Don't waste your money on high-priced HDMI cable

[prankey]

you can't hear digital - you have to get analog somewhere
He is saying digital out from player, and analog from DAC instead of avr.

Dude, if you pass digital till the AVR, you will most probably get 100% of the signals as they left the source till AVR for an analog conversion JUST ONCE! If you do it before, you will have to pass LOSSY, ANALOG AUDIO through and additional preamp and cable before it reaches the AVR! Now here, even if you use the world most expensive, exotic cable or preamp/DAC, you will ALWAYS loose quality, fidelity and add noise and THD. In contrast, we argue here that a bad DAC or a bad digital cable MAY, MYSTERIOUSLY alter audio or add Jitter when theoretically, chances are, it may NEVER happen no matter how bad are the intermediate paths.

Hi All,

Could you pls suggest where I can get cheap (but quality) cables in Bangalore & Mumbai (as I shuttle between these 2 cities). Looking to buy the following:

1) HDMI (AVR to Plasma) & (AVR to Media Player) - price?
2) Co-ax (AVR to DVD) & (AVR to Media Player) - price?

Thanx in advance

Just go to SP Road at Bangalore (infront of Town hall) and get a nice, shiny nylon clad, ferrite cores at both ends HDMI cable for any use upto 1.4!

For coaxial, just look through your junkyard and find a spare RCA cable which could well be rotten or even damaged at places. However if it doesn't have any loose electrical connectivity, it will work EXCELLENTLY and will certainly give you maximum quality you could possibly get out of any CRORE rupee worth of cable! This holds true for any HDMI or Coaxial or Optical cables if you could trust my words irrespective of what some of us have reservations on. Save funds to donate or buy better speakers, TV, Speaker cables instead of throwing down the drain by being skeptical like some of us are here!

In addition , lot many vendors selling cheap HDMI cables in ebay.. Will those cables work ? Anything special to look out for in those like 1.3 compliance etc ?

They all should work, and I don't see any Rs.150 HDMI cable on ebay so best is to buy from your local market. We can even start a pan India group buy for HDMI cables and might pull the cost to around Rs.100 only!

 

[omishra]

For digital cables no problem till 1-2 meters. But after that length copper quality, shielding and impedance makes issue for digital transmission.
Bad copper wire, connector = loss of data,
bad shielding = introduction of noise more than signal
mismatching impedance = oscillation in cable resulting addition/loss of data (unwarranted change)

Digital transmission in wire is not DC pulses switching ON/OFF as 0 and 1. But they are data frames modulated over some frequency. So addition of noise or loss of that bit (0 or 1) produces error in frame. That's you call degraded quality. Sometimes, due high error rate HDMI protocol initiates renegotiation of its parameters with gadget connected at other end. That we call blackouts in audio or video.

So quality must be acceptable in terms of individual copper strands, noise shielding and good point of contacts. That does not mean people should start selling cable applied with snake oil. There could not be huge difference of Rs 300/- to Rs 10000/- to justify. Decent cable with nice protection jacket, nickel/gold plated contacts with acceptable quality copper strand will do. These comes well within range of 300 Rs/- for 1.5 meters.

My 2 paisa!

 

[shravank30]

Dude, if you pass digital till the AVR, you will most probably get 100% of the signals as they left the source till AVR for an analog conversion JUST ONCE! If you do it before, you will have to pass LOSSY, ANALOG AUDIO through and additional preamp and cable before it reaches the AVR! Now here, even if you use the world most expensive, exotic cable or preamp/DAC, you will ALWAYS loose quality, fidelity and add noise and THD. In contrast, we argue here that a bad DAC or a bad digital cable MAY, MYSTERIOUSLY alter audio or add Jitter when theoretically, chances are, it may NEVER happen no matter how bad are the intermediate paths.


Just go to SP Road at Bangalore (infront of Town hall) and get a nice, shiny nylon clad, ferrite cores at both ends HDMI cable for any use upto 1.4!




They all should work, and I don't see any Rs.150 HDMI cable on ebay so best is to buy from your local market. We can even start a pan India group buy for HDMI cables and might pull the cost to around Rs.100 only!

High Quality I-MAXX HDMI High Definition Cable Full HD 1080p Anti Interference | eBay

This has ferrite cores at the ends.
Is it reasonably priced ?