Comments on Profile Post by luckybaer

Well that first assumption is a big 'un, but if that were true with no other qualifiers then yes, I would say it would make a difference with the DDC.

In order to make a prediction about whether it would have an influence in situation B, you need to have a theory for why it has an influence in situation A. If it's placebo, then sure, it can have an effect anywhere you believe it'll have an effect. If it's something else, well, depends on the specifics.

"would it also improve"

If you think so :)

(assuming there wasn't something bad about the previous cable, and they are not made to a standard, so there can be)

(placebos can be negative too)

I'll stick with my AQ Forest. Lol... @Armaegis @mkozlows @Thad E Ginathom

I’d say no. My take: The SU-6 is reclocking the signal, so it only has to be able to reconstruct the digital signal without errors. This is possible with quite some noise present, so a better cable probably doesn’t make a difference.

Feeding a DAC directly, though, the signal isn’t reclocked in most cases. Noise that is gathered by the cable might be audible as it might lead to the signal crossing the threshold to 1 or 0 level earlier or later than intended. No problem if it stays digital like in the SU-6, possibly audible if it is directly converted to analog.

So better shielding might actually be audible in the DAC case. I severely doubt that materials of the cable itself and other audiophile shenanigans will really make a difference, though.

Just to add that: Note that the above with the 1 and 0 is grossly oversimplified. In reality, the clock for the DAC is regenerated from the signal at larger intervals than 1 bit, and I'm not sure myself how much impact cable noise can even have on the precision of that clock. But at least, there is an imaginable impact.

Personally, I can't imagine how an impact that a cable from PC to DDC would have should work, so my guess is that there can't be an impact unless you compare a cable that is utter crap or faulty to a better cable, or the cable is very long. There shouldn't be any audible difference above, say, 10$ if the cable isn't longer than 1.5m or so.