SPDIF cable - does it need to be anything special?
- Thread starter fobos8
- Start date
IMO, no, no big spend needed, just go for a well constructed cable 
I've got an Atlas cable connection to my PC, my sister has a bog standard Amazon basics cable and they both sound the same.
I've got an Atlas cable connection to my PC, my sister has a bog standard Amazon basics cable and they both sound the same.
Just don't bother about anything gold on an optical connector. There's no benefit whatsoever.
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I use a multi strand glass fibre optical Spdif cable, 300 strands. Not cheap, not expensive but sounds fantastic.
Tinman1952
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As first ever posts go, they don't come better
(Like a record coming straight in the charts at number 1.....back in the days when they needed to sell more than 3 records to enter the chart).
Tinman1952
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Tinman1952
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There are loads of people that would be willing to bet that, in a blind test, you couldn't consistently tell one optical cable from another.
You could make a lot of money proving them wrong
Tinman1952
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All I know is I upgraded from a Van den Hul Optocoupler (£60) to a QED Performance Optical (£99) and not only did it sound clearer…it would pass 24/192 whereas the Van den Hul would only do 24/96…so not all cables are equal. Just my experience but you are free to disagree obviously 🙂There are loads of people that would be willing to bet that, in a blind test, you couldn't consistently tell one optical cable from another.
You could make a lot of money proving them wrong
Your bitrate example proves that there's a difference.
And true, given the choice, most people would prefer to know that they're listening to 192 rather than 96kHz.
But how many of them could tell by listening?
Again, it would be truly impressive to witness somebody reliably, blindly identifying the higher sample rate.
abacus
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Toslink was never designed for 192 (1st generation was only 48) and currently only rated up to 96, and that assumes the equipment it is connected too can manage it. (Remember the electrical input gets converted to light and then converted back at the end)
There is very little music that is true 192 (Most is just upsampled as studios use mainly 48 or 96 for mastering) so a bit of a niche for most users, (Plus a lot of Hi-res when tested is actually worse than 44.1 (Going above 44.1 is pretty pointless as there is virtually no music that goes above 20K) as unless very young their hearing is not good enough. (Many people consider themselves to have good hearing, but get a big shock when professionally tested, as in most cases it turns out to be not as good as they thought it was)
Bill
There is very little music that is true 192 (Most is just upsampled as studios use mainly 48 or 96 for mastering) so a bit of a niche for most users, (Plus a lot of Hi-res when tested is actually worse than 44.1 (Going above 44.1 is pretty pointless as there is virtually no music that goes above 20K) as unless very young their hearing is not good enough. (Many people consider themselves to have good hearing, but get a big shock when professionally tested, as in most cases it turns out to be not as good as they thought it was)
Bill
Yes and I'm sure the difference between their L & R ears might also shock some people
(for listening to their speakers with drive units pair-matched to within 1dB).
Maybe post them on Hi-fi Wigwam where there's more perverts for that sort of thing 😍
Tinman1952
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I agree with everything you have said here 🙂 My point was just to show that not all optical cables are the same 👍
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