WHY SHOULDNT I USE AN UNSHIELDED, BRAIDED OR TWISTED CABLE AS A DIGITAL CABLE?
The Internet assisted proliferation of completely inappropriate cable designs, silver or not, being touted as “digital cables” is nave at best, and only demonstrates a lack of background in even basic electronic principles. Only a coaxial type, exact 75 or 110 Ohm impedance cable can be used for digital audio signals, and proclaiming anything else to be suitable is simply irresponsible and wrong. Unlike audio frequency cables, vastly more interference prone RF (Radio Frequency) signals, such as digital data, must be transmitted by a cable whose calculated impedance exactly matches the input impedance of the receiving equipment, either 75-Ohm RCA/singled ended (S/PDIF) or 110-Ohm XLR/balanced (AES/EBU). Though the AES/EBU interface has a higher tolerance for mismatch, failure to match the impedance of the cable to the load results in power loss, error-generating mismatch reflections, and ultimately produces varying degrees of digital jitter (timing errors between simultaneously conveyed
