Fiber Optic Digital vs Coax Digital Audio?

[Feanor]

No, not all of them will work -- only use digital interconnects for digital interconnects. Some analog interconnects don't have the right bandwidth. The ones you two chose might have worked, but (a) I will not guarantee that it will continue to work, and (b) I will certainly not guarantee that all analog interconnects will work. Bad advice.

Check out Blue Jeans Cable for highly cost effective cabling with out the hype.

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/

You will note that Blues Jeans sell you exactly the same same Belden cable and connectors for digital coax as for analog. They do recommend the more heavily shielded but less flexible cable for digital, however there is not bandwidth problem in either case. For that matter, any old composite video cable you have lying around has the bandwidth for digital, assuming it works with your TV.

[Dusty Chalk]

Video is different -- I will fully agree that any video cable will work as a digital interconnect. But I will stand by my stance that analog audio interconnects are not interchangeable with digital interconnects.

[markw]

Video is different -- I will fully agree that any video cable will work as a digital interconnect. But I will stand by my stance that analog audio interconnects are not interchangeable with digital interconnects.

I've got a cracked, brittle, yellowed interconnect form the eary 60's that says you're wrong.

I will go as far as saying that the common denominator just might be "75 ohms" but, then again, I doubt my antique is.

I think that for short digital runs the cable is not all that critical.

[StevenSurprenant]

When Signals Go Bad

One of the interesting distinctions between digital and analog signals is that they degrade in rather different ways. Both are electrical signals, carried by a stream of electrons in a wire, and so both are subject to alteration by the electrical characteristics of the cable and by the intrusion of outside electrical noise. But while the alteration of an analog waveform is progressive and continuous--the more noise is introduced, the more noise will come out of our speaker along with the tone--the digital signal suffers alteration quite differently.

First, a digital signal, because of its sharp transitions, is highly subject to degradation in its waveform; those sharp transitions are equivalent to a long--indeed, an infinite--series of harmonics of the base frequency, and the higher the frequency of the signal, the more transmission line effects, such as the characteristic impedance of the cable, and resulting signal reflections ("return loss") come into play. This means that while the signal may originate as a square wave, it never quite arrives as one. Depending on the characteristic impedance of the cable, the capacitance of the cable, and the impedance match between the source and load devices, the corners of the square wave will round off to a greater or lesser degree, and the "flat" portions of the wave will become uneven as well. This makes it harder for the receiving circuit to accurately identify the transitions and thereby clock the incoming signal (causing the phenomenon known as "jitter"). The more degradation in the signal, the harder it is for the receiving device to accurately measure the content of the bitstream.

Second, a digital signal, because of the way its information is contained, can be quite robust. While the signal will always degrade to some degree in the cable, if the receiving circuit can actually reconstitute the original bitstream, reception of the signal will be, in the end analysis, perfect. No matter how much jitter, how much rounding of the shoulders of the square wave, or how much noise, if the bitstream is accurately reconstituted at the receiving end, the result is as though there'd been no degradation of signal at all.

One note: it's often assumed that SPDIF digital audio, or DVI digital video, employ error correction. Because these formats are meant to deliver content in real time, however, they can't employ error correction; there's no time to re-send data packets which aren't correctly received. So when digital data are lost, the loss is final. Depending on what is lost, this may result in an interpolation (to "guess" the content of the missing data), an error (where data are misread and the erroneous content is rendered in place of the correct content), or a total failure (where the signal may disappear entirely for a period of time).


http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messa...79/125179.html

[PeruvianSkies]

Not to add more debate to this thread, but has anyone else experienced the difference between gold and silver cables? I switched over about a year ago to WhiteZombie Audio cables, which are pure Silver cables and I noticed a huge improvement over my previous cables, which were a variety: Monster, Audioquest, Tributaries, etc. To me, the Silver cables sounded more realistic and did not add any coloration to the material.

[musicman1999]

I tried a set of kimber silver streak interconnects and found them far to bright for my liking.Silver cables,like any cable,are very system dependant.If you system leans toward the bright side,silver cables will bring that much further out.

bill

[Dusty Chalk]

My favourite cables that I have (Quartets from Pure Silver Sound) are silver. I've heard gold ones, but I don't think I could tell the difference. I need to find silver cables pseudo-shielded with copper. I think copper will be fine for the pseudo shielding, while silver should be used for the conducter. Does anyone know of such a beast?

[StevenSurprenant]

I got my new DH Labs D110 digital interconnects and they are great. Imaging, sound stage, and micro detail all improved, I'm keeping them in the system.Now I will start working on the bass side of my system.