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Author Topic: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable  (Read 59700 times)

slwiser

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What does everyone think about this article!

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm

Is it correct?
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danlavry

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2006, 06:37:34 PM »

slwiser wrote on Tue, 30 May 2006 23:57

What does everyone think about this article!

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm

Is it correct?


Hi,

This article is a bunch of nonsense! Longer is NOT better. SHORTER IS BETTER! That is unless you are the one selling cables, and you charge a lot and by the foot Sad

Check the website of that Empirical Audio guy:
http://www.empiricalaudio.com/
You will quickly understand that he stands to benefit from that B.S.

For a 1 meter SPDIF he charges 419.99$
For a 1.5 meter SPDIF he charges 549.99$
For a 2 meter SPDIF he charges 679.99$

You will find B.S. “explanations” such as:
“The Bitmeister uses a patented technology that allows the conductors to be 50% bare. Bare conductors cause less dispersion (smearing) in the digital signal” than fully insulated conductors, reducing jitter in the digital signal".

“Pure 99.99% Perfect Crystal Silver conductors in
a custom stranded configuration enhance high-frequency response
by minimizing skin-effect and stranding effects”.

What a bunch of self serving nonsense Sad

Regards
Dan Lavry
www.lavryengineering.com
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Teddy G.

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2006, 01:56:27 AM »

And I thought the reason was to get the SP/dif, consumer crap, as far away from the good stuff as possible - just "because"?


TG
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ammitsboel

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #3 on: June 01, 2006, 07:32:45 PM »

danlavry wrote on Thu, 01 June 2006 00:37

What a bunch of self serving nonsense Sad

Maybe, maybe not.
I'm sure that he would say the same about your writings.
So apart from the personal ranting where does it leave us...?

Best Regards
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"The male brain is designed for ecstasy" -Dr. Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg

danlavry

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #4 on: June 01, 2006, 08:45:57 PM »

ammitsboel wrote on Fri, 02 June 2006 00:32

danlavry wrote on Thu, 01 June 2006 00:37

What a bunch of self serving nonsense Sad

Maybe, maybe not.
I'm sure that he would say the same about your writings.
So apart from the personal ranting where does it leave us...?

Best Regards


As I said:

“The Bitmeister uses a patented technology that allows the conductors to be 50% bare. Bare conductors cause less dispersion (smearing) in the digital signal” than fully insulated conductors, reducing jitter in the digital signal".

This is a none technical BS, and saying so is not a rent.

“Pure 99.99% Perfect Crystal Silver conductors in
a custom stranded configuration enhance high-frequency response
by minimizing skin-effect and stranding effects”.


"crystal silver"? That is a made up non technical BS.

The are a lot of other comments in that "writeup" that are non technical or technically incorrect. He talks about impedance matching, which is a problem that grows with cable length, contrary to his conclusions. He talks about skin effect which is BS in the context of 1-2 meters for a signal with many ns rise at a few MHz frequency. You want to understand skin effect? Go to my site at http://www.lavryengineering.com click on "forum" then "Tutorials" and find "Skin effect". You may then realize the difference between my technical presentations and that crock you are comparing it to.

Sorry. I assumed you could see that what I said is not just a rent. A technical person would see though it it immediately. I keep forgetting that many readers are more into sound production and much less into the technical electronics subjects.

Regards
Dan Lavry
http://www.lavryengineering.com
 
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Daniel Asti

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #5 on: June 02, 2006, 10:42:16 AM »

slwiser wrote on Tue, 30 May 2006 18:57

What does everyone think about this article!

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm

Is it correct?


Did you know that there is no government regulation that holds them accountable for what they claim? They can say whatever they want when "describing" the product. This is very similar to the herbal supplement industry.

The reason there are $5,000 power cables is because someone will buy them. There is no science backing it up whatsoever, you see. All of it is based on belief. The company will invent terms and vividly describe something and someone will believe what they say. They buy this cable and, like many studies have shown, will not be able to tell their own cable from a well built but much less expensive cable. (Unless they rig the test - which is awefully common.) Audiophiles and snake oil companies alike will claim that science is just not far enough along, you just can't measure it... So, you gotta believe them and take their word for it.

Dan is not ranting and you must understand that. His writings and theory are scientific and the community accepts him because it can be backed up with a step by step reproduction and verification. As he pointed out in the paper; they are bluring the lines of fact and fiction. Some things, like the cable length "concept", just fly in face of plain old-fashioned common sense.

Dan is not being subjective.
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ammitsboel

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #6 on: June 02, 2006, 10:57:07 AM »

danlavry wrote on Fri, 02 June 2006 02:45

You may then realize the difference between my technical presentations and that crock you are comparing it to

My post was meant to show this difference.
Being a strong believer with a lesser sense of balance often leads to BS.

I do not doubt your technical skills.


Best Regards
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"The male brain is designed for ecstasy" -Dr. Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg

Yannick Willox

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #7 on: June 02, 2006, 11:21:33 AM »

Just to throw some oil on the discussion:

if we make the spdif cable a transmission line, couldn't this have advantages ? Imagine how long it would have to be  Very Happy
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Yannick Willox
Acoustic Recording Service

danlavry

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #8 on: June 02, 2006, 04:08:37 PM »

ammitsboel wrote on Fri, 02 June 2006 15:57

danlavry wrote on Fri, 02 June 2006 02:45

You may then realize the difference between my technical presentations and that crock you are comparing it to

My post was meant to show this difference.
Being a strong believer with a lesser sense of balance often leads to BS.

I do not doubt your technical skills.


Best Regards


I often have a problem with the word "believe" when talking about technology. People are free to believe all sorts of things, but technology is about science and engineering. One is not free to believe that 1+1=7, no matter how much they wish it to be. Technology is about what is really taking place.

No one is free to talk about a skin effect problem in context of some 2 meter cable at some 10MHz and many nsec rise time. Is it legal to misrepresent such facts? I do not know. But I know it is wrong technically.

Did you visit the article "Skin Effect" on my site? It took some time to put together, and I did it for just such cases as we are dealing with here. There are many cable companies that use skin effect where it does not count, including many makers of speakers wires.

You see, there is such a thing a a skin effect, and it does matter a lot at high frequencies, long cables, tiny thin diameter conductors. Strictly speaking, you can not ever say it is not there. If you put one grain of salt into a body of pure water the size of the Atlantic ocean, you can not say that the water is free of slat either. This is a pretty good analogy to skin effect "problems" for a 2 meter spdif cable.

Regards
Dan Lavry
www.lavryengineering.com
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Rivendell61

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #9 on: June 02, 2006, 04:50:35 PM »

The same fellow (Empirical Audio) says that he will be pleased to mod/fix the 'weaknesses' in the Lavry DA-10.... Smile
http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/viewtopic.php?t=28401
A couple of mildly skeptical responders don't get very much of an answer from him.

He mods the Benchmark DAC 1 for a mere $1050 (and another $500 for a 12S interface), other options available!

He uses the 'engineering talk' to sell--but there is no specificity about mod results--only things like "10-15% improvement in focus and imaging".

Mark
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danlavry

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #10 on: June 02, 2006, 07:12:05 PM »

Rivendell61 wrote on Fri, 02 June 2006 21:50

The same fellow (Empirical Audio) says that he will be pleased to mod/fix the 'weaknesses' in the Lavry DA-10.... Smile
http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/viewtopic.php?t=28401
A couple of mildly skeptical responders don't get very much of an answer from him.

He mods the Benchmark DAC 1 for a mere $1050 (and another $500 for a 12S interface), other options available!

He uses the 'engineering talk' to sell--but there is no specificity about mod results--only things like "10-15% improvement in focus and imaging".

Mark


I see. he says:

"Same changes that I make to all DAC's. They all have essentially the same weaknesses".

and  

"Very few designers are experts in all areas of design. They are not well known and obvious to most designers, even Sony's best".

Put those 2 statements of his together and you get to conclude that all of the DA designers are on one side of a room, sharing the SAME common weaknesses, and this guy is on the other side of the room, the one that knows how to fix those weaknesses.

How else can you interpret what he says? I will leave that "as an exercise for the reader", together with a little suggestion don't let him near a DA10.

Regards
Dan Lavry
http://www.lavryengineering.com


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kraster

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #11 on: June 03, 2006, 09:57:59 AM »

I would also question the legality of the statements in the original post and indeed much of the BS floating around in the audio world. If, as Dan says, the majority of what was stated in the marketing fluff is a load of baloney then the seller of said item is guilty of advertising under false pretexts. Where I come from this is illegal.

On the empirical website they have interconnects using "Perfect crystal":

"Perfect Crystal (PC)
Perfect Crystal silver is created by using more processing steps in the
fabrication of the conductors and assembly of the cables. Perfect
Crystal provides extremely low sibilance and improved focus resulting
in more bass impact. PC silver also makes female vocalists sound
liquid and live, not hissy. Systems that are already overly bright are
excellent candidates for PC silver. PC silver does not have that
characteristic high-frequency brightness or sharpness generally
attributed to silver wires. This results in detail and blackness between
instruments without sibilance."

The marketing tac always seems to tie in some arbitrary and obtuse technical data with some phenomenon that anyone would be familiar with. e.g Valve equipment is sold with the concept that it "warms" up the sound because the valve itself is warm to touch.

Obviously it is the function of audio marketing to make a piece of equipment more desirable by embuing it with a sense of magic. But when this sense of "magic" is directly contradicted by scientific fact then surely an advertising standards agency must take action.


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Jon Hodgson

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #12 on: June 03, 2006, 10:10:20 AM »

kraster wrote on Sat, 03 June 2006 14:57


"Perfect Crystal (PC)
Perfect Crystal silver is created by using more processing steps in the
fabrication of the conductors and assembly of the cables. Perfect
Crystal provides extremely low sibilance and improved focus resulting
in more bass impact. PC silver also makes female vocalists sound
liquid and live, not hissy. Systems that are already overly bright are
excellent candidates for PC silver. PC silver does not have that
characteristic high-frequency brightness or sharpness generally
attributed to silver wires. This results in detail and blackness between
instruments without sibilance."



Roughly translated that seems to be saying
"The minute differences in the characteristics of this cable compared to others, that probably give electrical differences that are not measurable, actually cause audible differences in the sound that an AE would actually have to twiddle knobs some way and visible change the waveshape to achieve.... honest!"

Actually if you ask me the description if it were true, is of a pretty naff cable, who wants all that topend loss?
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slwiser

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #13 on: June 03, 2006, 11:25:14 AM »

I would guess from the responses that I need to be more careful in what I read as being actually "technical in nature".  From the response here this article is more advertisement than technical therefore by definition this thread could be removed if anyone finds this line of questioning inappropriate for this forum.
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AndreasN

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Re: Why longer is generally better for an S/PDIF Digital Cable
« Reply #14 on: June 03, 2006, 11:58:16 AM »

Hi Dan!

There seems to be a minimum length issue at least with some cabling. Stumbled upon this while building a new computer:

SCSI: .. "The shortest cable must not be less than 30 centimeters (12 inches) between each device. For example, if you have 3 device connected to the host adapter, the minimum lenght of the cable should be 1 meter (3 feet)." http://www.technick.net/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=gu ide_scsi
IDE: .. "80 wire cables also can't be any shorter than 254mm (ten inches), by the way." http://www.dansdata.com/rcables.htm

Both are ribbon cables with simple unshielded parallel conductor/earth/conductor/earth wiring to avoid crosstalk.

This has probably little or nothing to do with SPDIF, but it would be interesting to hear your view as to why there is a minimum length on these cables.


Andreas
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