Well I thought he was talking about speaker cables using different quality
sources to see if the quality of the source made any difference to the
"sensitivity" of the speaker cables, but reading it again, you could be
right. If you are, then I'd agree that a digital signal is a digital signal
is a digital signal, and it would be very difficult if not impossible to
degrade it using cables.

Mark

"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...
Not sure I understand your reply:-

I understood Glen Richards to say that he changed the interconnects
between CD player and DAC and heard a difference. My contention is that
there cannot be a difference.

S.


"Mark R Penn" wrote in message
...
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.