Will any old arial cable do or should I spend a small fortune? And if so why?
you can use some coax but make sure you use decent connectors and that the whole thing is 75 ohms. or you could just buy a chord prodac silver for 50 quid and be done with it. cheers julian
Hi. Use a video quality coax which has good screening to avoid radiated noise. If both units use RCA connectors then something like Argoss cat no.534/3724 at £9.99. you should be able to get something similar at your local electrical retailer (tv shop!) maybe even cheaper. Don't go too cheap as the connectors tend to be poor and may cause long term reliability problems. Chris
Still looking. Only just sold the CDS2 and am waiting for the cash before I start pestering dealers etc. & I've got to get the HDD sorted before I know my budget.
Tom, I bought one from eBay user magicpocket, also see http://www.scsibobs.co.uk/ 39.99 with Eichman Bullets, seems good, arrived next day. I have no affiliation btw, but I was in a similar position needing one to try out my Non OS DAC with my SCD-1.
Any coaxial phono-phono will work in a short length. So you probably have something lying around to get you going. If the DAC you end up with has TOSLink or uses BNC for S/PDIF then your options spread. Given that most S/PDIF is phono clearly impedance isn't critical so don't worry about it too much. Maplin sell adaptors and ready made cables, or any music gear type shop will be able to help. Paul
Any cable will do so long as it is 75 Ohm. Don't worry too much about connectors, it's not a real problem (compared to the board trace/cabling internal to sender/receiver ) If you are inclined to worry about such problems, and/or want to use very long spdif cables, then you should seriously consider the benchmarkmedia DAC1, it is essentially jitter free. [If your eyesight is like mine, you might find it useful to have the squeezebox a lot closer to where you sit and run a long spdif cable to the hifi - I'm seriously considering doing this myself as I can't read my roku box easily from 12ft away ] IMHO, the DAC1 is state of the art and isn't going to be bettered at any price... [Don't ask me how it sounds, it's pointless ]
There is a guy on AVForums who makes and sells 'Digital' co-ax cables very cheaply. He uses Belden broadcast quality coax along with Canare 75 ohm crimped connectors ( Phono or BNC). I don't wish to get into a cable debate however i will say that I compared Marks £20 cable to 3 or 4 other commercial designs ( One of which cost £83 four times as much and with lashing of OFC and silver plating ) and couldn't detect even the smallest amount of difference between them so I kept Marks and flogged the others. Here's a link, (I've got no connection to this guy other than as a satified customer) . http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101717 HTH
