Digital coax cable - plug/OCC?

Haha, that is a conclusion I can thoroughly get behind . . . . 

£580!!! you'd have to be off your tits on something or other.

That's just utter ridiculousness.

There's a lot of nonsense in this particular subject and the truth is that there is nothing (that I have found) in the audio world that is a true 110ohm or 75ohm cable.

The exception is the DHlabs110 cable and that sounds crap.

Also, if you are using RCA plugs, you do not have a true 75ohm cable.

As for the perfect length.....well, it isn't going to matter one iota if the cable isn't of the correct resistance. That is the big issue.

Lots of DACs and streamers now have 75ohm resistors on the input/output to nullify the effects of the cable issues.

Personally, I don't worry about it.

Nope. I don't believe they have a 75ohm cable there.

The 75ohm is achieved by the distance between the center core and the outer braid.

Too much, and it isn't 75ohm. Too little and it's not 75ohm

That's why RCA connections fail. They do not have enough distance between inner and outer connections.

www.cleareraudio.com/products/copper-line-alpha-digital-interconnect

That's a genuine 75ohm cable.

Reflections in cables are very rarely anything to do with length morevto do with the connectors and the counterparts on or on the equipment and genuine terminations impedance mis-matching causes the resulting signals to bounce back and forth in the cables due to not having a matching acceptance or parting receptacle.

You can see these reflections even on a basic scope for an indepth look a vector network analyser is required

If anyone would like them measured happy to do so

But it's for just *one* cable, which is up for debate as to how much (if any) difference it makes?

You'd want a seismic leap in performance for that outlay on a cable . . . . and for it to cook you dinner and do the washing up for a good few months . . . 

Not really, retail price of my system in today's money would be about £15K, so only a couple of percent spent on cables. (I don't actually recall what the cables cost but it wasn't that much).

it's not my fault I managed to buy the amp and speakers on the cheap    No-one else was interested in them because they believed a load of nonsense written on the forums.

I'm not  in agreement with the idea that if you spent £15K on a system you have to use  cables that cost a certain percentage of that in order to 'get the best from it.'  That's the sort of rubbish you see in the magazines - 'Allow ten percent of the budget for cables'. Utter balls. But - it's worth paying a bit extra for something well made that will last you out (which IME a lot of cables from 'respected manufacturers' are not).

I knew Olllie would do a proper job with first class components, worth the extra for that alone. Plus, yes, I heard a difference. 

If there are reflections caused by impedance mis-match then the length of the cable will make a difference to the signal being carried.

However with reflections the frequency of the signal will also make a difference to the signal so it's a bit of a double whammy.
In RF transmission systems the quality of the matching is easily measured by a VSWR meter that measures a ratio. For a perfect match the VSWR (ratio) is 1:1, generally you can tolerate up to 3:1 but lower is always better.

Not if it specified with an RCA connector..

Yup, one linked should have BNCs

Oh come on Bigman, it may sell for £580 in the uk but you can knock 30% off for a more realistic price, that's what it sells for in the states.  It is relatively cheap compared to many cables out there, you've been buying cables, but have had to change connectors on them, I know they don't cost quite this much, but they're not cheap.  Strangely enough I was reading someone's experience yesterday, I think it was a mains cable, one of them was pretty experienced the other not so, anyway the plug was to be changed, "let's cut the end off, it is frayed and corroded, oops I wasn't expecting that!" When cutting off the end of the wire there were numerous small wires and stuff that then had to be re- connected, what I'm saying is to make up this cable many hours would go into doing this and that has to be taken into account.

I've come across the original post again, here it is:-

A cable making friend came down to visit today, and do some really helpful making of custom power cables to help tidy things up at the back of my system. Nothing too snake-oil - just a heavy duty shielded cable, reasonable plug and fake oyaide IEC plugs (I just liked how they looked when I bought them).



He also reterminated my "Snake oil" cables - original retail on these was £200 per strand foot, apparently - which were quite interesting - 6 strands per wire of something that looked similar to copper - an alloy? - with thick silver plating, at first look - with a solid 2-3mm wall thickness of PTFE surrounding them before twin shielding (foil and braid) on the outside.



But the REAL "Whoa!" moment came when we came to look at reterminating the Acoustic Zen hologram II's. the copper that was exposed was badly corroded and hadn't been twisted tidily - it looked more like dreadlocks on the end, so we decided to cut it off, cut back the heat shrink, and use fresh wire for the new banana plugs.



BOY was that a mistake! Rather than just exposing fresh wire, what we actually exposed was 3 or 4 different gauges of wire, with each individual strand fed into a separate plastic (ptfe?) tube. Judging by the cable thickness, and its' feel, I would guess that there is some cloth tubing or wrapping around these strands further back along the cable. All in all, I think I know exactly where Tweakerman got his ideas for his Ultimate Speaker Cable - video on Youtube - which according to him "might be the best in the world."



All I know is, as a bi-wire cable, it's going to need 16 banana plugs, and IIRC there are about 8 strands which will need to be stripped back individually before combining and tinning. Cable making buddy has taken them away with him as "homework" as he guesstimated around 3 hours work just to do the stripping..

I am hoping I have answered your question in my previous two posts, I do agree with you about spending a certain percentage on accessories, it was the only way I could put across my meaning.  I am pleased you like and heard a difference with Oli's interconnects, I would certainly not knock them, my brother owns a pair, which are actually in use in my NVA system, but when compared to other interconnects at a far greater price we felt they had to be replaced in my brothers system.  So posting 'you must be off your tits', was a little over the top, it's  all relative to the improvements and the cost of your system.

It may be relative to money spent, or how much money someone has, but it isn't relative to performance. Sure if you want something that isn't going to fail after a time you need to spend more but otherwise it's not relevant. I don't agree that a more  expensive system needs more expensive interconnects. Sure they cost more so you expect them to be better and lo and behold they are.


Self-fulfilling prophecy, and the standard line pushed by the magazines and people like Darko and Hans. They haven't got the first idea what they are talking about or doing.


I don't care if the system costa million pounds and the owner had a billion quid in the bank, if they pay £500 for a digital cable they are being mugged off.