Why do digital cables sound different?


I have been talking to a few e-mail buddies and have a question that isn't being satisfactorily answered this far. So...I'm asking the experts on the forum to pitch in. This has probably been asked before but I can't find any references for it. Can someone explain why one DIGITAL cable (coaxial, BNC, etc.) can sound different than another? There are also similar claims for Toslink. In my mind, we're just trying to move bits from one place to another. Doesn't the digital stream get reconstituted and re-clocked on the receiving end anyway? Please enlighten me and maybe send along some URLs for my edification. Thanks, Dan
danielho
Because the components that connect the transport and DAC are themselves connected to the ac-line source via possibly different power cords...and we know from a thread elsewhere that AC Power Cords have an effect on frequency response (digital or analog)

Geez guys it was soooo easy ;)

Cheers and happy listening!

DPac
maybe it's not what goes through them; how about what "gets out of them" ie, emmissions => noise...
Less makes for more. More musical results from less error correction. That be a fact Jack...Tom
Actually, if a digital waveform is distorted to the human eye on a scope, then it is distorted. There are built in test parameters you can put in to determine if the waveform is in spec or out of spec over a period of time.

Check out this link:
http://www.scientificarts.com/logo/logos.html

You don't need to know the math to see what they are talking about. There are some eye diagrams there which are very "open" and hence have excellent data transmission with no errors and there are some which are "closed" which are filled with errors.

Just 'cause its digital doesn't mean it isn't lossy.
Spatialking...A digital waveform does not represent the information being communicated (a "one" or a "zero"). The waveform is sampled at some specific instant of time to determine if it is above or below some threshold. Where the signal goes in between sample times is completely irrelevant. All that matters is that the sample time be chosen so that it is well away from leading and trailing edges of the waveform where the signal level is changing rapidly and might be misread.

In a complex digital system that I worked on (Missile guidance) we had dozens of analog signals being sampled and digitized, and many digital signals being used to generate pulses of power (amperes) to control things like gimbals. All in the space of a 9 inch sphere, so you can imagine the electrical noise environment! By very careful selection of sampling times and signal sequences it all worked fine, although you would never have thought it possible if you looked at the raw analog signals. The bottom line is that a sampled data system does not exist except at the sample times.