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The Importance of the Digital Cable

Good Sunday evening dear friends,

This point of discussion has been on my mind of late, as I have listened carefully to the results. This is a bold statement and discussed ad nauseam here I am sure, though I feel others may be encouraged to explore this more deeply as we share our experiences here.

I’ve had several digital cables, ranging from several coax, to toslink. I have not yet tried a dedicated AES/EBU XLR.

Listening to the Denafrips Pontus, a ladder DAC, fed from an Oppo UDP-205 as transport, I was compelled to try a few different cables, because the results were not as good as expected. I played a few albums; XTC ‘Nonesuch’ - a rather hot recording from the 90’s but very interesting and politically out front. Then an Everett Harp CD that highlights his wonderful sax playing. Then Robben Ford and The Blue Line, the album being ‘handful of Blues’.After that some Arjit Singh, and Tarkan (Turkish music).
The cables running from the DAC to the Pre/amp are Transparent Ultra XL (original). I like these cables because they have a very natural organic sound. They do lack some of the detail up top of some of the best in class and perhaps are a less exciting that some, but over all I love the naturalness, slight warmth in mid-bass, scale and soundstage of their sound.
But things didn’t sound quite right. I can always tell when something isn’t quite right, because it’s harder for me to get involved in the music. Some of the quieter words were too vague, and there was just a general fuzziness and vagueness overall. The soundstage was flatter and resolution of detail was lacking. The Pontus as you know, is a very good DAC, so I knew something was off.

I had the Canare digital cable in place, and decided to switch it out for my Black Cat Veloce. Wow! The sound transformed. Now the DAC truly shined. All the detail returned. The sound was certain and clear. The soundstage was very wide and the vagueness replaced with clarity. The music was now exciting and involving.

This begs the question, how can a digital cable make such a difference? After all, it is transporting a digital binary signal?
Please share your experiences.
AK
4afsanakhan

Showing 1 response by aubreybobb

aubreybobb
86 posts
 
Those of you who use fibre for digital should be aware that older transducers use LED's which are slow and not very accurate - the electronics are pretty poor too.  I guess most toslink falls into this category. Unfortunately, this pretty much negates the advantage one would expect from the abscence of rfi/emi interference that fibre promises.

Newer ones use lasers and high quality electronics and combine this with good glass (instead of plastic) cable.  The improvement, in my opinion, is about like going from the lower models in a copper range to very near the top.    Doesn't break the bank.  Top quality for a set of transceivers and glass cable is around USD 200- 300/- not thousands!

Of course you have to have sfp ports in your equipment for best results. 

If no sfp ports, there is a workaround - one can use video converters also (v cheap) at either end of the path.  This helps, but it is more complex in terms of cabling and components, and the result is not quite as spectacular. 

Hope this is useful
Best wishes 


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