Gonk, I appreciate you taking the time to expain this.

I actually thought the answer was how you explained it. But I didn't realize that without the optical cable I would not be able to get the true 5.1 sound track. That was news to me. Glad I ordered the PDO cable and paid for 2nd Day shipping. Will need it as a friend is coming over this weekend and we will be configuring my new Sony in the service menu and adjusting the speakers and everything else. I went on a minor spending spree the last few weeks and got a new TV, speakers and the 1050.

I evne took pics last night as I was installing the 1050 so I would know how it was connected. Now I will have to take more pics when the PDO arrives. lol

Thanks for the help.

Larry

No.

He used a coat-hanger as a digital interconnect for an electrical (coax) digital link. On the rear of your 1050 you will see 2 optical and one electrical input for digital. The electrical one. It has RCA style termination but the signal is digital data.

I was amazed actually, but it says something (good) about the robustness of the link.

What confused me was the fact that a coax connection could be used for digital. I never knew that. lol

My other question regarding the coat hanger "cable". Does this mean it is a better "cable" than the $50+ dollar true digital coax cables? Should I stop at the dry cleaner for some hangers on my way home from work and rewire everything tonight? lol

Larry

Ha.

I think the interesting thing is that all the '1's stayed '1' and the '0's stayed '0', which is all you can expect from a digital interconnect. Any decent processor should buffer and reclock as part of the data verification process so most of the stuff folks attribute to hi-end digital connectors is hogwash.

When you talk about a compressed and packeted data sream like DD or DTS it really gets silly.

On the other hand I enjoy the sight and feel of a well crafted cable as much as the next guy (well, maybe not that much) but don't expect to get better 101100 out of it. Someone called it audio jewelry and I think that's about right. Nothing wrong with it.

That's why I didn't spend a fortune on cables. I got some nice cables, was not about to spend a small fortune on Monster cables, they are not worth the money to me.

One thing I did notice, both sound and quality wise was my speaker cable. I bought Lowe's 14/2 cable and ran short so I went to Home Depot for their 14/2 cable. What a difference! I might rip out the HD cable and get another 75' of Lowe's cable. I can actually hear a difference and the HD cable is on my rear speakers! The copper wire is thinner and more fragile too. The HD 14/2 is about as heavy as the Lowe's 16/2 but it actually is 14/2.

I'd rather spend my pennies where I know it is truly being spent wisely.

Larry

I'm not a 'cable believer' but there are some cases where reasonable care in selection could pay off.

- If your speakers are difficult or runs are long a large gauge wire would be wise.

- If you have EMI problems some low level cables are shielded better than others. Some even lift one end of the drain wire, although in a non-balanced configuration I'm not sure I see the point.

- Some cables are legitimately well built. It's nice to be well built I hear.

Sounds like you've got it under control.

Higher priced cables tend to have better (thicker) gold plating on the contact surfaces, which helps a lot to ward off intermittent connections. Also, good cables are more immune to the copper conductors oxidizing, again contributing to good contact over time. Foil shielding is common also on better cables, which affords 100% shielding.

The advantage of having the shield connected only at one end of the cable is to reduce any current flow through the shield in the case of a ground loop. This is more effective in a balanced wire however.

Aside from that, I don't believe any good cable would 'sound' any better than any other.

I use RG-59 cable throughout my system. I make my own cables, and prefer to use BNC connectors on equipment I make myself. For RCAs, I use ones made by Canare. RG-59 makes an excellent all purpose cable for digital as well as audio, as there is no bandwidth restriction on it at the relavent frequencies. I have an engineer friend who did a lot of lab testing of various cables, and RG-59 came out on top. If you're handy with a soldering iron, you can't do better.

Do you have any pics of your cables?

What do the Canare connectors cost? Any particular brand of RG-59 cable? Beldin, or something else?

Just curious as a friend of mine might be needing some cables soon and wants to fabricate his own.

Thanks.

Larry

The connectors are about $5 each, and Belden would be an excellent source for RG-59. I don't have any pictures of them, but the assembly is really straight forward.

Ok, but what part needs to be soldered? Isn't the connector a slip-on and then crimp over the cable itself to hold in place, or does Canare use a different type of connector?

Any particular type of coax? He was going to create his own speaker cable seeing as how I have 30,000 feet of cat 5 in my garage, but then he found it is the wrong type of cat 5. lol

Do you have a particular model number for the coax cable?

Thanks.

Larry