regular interconnect for digital signal transfer

In general I would not recommend it.

It may function, but unless the cable is specifically designed to have a 110 ohm "characteristic impedance," or it is explicitly indicated as being suitable for carrying AES/EBU digital signals, chances are that sonics will be seriously degraded due to jitter problems, waveform distortion, and other effects of impedance mismatches (more so or less so depending on the jitter rejection capabilities and other characteristics of the DAC).

Some "standard" balanced interconnects are designed in just that manner, though. An example is the inexpensive Blue Jeans/Belden 1800F cable.

Also, I would suggest that you obtain a cable that is approximately 1.5 meters in length (unless a very short length, such as 6 to 12 inches, would be adequate for your purposes). See this paper.

Regards,
-- Al

Thank you for your comments, gentlemen.

For those reading this who may not be aware, it is worth noting that the Van den Hul First Ultimate cable appears to have been designed with a "characteristic impedance" of 75 ohms.

That is the correct value for proper impedance matching for transmission of both unbalanced S/PDIF digital audio signals, and consumer-format analog video signals (component video and composite video).

Best regards,
-- Al

Stan, you probably have better information than appears on their website, but fwiw the Digi-Coupler and the MC Silver IT MkII are both listed there as being available in 1.5m lengths.

Also, the First Ultimate is listed as NOT being available in lengths longer than 1m, except "on special request; these will not be accepted for return." FYI, my strong suspicion is that the reason is that it has extremely high resistance per unit length (compared to most cables), in both the center conductor and the shield/return conductor.

In longer lengths the high shield resistance would cause ground loop problems with many components, whether the application is analog, digital, or video.

Also, the high center conductor resistance would cause significant signal loss at longer lengths in digital and video applications, where a low impedance (75 ohms) has to be driven.

Best regards,
-- Al