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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: Luminous Audio Allegro Digital Interconnects posted by Todd Krieger on February 23, 2001 at 22:14:51:
I've received several emails in regard to how the three digital cable parameters, bandwidth, impedance match, and RFI bleedthrough, impact the sonics of digital playback. I'd figure the best place to answer this is on a public forum.Bandwidth has an impact on two sonic qualities- microdynamics and transparency. (The first quality I believe is also tied to what many would call "bass slam," for I have not heard one without the other, in any type of audio playback.) A cable with poor bandwidth will exhibit a "splashy" dynamic character- a sense of music "blasting" during loud passages. Some people actually *like* this type of sound- many perceive this as good "macrodynamics." But the sense of hearing everything during loud complex passages simply isn't there. A cable with good bandwidth will then exhibit good transparency and microdynamics. One gets a better grip on cymbal attack and decay, and a better sense of dynamic proportion, and less sense of "blasting." Often, this may sound less spectacular, but this is actually how a lot of live unamplified music sounds like.
Impedance match isn't as cut-and-dry. Some signs of good impedance match are manifested in soundstage characteristics and "cleanness" of the overall sound. If a digital cable sounds grainy, zippy, or harsh (in an analog sense), then it probably isn't the ideal characteristic impedance (75 ohms for S/PDIF, 110 ohms for AES/EBU) for the interface it is being used in. (One could easily sample a poor-impedance-matched cable by simply trying a cable not made for digital audio.) A good impedance match cable will strike the listener with a "black" background, a sense of ambience, and a "sweet" sound during soft passages.
RFI bleedthrough is the grim reaper. You don't notice it right away, but it will make you turn off the system after a period of time. Your ears feel like they've been tortured with HF energy, even if the cable doesn't really sound bright otherwise. A cable with excellent bleedthrough performance will enable one to listen to the digital rig for extended periods of time, without his ears ever making him say "That's enough!". A cable with minor RFI bleedthrough problems will make one quit at the end of an album. A cable with poor RFI bleedthrough can make one quit at the end of the *first* song. Also, generally speaking, a high-resolution system will bring out this problem, while a mid-fi system (or possibly a tube system with HF rolloff) is capable of masking the problem, if it isn't severe in the first place.
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Follow Ups
- The Three Digital Cable Parameters and Related Sonics - Todd Krieger 02/26/0102:11:35 02/26/01 (0)
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