arthurz

Emotiva XDA-2. $400.

There cannot possibly be any sound differences between a regular short $5 cable and whatever ridiculous snake oil people are trying to sell. It's digital data over copper. If anyone from Northern CA disagrees and is willing to take a bet, we can organize a blind test. If you win, I'll pay you $10,000. If I win, you pay me $1,000 and promise to take a physics course. Any takers?

I have a similar issue with my Marantz AV7701. I have my digital sources hooked up to the Emotiva XDA-2 DAC via USB and Toslink and to the AV7701 via HDMI. The DAC is connected to the AV7701 as one of its analog inputs that can then be chosen for zones 2 and 3. Not exactly an answer to your question, but it solves the problem.

Marantz's marketing materials refer to their "Hybrid PLL" jitter removal technology in the AV7701. No idea what it actually is, but presumably it removes jitter .

Yeah, it seems like that might be true. However, as I mentioned, an asynchronous converter will fix this issue.

Musicophile, can you elaborate on why HDMI would be one of the worst connections? I'm definitely no expert, but it seems that since the signal is digital, all connections are basically the same except for cable length limitations and jitter. It seems most self-respecting DACs these days employ an asynchronous mode whereby they employ an internal timer to resequence the digital samples, so the jitter characteristics of the input shouldn't matter either.