• Registered: 2020-01-08
  • Posts: 27

Topic: recommended cables?

I will be buying the ADI-2 DAC FS soon. My Musical Fidelity MS6si amp has XLR balanced input in addition to RCA. Would the performance benefit from XLR cabling? I currently don't own such cables.
For input I'll need Toslink/optical and/or coax. Does anyone have any recommendations as to cable brand/type for digital?
While I have noticed sonic improvements from going to more expensive interconnect and speaker cables, I currently believe that for digital any cable is as good as any other. But I may be wrong, hence my question, before I go out and buy a cheap cable.
Thanks in advance for answering.

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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Re: recommended cables?

XLR cabling has several benefits - no ground loops, better SNR, lower noise sensitivity. The quality of these cables does not matter much and they are not expensive, so go for them.

For coax we recommend either real 75 Ohm coax cables, or (nicer handling) a Mogami 2964 based one. TOSLINK is not critical, any lightpipe will do.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • ramses
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Re: recommended cables?

For digital cable its only important that the plugs sit tight but not too tight and
whether the isolation is not too thick as this can issue "lateral forces" to the plug.

Sommer Cable TOSLINK cable is too thick for my taste, I got those and I do not like them fom handling:
https://www.thomann.de/de/sommer_cable_ … l_075m.htm

Very good experience I made with Mutec optical cable, its thin but reliable and fits perfectly in cable trunks.
With RME equipment I made good experience up to 15m and 192 kHz, maybe even 20m are possible:
https://www.thomann.de/de/mutec_optisches_kabel_1m.htm

For XLR balanced cables I would look for those with quality Neutrik plugs which you could even re-solder if needed.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • Jas0_0
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  • Registered: 2018-12-18
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Re: recommended cables?

Designacable offer good quality, inexpensive balanced cables with Neutrik XLR plugs and Van Damme starquad cabling

https://www.designacable.com/audio-visu … leads.html

  • Registered: 2020-01-08
  • Posts: 27

Re: recommended cables?

Thank you for your prompt and very informative answers. I forgot to ask for preference between optical and coax. In my system I have a (great) Musical Fidelity M6si integrated amplifier, a Bluesound Node 2i network streamer (whose DAC I am planning to upgrade with the RME product) and an old ADCOM CD player which has digital output (coax). Node 2i has both coax and optical. A stable solution would have me connect CD to RME with coaxial, and to connect Node 2i to RME with optical. But if coax is sonically better than optical, I might go for coax only + manual reconnecting between sources for these now rare occasions I use the CD player.

6 Reply by vinark (edited by vinark 2020-01-09 13:39:06)

  • vinark
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Re: recommended cables?

coax and optical are identical (as you expected)... For XLR any short microphone cable will do. cheaper ones might be more prone the failure if used very actively (like with a PA system with daily moving and pluging).
There is a small possible reason for bad speaker cables to sound different, low ohm coupling to the speaker filter and damping, but this does not exist when connecting line level high ohm gear like dac to amp and cd to preamp. Guitar to guitar amps are also affected because of the low ohms of the guitar (not amp, that is very high).

Vincent, Amsterdam
https://soundcloud.com/thesecretworld
Babyface pro fs, HDSP9652+ADI-8AE, HDSP9632