Star-Quad worries

I did testing a number of years back before I made cables for my entire studio and I couldn't measure a difference. I'm not sure that I was paying a lot of attention to 96k but I recall the testing putting my worries to bed. That said, I had no noise benefits from the star quad either (in my application) so I went with standard for most and made a pair w/ quad in case some situation came up. There's a LOT of other things in your signal chain that will affect the highs more than star quad vs standard twisted pair.

HF-loss is not a problem at run-lengths most of us deal with. However, unless you’re in an RF nightmare, it’s usually not worth the additional cost (and additional time when making your own cables).

Why would you care what's happening at 96KHz?  Most humans can't hear above 12K-ish.  Also, 96K would be a sampling rate, but the A/D antialiasing filters will likely be only around 20KHz.

But lets look at some details:

Starquad is around 200pF per meter between the conductors themselves as well as the shield.  The nominal DCR of the conductors is 0.09ohms per meter. 

If we ONLY consider the DCR and the capacitance of the cable and nothing else, then we use the formula Fc=1/2piRC.

Let's say we have 100m of cable (I know, it's a long cable) then we'd say the capacitance is roughly 20000pF and the DCR would be 9 ohms. 

The result would be 884.2KHz.  Or roughly 10x the 96KHz sampling rate you're using. 

Changing the impedance of the source or load won't appreciably change the outcome of the filter when dealing with these values but it will change the level of the signal. 

Only when it can be physically measured!  Everything else is guessing tainted with personal bias.

Over the last few years it seems that I have been developing an anti-science bias.    . At least that's what they are telling me....  LOL

I get that we're riffing on the Anti-Elitism™️ Du Jour, but it's worth noting that this ^^^ isn't contradictory.  

I don't disagree with that characterization.  

Applied sciences are completely different to theoretical. It’s like arguing fire doesn’t burn. We certainly don’t need an extra mathematical dimension which can’t really be proven to figure in a practical manner how a cable works.

I know right?

- First I was ignorant.  Then I trusted the science.  Then, quickly, "trust" became an obvious ruse.  Then I became a conspiracist.  Then I was deemed "right" by alternative science.  Then the original science changed to fit a different narrative.  Then all science became non-important in real life.  

And now, I'm left staring at my left foot.....wondering if 96k is going to infect the audio world as we know it, and make storage costs double....  .  Things I think about in my spare time while files bounce down....

Interesting.. I took the datasheet to mean ALL conductor capacitance relative to each other is 200pF, but maybe they mean EACH conductor is 200pF, which means you have to multiply it by 4x..

Meaning that 20000pF per 100m is actually 80000pF, which would cut the -3dB down to 220KHz or so, without taking into account any affects from the source/load impedances.

What it also doesn't account for is that when paralleling up two conductors, the DCR will half, which would raise the -3dB point to 440KHz.  It also doesn't account for any series inductance that will be added, which is going to be pretty high, perhaps a few uH for 100m.

All in all, I don't see how that graph can be correct based on the numbers the datasheet give.

You can't hear 10Hz (nobody can) and you should be HPF'ing it anyway so why does it matter?

This also brings up understanding science 301 that I know you understand, understanding the methods used to achieve the results are as important as the results!

My biggest audio bitch for the last 35 years, don’t tell me what your amp puts out at 1KHZ I want to know what it can do full range! Also I don’t drive resistors if you rate it at 2 ohms tell me if it can handle 1/4 ohm without shutting down!