I decided to consult R&D engineers at an audio manufacturer just to prove once and for all whether the net terrorists who accused me of being delusional were correct. Surprisingly, these professional digital engineers did not consider it in the least bit odd that a SATA cable could influence musical performance. “We listened to dozens of SATA cables before we selected the ones we use in our equipment,” I was told at the outset.
I argued the assertion that digital was just 0s and 1s – it was either okay or not and was told “It might be 0s and 1s at either end of the cable but between the connectors it is effectively an analogue signal – albeit a square wave at a very high frequency.” Effectively, one software engineer argued, digital is best regarded ‘more as a concept’ than anything concrete. (Please note that this is the way he expressed this notion and is not my words. I am not saying anything philosophical about digital: I get in enough trouble just by saying it is imperfect. And it must be, else why does it need error correction?)
I do not wish to put any more noses out of joint but is it not interesting that a highly successful British manufacturer – one that has not become subsumed into a Chinese brand collecting empire nor is running on empty at the bank like some – treats SATA cables as regular components, just like resitors or capacitors, not as some perfect digital entity that cannot possibly influence sound quality?
