Hi Folks, just a few quick observations on this issue. Firstly if you know absaloutly F**All about something you should probably not tout yourself as an authority on the subject as sooner or later someone is going to make you look like the goose that you are. Digital cables are not all the same, and they do NOT "work or not work", they are susceptible to two major issues namely induced electro-magnetic interference and resistance at the connectors.
Electro-magnetic interference is simple, lay two cables next to each other on the ground. To one of them connect a load (like an amp) on one end and to the other end connect a mains voltage. On the second cable connect a volt meter between any of the cores and earth. When you switch the mains power on you will clearly see the voltmeter flicker. This is caused by the magnetic field generated around the power cable inducing a voltage in the other cable. This is the basis of operation of nearly all electrical equipment like transformers and motors. Now when you have a digital cable that has a low voltage like 5V switching on and off thousands of times a second this induced voltage on the cable is seen by the receiving device as a series of ON signals instead of the original signal. So when you are on recording the last bar of your masterpiece and your wife switches on the washing machine in the next room you get a glitch. How do we stop this? With a Faraday cage or simply put a good cable shield that intercepts the magnetic field and sends the voltage to ground. Cheap cables tend to have poor shields simply because shields are expensive to make in a cable and constitute a substantial portion of the total cable cost.
Cable end connections are a no-brainer, if you use cheap plumbers solder with 10% silver content to manufacture your cable, you will get corrosion, and corrosion equals resistance to current flow and resistance equals voltage drop, so what started out as 5V at the source derogates to 3.5V for example by the time it reaches the receiving end. Most digital systems working on a voltage like 5V will consider the signal to be ON at about 3V and OFF at about 1.5V so put a tiny bit of interference or resistance on a signal and it is very easy to misinterpret the state.
So, yes, the cheap cable may work perfectly the day you plug it in but sooner or later you will see the error of you ways. By the way I do not sell cables but am a control systems engineer and I work with digital networks in harsh environments all the time and have seen these problems hundreds of times.
I also think that you are insane if you spend $500 on a cable, $20 will get you a perfectly good cable, $2 will not.
Cheers Simon
Axe <---> (o)===:::
Apologies again to all who are trying to help.
