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What I have been told is...

Posted by John Marks on March 3, 2016 at 19:05:25

In Reply to: AES/EBU digital 110 ohm characteristic impedance posted by Duster on March 3, 2016 at 18:40:57:

Well, disclosure first. Since my departure from Stereophile I have taken steps to commercialize an S/PDIF cable design that started out as something I made for myself. But people urged me to build it in series and sell it. And I do have an AES design that will be available in 60 or 90 days.

And not to blow my own horn, but as a kid I was both a music nerd, a choral nerd, and an engineering nerd. And years after that I was a member of the startup editorial staff of DIGITAL AUDIO magazine. And I have written for Surround Professional and other pro audio magazines.

Perhaps in a way analogous to the fact that the sampling rate for the CD was chosen to enable digital recordings destined to be CDs to be recorded upon the installed base of Sony professional broadcast analog video U-Matic cassette decks, I was informed long ago that the AES/EBU standard was written widely, in order to enable EBU members to use long runs of bog-standard analog mic cables as digital cables.

Optimal? Best? Perhaps not.

But a workable kludge.

Just looking at the math from the standpoint of Oliver Heaviside's "Telegrapher's Equations," it would seem to me that an S/PDIF cable, that is a pure coaxial that does not have an antiphase leg running in the other direction, should do a better job of transmission within its specs. But IIRC, S/PDIF is limited to 10 meters and AES/EBU goes out to 300 meters. IIRC.

But it equally can be said that RCA/RCA S/PDIF has a built-in reflection generator at the juncture between a cable that may be close to 75 Ohms, and an RCA plug that by definition cannot be 75 Ohms because of its physical dimensions.

In my experience, the best Red Book digital sound comes from BNC/BNC S/PDIF, unless the DAC is not that good, in which a "better" digital signal can make a poor DAC sound worse.

YMMV.

ATB,

John

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