On 20091016_115141, ghe wrote: > > On Oct 16, 2009, at 9:50 AM, Paul E Condon wrote: > >> Analog signals degrade on long cable runs, particularly >> the high freq. part of the signal. > > Not if it's low impedance balanced, it doesn't. Not at 100' anyway. > > Use the hardware Deutsche Grammophone, etc. use -- your recordings aren't > going to sound any better than that... > > -- > Glenn English > g...@slsware.com
Impedance and balance are two different things. Impedance only becomes an issue when the wave length of the signal on the cable becomes comparable to the length of the cable run. Balance OTOH has only to do with rejection of common mode environmental noise, e.g. hum pickup, not with loss of signal amplitude. In addition to impedance and balance, there is also hi-freq. loss due to RC time constant of the cable. Cheap cables have small center conductor, and thin layer of insulation. Small conductor is higher resistance (R). Thin insulation is higher capacitance (C). Both make hi-freq loss greater. I have never seen wire size/ insultation thickness spec.s on the label of any audio cable in a consumer electronics store. I have never seen balanced output of stereo audio in a single jack on a computer. (An example of RC time constant effects, is the difficulties CPU chip makers have with on-chip signal timing. The wave length of the signal is vastly larger than the chip size, but still the signal at the receiving end of a via rises noticeable more slowly than at the sending end.) But this is theoretical knowledge. It precludes me from believing much of the marketing pitch of consumer grade electronics. I'm hoping to find some practical information that is in better conformance the established theory. I'm older now than when I bought the hifi. Hearing declines with age. But I can still tell the difference between the sound from my computer and from my hifi. It may be that the age of real hifi has passed, just as the age of the vacuum tube has passed, but I'm hoping not (for real hifi. I don't mind the new dominance of transistors.) Thanks for reading to the end of this rant. -- Paul E Condon pecon...@mesanetworks.net -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org