I don't think anyone said anything about that cable - isn't it the speaker
cables which are being compared? The relevance of the DAC is the quality of
the source isn't it?

Mark

"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...

"Glenn Richards" wrote in message
...
Mark R Penn wrote:


I then sent the digital output of the Technics player into an Arcam Black
Box 50 offboard DAC, and repeated the experiment.

This time there WAS a quite dramatic improvement in the sound each time
you went up the scale. Tighter and deeper bass, better projection and
soundstaging, more detail.

Now this I DO take issue with. The data that goes between player and DAC
is EXACTLY the same regardless of cable. In fact, I have done an
experiment where I used literally a short bit if wet salty string between
CD player and DAC, and the decoded audio was identical to using a
correctly matched 75 ohm cable. S-PDIF and AES/EBU is extremely rugged and
will withstand a lot of abuse. Cable-induced jitter could be an issue with
an inferior DAC that doesn't reclock the data adequately, and this may be
the case with the Arcam unit, I don't know the details of their receivers,
but even with a poor DAC receiver, whilst there may be a difference
between a good 75 ohm cable and something very inferior (very poor
impedance match) there would be negligible difference between two 75 ohm
cables of normal domestic lengths.

S.