SPDIF Crystal Cable for D400

[agentsmith]

I have "upgraded" the D400 (now D440 Pro) bundled SPDIF link cable with a French Viard SPDIF cable.

That leaves the crystal cable available for use as SPDIF cable for other devices such as TV box or Blu Ray player.

Does anyone know the quality level of the included Crystal cable?  It look like a Piccolo Diamond cable without the nice solid steel piece with the logo.

In any case I do not know the quality of the Piccolo cable.  What level is it as compared to other cables from, say, Cardas or Black Cat 75?

[Devialetuser]

I have heard the Crystal cable bundled with the Devialet D400, replaced it with an Audioquest Coffee and it sounded much better. I would guess the price for the materials used inside the Crystal cable to be about £100 and the rest is just marketing overhead.

[kerkhoffd]

I think it is a Crystal Cable Standard Digital Diamond cable. I have one too. At first it sounded incoherent and lacking base. It took quite a while to settle in. After that I compared it to AudioQuest Diamond. I prefer the AudioQuest, but the Crystal Cable is a more than decent cable. I guess it depends a lot on the rest of the setup.

[Devialetuser]

Just upgraded from the Audioquest Coffee to the Chord Epic 1M Spdif cable (£400). I find the Chord has the edge over the Audioquest by a fair margin. There is more sparkle in the upper frequency, without sounding fatiguing. Although the cable is yet to burnin, I am find that the detail retrieval is excellent.

[Rama]

Currently I am using a transparent coax cable. It came in the performance box but on the cable its printed premium. Will have to ask transparent cable co about the discrepancy. Anyhow I find it very satisfactory for my needs. Not sure if an upgrade is necessary at this time. Overall I don't think the an upgrade would make a significant difference, but i might be completely mistaken.

[GuillaumeB]

Currently I am using a transparent coax cable. It came in the performance box but on the cable its printed premium. Will have to ask transparent cable co about the discrepancy. Anyhow I find it very satisfactory for my needs. Not sure if an upgrade is necessary at this time. Overall I don't think the an upgrade would make a significant difference, but i might be completely mistaken.

Well it sounds as though you have the better cable since Premium is the level below Reference.

My (at the time) 500 shipped with this cable. Then I made the terrible mistake of auditioning the Ref XL thinking it couldn't possibly make that much of a difference. It literally blew me away, a big night and day thing. Others heard the same thing too.

Why do I say that I made a terrible mistake? The cable cost me £3,700. Yikes!

Guillaume

[Rama]

Thanks for the clarification. Well I remember not paying a whole lot for the transparent cable maybe around $150. However, after your reply i find it would be prudent to audition the audioquest coffee cable. Mine is a two D220 pro setup so I really cant justify spending £3700 on the Ref XL.

[ray1234]

Bring back an old topic, I recently got a second hand D400. I am now using Audio Request Coffee digital coaxial RCA and use a RCA-XLR adaptor on the companion end, it is sounding fine.

I will soon acquire an Audioquest WEL Signature XLR-XLR digital cable, I wondered if anyone has tried all XLR digital cable with a XLR-RCA adaptor on master end, will that work? I know the cable will then be 110ohm instead of 75ohm, does that matter to the D400?

[audio_engr]

I ditched that Crystal RCA-RCA cable for Audioquest WILD RCA-XLR 3.0 metres DBS 72V [custom-made by Audioquest]. The AQ is a fantastic cable & 1 step down from AQ WEL Signature.

[audio_engr]

I will soon acquire an Audioquest WEL Signature XLR-XLR digital cable, I wondered if anyone has tried all XLR digital cable with a XLR-RCA adaptor on master end, will that work? I know the cable will then be 110ohm instead of 75ohm, does that matter to the D400?

If you look back for this topic, you'll find that I had a lot of issues with the DBS not allowing over 96kHz playback. The moment I was playing 176.4 or 192kHz files, the companion would shut-down. Audioquest had 2 attempts to fix this problem with my WILD RCA-XLR and finally, they found a way to fix it and returned me my WILD digital with RCA-XLR build.