Best digital cable to audition?

Readster,

My understanding is a digital cables impedance, inductance, total length, internal reflectance and quality of terminations all play a role in its ability to preserve data.

Lots of discussion here at Audiogon on the subject, including the concept of maintaining 75 ohms as that is supposed to be the standard.

Then there is the issue of whether the DAC and transport are TRUE 75 ohm and would benefit from that exact termination.

Connectors play a role, with BNC type claiming to be "the" 75 ohm standard. In response, Canare built an RCA version that is reported to be just as accurate.

So as usual, the answer is not easy and why many of us choose to audition various cable to determine what works.

Readster, I'm no expert on this subject but there are no ones or zeros. That's just a concept. In reality there are electrical or light signals. Those electrical and light signals can be affected by any number of things. Even some fiber optics sound different in my experience.

I just got a Stereovox HDVX cable. Its still breaking in, but so far I am liking it.

Cheers,
Nick

I auditioned the Marigo Labs Apparition 5.6 vs the Transparent and, in my system, I liked the Transparent better.

Being a transmission lines for high-frequency digital signals (megahertz range), all digital cables must first meet the "minimum" requirement of a 75-Ohm impedance. Some expensive digital cables unfortunately do not even meet this simple standard and most consumers have no way of knowing that.

Having the correct 75-Ohm impedance alone is of course no guaranty of a perfect signal transmission. As Albertporter already mentioned, connectors, termination, length, etc., could also affect the signals.

I am lucky enough to have a friend, a EE who worked in data transmission and has the equipment to measure the basic performance of digital cables. He showed me on his scope signal problems caused by impedance mismatch and reflections in the cables. The test signals became distorted with overshoots and other ugly noise spikes. This is not acceptable, especially from cables costing upward of $500. He did some simple things to the the connectors/terminations, and suddenly the test signal emerged perfectly undistorted. Listening tests with and without the fix confirmed the clear sound improvement.

And these are only problems that we understand pretty well. Engineering variable, however, are rarely fully defined and understood. There are often hidden parameters that we failed to account for at first, second, or even third pass.

So as a consumer chosing a digital cable, the first thing is to get absolute assurance of a 75-Ohm impedance. Then, find out about the quality of the connectors and terminations. If these issues are resolved, you would have avoided the first-order problems. Your ears will do the rest. It's pointless to try a digital cable that's are not even 75 Ohm.

Sometimes I wished that there were stricter regulations for digital cables, for example a 75-Ohm label like food nutiritional-fact label, based on actual measurements, not just wishful thinking. It would not be a guaranty of great sound, but it's a good start.