Digital Interconnect Questions

It is all relative, fortunately.

If you have $30k invested in Amps, Pre-amps and DVD/CD players, then you want an associated cable to connect the equipment.
Otherwise, you won't hear the difference.
I'm one of those people that have the high-priced equipment, and have convinced my self that the higher priced cable is needed. However, for years I also revelled in mid-fi, and I equally enjoyed it. The only thing that changed is my ability to afford the more expensive.

I've auditioned a number of them, to mate with my MSB Link Dac. I tried both the expensive Goldmund Lineal ($500?) and the Illuminations D-60. But I ended up with the Canare Digiflex Gold, about $50. I'm also thinking of upgrading, but I've read some reviews lately that said things like, there is no real huge improvement over the Canare unless you go to something like the Tara Labs The One or XLO Limited Edition (both about $1000, cheaper on the web). You can read reviews at Audioreview.com But I don't know for sure, and one thing that really bugs me is the difficulty of just auditioning. I wish I could get like 4 or 5 of these into my house at one time so I could really find out the truth. But it's hard unless you have a dealer who carries many different brands! (And most don't, instead each dealer pushes 1 or 2 brands). Main thing to know is that they do sound different so it is worth *auditioning* but try to avoid buying until you find one you like.

I have found that the difference between cables usually depends on the equipment. If you are using a seperate dac I think you will hear a major difference. The equivalant of cd player upgrade. I personally feel that the digital cable is one of the most signifacant in your system.

In my very limited experience, yes, differences can be heard (in a good, highly resolving system, of course). I just recently bought my first outboard DAC, a Theta DSPro Basic IIIa, to feed from my Adcom player. I went to a dealer and picked up two interconnects, a $60 Vampire, and one made by a previously unheard-of (by me) local company (VA) called Empirical Design, at $150 (FYI, they are supposedly run by a guy who used work for Goldmund, and the story is that this IC is basically the same as one they used to market for about $450). Both are coaxially shielded, 75ohm cables at 1m, the Vampire being silver-plated OFC copper with PE insulation in an average-diameter soft PVC jacket, and of course using their own connectors; the Empirical Design employs "pure" copper conductor and shield in foamed Teflon insulation with a narrow-diameter Teflon jacket, and what appear to be Tiff RCA's. If I was hoping to be able to return the cable that would save me $90, I was disabused of that notion within one hour's burn-in and auditioning. The primary areas of sonic improvement I can point to would have to be treble smoothness, followed by superior soundstage depth and transparency to low-level detail, but the truth is that the costlier wire just gave a presentation that clearly exceeded overall in its naturalness and "organic wholeness", leading to an increase in general believability. The cheaper stuff, while still sounding better with the DAC than the CD player run on its own, seemed more coarse, flat, and mechanical in comparision. (Digital IC performance is said to be highly dependent on the partnering transport and decoder in question, so this result is not to be taken as universal.) I intend to continue with further comparisions (within a reasonable budget) to see what more is possible, and have become curious to check out one of the outboard jitter-reduction devices such as a DIP as well, since my "tranport" isn't in the same league as the processor. In any case, it may not cost anything but your time to experiment (given a helpful dealer), so you should definitely try an upgrade and stop wondering. Good luck!

My Acoustic Zen MC2 comes the closest to my analogue cables after comparing at least 7 or 8 different brands. The clear, if not profound difference in cables has helped make my home theater listening "even better than the real thing". Don't just listen for the immediate differences, listen for 2 hours at a time for a few days. Harshness and listener fatigue reveal themselves over time.