High Grade SATA cables Sound

[sandyk]

You don't need to pay huge amounts of money to see if better SATA cable are worthwhile or not.
Use the shortest possible possible cables such as the attached, which have 2 separate shielded cables internally.
 Even if you are unable to hear a difference directly, they will help to improve airflow and reduce pickup
of internally radiated RF/EMI from Motherboard PWM controlled fans etc.
They are well under $10 each.
     These types of SATA cables are very widely available. 
Attached is where I bought mine from. You can clearly see the 2 separate shielded cables in the photos.

 

https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/sis.html?_nkw=SATA+3+III+3.0+DATA+HDD+SSD+Cable+25CM+%2F+10"+-+UV+Blue+W%2F-+Latch&_id=110984713671&&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2658
 

[plissken]

2 hours ago, Lebouwsky said:

 

To sharpen the discussion is a good thing on a platform like this. But to me this is where you cross the line. Lighten up a bit, it’s a hobby forum and you’re talking to fellow members here.

 

I totally agree:

 

On 11/20/2017 at 9:56 PM, sandyk said:

You really are stupid if you think that anybody would trust you, with or without a remote control,  to arrange any kind of definitive tests.

 

[plissken]

34 minutes ago, sandyk said:

You don't need to pay huge amounts of money to see if better SATA cable are worthwhile or not.
Use the shortest possible possible cables such as the attached, which have 2 separate shielded cables internally.
 Even if you are unable to hear a difference directly, they will help to improve airflow and reduce pickup
of internally radiated RF/EMI from Motherboard PWM controlled fans etc.
They are well under $10 each.
     These types of SATA cables are very widely available. 
Attached is where I bought mine from. You can clearly see the 2 separate shielded cables in the photos.

 

https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/sis.html?_nkw=SATA+3+III+3.0+DATA+HDD+SSD+Cable+25CM+%2F+10"+-+UV+Blue+W%2F-+Latch&_id=110984713671&&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2658
 

 

Been using Intel NUC's that don't require any SATA cabling at all. Just M.2. I have some replacement audiophile PCB traces on order.

[sandyk]

11 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

Been using Intel NUC's that don't require any SATA cabling at all. Just M.2. I have some replacement audiophile PCB traces on order.

 

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

N.B.

 I am not recommending that members spend 100s of $ on boutique SATA cables.

Even if they do result in any improvement, a much shorter and direct cable as I suggested should perform

either the same or close to the boutique cables of a longer length.

Many members use internal SATA cables that are far longer than necessary, partly due to them being what came with their purchase.

 

Quote

High Grade SATA cables Sound

 

[ismewor]

This might be the area like power cord discussion 20 years ago.

[barrows]

I would like to re-vive this thread...

 

If SATA cables do make a difference, let us look at the problem technically.  SATA is a very high speed transfer protocol, therefore the "best" SATA cable should be the one which operates exceptionally well at high speeds.  High speed transfer requires low impedance at high speeds.  High speed signals due not travel "through" a wire, they travel o the surface of the wire: hence we see lost of silver plated cables for high speed data transfer, as the signal will be traveling through the silver surface, hence there is no need to pay more for solid silver conductors, but a silver plated conductor is a good idea.  Next we should address dielectric losses, the best feasible dielectric is air, so an air suspended conductor would be a good idea as well, such as those made by Nordost and Iconoclast.  Next is shielding and geometry, at the speeds used in SATA, I suspect COAX construction of the individual lines would be a good idea, and this nicely handles shielding as well.  I do not know if SATA has an impedance standard, but I would suspect that it would.  To meet an impedance standard with precision requires high quality, machine built cables with high precision build.

 

OK, so here is the theoretical ideal SATA cable:

 

High quality silver plated inner conductor, with spiraled FEP filament to create stability and an air dielectric.

 

FEP insulation over that, followed by a silver braid shield (coax construction)

 

Flat cable consisting of multiple coax conductors as above for each signal

 

PVC or other more flexible outer jacket (all FEP may be too inflexible to route inside a server)

 

Machine built to high precision, no hand built cables need apply here, for tight impedance control

 

Who makes a SATA cable like this?  The design would be similar to Nordost's (excellent) Valhalla 2 USB cable

 

Anyone?

[yamamoto2002]

It seems cable characteristic impedance is 100Ω ±10Ω

 

12G SAS cable with SFF-8680 connector has 2x performance per paired wire compared to SATA600 cable and

24G SAS cable with SFF-8681 connector has 4x performance per paired wire.

 

I think those cables/connectors have better performance and construction (for electrical performance standpoint) than generic cheap SATA600. Not sure if it is beneficial for sound quality🙂

 

SFF-8680 and SFF-8681 connector is compatible to SATA 600 harddrive or SSD.