Digital Audio
Digital Audio
Is it worth it to buy more expensive digital optical audio cables instead of generic ones?
Right now I have a Samsung home theater in a box, 5.1 surround sound. It’s not a high-end system or anything, but it fits my needs/wants. I just switched all my RCA audio cables and replaced them all with digital optical audio cables. They sound great – I can really tell the difference, especially for video games. The sound is clearer and separated between the speakers a lot better.
Now, here’s where my question starts to come into play. Because I have only one digital input and I have multiple devices using digital audio, I have to run everything through a source selector. I had to buy one audio cable each for the devices themselves (Xbox, PS2, and cable converter) to run to the source selector, and another one from the selector to the receiver itself. Because I need so many cables I went with cheaper ones.
But sometimes, the audio drops out or gets static, which is fixable but inconvenient/annoying. Could this be because I went with cheaper cables instead of high-end?
Cables arguably do make a difference. IMO, the largest difference will be when you’re going from the cheapest cables to more expensive aftermarket cables with gold plated connectors. Then, you basically go up in price 10-fold to get twice the sound and video quality performance. Worth it if you are a die-hard audio/videophile, but not necessary if you just want good sound on a tight budget.
As you might expect, the higher quality your home theater is, the more you will benefit from higher quality cabling (i.e. your system is only as good as the weakest component in a basic sense).
An excellent value in the high-end cable market is from DH Labs (Silver Sonic). Much better performance than the well-known Monster Cable for about the same price. DH Labs has been known by audiophiles as a sleeper underground cable company for at least 10 years and have received rave reviews from professional reviewers (Soundstage.com) as well as private owners (Audioreview.com).
Rule of thumb… unless you’re a die-hard for the best performance, just make sure you get cables with gold plated connectors and you should be fine.
Also, you might consider 75 Ohm digital coaxial SP/DIF cable as a formidable alternative to the Toslink optical digital audio cable if you have these connections available.
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