I hear that because coaxial digital cable is used to transmit the digital signal, the data is passed as 1s and 0s. Therefore the actual signal is either present or not present.

It would mean that using a very cheap coaxial digital cable would produce the same results as using a very expensive £150 gold plated one.

However, a lot of reviews claim some of these cables are much better than others.

How can an expensive one better if the signal is digital?

Is it worth buying one at all, or maybe I should indeed stick to using the default cheap coaxial digital cable that comes with most DVD players?

From usenet, I've yet to find an archived copy of the page cited:

=============================================
From: Arny Krueger (arnyk@pop3free.com)
Subject: Krueger and Nousaine Beaten With a Coat Hanger!
Newsgroups: rec.audio.opinion
View: Complete Thread (10 articles) | Original Format
Date: 2000-12-24 03:18:21 PST


Looks like someone beat Tom Nousaine and I to the punch with a Coat Hanger wire listening test. ;-)

Please see http://www.magnani.net/~al/DigitalWireLabTest.html :

"So just to recap this thing to death, we had: The professional Sony S7000TP reference DVD player, going to a 20 year old, ugly green, RCA patch cord which was cut in two. On one side of the green RCA I soldered a blue painted wire hanger to the shield and another to the center conductor. I soldered the other ends of the wire hangers to the other half of the ugly green RCA patch cord. We then clipped the alligator clips with thin wire to the centers and shields of the RCA connectors of my cable and of the Canare cable, and then plugged the other XLR-balanced side of the Canare into the Dolby Labs decoder. I honestly did not know how badly we would be rolling errors on this one... and with open, scientific minds, we played a DVD... "

Obviously, this guy cheated. No rust on the wire! ;-)

"Are you all sitting down? Good. We played the King Crimson Deja VROOM DVD for over fifteen minutes with this configuration and not only did it sound good, but the Dolby Decoder reported ZERO errors... Did you all get that ok? ZERO, nadda, nihil, zippo, nothing, none... error-free. Given that, there was not much point in trying the higher quality cables I had brought with me."

"Conclusion: IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU USE FOR YOUR DIGITAL CABLE CONNECTION BETWEEN YOUR DVD PLAYER AND YOUR PROCESSOR... YOU CAN BASICALLY USE ANYTHING THAT LOOKS ELECTRICALLY LIKE METAL. IT WILL WORK JUST FINE. (Between the coax connectors that is... I have not successfully used the wire hangers on the tos-link optical connectors... yet...) If you like you can hook the shield on one side to one of your Rodan bronze statues, and the other shield to somewhere else on the statue, and then hook the center conductors to another Rodan bronze, and it will work JUST FINE. The sonic clarity will be stunning, as well as visually pleasing."

Obviously, it was the blue paint!

==============================================

[CodeThief]

lol quality, I'll remember this

Dave

Codethief, see if you can "DIY cable bodge" a pair of bronze statues and post the results.

Mike.

[LV426]

I can't say I'm at all surprised.

I'm equally unsurprised that many people claim to be able to tell one cable (in a digital link) from another, with phrases like "tighter", "more bass", "more controlled", "more transparent" et al, in the context of something that costs £100 per metre - all of which are potentially valid in an analog context and which simply CANNOT be true in a digital chain.

Basically, you have to satisfy yourself that, having spent £100's on an esoteric cable, it was worth it, so psychologically, you hear the benefit.

[Reiner]

Buy 2 RCA connectors and a meter SAT cable (75 Ohm) and solder one yourself.

I would agree there is a difference between a normal interconnect vs. a digital one (using PCM/CD-Audio) but between digtial cables itself - dunno.
That said I would rather save the money and buy something else ... more DVDs perhaps?

[Brimstone]

Originally Posted by ;270147

From usenet, I've yet to find an archived copy of the page cited:

Using WayBackMachgine website to look at archived old versions of webpages:
http://web.archive.org/web/200003051...reLabTest.html

Cheers, Brim.