HDMI Cable: The Truth

[Adul]

Originally posted by: mshan
I would argue that my "premium" HDMI cable isn't enhancing the signal vs. basic Monoprice ones, it is just passing the signal with less degradation and distortion (thus my comment about how the Monoprice cable may look slightly coarse, but that it may not be something you realize till you compare it to one that is less price constrained in terms of construction than say basic Monoprice one).

It is hard to believe that HDMI interface, in real world applications, is perfect and completely distortion free, unless you have catatrophic all or nothing drop out.

If basic Monoprice cable ever so slightly blurs signal (jitter?), then a lower jitter cable (Wireworld Ultra-Violet) could pass a sharper, lower noise, higher resolution, seems like more right colors, signal simply because it is truer to original source.

The signal degradation would matter if it was analog, but this is a pure digital signal. What degradation is going to happen to a digital signal? It is not susceptible to noise or interference the same way an analog signal is.

But a digital signal, because of the way its information is stored, can be quite robust. While the signal will always degrade to some degree in the cable, if the receiving circuit can actually reconstitute the original bitstream, reception of the signal will be, in the end analysis, perfect. No matter how much jitter, how much rounding of the shoulders of the square wave, or how much noise, if the bitstream is accurately reconstituted at the receiving end, the result is as though there'd been no degradation of signal at all.

 

[mshan]

Timing jitter, I believe.

Regarding other types of distortion, perhaps it is not the actual stream of ones and zeros, but a noisy signal makes it harder for receiver to process signal, and that "strain" on local power supply to that chip on motherboard, electronics, etc. inside playback unit is what degrades final picture (ever so slightly blurred, compared to actual best case signal quality)?

High end audiophile transports go to exhaustive and expensive measures to minimize vibration and power supply issues, and may also be why a hard drive based "transport", feeding an outboard dac, can match an outboard cd transport costing thousands of dollars in terms of signal quality outputted.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: mshan
Timing jitter, I believe.

Regarding other types of distortion, perhaps it is not the actual stream of ones and zeros, but a noisy signal makes it harder for receiver to process signal, and that "strain" on local power supply to that chip on motherboard, electronics, etc. inside playback unit is what degrades final picture (ever so slightly blurred, compared to actual best case signal quality)?

High end audiophile transports go to exhaustive and expensive measures to minimize vibration and power supply issues, and may also be why a hard drive based "transport", feeding an outboard dac, can match an outboard cd transport costing thousands of dollars in terms of signal quality outputted.

I'm going to go out on a limb and figure you haven't worked with electronics much have you?

The term blurring is hardly even applicable to digital communication. If anything you will get the errors shown in an earlier post but in no way will the signal come in more blurred or with less accurate colors.

 

[mshan]

Correct, my background is more former (very expensive) habit of buying high end audio equipment.

I know what I see, but as for theory, that is more extrapolation from the world of digital audio (cd players to cd transports with outboard DAC combos to now usb outboard dac based systems).

I don't do a b x instantaneous double blind comparisons (who listens to music or watches video that way), but rather I put one cable in the system, leave it there for at least a week, then switch to other cable and do the same. Right after switching to other cable, I often become particularly aware of what may be deficient in one cable vs. another, in my system, but over time, I mainly find that one cable may just subtly draw me into the picture more so than the other (it is just more interesting to me) and that is what really matters to me.

I would venture to say that, like high end audio, some combinations of components, whether by design (they were voiced to work together), or by serendipity, just work better than other combinations do. Whether that is because the cable is transmitting a cleaner, more accurate signal, or is basically acting like an audio equivalent of a tone control (how some in audio may accurately describes some audio cables as), who knows, but at least for me, who cares. I see what I see, and luckily, I like what the combo looks like.

edit: when I say blurring, I am referring to final end image on screen, no actual data stream. For me, it would be like difference from using quality 480 native projector with superb optics and 1:1 pixel mapping (and minimal signal processing in unit), vs. using say quality upsampler of 480i dvd source to 1080p native projector; even though there might be perceived to be less detail in the 480 projected image, there is a clarity there that you probably just can't get if you upsample to a non-native resolution. Again, I am not an engineer, so don't know if that analogy for what i mean by blurring conveys correctly.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: mshan
edit: when I say blurring, I am referring to final end image on screen, no actual data stream. For me, it would be like difference from using quality 480 native projector with superb optics and 1:1 pixel mapping (and minimal signal processing in unit), vs. using say quality upsampler of 480i dvd source to 1080p native projector; even though there might be perceived to be less detail in the 480 projected image, there is a clarity there that you probably just can't get if you upsample to a non-native resolution. Again, I am not an engineer, so don't know if that analogy for what i mean by blurring conveys correctly.

I think that's exactly the point--the data stream is the same with both cables.

 

[mshan]

Using an audio analogy again:

What Does Jitter Sound Like?

"An instrument's or a singer's voice will spread out. You are not able to define the sound and you have the impression that the single tone is dirty or unclear. If you concentrate on a single tone, it will be as if the tone is rejected by the ear. Just like some kind of recoil. You may identify the frequency of the tone but you are not able to hear whats inside the tone.

Then remove the jitter and the same tone becomes extremely defined, clear and airy. You will hear a wealth of details that was covered before.

It is like the human capability to hear a voice and be able to tell something about how the singer feels. This information or impression lies inside the voice and if you hear any tone, your perception will try to extract all this information.

This information / quality is supplied within a low jitter audio reproduction and can be extracted by the ear very effortlessly." http://www.jitter.de/english/sound.html

 

[Pacfanweb]

mshan, perhaps THIS ARTICLE will enlighten you about the myths of expensive speaker, and other cabling.

It's by Roger Russell, who designed for McIntosh for many years. If you are a high-end audio equipment fan, then certainly you know who McIntosh is.


You are imagining things with your cable comparisons. It's really as simple as people are telling you.

Digital is 100%, or there are major problems. There is no "fuzziness" or "distortion", etc.

If you COULD introduce some "noise" into the cable along the way, that would not show in the picture, as long as the signal for the picture itself still got to the display source.


There is a good reason why nobody will take the Million Dollar Challenge by James Randi, to prove that expensive cabling is better.

 

[mshan]

"Now that you know what "OCC" is, it is important to understand what it does. Using UP-OCC material produces a truly unidirectional copper crystal that is as free from impurities as possible to prevent corrosion. It increases flexibility and fatigue resistance without impairing conductive characteristics. It offers extremely low electrical resistance and rapid signal transmission. In plain English, your signals get from point A to B without losing the detail, soundstage, and bass response of the original recording." http://outlawaudio.com/products/cab_about.html

Outlaw Audio is not high end audio, and they previously on their website had said that speaker wire differences were very, very subtle, but that much more delicate signal passed by interconnects means that well designed and well manufactured interconnects can make a subtle, though meaningful difference.

And just because a particular system doesn't have sufficient resolution and genuine transparency (not artificial perceived detail because of etched highs) to reveal subtle differences doesn't mean that they don't exist.

 

[Modelworks]

You cannot compare HDMI with digital sound. The methods used to send the information are very different. The only thing they have in common is they are both digital. HDMI uses a method called TMDS. TMDS analyzes the way the signal is being received at the other end, it then sends commands to the transmitter telling it to adjust power levels or timing so that the receiver gets a error free signal. There is no error correction built into HDMI so if you receive a bad bit it does not try to recover it, you will lose the entire frame, not just a block of it, or fuzzy, less color. Instead it notifies the transmitter the status of the signal it is receiving and once that parameter is set no further adjustments should be needed. If it still cannot get a perfect signal then it tries to cut the connection completely and re-start the streams. If that fails then you get a yo yo effect of the display and transmitter going between trying to equalize the cables and restarting the connection, which is very rare.

Jitter cannot be seen in this format because if it becomes large enough to actually effect the bits you will get no picture for that frame.

How the receiving chipset displays the information it receives can effect the result, but that has to do with the quality of the display not the cable.

 

[mshan]

If anyone truly believes that bits are just bits, then continuing debate on this thread is, in my opinion, completely pointless (I would ask, in closing, though, have you actually compared, on a long term basis, a generic HDMI cable, versus a compentently designed videophile HDMI cable, using a sufficient high resolution chain of components?)

And if you are truly happy with your current rig using generic HDMI cables, all I can say is, more power to you! :thumbsup:

 

[newnameman]

Originally posted by: mshan
If anyone truly believes that bits are just bits, then continuing debate on this thread is, in my opinion, completely pointless (I would ask, in closing, though, have you actually compared, on a long term basis, a generic HDMI cable, versus a compentently designed videophile HDMI cable, using a sufficient high resolution chain of components?)

And if you are truly happy with your current rig using generic HDMI cables, all I can say is, more power to you! :thumbsup:

When you yourself admit you have never done a double blind A/B comparison, you're in no position to ask what kind of comparisons other people have done.

 

[Pacfanweb]

Originally posted by: mshan
If anyone truly believes that bits are just bits, then continuing debate on this thread is, in my opinion, completely pointless (I would ask, in closing, though, have you actually compared, on a long term basis, a generic HDMI cable, versus a compentently designed videophile HDMI cable, using a sufficient high resolution chain of components?)

And if you are truly happy with your current rig using generic HDMI cables, all I can say is, more power to you! :thumbsup:

If there was any difference, you would notice it immediately. You would not need a long-term test.

But there is no difference, so nobody can tell. If a wire is large enough to carry what's being pushed through it, then getting a bigger wire, or a "nicer" wire will make no difference. Once the signal is getting there, that's as good as it gets.

If you want proof of how speaker and component manufacturers know that wire makes no difference, open up your speakers. Open up your preamp or receiver. Open up your DVD player, or TV. Look at the wires inside. What are they? Yep, plain old copper wire.

READ the link I gave earlier. Roger Russell has forgotten more about high-end audio then everyone on this thread combined knows. HE says there is no difference. McIntosh even did tests on the wires and nobody could tell the difference.

The only people who say wires make a difference are the manufacturers, hi-fi mags which run ads by those manufacturers, and people like you, who spend money on this snake oil so your mind makes you think you hear/see a difference.

You might also want to listen to Modelworks, since he obviously knows what he's talking about.

Probably everyone here has viewed top-flight HD equipment....it's not like it's hard to go see the best TV's out there. They aren't only available in fru-fru boutique shops. So it's not like asking if someone has heard Cary Audio or McIntosh equipment that's hard to find.

 

[sdifox]

I want to thank mshan for keeping the economy going, without him, exotic cable companies would have failed miserably.

I want to borrow a line from Armageddon. "American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!"

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: mshan
If anyone truly believes that bits are just bits, then continuing debate on this thread is, in my opinion, completely pointless (I would ask, in closing, though, have you actually compared, on a long term basis, a generic HDMI cable, versus a compentently designed videophile HDMI cable, using a sufficient high resolution chain of components?)

And if you are truly happy with your current rig using generic HDMI cables, all I can say is, more power to you! :thumbsup:

I've done the work with TMDS in a ISO lab with, what were state of the art at the time, logic analyzers and oscilloscopes .

As long as the bit is recognized as a 0 or 1 at the other end there is no difference in the wire it uses to get there. TMDS uses a 3.3volt compatible logic, meaning anything from 2.5V to 3.4V will be seen as a 1 . Anything 0 to .6V will be seen as a 0.

That means for a cable to effect the bits received it would have to lose almost 2 volts to make a 1 a 0. Not going to happen unless the cable is taped together

Jitter that would need to occur for it to effect the picture at all is around 800ps I think, it has been a while. I think even the worst cables were around 90ps.

ps=picoseconds.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Modelworks

Originally posted by: mshan
If anyone truly believes that bits are just bits, then continuing debate on this thread is, in my opinion, completely pointless (I would ask, in closing, though, have you actually compared, on a long term basis, a generic HDMI cable, versus a compentently designed videophile HDMI cable, using a sufficient high resolution chain of components?)

And if you are truly happy with your current rig using generic HDMI cables, all I can say is, more power to you! :thumbsup:

I've done the work with TMDS in a ISO lab with, what were state of the art at the time, logic analyzers and oscilloscopes .

As long as the bit is recognized as a 0 or 1 at the other end there is no difference in the wire it uses to get there. TMDS uses a 3.3volt compatible logic, meaning anything from 2.5V to 3.4V will be seen as a 1 . Anything 0 to .6V will be seen as a 0.

That means for a cable to effect the bits received it would have to lose almost 2 volts to make a 1 a 0. Not going to happen unless the cable is taped together

Jitter that would need to occur for it to effect the picture at all is around 800ps I think, it has been a while. I think even the worst cables were around 90ps.

ps=picoseconds.

Dude, you only worked on it... He's the audiophile/videophile who spents big bucks. He has a Samsung LN46A550 man!

No way you can be right.

 

[mshan]

I never claimed the LN46A550 was state of the art or high end video. Also, I stated that I used to spend big bucks on audio in the past (a decade ago) and realize now that it wasn't worth the money I spent.

In a previous post it was stated that the original design spec was compromised by marketing (proper shielding was punted because they didn't want those thumb screw secured connectors?), and that says nothing about what corners may have been cut / trimmed when mass market produced to a very low price point in mass market. Plus the HDMI cables he used in testing,were probably laboratory grade reference quality cables, made precisely to spec, not mass market generic cables made to hit a retail price point of a couple dollars. How much did that laboratory grade TDMS signal producer cost, and how does the one in all our hdtvs compare to it? Is the signal as pure, clean, and strong as that probably produced by a laboratory grade reference device?

If all HDMI cables look the same to you, great, but that doesn't prove, in the real world, that differences in HDMI cables don't exist. Whether inherent to the cable itself, or more likely due to the real world interaction of cheap mass market transmitter in source, generic compromised construction cable, and cheap receiving chipset and associated circuitry in monitor that may have to strain to compensate for borderline quality or just weak attenuated signal, I don't know.

At this point, we're all just talking past each other, so I am going to try and drop off the thread because further debate really does seem pointless.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: mshan
I never claimed the LN46A550 was state of the art or high end video. Also, I stated that I used to spend big bucks on audio in the past and realize now that it wasn't worth the money I spent.

The spec that Modelworks designed was, by his own admission, compromised by marketing, and that says nothing about what corners may have been cut / trimmed when mass market produced to a very low price point in mass market. Plus the HDMI cables he used were probably laboratory grade reference quality cables, made precisely to spec, not mass market generic cables made to hit a retail price point of a couple dollars.

If all HDMI cables look the same to you, great, but that doesn't prove, in the real world, that differences in HDMI cables don't exist.

Properly constructed cable= connections are well soldered/crimped. Here is the patent filing diagram for HDMI. Notice the cable connection are designed like phone punch panels.. You push the cable in, the jacket gets cut, you get contact. End of story.

All decent cables are made to exceed signal transmission spec. They can be damaged by shipping/handling though.

The compromise he was talking about was the unified audio/video link. And no thumbscrew.

Do you spend tons of money on your DVI cable? Guess what, the video portion of HDMI is exactly the same as DVI.




<--- grew up in an electronic part mid level distributor/ Audio equipment retailer. Visited a lot of electronic part factories, including cables.

 

[JackBurton]

Monster cables are great cables, however slightly overpriced. I wouldn't pay regular price for them but you can get GREAT deals on eBay for the top of the line Monster HDMI cables (m1000 series). These are brand new 8' cables for ~$28. Would you get better performance than Monoprice cables? Most likely not. Are they constructed much better than Monoprice cables, hell yes. Don't get me wrong, most people will do fine with Monoprice cables, but for the extra flexibility and better construction I'll pay a little more. And $28 is VERY reasonable.

Now if you want to talk about out of this world crazy cable prices, check out Nordost cables. It makes Monster cables look like a steal.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life
Is there a difference in a $5 HDMI 1.3b cable from EForcity.com and a $50 HDMI 1.3b cable from Monster in terms of quality delivered over the cable from a FIOS HD receiver to a 1080P 52" HDTV?

I am running a couple of these $5 HDMI cables and wonder if I am missing out on quality of picture and sound.

Short answer, your $5 cable will do just fine.

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: mshan
I never claimed the LN46A550 was state of the art or high end video. Also, I stated that I used to spend big bucks on audio in the past and realize now that it wasn't worth the money I spent.

The spec that Modelworks designed was, by his own admission, compromised by marketing, and that says nothing about what corners may have been cut / trimmed when mass market produced to a very low price point in mass market. Plus the HDMI cables he used were probably laboratory grade reference quality cables, made precisely to spec, not mass market generic cables made to hit a retail price point of a couple dollars.

If all HDMI cables look the same to you, great, but that doesn't prove, in the real world, that differences in HDMI cables don't exist.

Properly constructed cable= connections are well soldered/crimped. Here is the patent filing diagram for HDMI. Notice the cable connection are designed like phone punch panels.. You push the cable in, the jacket gets cut, you get contact. End of story.

What you're seeing there is IDC.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Howard

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: mshan
I never claimed the LN46A550 was state of the art or high end video. Also, I stated that I used to spend big bucks on audio in the past and realize now that it wasn't worth the money I spent.

The spec that Modelworks designed was, by his own admission, compromised by marketing, and that says nothing about what corners may have been cut / trimmed when mass market produced to a very low price point in mass market. Plus the HDMI cables he used were probably laboratory grade reference quality cables, made precisely to spec, not mass market generic cables made to hit a retail price point of a couple dollars.

If all HDMI cables look the same to you, great, but that doesn't prove, in the real world, that differences in HDMI cables don't exist.

Properly constructed cable= connections are well soldered/crimped. Here is the patent filing diagram for HDMI. Notice the cable connection are designed like phone punch panels.. You push the cable in, the jacket gets cut, you get contact. End of story.

What you're seeing there is IDC.

Really? The ribbon cable type connection? I guess it's a smaller one

 

[Howard]

That's only one type. What you've shown is unstripped wire being cut into and retained by bladed contacts, which is basically what IDC is.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Howard
That's only one type. What you've shown is unstripped wire being cut into and retained by bladed contacts, which is basically what IDC is.

So IDC is that type of connection. Got ya. Did not know the name.