I have a new Harmon Kardon receiver that I want to connect to the SPDI/F output on my soundcard. My question is, of the people here who do that, what kind of cable do you use, and does it make that much difference?

I'm looking at digital coax cables that start at $50 (US), and go up from there. Are those really necessary, or will a standard patch cable do? I assume that there is s difference when passing square waves down the cable, as opposed to audio.

If you're paying $50 for a digital coax cable, then you're paying too much. In my area, one of the better places to get a digital coax cable was at a guitar/keyboard/music store.

I believe the coaxial nature of the cable lends itself to better quality than a standard patch cable (e.g. less E&M interference), but I don't know how much of that is actually a problem.

I prefer the optical cable as it seperates the amp and computer electronically. I did burn out my old amp that way. But I am unwilling to pay for a 15 m optical cable - quite expensive.

I used a standard 10 m patch cable for some time and worked just fine - but too short. So I tried a 15 m twisted pair cable and it did not work properly. Sound dropped out when lights were turned on or off. I ended up with an old cheap coaxial cable from the old 1995 network days. It works just fine. So the type of cable is not irrelevant, but a cheap cable will do.

If my soundcard had an optical output, I would use that. It's coax though.

Edit: I found some 6 foot digital coax cables at Best Buy for about $12 each. That's right about how much I was willing to spend.

It's my inclination that you should be wary of using just any old random coaxial cable, if you intend to crimp/solder your own ends. Different coax cables carry different impedences, and I'd be worried about frying your equipment if you used a cable with a low impedence.

But as with what sshd said, name brand probably isn't that important.

fry equipment? uh, ok.

I'm using a cheap no-name stereo rca cable here just fine here, no need for anything else. You've got to remember the type of signal it carries. If anything it's less susceptible to noise than an analog audio signal. Don't waste your money.

:x *BLAH* That's what I get from propagating misinformation that I've read on other sites/forums/newsgroups concerning BNC cabling and what not.

I got a 20ft dual rca cable from radio shack (gold ends, heavy gauge cable, good construction) and a mono mini plug-to-rca adapter for connecting my SPDIF port on my computer to my Kenwood amp. No dropouts here, works with AC3 encodings on DVDs, great sound quality. And it all cost less than $20. I just let the second RCA wire go to waste, its cheaper that way. I really don't understand why people spend so much on cables!

In this old test, I checked that the SPDIF output of my CD Player was error free with a 5 meters optical cable and a 1 meter standard RCA cable : http://perso.numericable.fr/~laguill2/spdif/proof.htm
Standard cables may be a problem for high lenghts. In this case use rather a thick 75 Ohm coaxial cable, like this kind of KX-8 :



Solid core, double shield, foamed dielectric, 2 € per meter. Radio/electronics components stores.
You can try long audio RCA cable, as Viper1313, if it's cheaper (actually, RCA plugs big enough for the above cable are expensive : 5 € each !)

Problems I occasionally had :
The CD player couldn't communicate with a standalone DAC via optical : the light was too weak.

I experienced this, but only with computer SPDIF out, both Soundblaster and Marian soundcards, all kind of coax. Never from the CD Player or DAT deck. Surge protectors for the computer seemed to reduce the problem a bit. An effective solution (95 % of success) was to put a wire on each RCA plug of the cable, and to plug each of them on the same domestic ground plug.
A 100% effective solution was to use optical instead.



The only cases of fried SPDIF inputs I heard of were caused by a given model of Soundblaster live that had 5 Volts instead of 0.5 Volts in the SPDIF output. Are you sure that something was fried because of the cable impedance ?

I bought some cables at Best Buy. They were about $12 (US) for a 6 foot length. I would rather use optical, but my soundcard only has coax outputs.

They seem to work just fine. Probably time to start making my own cables.

Parts express is good for this sort of thing. Not sure if they ship oversees.


http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/pshowdetl.c...tnumber=181-636

Their prices are good. Might buy some cables from them. Thanks.