Question:
I want connect my DVD to my amp, so I was thinking of buying digital cables.
After doing a search, the threads seems to slightly favour the coxial/RCA/Phono connectivity.
The threads seems to suggest that any decent phono cables should be O.K to pass digital data to the amp.
Question is, am I better of getting a £9.99 phono cable from a place like argos than spending £50 at some audio shop?
and is there a great diffrence between optical cables, as some are for a £10 while others are for £60, for the same length?
Pls advice
Truth is it depends on your system.
If you have a highly revealing system, then a £10 cable is going to affect what your hearing mor than if you have a cheap happy go lucky system.
A good quality co-ax is always better than optical unless it's length is greater than 10 meters.
Originally posted by giggsy
Truth is it depends on your system.Truth is it makes no difference, its a digital bitstream so nothing short of dropping bits will make a difference, which means anything better then a couple of rusty coat hangers will do the job.
Originally posted by giggsy
Truth is it depends on your system.
If you have a highly revealing system, then a £10 cable is going to affect what your hearing mor than if you have a cheap happy go lucky system.
A good quality co-ax is always better than optical unless it's length is greater than 10 meters.
Truth actually is that there is no difference between coaxial and optical methods (that you will hear) and if using a coaxial connection any phono lead will do fine as long as it doesn't drop bits. Try and get video-grade (75ohm) phono cables for use as a digital connection and you will be fine. You shouldn't really need to spend more than a fiver on one. As for optical the more expensive ones may be less prone to breaking and have better fitting plugs, but again, 50 quid is a mugs game.
It's not as simple as saying that it's a digital connection of 1's and 0's so any cable will do. Shielding and purity have a big influence on the sound.
Always try a cable on a buy and return basis. I have tested many digital co-ax and optical cables and they all have been different.
Some don't allow the smaller nuances of the signal through. Some have a pronounced midrange giving voices a nasal quality.
Some have a bass so bloomy it overwhelmes the midrange.
Some have a muted top end.
Each will sound awful in the wrong system but wonderful in another.
It might be that the £5 cable has the characteristics to match your system but you won't know that you get better unless you try more than 1.
Originally posted by giggsy
Some don't allow the smaller nuances of the signal through. Some have a pronounced midrange giving voices a nasal quality.
Some have a bass so bloomy it overwhelmes the midrange.
Some have a muted top end.
It is that simple, if it wasn't wouldn't people building their pcs care about for example their hard disk cables beyond whether its round or ribbon?
All of the symptoms you describe are analogue changes, changing random bits has random effects. Purity of a digital signal is only an issue once it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two states. A dodgy cable with say a slight break in the middle will produce drop outs and clicks, not subtle changes.
The changes you state can only come about at the DAC(digital to analogue converter) or later.
[edit]This has been discussed numerous times on these forums before, including in this http://Here.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105406 thread, which includes this enlightening link http://www.magnani.net/~al/DigitalWireLabTest.html , which pits a expensive interconnect against the wonders to 2 wire coat hangers.
Nice try mr. Nice. I work in IT building PC's and servicing them.
There is a big difference in the requirement of the 2 type of cable.
It is called timing. with a PC, timing is not an issue because if the packet is corrupted, the sender resends the packet and the net effect is that the download will take a bit longer. No problem there but when your talking hi-fi, this can have a big impact, noticable in the ways i mentioned earlier.
I can understand the belief that it is just digital so it shouldn't matter but it is never that simple.
Bare in mind that I said it would take a revealing system to notice the differences and then it still comes down to opinion which in the end is subjective.
If the data is corrupted on the way to the amp (which can be the only failing of a digital interconnect) then this will manifest in dropout. If there is no dropout the digital connection is working perfectly.
Ok. point taken. So explain why some cables (usually the more expensive ones) allow more detail to come through.
Originally posted by giggsy
Ok. point taken. So explain why some cables (usually the more expensive ones) allow more detail to come through.
Because if you see a £50 price label on a piece of wire it's definitely going to sound "better" !!!
In terms of timing - the bandwith required of the cable is so small compared to the average piece of telephone wire making up the typical office network it's like sending one bus an hour round an empty M25 with only 1 stop.. they will **eventually** catch up with each other but it might take a while...
That's not true. I tried a £150 cable from Kimber which I thought was ok. Found another cable under the bed which had been there for around 8 years because it was a digital cable and I didn't have a Dvd/Cd. Tried that and it was so much better than the Kimber that I returned it for a refund. The cable was a deltec but I have no idea of cost because it was given to me.
So price is not an issue.
Besides I always use my missus for blind listening tests. She knows zilch about audio but she knows when she can hear more or less in the music/film and she knows when somesthing is good or bad.
Originally posted by giggsy
I tried a £150 cable from Kimber which I thought was ok.
Aha! Kimber Cable - someone's been spending too much time reading the Russ Andrews brochures...
Originally posted by giggsy
Ok. point taken. So explain why some cables (usually the more expensive ones) allow more detail to come through. That might just be possible with PCM, but not with compressed formats like DD and DTS. They have to buffer the data a little bit anyway, since each byte on its own has no meaning, so the timing of the individual bits not being quite constant is a not really an issue.
Russ is the man.
Mr. Nice you are quite right about the DD/DTS but we did notice differences.
Ok, this is gonna sound a little lame but in the film Stuart Little (cough), there is a bit where there is a boat race in central park. Over the race and dialogue there is a PA anouncer in the abckground.
On a couple of of cables he was muffled and you couldn't understand what he was saying whereas on the cable I am using now he comes across load and clear without impacting what is happening in the foreground.
The real question is: does DD or DTS allow for error correction? My guess is that it doesn't due to the low bitrates (1.5Mbs or less) and distances involved, but I could be wrong. Let's look at it from both sides:
If DD or DTS allows for error correction in the bitstream, then yes, a dodgy cable will still work but not sound as perfect as a more robust one due to interpolation techniques used (basically, "guessing" what the missing bits are, when they go missing).
If DD or DTS does not allow for error correction, then one cable will sound just as good as another. Only a really duff cable will cause dropouts, and those are very noticeable.
Do not confuse PCM in the mix. While PCM does not have any error-correction capability, most processors interpolate dropouts in a raw PCM stream, so cable quality is a factor (although I still doubt it over the distances involved). You can't really do that with a compressed bitstream that does not provide an error-correction mechanism.
Originally posted by Nick dVl
Do not confuse PCM in the mix. While PCM does not have any error-correction capability, most processors interpolate dropouts in a raw PCM stream, so cable quality is a factor (although I still doubt it over the distances involved). You can't really do that with a compressed bitstream that does not provide an error-correction mechanism. Yeah, thats why I mentioned it as just possible with PCM.
Just get a proper cable from here:
http://www.ardelectronics.com/
Nice and cheap.
Originally posted by SuperBOB
Just get a proper cable from here:
http://www.ardelectronics.com/
Nice and cheap. Nah, I've just put 2 of my work suits in for drycleaning:D.
After doing a search, the threads seems to slightly favour the coxial/RCA/Phono connectivity.
The threads seems to suggest that any decent phono cables should be O.K to pass digital data to the amp.
Question is, am I better of getting a £9.99 phono cable from a place like argos than spending £50 at some audio shop?
and is there a great diffrence between optical cables, as some are for a £10 while others are for £60, for the same length?
Pls advice
Answers:
Truth is it depends on your system.
If you have a highly revealing system, then a £10 cable is going to affect what your hearing mor than if you have a cheap happy go lucky system.
A good quality co-ax is always better than optical unless it's length is greater than 10 meters.
Answers:
Originally posted by giggsy
Truth is it depends on your system.Truth is it makes no difference, its a digital bitstream so nothing short of dropping bits will make a difference, which means anything better then a couple of rusty coat hangers will do the job.
Answers:
Originally posted by giggsy
Truth is it depends on your system.
If you have a highly revealing system, then a £10 cable is going to affect what your hearing mor than if you have a cheap happy go lucky system.
A good quality co-ax is always better than optical unless it's length is greater than 10 meters.
Truth actually is that there is no difference between coaxial and optical methods (that you will hear) and if using a coaxial connection any phono lead will do fine as long as it doesn't drop bits. Try and get video-grade (75ohm) phono cables for use as a digital connection and you will be fine. You shouldn't really need to spend more than a fiver on one. As for optical the more expensive ones may be less prone to breaking and have better fitting plugs, but again, 50 quid is a mugs game.
Answers:
It's not as simple as saying that it's a digital connection of 1's and 0's so any cable will do. Shielding and purity have a big influence on the sound.
Always try a cable on a buy and return basis. I have tested many digital co-ax and optical cables and they all have been different.
Some don't allow the smaller nuances of the signal through. Some have a pronounced midrange giving voices a nasal quality.
Some have a bass so bloomy it overwhelmes the midrange.
Some have a muted top end.
Each will sound awful in the wrong system but wonderful in another.
It might be that the £5 cable has the characteristics to match your system but you won't know that you get better unless you try more than 1.
Answers:
Originally posted by giggsy
Some don't allow the smaller nuances of the signal through. Some have a pronounced midrange giving voices a nasal quality.
Some have a bass so bloomy it overwhelmes the midrange.
Some have a muted top end.
It is that simple, if it wasn't wouldn't people building their pcs care about for example their hard disk cables beyond whether its round or ribbon?
All of the symptoms you describe are analogue changes, changing random bits has random effects. Purity of a digital signal is only an issue once it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two states. A dodgy cable with say a slight break in the middle will produce drop outs and clicks, not subtle changes.
The changes you state can only come about at the DAC(digital to analogue converter) or later.
[edit]This has been discussed numerous times on these forums before, including in this http://Here.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105406 thread, which includes this enlightening link http://www.magnani.net/~al/DigitalWireLabTest.html , which pits a expensive interconnect against the wonders to 2 wire coat hangers.
Answers:
Nice try mr. Nice. I work in IT building PC's and servicing them.
There is a big difference in the requirement of the 2 type of cable.
It is called timing. with a PC, timing is not an issue because if the packet is corrupted, the sender resends the packet and the net effect is that the download will take a bit longer. No problem there but when your talking hi-fi, this can have a big impact, noticable in the ways i mentioned earlier.
I can understand the belief that it is just digital so it shouldn't matter but it is never that simple.
Bare in mind that I said it would take a revealing system to notice the differences and then it still comes down to opinion which in the end is subjective.
Answers:
If the data is corrupted on the way to the amp (which can be the only failing of a digital interconnect) then this will manifest in dropout. If there is no dropout the digital connection is working perfectly.
Answers:
Ok. point taken. So explain why some cables (usually the more expensive ones) allow more detail to come through.
Answers:
Originally posted by giggsy
Ok. point taken. So explain why some cables (usually the more expensive ones) allow more detail to come through.
Because if you see a £50 price label on a piece of wire it's definitely going to sound "better" !!!
In terms of timing - the bandwith required of the cable is so small compared to the average piece of telephone wire making up the typical office network it's like sending one bus an hour round an empty M25 with only 1 stop.. they will **eventually** catch up with each other but it might take a while...
Answers:
That's not true. I tried a £150 cable from Kimber which I thought was ok. Found another cable under the bed which had been there for around 8 years because it was a digital cable and I didn't have a Dvd/Cd. Tried that and it was so much better than the Kimber that I returned it for a refund. The cable was a deltec but I have no idea of cost because it was given to me.
So price is not an issue.
Answers:
Besides I always use my missus for blind listening tests. She knows zilch about audio but she knows when she can hear more or less in the music/film and she knows when somesthing is good or bad.
Answers:
Originally posted by giggsy
I tried a £150 cable from Kimber which I thought was ok.
Aha! Kimber Cable - someone's been spending too much time reading the Russ Andrews brochures...
Answers:
Originally posted by giggsy
Ok. point taken. So explain why some cables (usually the more expensive ones) allow more detail to come through. That might just be possible with PCM, but not with compressed formats like DD and DTS. They have to buffer the data a little bit anyway, since each byte on its own has no meaning, so the timing of the individual bits not being quite constant is a not really an issue.
Answers:
Russ is the man.
Mr. Nice you are quite right about the DD/DTS but we did notice differences.
Ok, this is gonna sound a little lame but in the film Stuart Little (cough), there is a bit where there is a boat race in central park. Over the race and dialogue there is a PA anouncer in the abckground.
On a couple of of cables he was muffled and you couldn't understand what he was saying whereas on the cable I am using now he comes across load and clear without impacting what is happening in the foreground.
Answers:
The real question is: does DD or DTS allow for error correction? My guess is that it doesn't due to the low bitrates (1.5Mbs or less) and distances involved, but I could be wrong. Let's look at it from both sides:
If DD or DTS allows for error correction in the bitstream, then yes, a dodgy cable will still work but not sound as perfect as a more robust one due to interpolation techniques used (basically, "guessing" what the missing bits are, when they go missing).
If DD or DTS does not allow for error correction, then one cable will sound just as good as another. Only a really duff cable will cause dropouts, and those are very noticeable.
Do not confuse PCM in the mix. While PCM does not have any error-correction capability, most processors interpolate dropouts in a raw PCM stream, so cable quality is a factor (although I still doubt it over the distances involved). You can't really do that with a compressed bitstream that does not provide an error-correction mechanism.
Answers:
Originally posted by Nick dVl
Do not confuse PCM in the mix. While PCM does not have any error-correction capability, most processors interpolate dropouts in a raw PCM stream, so cable quality is a factor (although I still doubt it over the distances involved). You can't really do that with a compressed bitstream that does not provide an error-correction mechanism. Yeah, thats why I mentioned it as just possible with PCM.
Answers:
Just get a proper cable from here:
http://www.ardelectronics.com/
Nice and cheap.
Answers:
Originally posted by SuperBOB
Just get a proper cable from here:
http://www.ardelectronics.com/
Nice and cheap. Nah, I've just put 2 of my work suits in for drycleaning:D.
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