2. digital
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Why does my DAC sound so much better after upgrading digital SPDIF cable?

I like my Mps5 playback designs sacd/CD player but also use it as a DAC so that I can use my OPPO as a transport to play 24-96 and other high res files I burn to dvd-audio discs.

I was using a nordost silver shadow digital spdif cable between the transport and my dac as I felt it was more transparent and better treble than a higher priced audioquest digital cable a dealer had me audition.

I recently received the Synergistic Research Galileo new SX UEF digital cable.  Immediately I recognized that i was hearing far better bass, soundstage, and instrument separation than I had ever heard with high res files (non sacd),

While I am obviously impressed with this high end digital cable and strongly encourage others to audition it, I am puzzled how the cable transporting digital information to my DAC from my transport makes such a big difference.

The DAC take the digital information and shapes the sound so why should the cable providing it the info be so important. I would think any competently built digital cable would be adequate....I get the cable from the DAC to the preamp and preamp to amp matter but would think the cable to the DAC would be much less important.

I will now experiment to see if using the external transport to send red book CD files to my playback mps5 sounds better than using the transport inside the mps5 itself.

The MPS5 sounds pretty great for ca and awesome with SACD so doubt external transport will be improvement for redhook cds


karmapolice

Showing 3 responses by mwelbourne

mwelbourne
6 posts
 
For the last 13 years I've had a media PC hooked up to my TV and Denon surround amp. I'm using an TOSLINK from the PC motherboard to the amp. So, this is a red light flashing on and off on the motherboard going down about 1m of some sort of glass tube (whatever an optical cable is made of) and the amp is reading the pulses of light. I only play mp3s and it's mainly dance/pop stuff (so nothing high brow) - it all sounds truly amazing. I've never heard music sound better than it does in my house.

Am I to understand that the cable is causing jitter to a flashing pulse of light and that the digital info being received by the amp is not totally correct? Or is jitter to do with extra devices and connections and distance between the source and the amp?

The only thing that I have ever found that affects the quality is to use some mp3 gain software that stops mp3 flies from clipping. Before lowering the gain to remove clipping they sound harsh, get rid of the clipping they are sweet as anything. I do find that any Youtube or Spotify stuff directly over the internet generally tends to sound a bit rough in comparison, I assume it's down to the gain and that internet stuff is designed to sound good through phones and laptop speakers and not a couple of thousand quid of amp and speakers.
mwelbourne
6 posts
 
Am I right to think that gold connectors for digital cables are pointless? 
mwelbourne
6 posts
 
We are not talking about dropping bytes or getting bit-errors here. This is about timing inaccuracies. The timing of the digital signal must be extremely accurate, from word to word, in order for the D/A to reproduce a low-distortion waveform.

How does timing affect things if there is buffering? I still don't quite get this.
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