Upgrading SATA cables

I would counsel caution in buying digital cables from the hi-fi manufacturers which have had acoustic cable design tweaks applied. As a result, there are numerous cables on the market that no longer meet the standard(s).

I’d suggest reading up on interface design to understand that a lot of the claims simply cannot be true because of the inherent design of such interfaces.

I did overhear someone at a show claiming that downloaded files cannot be ‘pure’ / ‘true’ because they are transmitted as packets and can arrive in a different order. This person was sober and at first glace rational. Thankfully the internet still seems to work :rofl:

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Those darned packets. If only there was some way of adding addresses or a method of knowing what order they were supposed to be in.

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better if they’d thought about that at the design stage eh?

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Im surprised some hifi company hasn’t come up with cables with little cages around them to stop packets from escaping.

Oh wait - maybe I’m onto something there…

We do occasionally get reports here of certain often exotic cables not working. Having paid quite a lot of money for them the assumption is often that the problem is elsewhere. However on changing them out for a ‘standard’ cable the problem goes away. That said I am not against the notion of experimenting with different options. Just spend some time with the setup in standard form first so you can properly evaluate any changes. And be sceptical, but not to the extent of becoming cynical. Have fun, enjoy the comparisons, and remember that just because someone does or doesn’t hear something means nothing in the context of your system in your house.

Room acoustic improvements are the least done, but generally the most impactful improvements in sound quality for any system. It’s amazing how much the space is involved in how music sounds. I shoot photos for musicians’ PR and albums, and I’ve heard what cuts sound like as recorded, in studios designed to prevent sound from invading any microphone other than the one intended. It’s so bizarre sounding - surreal and completely off-putting. A lot of reverb and decay is added to albums recorded in those acoustically dead studios to make them sound like our ears expect them to sound.

I’ve done room acoustic work in our main listening area. First with things that are “normal” for a room - curtains, rugs. Next step was deadening the corders with bass traps, one of which is behind my open audio equipment rack (if it was behind a solid rack it wouldn’t do anything) and another that’s the color of the walls tucked under a corner table.

Third step was getting diffusion to break up room mode sound reflections. We have a number of large complex wood carving/statues from Bali, Tibet, etc. When we set them up on the bookcases and tables in the room, you could hear the difference. It was striking enough that we even tried different pieces in different places just to convince ourself that it mattered that much. That was a “bridge too far” - the quantity and location of the big wood carvings mattered more than which one was where.

Last step, catching the last nasty reflections from the walls behind the speakers. You can now get acoustic panels that have art printed on the surface. Acoustic panel sellers have a large collection of stock art you can use. We used my own photographs (I sell through galleries)… although we had some “spirited” discussions about which photos to use, since we’re going to be looking at them for many years. Because my speakers are dipole for bass, cardioid for mids and highs, damping the whole area behind would have wrecked the sound for that particular speaker design. We did some large panels, hung to start just at the level of the tweeters. Before we hung them, we leaned them up against the wall behind the speakers, and yeah, it was bad, almost reduced bass but boomy, flat mids. But up on the walls, good.

When we lived in an apartment in Singapore, the main living room dining area had marble floors, hard plaster walls, and 10 foot windows all along one side of the room. The echoes in there were so bad if you were on a phone call the person on the other end couldn’t make out what you were saying. That was how we ended up with the speakers we have now - even after rugs and curtains and soft pillows on furniture and rugs for wall hanging, the room still had a lot of “room mode” amplifications of specific frequencies here and there. Regular speakers just didn’t work - moving them forward, back, etc changed room modes but didn’t stop them. Having the woofer open all around, with everything above in a cardioid radiation pattern, killed all the room mode problems. That was my education in how much acoustic treatments matter.

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I have two high end systems - one for home, one for my photography studio. They both have mildly exotic cables recommended by the shops we bought the speakers from. We learned that the shops’ advice was pretty good when we moved recently. As we were in the unpacking nightmare, I just used the first cables I found with the first gear I found. Five minutes in to the first thing we listened to, my wife (who mostly listens to books on tape through $5 earbuds) said “did the movers break something?” The system sounded weird. Flat and lifeless. Width imaging was there but zero depth. But we kept listening for a few days because we were unpacking.

When I found the cables that had been used with those speakers and amps since the day we got them, I swapped the cables. Again, a few minutes into a jazz album we listen to frequently, my wife said “what happened, this is how it used to sound?” And in fact, we had vertical and depth imaging back.

Later on, I cable-swapped back and forth on my studio system, and found that in fact, one set of cables made it sound way better than the other. So yeah, cables do matter. Those are analog signals running to the speakers, so little things can change little things in the current being delivered. I actually saw an article recently where someone with high end electrical engineering measurement gear tested several different speaker cables, and showed that there were in fact detectable differences between different cables. (I think it was in the WireCutter program hosted by New York Times.)

Biggest differences were between gauges of wire, but within common gauges, there were smaller and measurable differences between different speaker wires. That’s NOT what they expected to see, which adds a bit of credibility. Their conclusion was, gauge matters because the differences are big enough to be able to cause changes that almost everyone could hear; beyond that, if your amp and speakers are really really precise (read: high end) MAYBE you could hear the difference.

They did test with speakers next, but none of the speakers were over $500 a pair - and I can tell you from my own systems (besides the two main systems we have smaller, lesser quality systems in the garage, kitchen, and two bedrooms) the wires don’t matter much in any other than the two high end systems.

Of course wire gauge matters for analog signals. Signal attenuation is a function of the cable’s resistance which in turn is a function of its material (cooper clad aluminium vs varying purities of copper for eg) and cross sectional area - 1.5mm², 2.5mm² for eg for speaker cables etc. There are also different constructions that attempt to vary capacitance and/or inductance relative the norm, or even attempt to impact skin effect. It is possible these may work better in some scenarios than the norm and not in others, but lets not get into skin effect :wink:

The discussion here however was about the possibility of SATA digital cables connecting a disc drive to its host computer interface impacting the resulting audio quality. The important thing is are they in-spec for the digital interface or not, as if not, then we assume data errors may eventually occur. If in spec and we assume no cable induced data errors, then how is that to impact heard audio quality?

I do accept there are some specific scenarios where changes to the design of a digital data cable can potentially positively impact audio quality through minimising jitter (or perhaps even EMR) to a particularly sensitive audio device, but I don’t believe this is one of them.

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Hi Adam,

I think your post gives a good open minded overview of this topic.

Any change we make needs to be measured. I am open to the fact that we may not understand why some things will have a positive or negative impact on the sound quality and I also consider the synergy and reliability of the system as a whole. Some of these tweaks may not make a definite identifiable sound improvement but I definitely don’t want any of them to be detrimental to sound quality or reliability. Several small cost affective tweaks combined may make a change that most people could identify as a definite but small improvement to sound quality. Everything else should be set up properly before considering these final potential tweaks.

I totally agree that room acoustics have a huge impact on sound quality and different types of speakers will interact differently and its what most people don’t pay enough attention to. Have a look at some set ups online where people have spent a huge amount of money on great speakers and put them in a room and placed them in a position that is never going to allow then to sound at their best. To me that is $5K, $10K etc of wasted money. A lot of my furnishings that I have purchased will hopefully have a positive affect on room acoustics with my stereo. Most of us hear our speakers in a HiFi shop before we buy them and not in our own house. I have levelled and aligned my speakers using a tripod, clamping device and digital level with a laser pointer as the damn Jamo’s only appear to have 1 flat surface on them which is the back brace. They are now set up within 1 degree as I found it very difficult to adjust the spikes so the speaker was not a couple of degrees or more out of level in one or more ways when done by eye as its far more difficult to notice it with the Jamo’s.

I did a test a few months ago with power cables in my system.
I unplugged my Cardas Clear power cables on my Tube monoblocks and replaced then with $10 specials.
After 10 seconds of replaying music my view was that I had been foolish and they would be advertised on Audiogon within the hour.
After 30 seconds I started noticing differences and told myself not to jump to conclusions too quickly.
I went back to my listening chair and continued to listen. After a couple of minutes it become evident that there was a distinct difference in sound quality, it was now somewhat fuzzy, smeared and lacked some detail, dynamics and coherence.
After listening for half an hour to several different songs with high levels of instrumental timbre and acoustics I had heard enough (the Jamos and Monoblocks both excel on this type of music).
In went the Cardas Clear power cables on the monoblocks and I was delighted to hear the satisfying results of 40yrs of musical journey towards a satisfying and rewarding musical presentation.
Were they worth the outlay of $2k US (demo models) in a $50k US system? I do believe they were cost affective as I believe my system sounded far more than 5% better with the Cardas cables. It still sounded good with the $10 specials but disappointing for $50k and more like a $45k system in my view in comparison in this set up. I believe the cheap cables added such a weak link to the system but I also believe that changing out the power cables on the other components will also make smaller differences to sound quality. Not because they are inferior or on the music server or DAC but because the first weakest link can possibly make such a big difference and that the last tweak or 2 will make a small or near impossible to quantify change in sound quality if the rest of the system is already well set up with good synergy.

Digital cables I believe make far less of a difference and buy proportionally in regards to cost.
SATA cables well maybe nothing but a waste of a $100 but worth looking into and seeking feedback.

Whilst your experiences with changing cables are undeniably your experiences, I would always suggest double blind testing when you make changes like this. The mind is a powerful thing and the placebo effect is real.

If you can hear and reliably identify a positive effect in a blind environment then you know the changes are valid and worthwhile.

Positive effects outside a blind environment may of course have the same effect in making you think the sound is better (and who’s to say that doesn’t have value), but if you can’t replicate it blind then you’re just reacting to how you think it should improve, rather than a real improvement.

From my perspective I agree with most of the posts above. There’s value in well constructed and well made, suitable gauge speaker cable, and decent analogue interconnects. I’m very sceptical about power cables, given that you’re changing the last meter of cable in a house installation that probably has 10p/metre wiring in it. SATA/Ethernet and other digital cables? Selling those to people is just stealing…

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This is getting weirder and weirder. Audio grade SATA cables…? Computers like a NUC are not made for the best possible audio reproduction. So why invest in SATA cables… Just like the Roon team advises, remove the Nucleus/NUC from the Audiochain and use a quality network streamer.

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What if making changes at the server has an impact at the streamer?
Devils advocate.

Well, as long as people go into it with their eyes open. In the case of the OP, @Dean_Bedwell, he clearly has put a lot of thought into optimizing his system as best he can. (I love the way it has been treated acoustically.) So, if you want to try something ‘outre’, go ahead.
If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work and we get feedback. If it DOES work, well, that might need its own thread. Some posters get all righteous about these things, but I don’t suspect that’s the case here.

Well, I suppose… But when I read (on the Pachanko SATA Mk2 cable page) that the said cable is “compatible with all OS”, forgive me if I do a facepalm. It’s a claim that is undoubtedly true, but totally meaningless…

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I don’t suppose you would feel better if the cables were ‘tuned’ the the OS being used? :wink:

The ears should be open for this one, not the eyes! :rofl:

Wondering if these cables have been heat treated.

This would be a good place ti re-post that WhatHiFI (sic) link, that I can’t find.

Heat treated? That is so last week. Cryo treated is back in fashion this week. Keep up at the back!

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Oops, then the business model of the Cable Cooker company is out of the window then?

Just change tack and start working on that cryo-cooler for PCs. Why stop at cables when you can cool the whole PC and reap the sonic benefits? Super-conductivity is the way forward…