Digital interconnects - all the same?

i use an old hard disk led cable spliced together with an old rca cable to connect my spdif motherboard header to my amp (digital coax) and it works perfect :-)

so no - no special cables needed
 
cram said:
Sigh

I didn't actually say what I believe... I made the perfectly valid point that if you believe that all digital cables are basically the same then it doesn't matter where you buy them from. Back to your message above: I get your point but your analogy is poor. Video streamed over the internet is most certainly affected by the bandwidth available as you well know. And watching video on TV is far closer to streaming than it is to downloading.
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his analogy is fine actually, he is talking about network cable not network bandwidth.

digital cables work or they don't, you might get audio/video drop outs or anomalies with a cheaper cable but you can also get this from a £100 version also. if you really think you're getting superior sound/video because you paid for an expensive digital cable then i guess you should sign up to the RA newsletter - he makes a great living from gullible people.

think about a DVI/HDMI cable for a second, you actually think it's possible for a cable to improve black levels on a digital signal or for a cable to lose black levels.....anyone who buys into that needs a straight jacket.
 
network cable will influence bandwidth. Digital cables work or don't work? Hmmm to go back to network cables mentioned I wonder if there are ever such things as bad packets.

And for the third (and hopefully final time) I will repeat if you believe that all digital cables are basically the same then it doesn't matter where you buy them from. I'm hardly being a cable evangelist with the that am I?
 
if you get bad/lost packets under a digital cable you will lose the picture/audio completely or see/hear some kind of corruption, you won't get slightly worse blacks or color saturation.....this is what makes me laugh about digital cable fanatics ....they lose all sight of logic.

his analogy is still correct you're just being pedantic for reasons unknown, does everybody spend £100 on DVI cables for their PC monitors??? no because there's no difference....there's a picture or there isn't.

none of this is directed toward you btw, unless you actually believe in voodo magic :)
 
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You wouldn't lose the picture/audio completely because of a bad packet on an HDMI cable.

I don't really have any truck with the cable fanatics. As I don't believe the so called gains reported. But there again I'm not totally on the side of the sceptics who say its all 1s and Zeros and it works or it doesn't work as that's just factually incorrect.

Anyway , I've said my piece on this thread so I'm strolling off.
 
do we have to keep having the same argument?

if you want a cheap cable buy one, if it works then great. if it doesnt take the loss and buy another. your choice.
 
Thanks for the advice and suggestions. I've gone for Fisual optical and coaxial cables and a Mark Grant subwoofer cable. :)
 
maybe you should actually read my posts - i gave some very valid points to why digital cables make no difference.

the only bickering going on here is from you and ppl who believe in black magic and have nothing to backup their claims but heresay and BS, which the audio industry thrives on.

it's the same as idiots who must have the latest in speaker cable and expensive airloc'd terminations costing them hundreds of pounds .......and they run them into speakers which don't cost anymore than that. it doesn't bother me in the slightest how ppl waste their money ....but a con is a con is all i am saying.
 
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marscay - if you read the entire thread there was none/little of the black magic stuff that you hate. The useful parts of the thread to the Op were basically don't spend a lot but make sure the cable looks/feels well constructed. Advice I would imagine you agree with. Don't think anyone actually said go out and spend £££ss on digital interconnects
 
i didn't realise the like of subwoofers work with a digital signal?!

How people can say there's no difference in the quality of coax cables (including interconnects - which are basically the same thing) is beyond me. The whole makeup of the cable will affect signal and sound quality.

I agree that there's not much difference between digital cables like HDMI and Optical although a badly made up cable will suffer more faults and hence the sound/picture quality.
 
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Reality Bites said:
How people can say there's no difference in the quality of coax cables (including interconnects - which are basically the same thing) is beyond me. The whole makeup of the cable will affect signal and sound quality.
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This has been debated time and time again.. but the claim that cables (and numerous other audio bits) will provide vast differences to the human ear/eye are not backed up by solid evidence beyond that a well built cable will do the job.

People can believe what they like about hi-fi - but the fact is that until things are backed up by objective proof, no-one really has the right to go on about how widget A outperforms widget B. We can all talk about how widget A appeared to make a difference in a subjective manner, but to say that it does and that anyone who says otherwise is wrong without any solid evidence for said claims is not only silly but irresponsible imo.
 
The interesting thing that I have noticed about people who won't spend more than a quid on a cable is that they get so up their own backsides about it.

The people who spend maybe a tenner (steady now :eek:) are quite happy about their purchase and most just don't seem to care if there's an improvement or not as long as it isn't worse than what they started with.

I'm sure that some people have got rich from selling expensive cables in hi-fi shops and the like, but I'm also sure there's a lot of people who have got rich selling total crap to people on eBay who believe they are getting the bargain of the century.
 
oli collett said:
This has been debated time and time again.. but the claim that cables (and numerous other audio bits) will provide vast differences to the human ear/eye are not backed up by solid evidence beyond that a well built cable will do the job.

People can believe what they like about hi-fi - but the fact is that until things are backed up by objective proof, no-one really has the right to go on about how widget A outperforms widget B. We can all talk about how widget A appeared to make a difference in a subjective manner, but to say that it does and that anyone who says otherwise is wrong without any solid evidence for said claims is not only silly but irresponsible imo.
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this is the thing though, there will never be objective proof as it's all subjective. All i said was that a badly made up cable will not perform as well as a well made cable....nothing more.

The other thing i don't understand is that people who claim all cables are the same and that all digital devices (the bluray thread recently for instance) are suggesting that magazines who review the items and even the manufacturers who produce them are frauds. They all say there is a big difference between very cheap and very expensive equiptment, yet according to the gurus on here, they are full of BS.

can't be bothered with another argument over quality of sound/vision depending on the kit you use because it will go on forever. If someone watches/listens to some kit with x cable and they prefer it, who are a bunch of internet forum geeks to tell them otherwise?
 
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Reality Bites said:
this is the thing though, there will never be objective proof as it's all subjective. All i said was that a badly made up cable will not perform as well as a well made cable....nothing more.

The other thing i don't understand is that people who claim all cables are the same and that all digital devices (the bluray thread recently for instance) are suggesting that magazines who review the items and even the manufacturers who produce them are frauds. They all say there is a big difference between very cheap and very expensive equiptment, yet according to the gurus on here, they are full of BS.

can't be bothered with another argument over quality of sound/vision depending on the kit you use because it will go on forever. If someone watches/listens to some kit with x cable and they prefer it, who are a bunch of internet forum geeks to tell them otherwise?
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Just think that these magazines would lose sponsorshop from the cable companies who give them a lot of money. if they produced an article saying they were all the same, that sponsorship would go bye bye to another magazine. THe reason a lot of gurus go on about it is because a lot of them have a lot more technical knowledge about the construction of the cables and how the technology works than a silly reviewer or manufactuer will.

What hi-fi are numpties and this has been proven. Their ratings for cbales stating better blacks, better contrast, less noise is all a crock of **** there is no way a HDMI cable or a digital optical cable (in the case of sound) can do these things. Go over to avfourms and watch the 3 HDMI videos, very interesting but quite complicated too.

http://www.avforums.com/tv/

use the drop down table at the bottom and navigate to HDMI events 1, 2, and then 3 :D

Right I'm off to play with my arrived SPL metere and calibrate my system. Now that is £25 worth spending money on if you have surround sound !
 
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