Master to Companion cable choice

[Bertie]

So, come the day I land my next 220 and am ready to 440 my amp, is there any mileage in spending coin on a digital interconnect or will the ‘Amazon’s choice’ £6.99 cable do it? There’s a lot of chatter about some cables offering a richer sound. Will I be able to hear any difference buying another interconnect?

[daniel.avasilichioaei]

Any decent digital cable will do the job. The only role of this cable is to transmit digital bits between the master and companion.

[audio_engr]

There are Two ways to connect your Master & Companion.
1. Devialet's preferred way is RCA out (Master) & RCA in (Companion).
2. Another alternate way is RCA out (Master) & AES in (Companion).

I use the RCA > AES after evaluating that it's more open sounding, better dynamically & certainly a larger soundstage. I started with a custom build DH Labs Sonic Silver cable & then moved to Audioquest Diamond, thereafter to Audioquest Wild & finally to Audioquest WEL Signature (all of them RCA > AES). With each change of the digital cable, sonics improved up the ladder.

[thumb5]

I'm with Daniel on this. Put another way, and being blunt: if you are inclined to think that the choice of digital cable will affect sound quality, it probably will, to your ears. If you think it won't make a difference, it won't.

[audio_engr]

I'm with Daniel on this.  Put another way, and being blunt: if you are inclined to think that the choice of digital cable will affect sound quality, it probably will, to your ears.  If you think it won't make a difference, it won't.

Interesting! And what happens when you don't "think" BUT actually "hear" the change.

[ada]

@audio_engr you hear the change on the companion channel only, right? because from the cable you put in the middle, only one channel is being impacted

[audio_engr]

@audio_engr you hear the change on the companion channel only, right? because from the cable you put in the middle, only one channel is being impacted

In my case, first off is that I do "hear" changes between cables. If I go RCA (master) > RCA (companion) both channels sound similar. But if I go RCA (master) > AES (companion), for some crazy reason, the whole setup sounds a helluva lot better. But as you sit and analyse the change minutely, I tend to get a feeling that for some odd reason, the Companion channel sounds slightly superior than the Master channel. Which brings me to the topic of Dual Monos connectivity that Devialet should have addressed it as AES > AES as they knew very well that their AES is the most superior sounding connection.

Furthermore, I took a look at how they're connecting their Astra Dual Mono. It seemed weird that they're doing a Digital 1 OUT to Line IN (Astra-A) and similarly, Digital 1 OUT to Line IN (Astra-B) - all RCA Coax Digital.

[thumb5]

I'm with Daniel on this.  Put another way, and being blunt: if you are inclined to think that the choice of digital cable will affect sound quality, it probably will, to your ears.  If you think it won't make a difference, it won't.

Interesting! And what happens when you don't "think" BUT actually "hear" the change.

I think you're missing my point, which was that if you generally believe that cables make a difference, most likely you will hear such a difference.  I wouldn't argue with the fact that you are indeed hearing a difference, but I would argue that the cable itself is not the source of the difference, so much as your expectation that you will hear it.

[audio_engr]

 but I would argue that the cable itself is not the source of the difference, so much as your expectation that you will hear it.

If that was true, Devialet would have simply included a $10 Digital Coax RCA ~ RCA cable in their packaging. 
But they included the Audioquest Carbon and thats at $230 for 0.75 meter RCA-RCA. They could have even given the Audioquest Forest (lowest in the AQ lineup @ $30). And majority of the Dual-Mono user folks in this Forum would have also used a $10 cable. But thats not the case.

[thumb5]

There are many reasons why Devialet might include a given cable with their dual-mono products. Based on the quality of their hardware engineering, I believe that they would design a product that is not sensitive to the specific cable used. Anyway, it's clear that we have to agree to differ on this so I have no more to say - I just wanted to add some balance.