Reccomend a budget digital coaxial ic!

Hi

As some of you might know I have recently stumped up for the Midiman superdac for my system. Now I need to get a (preferably) budget coaxial interconnect to link it to my cdp.

Wm did reccomend the ixos 1051, however I have noticed that http://hificables.co.uk/acatalog/Cable_catalogue_Digital_cables_18.html have a qed coax at £22.50 delivered for a 1m ic. Is this cable any good? Also is it the appropriate one for a spdif connection?

Any other reccomendations or is that qed cable good enough?

Cheers.

 

qed p75 (and even the sr75) can be bettered, for less cash

Black Rhodium Rhythm (around £20) is a superb cable. Very highly recommended- I had the QED DS (forerunner to sr75) and the Rhythm walked all over it. The Black Rhodium Scherzo (£80) walks all over the Rhythm, and indeed a £120 LAT, but thats another story...

forgot to mention, that I also have the Ixos 105, more or less the same as the 1051 (now XHD408-100 iirc) and it sounds ok, but a little forward...BR Rhythm still all the way for me

 

I'm with Rory on this one. I had a P75 and sold it on.

I now have a Black Rhodium Rhytmn (cost £25) much better than the p75 and a Black Rhodium Rondo (£60) better than the Rhythm but not by much. And finally I'm using a single Back Rhodium Concerto which is IMHO better than th Rondo butnot strictly a digital cable. I'm buying a scherzo as I've heard good things about it, and as such am selling the Rhytmn.

Its only 2 months old and barely used, in its Box,
I'll sell it to you for £20 inclusive of signed delivery P&P (in uk) if you want it.

 

There's a few options with Chord as well. Check them out too.

Jay

 

Apogee Wide-Eye, 50$ on the net...

Beats all but the most expensive...

 

I'm interested to know how these cables can sound so much better than one another, particularly at the similar price and construction they all are. My experience with various co-ax cables I tried, including ones that were determined to be perfect - that is used the best materials, genuine 75 ohm plugs and 75 ohm cable sounded very little, if any different from each other, so how there can be such night and day differences I am not sure....

My experience suggested there was absolutley nothing wrong with the QED P75 at its cost, but naturally, any 75 ohm co-ax cable should do the job just fine.

 

I'd agree with Lowrider. I got a couple of metres and made up two cables terminated with Eichmann Bullets - superb.

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/wydeeyecables.php

Must be somewhere you can get the cables in the UK though - try http://www.apogeeuk.com/

IMO it compares well with digital cables I've tried upto £150. I also agree with others about QED Qunex P75 it's utter shite

Michael.

 

Whats utterly shite about it? Seemed like a reasonable, well constructed, if moderately overpriced cable to me?

 

What's utterly shite about it is that when compared to pretty much any other digital cable I've tried (including ones costing about the same) it sounded just horrible. Harsh, no bass, muddled and lack of soundstage.

It looks reasonably constructed but it's performance is anything but reasonable.

Michael.

 

I dont understand that to be honest. Mine didnt really sound any worse than any others I've tried, heard or owned. I cant see how a cable that transmits binary data can have that kind of effect.

 

NOW YOU HAVE OPENED A CAN OF WORMS:duck:

the bianry information is sent as a square wave down a coaxial cable. Something to do with the forward part of the wave. A good cable will transmit the whole signal, a poorer cable will only transmit part of the signal. Don't quote me on this but after reading lots of threads onthis topic thats the gist of it, but I'm no electirician or physisist (can't even spell!!!.

But using my own ears the differences can be hugely different!

IMHO using my ears the P75 is not a touch on the Black Rhodium Rhythm (same RRP price roughly). the rondo a £35 more expensive is just better but not by much.
The Concerto is a lot better than both but is a so called analogue cable (after measuring its resitance only between 60-70 ohms not 75ohms which apparently a true digital coaxial cable should be). All I know is it works and sounds better than all other cables I've tried and hasn't blown up my equipment yet!

If i had the option of a BR Rhythm, rondo or QED p75 I would go for the Rondo only if it was the same price. for the money the Rhythm kicks the QEDs arse IMHO!

 

One of the forum members at avforums makes quality digital cable using Belden cable and Canare plugs.

He sells these at £20 for a one metre length in the Power Buy forum which seems to be exceptional value.

 

No it isn't....

But it is entirely possible for digital cables to affect the sound. Read the manual for your EWX, as this will say so (at least, the manual for my Aureon does), if you need to hear it from a pro company rather than from hifi....

 

Yes that was the perfect cable I refer to. Excellent construction, and technically perfect apparently. But I still struggled to hear any difference between it and the P75, I'm afraid. Except I think (if its Mark Grant your referring to) he used "Silver Serpent" cable...

BTW Isaac, I'm wondering whether they think the included optical cable that comes with the EWX is up to scratch...

 

Paul - one word: jitter That's what makes different digital cables sound so different. I've actually heard much bigger differences with changing digital cables than I have changing analog ICs

Michael.

 

Fair enough, but jitter is timing errors as I understand them, I'm just struggling to comprehend how even when the timing is slightly off, how it can take away bass and such like... anyway, I think we should agree to disagree on this one, but to my ears, the P75 was nowhere near as bad as whats being said here, even if it was no better either.

 

OK, the digital signal is a square wave form, the most crital piece being the leading edge of the square wave, the more shite free & straighter the 'edge' the better it.
Now matter what you guys feel, I will always use the best possible cable in a digital application period, saying it's just '1' & '0's doesn't wash, wave form amplitude, outside variants, connections all have a bearing on the end result. Wm

 

I find this very surprising. Now I admit my hearing is not as good or critical as some of guy's but I can hear differences between certain analogue cables but the differences have never been day or night. I've heard much bigger differences between speaker cables. BUT, I've never been able to hear any significant differences between digital I/Cs.

As I mentioned on another thread, my AV sound processor packed up a few weeks ago. This was connected to my DVD's 5.1 analogue phono outlets via 5m long analogue cables. The DVD has DD and dtS decoder built-in and my Yamaha E492DSP didn't have any processing capability, so there wasn't a need for a digital link. Now I'm thinkling of replacing it with an AV receiver such as Denon 3803. I was concerned about the need to take the floor up and run digital cables so as an experiment I connected 2 x 7m long analogue MF NuVista leads togther using a joiner from Maplins and connected my CDP to my DAC20. I could not hear any difference between a 14m analogue cable and a 1m digital cable from Maplins.

As I mentioned, my hearing isn't what it should be but day and night differences? It could be that my system isn't good enough to show up the differences. Do any of you live near Ilford?, if so, would you like to demonstrate these differences?

Please note I'm not taking the Michael (sorry Michael ). I am genuinely open minded about these things but until I hear otherwise I'll remain sceptical about digital I/Cs. I understand jitter and clock drifts etc but in my opinion a DAC should be able to correct small drifts especially the expensive ones with a relatively large buffer built in.

 

I sujest you compare a cable at least as good as the Apogee, wich is not expensive at all, if you dont hear any difference, keep whatever you have...