Why do digital cables sound different?


I have been talking to a few e-mail buddies and have a question that isn't being satisfactorily answered this far. So...I'm asking the experts on the forum to pitch in. This has probably been asked before but I can't find any references for it. Can someone explain why one DIGITAL cable (coaxial, BNC, etc.) can sound different than another? There are also similar claims for Toslink. In my mind, we're just trying to move bits from one place to another. Doesn't the digital stream get reconstituted and re-clocked on the receiving end anyway? Please enlighten me and maybe send along some URLs for my edification. Thanks, Dan
danielho
Expensive Digital cables sound different because you sit lower in your chair when listening to them. This is because your wallet is empty.
I still think a more interesting question is: Why do AC cables sound so different? or Why do AC cords make such an impact on a systems sound?

The AC cord seems much more mysterious to me because it does not directly carry the audio signal at all in a system.

I posed this question and there were only 6 responses at:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?fcabl&1042221110&openusid&zzTok20000&4&5#Tok20000

KF
here's what you need to do... go to your local wal-mart and purchase you a GOLD-PLATED OPTICAL cable, THAT'S WHERE IT'S AT!!!!! HA HA HA. (believe me, they make 'em)
I want a DAC with a slot for PC133 SDRAM, a 5 1/4 drive bay and an IDE controller. Those features should cost less than $60 retail (motherboards do that and a lot more for $60). I'll drop in 128 megs of RAM from crucial for $35. I'll plug in a 40x Plexwriter for $90 with a $3 IDE cable. Then the DAC can expect 100% accurate data to pour into the buffer at several times the playback speed. All it needs to do is pull out samples every 1/44100th of a second and do its thing with them.

If you think streaming bits from a buffer is somehow inferior to streaming them from an external component... well, uh... good for you, I guess. I hear that buffing bits smoothes them over and takes the harshness off the music, but to each his own.

Seriously, if $300 digital cables make a difference, we need to demand better hardware, plain a simple.
This discussion died off. Why?
I'm in the "I can hear a difference and I don't know why" camp between Coax/RCA terminated cables. Some expensive digital cables sound better than the HAVE Canare, some sound worse. I dunno.