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Sound Quality Changes caused by Sata cables.

I built an audio PC using these super short super flexible Sata cables and have been really dissatisfied with the defocussed and over smooth sound quality.

There is a thread in Computer Audiophile where someone put an additional shield on his stock Sata cables, and found improvements in SQ.

This prompted me to cut up one of these flat 'super' cables. Horror horror, there is no shield at all, just two drain wires on either side. The two data sections are also not separated to any extent.

So, I put copper tape over these 20 cm cables and some of the soundstage focus came back, but the thing was still unsatisfactory. It was clearly, in its raw state, picking up or radiating despite the neat cable arrangement

I finally replaced the Sata cables with 30 cm properly shielded flat cables (don't have any shorter ones now). These are transparent and so I can see spaced data pairs and aluminium tape wrap around them.

Presto, sound stage, focus, as well as hf and lf balance have come back and I am a lot happier.

The lesson really is not to trust claims for 'superior' components without thinking and analysing them. In this instance, I was coming close to wanting to sell the dac, thinking that there was something really wrong.

The other lesson learnt is that unshielded sata cables affect SQ to such an extent they they will no longer feature in any of my PCs. Unfortunately, this means cutting stock cables have a look first.

I have also bought some Sata 2 cables to see if Paul Pang' claim that Sata 3 SSDs should be connected with these in audio systems.

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Topic - Sound Quality Changes caused by Sata cables. - fmak 09:00:44 07/05/14 (144)
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