Digital Cable Survey

I use a DC1, but I also use BNC to RCA SPDIF cable by Gotham Kabel AG .. which is very effective as well, 

Simon

Errr...DC1 BNC-RCA between NDX & Hugo...Chord Prodac VEE3 RCA-BNC from Sonos Connect & NDX.

The Chord is fine.

G

BIS Audio Vivat digital (BNC-BNC) here. A step up from the DC-1, and no loss of timing (PRAT!)

You could also see if Naim would re-terminate your cable on one end, esp if you like the sound. Of course you would need something in the meantime, but can then sell on whichever you like least. I just got an Atlas Opus and am blown away but it's all RCA and discontinued but great vfm if you can find one. It's been replaced by the Mavros which you could have done however you want. I'll probably have mine switched to BNC at some point - they offered to do it gratis if I cover shipping. 

Like you I was worried about the SQ from using adapters, in my case at both source and Hugo ends.

I had a LAT Di30 signature cable made up BNC to RCA (with Hugo-friendly plug).

I'm a bit of an agnostic when it comes to cables, but the improvement in SQ was immediately obvious and well worth the outlay (under £80 for 0.5 metre as I recall)

DC-1 cable is very decent, and my preference in my all Naim system. But when using the Hugo, the balance is better with a Chord Signature TA, which is available BNC-RCA. The DC-1 to the Hugo sounds, in comparison, a little soft and muted. Conversely, when I use the Chord Sig TA between US and V1, it makes my ears bleed whilst the DC-1 sounds perfect. Funny how these things work.

Thats what we get when we stray from the Naim family.  I bought my new cable blind.  I just hope it sounds perfect.  That is not too much to expect.  Or is it?

I gave up on perfection a while ago, now I am happy with "very good"

Blind buying can be a leap of faith, but not so much when buying a decent brand rather than one that appears overnight, and disappears the next day. Which does seem to happen quite often in the cable business. But now days I tend to only buy cables that my dealer lends me first, works well for both of us.

In your case, with the rather decent price you managed to snag that Transparent Audio cable for, I daresay you could sell it for zero loss at any time in the future. That makes the leap of faith more like a short hop!

This is the reason that I rarely join these threads, I left the pure naim path many years ago, and then it was the Linn/Naim path. Today I still use elements of Naim but I am fully conscious that my context will only further complicate matters. For instance I found the Benchmark DAC1 to be very good, and not far behind the nDAC ....but, when I listened to it in an all Naim system it failed to impress.

That said, even when I was mainly Naim the DC1 I found to be underwhelming, and bought a Stereovox cable in preference.

I have listened to many cables in my system, including the Chords (although not the £1k+ Sarum), and generally found them to shape sound; that is they improved some aspects whilst leaving others untouched, or perhaps degraded. The cables that I have found to be consistently improving are Coherent Cables 3d and 5d - although I have not listened to them in an all Naim system.

M

It's funny, I have used several cables from my NDX into Hugo, and I keep coming back to the DC1 which is natively wired BNC to phono, for me that sounds overall best balanced and natural. However feeding into my NDX BNC connector, I have tended to prefer my Gotham Kabel phono to BNC.

Simon

I use a Stereolab The Reference XV-Untra available from The Cable Company $350USD. Deep Cryo treated silver etc... Best digital cable I've experienced BNC/BNC and they include very high end BNC/RCA adapters. The DIN/DIN Chord TA is very good but only at a steep discount...IMHO not worth the retail price unless you have the kind of cash associated with the outer limits of cost vs. diminishing returns.

Cheers,

M

I completely understand. I run a few systems, and what works well is one is often less than optimum in another. But then, I quite enjoy the journey in terms of maximising the system's synergy.

I do not disagree with your views on the Chord digital cables. The Signature TA 75ohm cable I have does sound distinctly different from my other 75ohm cables, and the Hugo is the only DAC I like it with. It is also the only 1 metre cable I have, which is really a little short for a 75ohm cable, particularly one with the impedance mismatch that occurs when using BNC to RCA connectors.

If that is Gotham Kable in Switzerland, I use their bulk cables to wire my studio, in terms of patch cords, mic cords, and even guitar leads. It is excellent quality cable. Funnily enough, I have never thought to make up some digital cables for my audio systems. Given your comments, I will give it a try, as it offers me the opportunity to make up cables identical in everything except length.

As I noted in my earlier reply to Mr. Underhill, I do think signal reflections and the commensurate impact on jitter levels plays a significant role when one hears a difference between digital cables. An RCA/phono/cinch plug is never 75 ohms, usually somewhat less (and different every time you insert it) and will not match the true 75ohm BNC. I suspect in this case the cable should be longer than 3 metres to minimise the potential for the inevitable reflection of the 5v differential pulse to trigger a false timing event at the S/PDIF receiver.

Canare offers one :

http://www.canare.com/ProductI...spx?productItemID=40

I made my own one up out of 75ohm cctv cable and crimped bnc/rca plugs. Honestly I can't hear any difference between this and the TQ cable i used.

Yes, it is the very same. I use of one of thier BNC to Phono SPDIF patch leads at 50cm and it works really really well, and sounds clean and natural for most devices across different bandwidths. It cost me about £40 from memory.

Simon

PS strictly speaking I can't see how the Canare device can offer a 75ohm CI when connected to a phono socket, just because of the physical dimensions and shape of the phono socket, even it was achieved with careful design on the plug. Therefore there will be reflections, and the higher the frequency, ie for higher definition SPDIF streams the more evident the reflections will be ( and will interfere with the rising and sinking edges of the waveform). The aim is usually to keep the physical area of the wrong CI as short as possible to mitigate which I think must be the approach of Canare.

As Simon noted above, whilst Canare's RCA plug is stated as being "true" 75ohm, the issue is with the geometry of the plug to socket. The BNC locks to position every time it is connected, the RCA does not and impedance will depend on how much surface contact there is - which can vary each time. 

I've tended to experience the opposite, in that if I have an S/PDIF cable related jitter issue, it is more obvious with Redbook than on higher resolution material. Which I had assumed would be due to the higher sampling rate reducing the impact of rogue reflections. But who knows - there are so many variables at play. 

Thanks for the confirmation on Gotham Kable. I'll get to work

Thanks for that. Would a bullet-plug RCA (i.e., Eichmann) eliminate the geometry issue? 

In case you are wondering…  Do not buy a Transparent Audio digital cable if you plan to use it with a Hugo.  The RCA plug does not fit securely.  I guess I had this coming to me.

No, same issues really. A 75 ohm BNC would be the best connector to use.. Indeed the BNC was developed to offer 50 or 75 ohm CI.

I find however the Eichmann Bullet plugs are good sonically for audio signals because they offer pressured point contacts in a small low mass non metallic connector and tend to minimise microphony.

Simon

I don't want to start a new thread and this seems as good as any, so apologies for any hi-jacking. In addition, I apologise for the length and blame no-one for tl;dr

To set a baseline, I'm a 500 series person (traditionally very Naim) who due to budgetary constraints has been doing streaming on a tighter budget. I started out with bare NDX (previously loved), which was fine up to a point - that point being it simply couldn't (understandably) compete with the rest of my sources.

I use a Synology NAS, with a BT-issue Ethernet cable to an Asus wireless router. Circumstances dictate that I stream wirelessly to the NDX (since ditching th HH5 that's been great).

I then went to a Hugo (via a no-name digital BNC>Phono cable) and a Chord Signature TA interconnect. Much much better, to the extent that on some music it was very close to my primary sources.

Some easing of my budgetary constraints has now led, somewhat inevitably knowing our hobby, to experimenting with other links in the system.

I borrowed an Audioquest Cinnamon Ethernet cable to go between NAS and router, and Chord Anthem TA and Signature TA digital cables.

Over a period of several days I first tried the digital leads, and both Chords clearly improved quite substantially over the no-name cable, with the Sig having just enough of an edge in clarity and definition over the Anthem to justify the additional cost.

I then swapped my BT ethernet cable (NAS > router) for the Cinnamon - somewhat dubiously I'll admit, as I expected little. To my surprise, a layer of hash on busier recordings was greatly reduced, and everything sounded tighter and slightly more real. Result! Surprising, but result!

I invited Dave J over on Monday afternoon to validate my thinking on the digital (Anthem/Sig) cable front as he has a lot more experience in experimenting with the digital side than me.

I concentrated the proceedings on two recordings - Rammstein's Sonne, which is loud, obnoxious, has serious thwackage, but also has a lot of detail tucked away in there, and I have the CD version of it (I used a WAV rip on the NDX) and Matthew Halsall's When The World Was One (the title track itself), a totally delightful acoustic jazz album that's beautifully recorded in 24/88.2.

I played Dave both pieces in full on the NDX/Hugo/Cinnamon/Signature TA set-up. Sounded good. Then played him the Rammstein piece on the 555 and it kicked the streamed version into the weeds. Partly this can be explained by the fact that the connection to the 552 for CD is via a Sarum TA I/C compared to the Hugo's Signature TA. But hey ho.

Dave being Dave he'd bought a few strays and orphans along in the shape of three additional network cables. B*stard :-)

First in was the German MeiCord. It's supposed to be directional, but there's no indication on the cable so I just plonked it into the NAS and Router, replacing the Cinnamon and tapped on the Rammstein again. Wow. Nearly all the heft and punch that was present in the CD/555 version was there now in the streamed version. The vocal presentation and some of the subtlty of the CD was still missing, but this was a major step up from the Cinnamon. With the Matthew Halsall, the improvement was nearly as great.

The Rammstein comparison with the CD was very much closer now, such that Dave was having trouble distinguishing the two sources as I blind switched on him. I  was completely impressed and if we'd stopped there I'd have place an order for the German cable.

Next we swapped the MeiCord for a length of Chord C-Stream network cable (note: Chord do not sell a cable that adheres to Ethernet standards, they concentrate on what the thing sounds like). This was fairly similar to the MeiCord, maintaining much of the thwackage but adding a bit more subtlety to the soundstage and instrumentation - notably the trumpet that comes in for the second solo on the Halsall, though the bass was a bit bloomy (as it had been, to be honest with the Cinnamon).

The Rammstein CD comparison was still very much touch and go as to which was which.

Finally, out of his bag of tricks, Dave produced a length of Chord Indigo network cable. Hmmm.

You'd think that after a couple of hours playing just two tracks we'd be a bit jaded. On went the Rammstein.

Oh. My. Goodness.

(Actually I swore copiously once I had control over my jaw again)

It was amazing. Dynamics, sound stage, presence, vocal presentation, all improved by a huge amount. Power, aggression, expression, timing, pace all there in spades. All this from an already improved base, and all this from a tiddly bit of cable from NAS to router.

On went the Halsall track, and it was simply even more beautiful than normal, a greater sense of ensemble, great texture to the instruments, the bass nicely controlled.

From the brief swap-over session we then did with the 555, the results were that the streaming version was now better than the CD. And not by a small amount. Gulp.

I knew from experience from the early days of digital that the link between player and DAC would play a part in the sound quality, so the improvements there were what I anticipated. I'll be ordering the digital Signature TA (once I've established that it's not going to be Super-ed any time soon).

People here had said that the ethernet side would perk up with better cables (goodness, how they were right), though I was less convinced about this (the "packets are just packets" argument). My experience with the Cinnamon was good though and, until I heard the others I'd probably have bought it (it's not expensive for a fancy cable in a short run). 

What I wasn't prepared for was that leap to the MeiCord...and then the quantum leap to the Indigo. The latter is fearsomely expensive....but I don't need much...and just as I never forgot my first audition of the Sarum speaker cable I know I'll never forget how that Indigo sounded. Some serious budgetary discussions need to take place with my boss/accountant/love-of-my-life because I NEED that cable!

Once I've got that lot bought, sorted and run in, I'm going to have to have a serious and extended review of streamed sound versus the 555, because that may, just may, have seen the writing on the wall.

Many thanks to Dave, his ears (they really are very good), and his damned cables (he does know his stuff).

Very persuasive Gary , probably the easiest home dem in my life was the Chord Signature digital TA BNC-RCA  in between ND5XS and Hugo compared to the TQ blue digital I had previously , huge difference . 

Peter .

These were the two tracks used:

Matthew Halsall

Rammstein