Self Laundry Upper East Side

The digital cables sound

In my journey in high resolution audio, I never thought of bumping into an old theme that I had ever faced: the quality of digital connections. The stable configuration of
My new DVD-Audio source provided with an optical digital cable connection to external DAC, as had always been the case for the CD player that had only Toslink output.

reading around, and drawing on some knowledge of hi-fi that I will have read years ago, I suggested that switching to SPDIF coaxial cable would have improved, albeit slightly, the sound quality, or better, that would eliminate defects Toslink cable. I

then a ride on ebay, and I run the cables from Belkin. Now, before horrified instantly, Belkin cables are available in two series of which the Silver is the best quality. Despite
Belkin is a manufacturer of hardware that rotates around the home networking, audio-video cables seem made really well for what they cost - at least on ebay, in Italy they cost a lot.
so I ordered a digital coaxial cable and a pair of RCA analog connection between DAC and amp, Monster cable to replace the old, to be used on other equipment.

Incidentally, the analog cables have arrows marked indicating the "direction" of the signal, which is one of their ends must be connected to the source to the amplifier and the other exclusively, and not vice versa. I would expect, intuitively, that the cable's direction was effective for up to digital cable, which has to do with frequencies much higher than audio. It is natural that the problems of transmission increases with increasing signal frequency.
'll discuss these matters.

Just get the coaxial cable, I proceeded to immediately replace the optical, without worrying too much, because I knew it would sound more or less as before, if not better. I also replaced the analog cables.
To my surprise, however, the first notes of the piano by Mari Kodama I realized that the great sound of DVD-Audio was lost and I felt like returning to an old CD.

Well, after an evening of listening tests, and after having switched between optical or coaxial twenty times the result was that the best sound quality I've always obtained with the optical connection.
With CD there is no difference, practically even with regard to internal drives, but when you go up a lot of things change frequently.

The sound of the cable was now darker, the sound image very small micro-dynamics insufficient.
With the optical cable I had become accustomed to even hear the piano playing that moved and changed in some way the sound received by microphones.
The reasons, according to the literature "classic" on the subject, can be two: the jitter and (brace yourselves) the running of the cable.

We will see later the running of the coaxial cable and the additional listening tests.