Yes, digital cables matter too

On a suggestion from another Agoner, I recently spent a fair bit of time sorting out the coaxial cable situation connecting my Bluesound Node (gen 3) and my Chord QuteHD dac.  I ended up enlisting outside help, but I learned quite a bit, and I am certain my system will be in a much better place as a result once I pull the trigger on one of the cables evaluated.

I went into a local dealer to buy a different item and mentioned in passing I was interested in trying a different digital cable, and he immediately handed me three and told to take them home and try them out.  My initial impressions were so positive I went to another local dealer and they handed me another five cables to try.  Combined with two coax cables I already had at home, that was a total of ten new and used cables priced from $25 to $1,500 to compare. Cables were: Pangea Premier Digital, Blue Jeans X ‘Better’, DHLabs Silver Sonic, naim DC-1, Chord Shawline, current and past Chord Signature Digital Super ARAY models, and Nordost Blue Heaven and Heimdall 2.

I have bought or assembled and evaluated a number of different PC, digital and analog cables, but until I got the Node, I had never really experimented with digital coax cables.  I have developed my own method for comparing cables that includes making sure all cables have been played recently in my system for st lesst a day, and then listening to a few cuts of various genera and styles of music with each cable and taking general notes.  I enlisted my son who has a very good system and good listening skills for blind testing a few of the cables.

I will touch on some if the highlights here.  

First, I have never listened to either Chord or Nordost cables in a controlled context, and at least for their digital offerings, I am impressed.  I had thought that my DHLabs Silver Sonic coax cable sounded pretty good, and it is often recommended as a good budget cable, but it was left a little bit behind by most of the others I tried in my system.

Second, some of these cables sounded dramatically different, and you get what you pay for.  My son easily identified as his favorite cables the two most expensive cables tested in a blind listening.  The amount of detail and nuance on offer made that result a near certainty.

Third, putting these high quality cables between the latest iteration of the Node and the Chord dac indicated how good the Node functions as a server for HD, 16/44 and mp3 files, and proved to me that digital cables make a big difference in this context.

The lower level Chord Shawline and Nordost Blue Heaven are both lovely cables.  The Shawline is balanced with good spatial detail and broad soundstage.  The Blue Heaven is super musical with great PRAT, an emphasis on leading edges and a lower center of gravity.  Of the two, there’s a bit more detail on offer from the Shawline. Compared to my Silver Sonic, both had less grain, sounded more organized and less shouty.  Either would have been an improvement, and I probably would have bought the Shawline if I hadn’t listened to cables further up both lines.

The naim DC-1 is a nice cable and a slight step up from the Shawline and Blue Heaven in terms of spatial resolution and detail, but interestingly, the naim wire had less PRAT and drive than either of the Nordost products.

The Nordost Heimdall 2 is a really lovely cable, similar PRAT and flow as the Blue Heaven, but more high frequency information, better tone, oodles of detail and very accurate placement of instruments and voices in the sound stage, all without sounding lit up or over the top.  It took this cable a few hours of playing to get to this point.  When I first dropped it in, it sounded a little thin.

The Chord Signature Super ARAY is also a great cable.  My son in the blind listening described it as not quite as punchy on leading edges as the Heimdall 2, but he felt the midrange was to die for, and this cable did voices better than any other cable in my test.  Very good tone, and detail and spatial resolution were also convincing with this cable.

One surprise in my listening was the Blue Jeans digital cable made specifically for Hawthorne Stereo.  At just shy of a hundred bucks, this was a very good deal.  It lacks the PRAT of the Blue Heaven, but it was smooth, good tone, sound stage and separation and bass definition.  The treble is a bit tipped up, but no jitter glare.  It doesn’t set a foot wrong, and especially for the price.  I did have trouble getting the RCA connectors to grip the socket on the Node, and the cable is stiff, which didn’t help.

So, in conclusion, yeah, trying different coax cables with the Node was a real ear opener.  When I first thought about upgrading my coax cable, I never considered spending up to half of the combined value new of my streamer and dac, but now I plan to buy one of the more expensive cables I tried, because after listening to them in my system, there is no going back.

kn