The impossibility of sound quality difference whatever the medium

[iamwappie]

The good old cables influence topic. I used to be in the camp of people stating exactly the same as the topic starter. Having an electrical engineering background I always thought that in the digital world anything below a certain voltage level is a 0 and above a 1 and if in the example of interlinks (max length maybe 1m) there would be such differences how poorly designs must that be to not being able to tranfer a digital signal properly over 1 meter?

I was wrong and really was one of those always taking a strong position.

Some things to consider:
1. The digital interlink mechanism does not incorporate any error correction
2. A block wave representing a digital signal does not exist in the physical signal path world. The block wave will be more rounded. Quality depending on cable and materials used
3. If I'm correct the receiving device must sync its clock based on the provided signal. This introduces errors in recreating the signal

I contribute the above to explain why I hear a difference. Most shocking to me was that replacing the digital interlink by a Crystal Cable one made the biggest improvement. I would have imagined analog cables would provide more improvements. Regarding the position of the poster that cables don't matter; why is a Crystal Cable provided with a D400 setup and not a 50 cent 'shoe lace' cable? It really matters.

I learned the hardway; Do an A - B comparison between cables and then judge but do not so based on theory. Ofcourse there are people that do not hear the difference as we are talking about the last percentages of sound improvements here.