A Confused streaming system - Mutec / SOtM Ultra

[Confused]

Confused,

Exactly which cable did you order from Habst?

Thx

When I first contacted Habst, I just stated that I was interested in buying exactly the same cable as used by Mutec when demonstrating the new REF10 / MC3+USB at Munich 2017.

Apparently it is the Habst Digital BNC Habst 5N Cryo Reinsilber 75ohm 0.5m.  See link:

http://www.habst.de/index.php/digital-xlr-rca-bnc.html

If you look at the picture per the link, the "earth" connector is an RCA plug.  Habst can supply this as a BNC connector by request, however, their recommendation is that you have the RCA connector as shown on their website.  The RCA connector is supplied with an RCA to BNC adaptor suitable for connection to an unused BNC on the REF10 (or whatever), the idea behind having the RCA plug is that it provides maximum flexibility for where you can connect the earth lead, so if you want to connect it to a spare RCA socket in the future, you can. 

In terms of length, 0.5m is just right for the REF10 and MC3+USB if you want to stack them with the front panels aligned.

Whilst we are talking cables, it occurs to me that the to use the REF10 with the Network Bridge, I would need at least two decent clock cables, one between the REF10 and MC3+USB, and one from the MC3+USB, which would be generating a word clock feed, to the Network Bridge.  This makes me wonder if the word clock cable is as critical as a 10Mhz reference cable?  This stuff can get expensive!

EDIT:  The above reminded me of something that happened on Sunday.  The morning was spent with the system playing music whilst I dealt with few jobs and tasks.  With the tasks finished, I found that I had about 10 minutes before I needed to go out.  I had been thinking about the shorter clock cables in the SOtM kit, so I sat down and had a quick listen with the REF10 providing feed to the tX-USBultra and sMS-200Ultra.  One thing that immediately struck me was the bass power and dynamics, very good.  I then turned off the two REF10 clock feeds to the SOtM kit, I was immediately struck by the difference, a slice of the dynamics and bass punch was noticeably diminished.  I was VERY surprised to hear this much difference with just the "upstream" clocks.  I then noticed that one of the lights was flashing on the MC3+USB.  It turned out that I had accidently turned off the REF10 feed to the MC3+USB, so it had lost the clock reference.  So in a way, I had accidentally blind tested myself, I was listening to the influence of the REF10 on the MC3+USB, not the SOtM kit as I thought.  (I presume the MC3+USB just defaults to it's internal clock, if it didn't, the music would stop)  Of course, I should then have retried the experiment, but time was up, and I have not had a chance to listen to the system since.  I am very much looking forward to this weekend, when I will have some time, and the plan for the free time is just to listen to music!