my thoughts on optical vs coaxial cables from your player to your DAC,

It is just 1's & 0's that go through there, so it really does not matter which you used. Even at $20 you still paid too much for that Monster branded cable.

The sound of signal loss on a digital line is typically along the lines of clicks, pops, mutes, and the like. Simply not working

What the sound of signal loss on a digital line is not includes changes in timbre, spectral balance, timing, rhythm, air, soundstaging, etc.

I can confidently say from the standpoint of theory and about 20 years of practice is that if you think you hear any other differences than what's in the first sentence, its not due to anything that happened in the digital domain.

In the sort of evaluation you did, people tend to hear random differences or differences that agree with their prejudices or beliefs. Everybody. Even me! ;-)

No

Also, Can you explain that? If the "strand count" on an optical cable is more than one.... you have a bad cable.
Edited by Ratman - 3/1/13 at 10:01am

Gauge is irrelevant in this application because you are carrying a small signal into a fairly modest load. Current is quite low so a very fine conductor will carry it OK.
Monster are famous for padding out their cables with lots of insulation to make them look more impressive, so size is irrelevant. Ths application, approc 1.4MHz data stream so circa 10MHz BW and 75ohm characteristic impedance is something the most generic RG6 (cable TV type) coax at 50c per m will carry perfectly.

If the shielding was so poor and local RF interference so high that it caused an issue, you would have the effects Arny posted in the beginning of post 4.
No.

Nope.A single clad silica fibre can bend far more than you'd think, plastic even more so, before fracturing.

This is from 2006, regarding RocketFish cables http://www.avsforum.com/t/693711/rocketfish-cables/0_100 As for multi-strand, you would only have that if you were connecting multiple devices. A single strand of fiber is used in Optical cables not multiple.

$15 bucks is too much, especially for Best Buy branded stuff. I use only monoprice.com stuff, and for the $15 you paid, I can get just as good 8 six foot Toslink's from monoprice. And yes, people are paying $13 grand for cables, just because they believe the marketing hype.

It has been proven over and over, that $13 grand, $100 grand, $1,000.00, $100 cables work no different than the stuff that the majority of us are buying from monoprice for very low prices.

I've got a 55" wall hung Sony LCD TV being driven by a Panasonic Blu Ray Player over a 25' long HDMI cable that I obtained from Monoprice. The 25' length was required by the route required of an in-wall cable from a designated location for the player. Before I set this up, I tested the player and LCD with a 6 foot Monoprice cable. True 1080 in all cases.

Could you post a link to this other study?

It's true that some HDMI cables will not pass 1080p60 properly if they are of poor construction, running near power cables/others and have insufficient shielding, or are of insufficient gauge wire for their length.
It starts out as "pixel noise" where you will see some pixels randomly flash brightly on screen. Simply put up an all black image and it will be very clear whether your cable is passing 1080p60 correctly. (note: some Plasma/DLP devices have noise on black too, but this is dark noise that is caused by how that display is driven, not a bad HDMI cable - you're looking for bright pixel noise, not dark pixels) Beyond that, you will start to run into handshaking issues where the picture may start to drop out etc.

But most cheap cables are fine and it's pretty obvious when you have a bad one. It's only once you start getting to long HDMI runs that you have to worry about cable quality, and that just means spending an extra $10-20 on the next level up, not hundreds. Monoprice are usually pretty good at doing cables which meet spec at low prices. (you can find cheaper cables that may or may not work)


Coax is generally regarded to be a better connection than optical. The main issue is that optical can suffer from jitter more than coax does. If your DAC/Amp uses a jitter-immune design (many are these days) then there should be no difference between the cables.
Even if it is not a jitter-immune design, you probably won't hear a difference.

Switching digital cables for one that is "better" is unlikely to make any difference. It's my understanding that jitter via optical cables is caused by the transmitter/receiver, and not the cable itself.

^^^ This is all true, and I couldn't have said it better. But to add:

Almost all modern audio DSPs now contain something called an Asynchronous Sample-Rate Convertor (ASRC). This "filter" re-clocks the incoming signal and completely removes any jitter from the incoming serial stream. So if the receiving device contains a DSP, it is likely immune from 'incoming' jitter, and a coax interconnect looses that one perceived advantage over an optical interconnect.

However, coax still has an advantage over optical: The ability to survive multiple cable segments. If you are running cable through the wall, and therefore use multiple connections, you often find that the optical signal does not make it through to its destination. There is a lot of signal-loss in an optical connector, whereas there is little loss in a coaxial connector.

The problem lies in not the cable, but there are just some equipment that do not play nicely with longer cables, and you have to use a EQ on anything over 35 feet with those instances. What you are looking at on the gizmodo.com article is a screwed up opinion from someone that did not do their homework, and is trying to disclaim that monoprice cables are not any good, because of the low price for them. The other thing is, the person writing the article does not give you the part number of the cables, so there is no way of knowing which one they actually used. Just because the cable is thicker jacket, does not state that it is better. It is the wire gauge of the wires that matters. They did not state if it was the 22awg or 24awg that they used.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10240

Thanks for the URL. This is a good sort of thing to include in any post you make - a clear pointer to the source of information you want to talk about.

Not only was it the 50 foot, but it was a certain sample of 50 foot, because when they tried it again:

"While it may seem conclusive that the 50-foot Monoprice is not a good choice, I was fortunate enough to have another 50-footer from the company, one that was not part of the original lab test. When I used it, I was not able to reproduce the noise. Furthermore, I double-checked the noisy cable on the Sony Bravia KDF-37H1000 with 1080p input (but 720p display) and again could not duplicate it."

Either one cable was bad and caused problems or one cable was a marvelous freak of nature and did things better than it should.

My best guess is that the sample that had snow was a bad cable. That is either a "stuff happens" thing, or a sign that Monoprice QC isn't perfect. Everybody has occasional bad product, even the most expensive sources.

The next serious question is how Monoprice handled the failing cable - went into denial and blamed the customer, or manned up.

They would have RMA'd it with no questions. Have never had a issue with returning items back due to bad out of the box, or went bad after using. For example, had the battery cover for the iPhone 4, and accidentally knocked it off of the end table, and broke the connector inside the case. They exchanged it with no questions asked. Of course the plastic was so cheap on the case, the second one, the plastic case broke on it, so at that time I just gave up and ended up just going with a standard Otter box case, and charged the phone more from that point on.

Dannylightning, did you realize that places like Best Buy purchase the same cables at the same price, then mark them up at least anywhere from 110 to 500%. Millions have purchased cables from monoprice and have never had issues with them. What you are doing, is allowing some writer's slanted opinion make the judgement for you, not your wallet.

Danny, you seem fairly level headed. A $13k cable seems absurd to you, as it should. It also seems logical to you that various cables, amps, dacs, etc might all sound different since they have different designs of very complex (to you, me, and most people) circuits, use different components, heck... may even measure differently. Common sense, right?

I urge you though to examine your quote above and really think about it. Would your mind really never change? Chances are it might if confronted with adequate proof. So ask yourself what sort of proof it might take.

Some people are happy to read about the research done in human hearing and human psychology, and accept that we often "hear" differences which simply have no physical reality. Others need first hand evidence. They need to experience the proof themselves. If you are of that mindset (and nothing wrong with that), then I ask you a vital question... do you believe knowing the brand of a component is required to properly evaluate the sound of that component?

Most audiophiles would respond "of course not" but then of course they have known the brand of every component they have ever evaluated prior to listening. They just don't believe it is an influencing factor, thus have never thought to "not know." If you, like so many others, think it obvious that knowing the brand shouldn't be required, then please take the next crucial leap and do a little reading about how to perform a test where you don't know, and what happens in such tests. Maybe even try it for yourself or with a friend.

I say all of this not to preach, lecture, criticize, etc but because it has real world usefulness. Usefulness to you. And I like to help people. If you were to come to accept that dacs, amps, cables etc were audibly identical if designed to a minimum quality standard, then the dollar savings to you are potentially huge. You can now focus your future purchases (or even sell old expensive gear, like I have in the past) on things that truly impact your system and experience. Speakers. Room. Room treatments. EQ, surround processing, etc. More movies and music. Audio jewelry is fine if you recognize it as jewelry... something for looks, not sound.

Again, your posts hint of a very level headed guy in there that may be receptive to a little steering. Not everyone is with wasting the effort on. I hope you are, and i assure you that losing the "innocence" of audiophilia detracts nothing from the joy of the hobby.

You are not going to be able to hear anything in a difference in the cables. Only time you would physically see or hear a problem, is if the cable is truly bad, and the equipment cannot do the error checking, due to a bad connection or "ghost" open, that closes when the cable is laid in one way, but opens when laid another way.

Thats the spirit! Just dont forget that this is a science forum. Not an ears forum. And youre the one who asked the question. Sorry if you didnt get the answer you wanted.

Understood. Human hearing using your ears rather than measuring equipment is and should be the foundation of all we do. What is so often overlooked is just how severely our sense of hearing is biased by what we know, what we believe, what we see, what we have been told or read... Not to mention other stuff like our mood etc.

Trust your ears... when you have isolated other variables so that only what you hear affects your impression. Comparing two cables as you did is essentially worthless. I could have performed that test for you and not swapped anything, and you would have still heard differences just because I "said" I swapped cables.

The word placebo is thrown out so often it turns people like you off of the whole field. But it is an appropriate starting point and I urge you to do a brief search and discover just how powerful placebo and bias can be.

In fact many of the things you perceive have nothing to do with your ears. Your perceptions originate in your brain, and the existence of both optical and aural illusions says that the brain is not a perfectly reliable source of such information.

Therefore, the phrase "trust my ears" as it is commonly used is often wrong.

If you are unconvinced by this sort of discussion I can give you readings from authoritative sources that you can use to correct your musunderstandings with.

He will have to read them with his ears. Any theory must be proven to his ears because that is all he trusts. Thats what he said.