A perfect digital signal consists of two voltage levels and infinitely sharp, perfectly evenly spaced transitions between them. In S/PDIF digital audio signals the DAC reconstructs a clock from those transitions. If the signal was ideal the DAC clock would be perfectly regular. Instead, because the transitions are not perfectly sharp, the clock isn't quite regular, which results in some distortion to the analogue output - this is called jitter. The characteristics of the cable will affect how much and what type of jitter gets introduced.
So in theory different cables can have an effect. In practice I think these differences are totally negligible. I have seen several blind tests indicating that there is no audible difference, and I have never seen a positive result in such a test. I think digital cables and speaker wire are probably the least important part of the audio path; as far as cables go, analogue interconnects are slightly more important, but all of this pales in comparison to the distortions introduced by speakers and room acoustics. -- opaqueice ------------------------------------------------------------------------ opaqueice's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4234 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31733 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
