Why so few devices with BNC's??


It's an ongoing amazement to me how many manufacturers use RCA's for 75 ohm digital connections.   Is this really to just save a couple bucks?  Lower end McIntosh stuff has RCA's as does most Japanese gear regardless of price.  It's not like BNC's are really so exotic, and 75 ohm cables are readily available.  In fact, the general lack of inputs is an annoyance.  Not everybody wants to use USB or Toslink.  Rant over. 😠  Thanks for reading.

[Please, this is NOT a thread to list all the exceptions.]

128x128kletter1mann

@thespeakerdude

darTZeel only makes analog products except for one integrated amp with a dac in it. the ’zeel’ 50 ohm interface is strictly analog only.

Herve Deletraz of darTZeel wrote an article published in the Sept 2001 issue of Stereophile about Impedance Matching in audio. it’s quite technical. but if you doubt the logic of the 50 ohm BNC advantage for analog interconnects, then you should have the tech knowledge to follow it. it’s serious.

https://www.townshendaudio.com/PDF/Impedance_matching%20deletraz%20paper.pdf

he wrote that article before he launched his audio company where he applied the principles mentioned and included the ’zeel’ BNC 50 ohm interface in all his products.

i have owned darTZeel amps and preamps since 2005 and always used ’zeel’ 50 ohm interconnects. compared them many times to conventional interconnects and always preferred the ’zeel’.

you have a right to your opinions, but there is real science behind the 'zeel'.

@mikelavigne ,

I am not an EE, but I work around them every day, and I have a physics background so I get the concepts. Turns out the 6moons article was excerpts of the one you linked. I don't feel a need to change my past statement, a flawed premise followed by flawed examples. Been around professional audio speakers technically a long time. This "idea" of impedance matching for analog in audio has been around since the 1990s from Goertz. He even patented it: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5393933 for speaker cables.  It keeps rearing it's head every once in a while, gets shot down because it does not work, and then it goes away till it comes back again. With speaker cables, these low impedance cables created problems without solving any, they caused some amps to blow up. It's bad science or marketing.

Maybe one of the EE's out there has a better graph or can make one. I tried to Google a good graph, but didn't have much luck finding one. Not sure this is a 50 ohm or 75 ohm cable, but does not matter, the principle is the same. That number does not work for the frequencies we hear.

 

 

 

 

I use a high end Marantz CD/SACD player and a dCS Bartok connected by a 75 ohm Shunyata BNC cable.  While the Marantz has a nice on board CD DAC, using its digital BNC output to the Bartok for CDs just sounds better.  The Marantz does an excellent job with its on-board SACD DAC however, a strength of Marantz engineering.