I have other commitments to do before i can test this cable. it has arrived, but i have other testing and commitments to do for the SEN/CEN 9018 group, meaning my main dac is partially disassembled. I have much work in this silly season and am also spending every second day with my mother who has fallen ill with Atypical trigeminal neuralgia. as far as objective testing i can only do checksum as i dont have the rather high grade high cost instrumentation needed to characterise such a cable and i'm pretty sure you'll find subjective testing meaningless. TBH i wasnt aware when i contacted the op about this offer privately that i had any responsibility to anyone else, i was simply curious, but it seems as the only member here that accepted the offer i have been lumped with responsibility i did not ask for and do not have time for right now
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I was experimenting with silver SATA cables years ago: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/audi...ip-amp-kits-dacs-chassis-123.html#post1699876
They seem to bring some improvement, but looking back at it, it's not that significant. I would suggest concentrating on USB cables
They seem to bring some improvement, but looking back at it, it's not that significant. I would suggest concentrating on USB cables
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Placebo effect. Back in '76 I had an audiophool friend who told me the 4 little wires (<1" long each) from his phono cartridge to the headshell made a difference. He paid $50 for the 4 wires. I told him if I paid $200/foot for wire I'd damn well hear it too. Some of what people see and hear what the EXPECT to see or hear. That's why the ABX tests. That's why some jokes are funny. By your logic my HD video on the hard drive should play back better. What will I see? More contrast? Better color? Make the women better looking?
I HAVE noticed the audio played after viewing video is definitely grittier if played too soon after watching HD video. Just trying to get a jump on April 1.
G²
Why ABX? Wouldn't any controlled DBT prove his point? (Not that I expect anyone pushing silver SATA cables with a sniffy "...hard to explain if you do not have related knowledge" to come up with one, but still...)
Projects like these keep people off the streets and out of trouble and don't actually harm anything, so there's an upside.
Projects like these keep people off the streets and out of trouble and don't actually harm anything, so there's an upside.
ABX is just one format of a DBT. It's like calling all tubes "12AX7." I wrote a little article for Linear Audio surveying several other formats (triangle, sorting, paired forced choice...) which might be of interest. I'd also recommend Introduction to Sound Recording especially section 5.10.9.
I am not asking you for confirmation of whether or not a bad data cable can corrupt the bits transferred.
I think we all know the answer to that.
I am waiting for confirmation that two good data cables that transfer the bits as accurately as each other can sound different at the analogue level.
I doubt this will ever arrive.
I disagree to an extent, messing around with high speed digital with little or no regard to either engineeing basics or possible EMC mishaps is sheer folly. Also the whole of the digital repreduction chain has to be considered, the data is buffered from the disk to the eventual final stage before converting to analogue audio...
That said it aint gone change anything, audiophool myths will build (already have) up around digital, at least it will keep my blood pressure up...
Just out of interest what difference (audiophile difference, not real world) will silver plated copper make to a digital signal (I have seen both types of cable used, both tin and silver, for temerature reasons, not signal), just curious.
That said it aint gone change anything, audiophool myths will build (already have) up around digital, at least it will keep my blood pressure up...
Just out of interest what difference (audiophile difference, not real world) will silver plated copper make to a digital signal (I have seen both types of cable used, both tin and silver, for temerature reasons, not signal), just curious.
Andrew I would like to see an explanation of how if the bit pattern arrives the same how it could possibly sound different, its like booting up your Windows 7 system and getting Vista. And when we are talikin SATA cables ALL your data is gonna come down it as you boot up from a hard disk, then through the SATA controller interface, not forgetting the local look up buffer etc etc etc.........;
I would normally be extremely sceptical about this, but having had problems with my HT pC (running Mythdora) for more than 12 months where I just could not play DVD's reliably at all and kept getting really weird errors in the syslog, I googled once again and some guy said buy some better quality SATA cables (to some guy who was getting the same errors as me). I was highly sceptical (after all the exact same SATA cables were working fine on my HD's which should have had faster transfer rates than my DVD player), but I was desperate. So instead of the normal $5 a pop sata cables I forked out for a "fancy" $12 a pop SATA cable.
Not expecting it to make any difference, I put it in and miraculously the problem went away, and I could play DVD's. Nothing else had been changed, apart from the SATA cable. So for $12 I could have saved myself over a year of grief changing drivers, kernels, and god knows what else trying to get the damn dvd drive to work properly.
How does this relate to audible differences? I don't know, but if the cable quality can effect the ability of DVD's to play, then I'd say it could definitely cause problems with the fidelity of the digital signal getting from the cd/dvdrom drive to the motherboard, and then to whatever DAC solution is being used.
Tony.
Not expecting it to make any difference, I put it in and miraculously the problem went away, and I could play DVD's. Nothing else had been changed, apart from the SATA cable. So for $12 I could have saved myself over a year of grief changing drivers, kernels, and god knows what else trying to get the damn dvd drive to work properly.
How does this relate to audible differences? I don't know, but if the cable quality can effect the ability of DVD's to play, then I'd say it could definitely cause problems with the fidelity of the digital signal getting from the cd/dvdrom drive to the motherboard, and then to whatever DAC solution is being used.
Tony.
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Well, that's the thing about digital- you either get gross effects which are easy to fix (a $5 SATA cable to replace a defective one) and are evident in all sorts of data transfer, or you get nothing. Binary, as it were.
Now indeed, if there's some new sort of physics that has escaped the attention of large industries with much higher mission criticality but is evident to a group of audiophiles, then some evidence is needed. I rate that probability vanishingly low, but solid evidence triumphs preconception.
Now indeed, if there's some new sort of physics that has escaped the attention of large industries with much higher mission criticality but is evident to a group of audiophiles, then some evidence is needed. I rate that probability vanishingly low, but solid evidence triumphs preconception.
A good system, including PC's these days should be well engineered, that includes simulation and testing both for signal integrity and EMC. that dosn't always happen, penny piching and cheap cables that are not up to the job. And any one can put a CE sticker on their product with little worry of reprisals if they operate outside Europe. I have seen a container load of SMPS's sourced abroad go in the skip, as they when tested in house they failed EMC big time. The origional units sent worked perfectly. Its the same with HDMI cables, as there is now a market for them they apear everywhere, even in your local supermarket, how many of these are well engineered I wonder. With STAT and DVD's you are pushing the data throughput more, so a barley adequate cable may work for low bandwith, but when the pressure is on and the data throughput at maximum they cant handle it. The cable is big part of the transmission line, and has to be taken into considerations, todays simulation packages can simulate connectors and cable runs across multiple boards and units (MB to drives etc) and with high speed data transmission it is becoming more and more critical. Now if you want fun with a cable specify a length that just happens to be one quarter of the wavelength of the main system clock.
There is no dispute that bad cables will effect digital signal trasmission and cost cutting is prevelant in a lot of consumer goods.
A parallel example is graphics cards, at work I have a top of the range proffessional card, all drivers and hardware checked, tested and certified to work with the 3D CAD (Solidworks) and at work I may get a couple of crashes a week...at home on my basic PC with a standard card I get many more crashes. My home system is adequate for day to day use but when pushed falls down occasionaly.. Another problem with PC's is the ever increasing overheads Windows itself puts on the hardware
There is no dispute that bad cables will effect digital signal trasmission and cost cutting is prevelant in a lot of consumer goods.
A parallel example is graphics cards, at work I have a top of the range proffessional card, all drivers and hardware checked, tested and certified to work with the 3D CAD (Solidworks) and at work I may get a couple of crashes a week...at home on my basic PC with a standard card I get many more crashes. My home system is adequate for day to day use but when pushed falls down occasionaly.. Another problem with PC's is the ever increasing overheads Windows itself puts on the hardware
I was intrigued for 40 odd years when I studied the effects.
I think it will be common knowledge sooner or later,
but later may be the best guess.
May I ask about the effects and how they were verified to really exist? I know I am being harsh but IMO that is the most fundamental issue almost never tackled on audiophile forums. Do the effects really exist so that their causes should be investigated?
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