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Just bought my first DAC, a Zhalou 2.5, and will open it over the holidays. Would like a decent but not overly expensive digital IC to use between my NAD 541i and the DAC.First, does anyone know of a good FAQ on the factors/qualities of digital ICs?
Second, does anyone know of a shootout of DIY and commercial digital ICs?
Third, does anyone have a recommendation, particularly if it's possible to DIY it? Money IS an object!
Follow Ups:
I've tried quite a few digi i/c cables and I think IME the "entry-level" cable that is good enough for 'philes is a Supra Trico. Should be about $60 for a metre or so. Nice open transparent sound with good detail. A notch or two up from this would be an Ensemble Digiflux - The Cable Company were selling these at $100 or so, but not sure if they still do (the RRP was about $300). More focussed than the Trico, with even more detail and worth it if you want to spend that much.
the 2 that I use & like are:
XLO ER-6 $33 for 1.5m &
Stereovox HDXV $75 used. This cable comes with BNC-> RCA adapters.My brother uses the van den Hul Digi-coupler & is very happy with that.
Here's a cheap one that worked well for me:
http://zaolla.com/zaolla_product_spdif.htmlI've never heard any difference between digital coax cables (having tried 4 or 5).
I've heard quite a bit of difference between optical/toslink cables, however. The best by far was the reasonably priced Van den Hul Optocoupler (as several other people have discovered, this optical cable really stands out). My old eBay glass optical was one of the worst optical cables I've used, by the way.
bartc,
I don't know if 69 dollars is too much for you to spend right now but I don't think that you can do better than Signal Cable's silver resolution digital IC. The Signal Cable IC is the best sounding to me, even better than the Pure Note digital IC that I purchased for 200 bucks on sale. I have also used the ones from Blue Jeans Cables, they have the true 75 ohm connector and/or BNC, but they are not as good as the Signal Cable.
I wouldn't agonize over the whole "true 75 ohm" issue, nor BNC connectors because the S/Pdif path is hardly ever built as a true 75 ohm transmission line in practice (even though the design hopes to emulate it). Just open up your DAC and transport and tell me if you see a 75 ohm line on a circuit board surrounded by ground on both sides (and via holes), and then neatly butted up to a 75 ohm feedthru reaching to the outside world. I have not encountered this in a consumer player ( or DAC) yet, but it is standard practice in the microwave industry. Such is the way of consumer audio, i.e., a lack of a real standard. Perhaps that's why there is so much guesswork, speculation, and confusion.Anyway if you can swing the 69 bucks for a 2 foot length of Signal Cable I think you will be happy with it for a long time.
Here you go
Of all of the digital cables I have tried, my current best values are the glass toslink you can buy on Ebay for around $20 plus shipping or the Phoenix Gold DRX.910 coaxial that sells for around $30. Which of these (or any digital cable) works best will depend on your transport and dac. I find the Phoenix gold to be a little better than the Apogee Wyde Eye and Harmonic Tech Copper link that I also own and like.
try any competent IC cable. Even the Sterophile writers would have trouble discerning it from an 800 dollar cable, unsighted. All you have to lose is 10 minutes of your time.
I have a modded Zhaolu 2.0 and have found that it works particularly well with a Stereovox digital IC.
Here's a recipetake a twisted pair from a length of cat 5 ..fit neutrik nys plugs.
this should cost less than $10 if you can get the 1m of cat5.
alternatively ....
get 2m 0.5mm solid core silver thread it into 2m 1mm id ptfe tube.
fold in half.
clamp one end say the two loose ends, using a hand drill spin the wire up tightly ...be careful as you realse it doesn't escape as it untensions.snip the looped end
then fit neutric nys plugs ....
you can buffer the cable to mimick 75ohms or use a pulse transformer.
this should not cost more than $30
Zanash, I'd always thought that the twisted pair recipes were unsuitable for the 75 Ohm digital use, or at least that's what I'd read. Have you done these and tested them? Is this better than starter off the rack digital ICs?I have both sets of materials (except plugs) in house as it happens and can do a twisted pair very easily.
But I don't know how you "buffer" to 75 Ohms. Can you elaborate?
What about shielding? I'd always been told that the digital IC needs shielding most of the time.
do also go with BNC connectors. Even a cheap cable of copper, terminated into 75 ohms with BNCs will cream that 800 dollar cable terminated into RCAs. In the technology that I use, we terminate 250,000 DS0s through one copper cable and BNC with no errors. You read that right.
Even though a BNC connector might be 75 ohms at the cable end, the BNC female end inside of the DAC is probably just a wire jumping accross the air to the receiver chip. Even if it does go into a transformer first, it would hardly qualify as a true 75 ohm transmission line. In that light I think the effort spent keeping the cable end a true 75 ohms is sort of wasted.
Ozzie, that would require major surgery! Neither the DAC nor the CDP is set up for BNC, just RCA 75 Ohm and optical.I will try your suggestion of "any" IC and see what happens.
Tekline makes a very good digital cable for a great price. Scott will work a deal with you as well. Cost would be less than $100.
Sure I have a money-IS-an-object recommendation: Apogee Wyde Eye. And you can DIY it. The raw cable is available from pro audio stores and sometimes eBay. I have not yet found a Net retailer who carries it, though, so if you do please post the URL.If you want to pay a bit more and get a bit more, Chris Ven Haus' cryo-treated Pulsar is very good as a digital cable and the price is reasonable. This particular cable requires a long break-in period, but it's fun to do it. Leave your source playing 24/7 and it's like getting a new and better cable daily for about two weeks.
If you visit Chris' site you will see that he recommends 1.5 metres as a minimum length for digital interconnect. I have tested and found this to be true also with Wyde Eye, and UHF Magazine has done the same with their Atlas OCC digital cables.
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