"More expensive optical cable opened up the sound"???????????????

[highfigh]

AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I try to be open-minded but when someone says their new optical cable makes the sound better, I want to pull out what's left of my hair. Specifically, I was told that the sound stage opened up and instrument placement improved.

Assuming the original one wasn't bent/coiled too tightly, isn't glass with fractures, isn't cloudy and hasn't been chewed on by a cat or dog (or something else), how can this happen?

The worst part, she's in the business and has been, for a fairly long time. It's not a matter of some bozo beng told that the new one would make the Sun rise. She said her boyfriend commented on the sound, without knowing that she had changed it. My first question was "...but you told him you were going to do it, right?" and she said he had asked why it needed to be so expensive, so I know bias exists.

Gene- any chance that you could test the effect of different optical cords on sound quality? (I'm just going to call it an optical cord)

 

[j_garcia]

I've tried cheapo ones that were a few bucks and some expensive ones. Never heard a difference between them. So now if I need one, I go with the cheapest ones that don't feel like they'll break.

I worked at a place where we made the optical modules for optical network switches and there ARE things that affect the signal. Do those things affect the signal enough to make one sound different? I don't think so.

 

[highfigh]

I've tried cheapo ones that were a few bucks and some expensive ones. Never heard a difference between them. So now if I need one, I go with the cheapest ones that don't feel like they'll break.

I worked at a place where we made the optical modules for optical network switches and there ARE things that affect the signal. Do those things affect the signal enough to make one sound different? I don't think so.

I know the material can be contaminated/cloudy or coiled so tightly that the loss of brightness can cause the receiving end to not respond as desired- I tried an optical splitter and it was a cheap POS. If I squeezed the body or twist it slightly, one side would be brighter and then, the other. It ended up being unreliable and I decided to use the optical out from the AVR to feed the little DAC I needed for Zone 2.

The problem I have with claims like this and about using a green magic marker on the edge of CDs is that the changes would normally be attributed to an analog cable. A sense of spaciousness can often be caused by added treble or upper midrange, but I have never read anything about an optical signal being affected to the extent that it would change the resulting information. If data is lost, the error correction should step in but I think the old optical carrier would have to cause a lot of info to be lost.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Let me un-confuse everyone.please read spdif spec document.

specifically this section:

2. Errors This usually causes very significant changes in the sound, often loud popping noises but occasionally less offensive effects. Any data loss or errors in either are a sign of a very broken link which is probably intermittently dropping out altogether.

Read more at: http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html

 

[tyhjaarpa]

It doesn't, unless the original cable was faulty in some way. It either works or does not, if there is change in sound the original cable was faulty and did not pass all the data correctly.

 

[andyblackcat]

Yeah what a load of snake oil optical cable market is.

I use cheap optical cable and wow prices on eBaY for some length ones pays off.

My cat chewed up two optical cables in the past and good for me they were £4.00 pound cables.