HDMI Cable for audio - Does it Matter?

[whacky]

Wanted to check to see what everyones consensus is on an HDMI cable for audio purposes.

 

I am currently using a Mac mini ---> Marantz AV7702 for my surround sound, movies, all channel stereo listening. Its currently connected using a generic HDMI cable.

 

 

Most often when I listen to 2 channel hi-fi I am running the Mac Mini out USB via a Curious Cable USB to a PS Directstream DAC directly to my Primaluna Dialogue HP. Which I find to sound amazing. Love it. 

 

However, due to some temporary issues with my 2 channel setup, I am forced to run everything through my Marantz, which is currently connected via HDMI for ease of use. 

 

 

Are people using high quality, more expensive HDMI cables for audio purposes only?  

Do you find it enhances the audio experience over generic cables?

 

 

If so, any quality recommendations? Nothing ridiculous. Say less than $500 for under 2m. 

 

 

Thanks

 

 

[witchdoctor]

23 minutes ago, whacky said:

Wanted to check to see what everyones consensus is on an HDMI cable for audio purposes.

 

I am currently using a Mac mini ---> Marantz AV7702 for my surround sound, movies, all channel stereo listening. Its currently connected using a generic HDMI cable.

 

 

Most often when I listen to 2 channel hi-fi I am running the Mac Mini out USB via a Curious Cable USB to a PS Directstream DAC directly to my Primaluna Dialogue HP. Which I find to sound amazing. Love it. 

 

However, due to some temporary issues with my 2 channel setup, I am forced to run everything through my Marantz, which is currently connected via HDMI for ease of use. 

 

 

Are people using high quality, more expensive HDMI cables for audio purposes only?  

Do you find it enhances the audio experience over generic cables?

 

 

If so, any quality recommendations? Nothing ridiculous. Say less than $500 for under 2m. 

 

 

Thanks

 

 

I have the same processor and like the Pangea HDMI cable from audioadvisor. I have not tested a lot of cables but found it does sound better than a standard one. I compared the Pangea HDMI against my best coax cable spdif cable which cost $250. Generally a spdif connection is better than hdmi. With the pangea in place the hdmi sounded better. I think the Pangea is around $40 

[Samuel T Cogley]

1 hour ago, whacky said:

Wanted to check to see what everyones consensus is on an HDMI cable for audio purposes.

 

I am currently using a Mac mini ---> Marantz AV7702 for my surround sound, movies, all channel stereo listening. Its currently connected using a generic HDMI cable.

 

 

Most often when I listen to 2 channel hi-fi I am running the Mac Mini out USB via a Curious Cable USB to a PS Directstream DAC directly to my Primaluna Dialogue HP. Which I find to sound amazing. Love it. 

 

However, due to some temporary issues with my 2 channel setup, I am forced to run everything through my Marantz, which is currently connected via HDMI for ease of use. 

 

 

Are people using high quality, more expensive HDMI cables for audio purposes only?  

Do you find it enhances the audio experience over generic cables?

 

 

If so, any quality recommendations? Nothing ridiculous. Say less than $500 for under 2m. 

 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

If you're in the market for a $450, 1.5 meter HDMI cable, I'm sure you'll find no shortage of vendors who will gleefully take your money.  Because HDMI also carries video, and video tends to be less tolerant of cable-related problems than audio, my rule of thumb is that if video performance is solid, don't worry about audio.  I recommend a well made, mass market cable. Here's a good example.  Good luck!

 

[Ralf11]

there is an upgraded spec. for HDMI cables - IIRC, it is for video or HD video - those cables cost a little more but nowhere near $100

 

some places let you try many different cables - Bluejeans cable is one

 

also, if this is a non-temporary setup the Benchmark DAC is said to sound just as good on any input

[hdo]

I use $5 HDMI cable to connect my PC and Mac Mini to LG monitor. No issues at all. Everything is perfect.

[Archimago]

I'm with Samuel.

 

If you're worried, just get a decent HDMI capable of HDMI 2.0 spec that can carry 4K/60Hz/HDR...

 

Some options earlier this year typically <$20:

http://archimago.blogspot.ca/2017/01/quickie-post-yes-cables-matters-for.html

 

 

[sandyk]

Many people have reported that it is best to use a higher quality cable from well known sources , where the needed length is quite a bit longer than your typical length HDMI cable .

[Archimago]

6 hours ago, sandyk said:

Many people have reported that it is best to use a higher quality cable from well known sources , where the needed length is quite a bit longer than your typical length HDMI cable .

 

Sure,

Just like any cable, it's good to get high quality cable that one feels comfortable with. But of course always remember that ultimately we're looking at digital data transfer. 4K/60fps HDMI 2.0 is an 18Gbps connection. When that can be performed accurately by a $20 cable with zero evident degradation, it's hard to imagine problems transferring audio.

 

2-channel 24/192 = 9.2Mbps

2-channel 32/768 = 49.2Mbps

2-channel DSD512 = 44.8Mbps

 

5.1-channel 24/96 = 14Mbps

5.1-channel 24/192 = 28Mbps (not that there's any material!)

5.1-channel DSD64 = 16.8Mbps

 

These data rates are child's play for modern HDMI. One could of course argue about the audibility of HDMI jitter which is higher than asynchronous USB. (For example, I can demonstrate with my Yamaha RX-V781 last year higher jitter than a good asynchronous USB DAC.) But jitter would not be an issue correlated with normal cable lengths and I certainly would not buy an HDMI cable much longer than needed (recommend keep it less than 15 feet)! Nor would the cable itself be able to affect jitter amount (the important thing is weather data integrity is affected).

 

[thyname]

It depends on what you use the HDMI cable for.

 

For i2s connection (for example from Singxer SU-1 to Holo Spring KTE), a good quality cable from WireWorld made a positive difference for me.

 

YMMV

[MetalNuts]

On 10/23/2017 at 9:11 PM, whacky said:

However, due to some temporary issues with my 2 channel setup, I am forced to run everything through my Marantz, which is currently connected via HDMI for ease of use. 

 

I would prefer just a reasonable HDMI cable for the temporary use unless you really want to exploit of using HDMI instead of USB.

Quote

Are people using high quality, more expensive HDMI cables for audio purposes only?  

Do you find it enhances the audio experience over generic cables?

 

I wonder how many audiophiles would prefer HDMI for audio purposes other than RCA, XLR, USB, LAN.  I only use HDMI for AV.

[kennyb123]

On 10/23/2017 at 6:11 AM, whacky said:

Wanted to check to see what everyones consensus is on an HDMI cable for audio purposes.

 

Are people using high quality, more expensive HDMI cables for audio purposes only?  

Do you find it enhances the audio experience over generic cables?

 

A few months ago I purchased an LG OLED 4K TV.  I obtained a handful of HDMI cables to see what difference they’d make, if any.  Except for the TV, my AV system is quite humble:  DirecTV receiver, Xbox One S, Onkyo TX-RZ710 receiver, Polk speakers.

 

The HDMI cables i compared:

Monoprice (purchased years ago - not sure which model)

Wireword Island, Ultraviolet, Starlight

Nordost Blue Heaven 

 

Visually speaking, most obvious improvement was to Island from Monoprice.  I struggled to see differences between Ultraviolet and Starlight, but both were better than Island.  

 

I wasn’t paying attention to sound quality, but it grabbed my attention nonetheless.  Starlight seemed to bring with it subtle improvements to sound quality each time it was tossed in.

 

Shortly after completing these comparisons, I attended RMAF and spent some time talking to a rep from Wireworld.  He was in the Canjam room so the conversation began with headphones cables.  I segued into HDMI cables, by saying I struggled to see improvements from Ultraviolet to Starlight.  He said where the differences will more apparently show up is on the audio side - confirming my observations.   

 

I should point out that the improvements I heard no way justified the price of the Startlight in my system.  But that may be more a statement about the quality of the audio gear in that system.  I ended up purchasing a couple lengths of Ultraviolet for the benefits I saw on the video side,

 

The Blue Heaven could not justify its higher price relative to the WW products, though I thought the picture was slightly better.

 

So my recommendation to the OP is to try to borrow a couple WW cables and listen for yourself.

[Ralf11]

sounds like the Monoprice was not certified for HD or 4k, right?

[kennyb123]

35 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

sounds like the Monoprice was not certified for HD or 4k, right?

 

For HD, yes.  The comparisons involving the Monoprice were limited to HD with the DirecTV receiver as a source.  I found it easiest to spot the difference when watching NFL football games.  

 

The Xbox One S was the only 4K external source.  This was kept out of the comparisons until the end when a friend showed up.  (It was his Xbox.). The conclusions I offered above were reached before that.

 

I found it much more difficult to spot differences in cables with video than with audio on my big rig.  Exception was between the Monoprice and Island when watching football especially.  The players at the top of the screen gained dimensionality with the Island due to the better edge detail.  It surprised me to find that my brain seemed to need to work harder to turn those images into football players in my mind.  The Island was easily a no-brainer over the Monoprice for that application, though the UV improved things further in that same area over the Island.

 

Passengers is a stunning on 4K disc as it’s true 4K.  The picture actually looked mind-blowing with all the cables.  I struggled to see improvements as easily, though some seemed to turn up between UV and Startlight, but not enough to justify the price difference.  Seems HD is in greater need of all the help it can get.

 

And as far as the sound quality improvements I mentioned, when they first grabbed my attention was during football with the sound of the announcers coming from the center channel.  There was a bit more coherence, naturalness and treble extension with the Starlight over the others.  And this was with the compressed audio from DirecTV.  But the Starlight stood out even more with the David Gilmour “Live at Pompeii” on HD blu-ray.  The sound was slightly harder with the UV.  The Monoprice was already disqualified by the time that we got to that disc.

 

[Summit]

The stock HDMI cable that came with my TV and Blu-ray player had clearly worse picture than my Supra HDMI. The skin color is probably the hardest to get to look naturel. The same was true then I used different HDMI cables for I2S HDMI audio transmission, but for audio AQ coffee sounded better than Supra, it was much more expansive thou.

[Ralf11]

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-SbabiV5yy07/learn/learningcenter/home/cables/hdmi.html

 

2.0a

[Samuel T Cogley]

Just a data point for the thread.  I recently acquired an HDMI 2.0 capable AV receiver and TV.  The existing "high speed" HDMI cables I had pretty much didn't work at all, or required so much dumbing down of the signal as to negate any affect of having HDMI 2.0 capability.

 

After purchasing some Monoprice "Premium Certified" (which seems to mean, "capable of passing 18gbps with low BER") cables, my problems all vanished.  So Monoprice definitely has HDMI 2.0+ capable cables.

[iiDexii]

Does audio SACD and hi rez in 5.1 channels matter on HDMI.

Hear romours of jitter and bandwidth..

I use a high speed hdmi that followed my blurayplayer... It sounds nice, but could it be better?

[Ralf11]

Dunno for sure, but Oppo thought it would be useful to design a special HDMI circuit with low jitter for their 205 player

 

must not have been cheap, as only port has that circuit

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Dunno for sure, but Oppo thought it would be useful to design a special HDMI circuit with low jitter for their 205 player

I suspect there's no special circuit. In HDMI, audio is transmitted during the horizontal blanking interval of the video. It is not possible to send audio without a (dummy) video signal. Moreover, the audio rate is (usually) determined by the transmitter, the receiver requiring some form of clock recovery (similar to S/PDIF). This clock recovery may be improved by selecting a video mode where the pixel clock is an integer multiple of the audio sample rate and sync timings result in constant-size audio packets. However, such a mode may not be compatible with video content or may not be supported by the video monitor. The special audio HDMI port on the Oppo player uses such an optimised dummy video signal (they say so on their website). Doing so does not require any exotic hardware; any off the shelf HDMI transmitter can be software configured appropriately. That said, they may well have a better base oscillator than a typical Bluray player.

[iiDexii]

I must make myself more clear.

I'm talking about the Hdmi cable.

 

As I've heard that also SACD and Hi rez needs bigger signal bandwidth in a cable..

Many serious people in the past has said either the cable work or not.

 

But jitter conserns me, as to give the products better work condition, and the bandwidth that is more critical with SACD and hi rez 5.1 channels.

 

Just wanted too know if it's a point upgrading cables from a freebee high speed Hdmi

[sandyk]

On ‎10‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 5:16 PM, Archimago said:

But jitter would not be an issue correlated with normal cable lengths and I certainly would not buy an HDMI cable much longer than needed (recommend keep it less than 15 feet)! Nor would the cable itself be able to affect jitter amount (the important thing is weather data integrity is affected).

 Agreed, although I wish the integrity of the weather data here was incorrect as 38C is too darn hot ! 

 As an aside, as I have posted elsewhere, cheap HDMI cables can radiate substantial UHF crap due to the pigtail sometimes used in the earth side. A better HDMI cable fixed my PC to DTV interference problem. (internal antenna)