A digital cable carrying SPDIF can be 15 meters without any obviously discernible loss. I do however find that a very long cable makes a difference, and usually for the worse. Despite this, I have not been able to discover a difference between 50cm and 150cm cables. One DAC can be very sensitive to the quality of the input signal (jitter) and can, therefore, be more reactive to a longer cable whereas another DAC can be relatively immune to it. This is something I have tested over and over again with a lot of different sources and DACs. And even though die-hard technicians would claim otherwise, reclocking doesn’t make the DAC impervious to the quality of the input signal. The end result depends greatly upon the quality of the source and the receiver in the DAC. “The shorter the better” is still popular when it comes to cables, confounded by insane prices of some high-end cables, but in the digital world, matters are a little different. This goes for all cables I tested so far and that includes the very different Lapp and Belden power cable.

In the reference-setup, I’ve performed several tests and they show that shorter power cables sound tighter and have more attack while longer power cables sound more fluid and more relaxed. All cables have a sound due to its construction and it is this sound that you either like or don’t like.Įven though the theory says that the cables in a system should have equal length, I cannot confirm this by performing practical tests. I think that there are parameters in a cable that influence the sound much more than possible pickup of radio waves. Rather than to theorize, I’ve always been more of the “just listen” kind of school. In general it is said that digital cables should be longer to form a proper transmission line, but in reality, you would never be able to make them long enough to cover all intervals.” And then he continues with a lot of theoretical stuff that is mostly beyond my comprehension. But to stay with what we know: George Cardas says it as follows: “a length of 60-75 cm is best avoided because of common radio frequency antenna lengths.

There’s even the possibility that many people (myself included) don’t completely understand everything about digital. There are in fact many complicated matters to digital sound that make an easy recommendation difficult. There are people that say a digital cable always has to be at least 1 – 1,5 meters because of RF matters. This seemed to be confirmed in listening tests later, see below. That’s one theory.Ī second possible explanation would be more obvious: the longer the cable, the more of its character shines through. In this case, you’d have the best focus and detailing while cables of various lengths would only diffuse the disturbances and hence the signals, resulting in less focus, more haze, and a more loose bass. In the case of having a setup with several cables, and cables of equal length would be used, at least these picked up disturbances would arrive at the same time and thus would do less harm. Power cables also carry lots of disturbances besides the nice clean power. What’s true about this? Without getting too much into details, here’s a little theory first. Best use a short lead? Or rather a minimum of 1,5 meters? Opinions divertĪccording to some, a power cable, but also a digital interlink has one defined perfect length, or should at least be a certain length.

Best power cable for stereo audio tuner