Cable Asylum

RE: Insertion depth

93.192.37.250

horst

In Reply to: RE: Insertion depth posted by Fluter on October 04, 2023 at 07:31:55

Would that matter?

My assumption is that the sockets are lined with conductive material all the way through.

And thank you for the patience and advice, much appreciated.

Follow Ups:

Insulation - Fluter 09:13:28 10/04/23 (2)
It's more likely that insulation, rather than contact material, is omnipresent.

I doubt you can "pull the cover" on the Mac, but where one can I'd do a basic continuity check from the signal lead coming off the back of each S/PDIF socket, to the signal wire on the far end of your cable assembly, while the problematic connectors are in place. Ideally that test would be conducted from both the source and destination devices; but that may not be feasible considering the components involved.

My point is that you have to provide assurance to yourself that a signal is even making it into the DAC. The most apparent symptom, as you have already discovered, is that it probably is not.
- depth - horst 04:05:44 10/05/23 (1)
  Goodness, I feel quite silly now - it was the insertion depth all along...
  Turns out the 47labs plugs are too short to reach far enough into the RCA sockets; and those sockets in both the Topping DAC and the Fosi amp have their (main?) contact area fairly far in, further inside than the older amps I have here and have used before with those plugs.
  Thanks a bunch, mate, your comment on insertion depth pointed me in the right direction!
  Of course I should have figured it out right at the beginning, it's the most stupid mistake one can make, but I just didn't think a plug that was working totally fine for years could have such a basic compatibility issue.
  
  Here's an image of my quick and dirty test cable, using heat shrink tubing; I'll get some teflon tubing and do it properly.
  
  Edits: 10/05/23 10/05/23
  - RE: depth - Fluter 07:20:48 10/05/23 (0)
    Voila!
    
    My compliments to you Sir, for staying in pursuit of the problem. This "RCA" socket/plug design unfortunately never matured into an enforceable commercial standard, eliminating such wide variance in implementations.
    
    I guess we can thank Digital to some degree for fixing that headache... As in: HDMI / USB / DisplayPort / etc.
    
    Tip-Toe'ing into low-mass variations of relatively ancient designs can be adventurous and fun, but reliability tends to be the occasional victim.
    
    Good work, and enjoy your experimentation. (But get a decent DMM!)

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