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Topic: stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable (Read 32117 times) previous topic - next topic
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stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Hello guys,

I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but I'm wanting to connect my DVD/CD player to my surround home theatre reciever using an audio digital coaxial cable.

All of my local shops sell the audio "Monster Standard THX digital coaxial cable".

I read that it has a "stranded conductor", but most other audio digital coaxial cables use a "solid conductor".

What is the difference ?
Is one type better than the other ?
I'm not sure if I should purchase the "stranded conductor" cable which most shops are stocking, or should I find one with the "solid conductor" ?

I plan to use the connection for both DVD and CD.

Thanks!

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #1 –
The coaxial S/PDIF standard used is based around the professional digital audio interconnectivity standard originally known as AES/EBU and is designed to work with any 75Ω AV coaxial cable. As long as the run is, say, 10metres or less, all but the very cheapest of cables will perform equally as well to the best of my knowledge, so don't get suckered into spending a fortune.

Cheers, Slipstreem. 

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #2 –
The stranded center conductor is theoretically more flexible, but its effect on the total flexibility of the cable is minor. Electrically, in this frequency range, it is a don't care.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #3 –
Quote from: bomber on
All of my local shops sell the audio "Monster Standard THX digital coaxial cable".


Stay away from Monster who sell vastly over priced things to consumers. Buy a well terminated 75Ohm coax cable from a professional retailer for example

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DRA502/

If you don't need 6' then they do a 3'3" one as well for a dollar less.

Consumer audio cables are one of the worse areas for utter rip offs possible.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #4 –
Quote from: bomber on
I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but I'm wanting to connect my DVD/CD player to my surround home theatre reciever using an audio digital coaxial cable.

All of my local shops sell the audio "Monster Standard THX digital coaxial cable".


Helps their bottom line, but doesn't help your system's sound quality

Quote
I read that it has a "stranded conductor", but most other audio digital coaxial cables use a "solid conductor".


Not true. Coax cables with stranded center conductors are very common. It's all about the right tool for the job.

Installed wiring like the coax cable in or attached to walls for a cable TV system = solid center conductor, and foil shielding.

Interconnects are more likely to use stranded center conductors and braided shielding for added flexibility and resistance to breaking due to flexing.

The relevant issues are convenience and durabiility, not sound quality.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #5 –
Thanks for the info / tips guys.

I've only just started spending decent $ on CD/DVD Player and surround sound system / receiver so this is really the first time I dealt with these audio digital coaxial cables....

I get the idea Monster Cables are known to be expensive !?, which is a bit of a pain, because basically it seems they're really the only audio digital coaxial cable my 3 local stores are selling (apart from very cheap ones which might be too cheap ?, they're only half the price of the Monster cable).

So am I being recommended to stay away from Monster Cables because of the expensive price ?, or is there also something not good about the quality I'll get out of them ?

Another thing that confuses me is the particular model of Monster audio digital coaxial cable my 3 local stores are selling is the Monster THX "STANDARD" cable.
On the packaging and website this model only mentions Dolby Digital Surround Sound and does NOT mention DTS, this "STANDARD" model cable can be seen here on the Monster website, it is the bottom one out of the 2 shown:
http://www.monstercable.com/thx/audio_cabl...igital_coax.asp

But the audio digital coaxial one above it "ULTRA SERIES" does mention DTS.

Does this mean only the top one "ULTRA SERIES" will play DTS, but the "STANDARD" one which is the only one my local stores are selling will NOT even play DTS ?

Seems like a bit of a bastard act !, the stores are giving me the option of buying something too cheap, or buying the overpriced one to get decent quality...
I really want to go with quality so I might have to buy the Monster cable, which is why I also asked the DTS question in this post.
I've been setting my new system up for weeks, all I need is the digital coaxial cable and I'm done !, the things is I can buy the Monster Cable just 5 mins around the corner, so to order a cable which is a bit cheaper off the internet from America and have it sent to Australia (paying for packaging / posting etc) might not even make it worth it, yes, these Monster people do seem like bastards ! 

Thanks.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #6 –
Half the price of Monster Cables is not "too cheap".
Creature of habit.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #7 –
I think any 75 ohm cable will work with DTS.    These 75 ohm cables were originally designed for RF (megahertz).  The "quality" has more to do with ruggedness & reliability. 

This is also the case with analog cables.  Some cheap analog cables are not 100% shielded, but once you get beyond that threshold you won't hear any difference.  With speaker cables, wire gauge can make a difference with long cable runs, but you won't hear a difference between "zip cord" and Monster cable.  (That's my opinion...  Most HA members will agree with me, but some "golden ear" audiophiles will disagree with everything I just said.)

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #8 –
I assume from your avatar that you are in Vic. Are you near a Dick Smith, Tandy or Jaycar shop? They should be able to sell you the right sort of cable for something closer to a decent price.

AFAIK, the only point where quality is much of an issue is in the construction of the connectors, and if you're not going to be constantly unplugging and reconnecting your set-up, this is a minor consideration, anyway.

The cheapest you can find would be a good place to start. If the sound is appalling, you can use it for something else. But it won't be.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #9 –
Ive only ever used solid core wire for soldering, and i can say with fair certanty that every cable in my room, with the possible exception of the main power cord on my power strip, is a braided cable

and yes, solid core is fairly stiff, in my experience

as for a difference in quality, maybe for amp to speaker, depending on how much power we're talking about, but for DTS coax, as long as its 75ohms and <10m long, it wont care
My $.02, may not be in the right currency

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #10 –
Quote from: MichaelW on
I assume from your avatar that you are in Vic. Are you near a Dick Smith, Tandy or Jaycar shop? They should be able to sell you the right sort of cable for something closer to a decent price.

AFAIK, the only point where quality is much of an issue is in the construction of the connectors, and if you're not going to be constantly unplugging and reconnecting your set-up, this is a minor consideration, anyway.

The cheapest you can find would be a good place to start. If the sound is appalling, you can use it for something else. But it won't be.


Hi Michael,
Yep, my local Dick Smith is one of the 3 shops I'm refering to, they offered me the Monster cable for $78 Australian, or another cable for I think about $23.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #11 –
Thanks for the info everyone, seems like I don't need to be paying anywhere near the Monster cable price.

I don't know if I need to post this as a new topic because it's sort of changing the topic, but it's still related to the audio digital coaxial cable.
I used some blank DVD's to burn some DVD-Audio discs at 24bit/48000 of friends recording in their studio.
Will these 24bit/48000 DVD-Audio discs play through an audio digital coaxial cable and actually play at 24bit/48000, or would it downsample to 16bit ?

I know with friends studio recordings I'm not really going to hear a difference between 16/44.1 and 24/48000, but as the master recordings were made at 24bit/48000 I would like them to play on my system that way.

I'm a bit confused as I read that when DVD-Audio is in Dolby Digital Surround or DTS you have to use the 6 point connection ?, but my friends studio recording is not surround, though it is at 24bit/48000, will the audio digital coaxial still play this type of recording at 24bit/48000 ?

Thanks very much for all the info / tips.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #12 –
bomber:

It's a cable. It conducts electricity. It is not going to change the type of signal, or convert it to a different format. It's not going to intentionally block any format either.

The signals, analogue or digital, will have a bandwidth, e.g. 20Hz-20kHz for analogue audio, 0-6MHz for SD video. Analogue video includes much higher frequencies than analogue audio.

The cable needs to avoid filtering out frequencies within the required bandwidth, and keep out interference. That's it.

The bandwidth required for 16/44.1 and 24/48 via SPDIF is almost identical, so as long as it works for 16/44.1, it'll work for 24/48. More importantly, make sure the devices at each end of the cable handle it correctly!


btw, you can easily send 6MHz video down cables designed for 20kHz audio - it's not ideal, but the fact it works shows you how silly it is to pretend that expensive cables are required.

DTS, AC-3 and PCM via SPDIF all use comparable bandwidth to SD video: ~6MHz.

Analogue component HD video uses 5-10x the bandwidth - and guess what - most of the time the exact same cables work for that too. Not perfectly, so I'm not saying you should use audio cable for HD video - I'm just illustrating how much "headroom" a typical cable has.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
David.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #13 –
Maybe twenty years ago Monster was a brand name.
Over time this name become a fair indication of their price/performance ratio.
Today it is synonym to their business practice, their treatment of Blue Jeans Cable seems to be one of the many examples: http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm
TheWellTemperedComputer.com

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #14 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
The bandwidth required for 16/44.1 and 24/48 via SPDIF is almost identical, so as long as it works for 16/44.1, it'll work for 24/48. More importantly, make sure the devices at each end of the cable handle it correctly!


btw, you can easily send 6MHz video down cables designed for 20kHz audio - it's not ideal, but the fact it works shows you how silly it is to pretend that expensive cables are required.

@bomber:

I assume you are talking about SPDIF?  Truthfully, I've always used the crappy RCA composite A/V cables that come free with devices and never had a problem.*  A sequence of bits goes in one end of the cable, and the same sequence comes out the other end.  If there were a problem, then I would get drop outs in the audio, not static or something.

It is just like any other digital network connection.  If you are streaming a video from the internet and a packet gets lost, you don't get static in your audio or video, you get a drop out.

I did have an issue last week with an optical SPDIF where the cable was bent too tight, which interfered with the light.  This caused intermittent audio drops as packets were lost.

* I once used a Y-splitter audio cable to connect two digital audio outs to a single digital audio in on a receiver, where only one device would be turned on at once.  Sometimes this would have problems, but only sometimes.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #15 –
Hi guys,

After I saw ALL my local electronic shops sell the Monster THX “STANDARD” version for audio digital coaxial cable, I decided to look on their website at the 2 types of audio digital coaxial cable they are offering.

Out of the 2 types of THX cables on their website the one named “STANDARD” mentions in the info that it supports Dolby Digital Surround Sound but does NOT say it supports DTS.
The other named “ULTRA SERIES” says it supports both Dolby Digital Surround Sound and also DTS.


The info from the website here:

-----------------------------
Monster Standard® THX-Certified Digital Coaxial Interconnect Cable 

Monster Standard® THX-Certified Coaxial Digital Audio Cable provides hookup to DVD and other components that utilize Dolby Digital Surround Sound. High-purity copper stranded coax delivers an improved signal and lower energy loss for amazing movie soundtrack and music reproduction.
-------------------------------


Ultra Series THX® 1000 Digital Coaxial Interconnect 

THX Certified digital coax audio cable for hookup of DVD and other components using Dolby Digital Surround Sound or high performance DTS. Allows you to enjoy your favorite movies and music with the superior quality that Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound can provide.

-------------------------------

So I emailed Monster through their website to ask the question, and here is the response I got:
--------------------------------------
Hello Brent,
For your application, the Monster standard does not support DTS as DTS does require a larger bandwidth capability.  For DTS I do recommend going with the ULTRA series cable.
Monsterously,
Eric Vitug
--------------------------------------
I can not believe this, as all my local shops sell the “STANDARD” model as their main and best cable for audio digital coaxial (and all told me even though the packaging does not mention DTS it would play it, none of them even stock the “ULTRA” model.

So, all these cables look the same to me, even the ones which are only half the price of Monster and less, so how do I know which plays DTS and which doesn’t, the email I got from Monster above mentions bandwidth, but when I was looking at them in the shop I couldn’t even see anything on the packaging about bandwidth…

This has totally done my head in !

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #16 –
The response you got from Monster is completely bogus.  Let's look at some numbers.

Full bandwidth DTS - 1,536 kbit per second.  - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Theater_System

CD's are full bandwidth at 1,411 kbit per second.  An old 640 x 480 30 fps video stream over coax required 9,216 kbit per second, which my old camera managed just fine.  Regular coax has plenty enough bandwidth for DTS.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #17 –
A monsterous reply indeed.

As others stated before, get yourself a decent 75 Ohm cable.
If your want to have some fun, get a strand of RG6 antenna cable, dirt cheap, horrible inflexible but it works.
I lost the link but in some forum a guy was running SPDIF over 30 meter (90 foot?) from his PC to his AV-center over RG6. Using standard F connecters and a F to RCA adapters.
The coax SPDIF standard is 10 m!

Or have a look here: http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepar...amp;cp_id=10236
TheWellTemperedComputer.com

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #18 –
Quote from: Tahnru on
CD's are full bandwidth at 1,411 kbit per second.




I made that mistake to.

SPDIF is biphase-mark-code. This implies that the transmission bit rate is the double ( 2.8224 Mbit/s  at 44.1 kHz samplingrate). However, this is a bandwidth any decent digital cable can do.

A nice link: http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html
TheWellTemperedComputer.com

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #19 –
The systems that I mentioned above using crappy composite cables for SPDIF transferred DD, DTS, uncompressed 192/24, etc all just fine.  Seriously, just grab a random cable to use.  If you have audio drop outs, then get a new cable.  It will be obvious.

Whatever you do, don't believe the BS the Monster Cable guy is telling you.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #20 –
straight from that documentation on epanorama

Quote
There is no real need for special quality cable as long as the cable is made of 75 ohm coaxial cable (a good video accessory cable works also as good S/PDIF cable).
My $.02, may not be in the right currency

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #21 –
Like I said, I'm totally new to this...

Why would the guy from Monster have told me the "STANDARD" cable does not play DTS if it seems everyone else like you guys here have no doubt it does ?
(did he just say it to make me buy the more expensive "ULTRA" model ?, if so, how would he think he could get away with lying like that ?, and why would he risk making that particular model of cable look like a pile of rubbish by saying it can't do something which most people seem to be sure it can easily do ?)

It's bizarre info, as 2-3 main biggest name / commercial franchise electronic stores in Australia are selling the cable as their main (best quality) audio digital coaxial cable, and the 3 different stores I asked at told me as you guys have, that it should play DTS.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #22 –
Quote from: Pamel on
I assume you are talking about SPDIF?  Truthfully, I've always used the crappy RCA composite A/V cables that come free with devices and never had a problem.*  A sequence of bits goes in one end of the cable, and the same sequence comes out the other end.  If there were a problem, then I would get drop outs in the audio, not static or something.


With the quality of receivers and trasmitters these days you'll potentially get away with slightly salted wet string as long as the run is very short. The topic was discussed at length in a thread which I can't find at the moment about the maximum run lengths of TOSLINK, S/PDIF over coax and balanced AES/EBU connections. The questioner was trying to workout if he could get away with TOSLINK or S/PDIF over coax or if he needed to convert to AES/EBU to get the distance he was after. The consensus was with most equipment and decent cables you could significantly exceed the notional maximum run lengths and not get any problems.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #23 –
Over the years, I have had numerous lies told to me by salespeople attempting to up-sell various products.

It is particularly pronounced with things like cables, where the "high-end" product has a ridiculously exaggerated profit margin.  Things like Best Buy selling a 3 foot USB cable for $20 dollars.

My guess would be that the rep. that you talked to has either been coached to feed you mis-information, or is just repeating what the company training has taught him is correct.

My grandfather has an adage for dealing with people that has served him well: "Never attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by ignorance/stupidity."  Chances are, the rep. just didn't know any better.

stranded or solid conductor ? - audio digital coaxial cable

Reply #24 –
Quote from: bomber on
Like I said, I'm totally new to this...

Why would the guy from Monster have told me the "STANDARD" cable does not play DTS if it seems everyone else like you guys here have no doubt it does ?


A maketdroid is lying by omission in order to try and tempt a consumer to buy an extremely expensive cable that will not have any effect. He is saying *Monster* don't support DTS on a cable they themselves have decided isn't their DTS cable. Monster don't support putting DTS down a random 75 Ohm coax cable either. It doesn't change the fact that it will work.

To reiterate:

You do not need a "THX" certified cable, this is marketing fluff.
You do not need a "DTS" cable supported by Monster, this is marketing fluff at best and down right lies at worst.

DTS is a bitstream at 1,536Kb/s. Stereo 24bit 96KHz PCM audio, which standard S/PDIF over standard 75 Ohm coax is rated for, works out at 4,608Kb/s. (Leaving aside what others have said about the actual bandwidth down the cable vs the data rate presented for use by the audio layer)

Therefore the notion that you need to part with lots of your hard earned cash for a cable to handle DTS because it needs "larger bandwidth" is utterly ludicrous.