Yes any cable will work. Only because of the crazy Hi Tech receiver chips used for the application. A good cable for your application is less than $10.00 US.
Read this please to a similar question. Gets a bit technical. Live and learn.
I will present the facts of this in a a punch list format.
1. S/PDIF Bit rate Clock rate demands
Here's how the maximum
sample rates relate to the required bandwidth for S/PDIF:
- For 2 channels at 48 kHz: requires a minimum frequency of 6.144 MHz. The receiver needs at least 3 MHz bandwidth to detect the signal properly.
- For 2 channels at 96 kHz: the data bit rate is about 6 Mbit/s, and requires a receiver bandwidth of about 6 MHz.
- For 2 channels at 192 kHz: the highest fundamental frequency is 24.576 MHz. For this rate, the external clock (for a transmitter) has to run at 24.576 MHz.
2.
Impedance Matching: The 75 Ohm impedance of coaxial S/PDIF cables is crucial for maintaining signal integrity. Mismatched impedance can lead to signal reflections, jitter, and compromised audio quality.
3. A quality cable must have a foil and braid shield. Metal RCA connectors. Plated with the same material like Gold as the mating connectors. This first step helps to avoid parasitic thermionic noise currents. The double shielding of braid and foil in a well constructed cable. Keep in mind this cable has to shield AC line noise, computers switching power supply noise, Wall warts switching supply noise, AM broadcast noise and even the CB radio noise!!!!
4. Rules to follow.
Keep S/PDIF cables short as possible for each application. But long enough to shift equipment around for accessibility of new plans. Also long enough to pay some attention to routing them away from the power cords of your equipment.
Avoid humidity contamination that could change the Er of the internal dielectric or oxidation of conductors. Store any unused cables in zip lock bags.
I hope this answered some questions and made clear many the technical facts. Some of which I was surprised by! Turns out S/PDIF Clock recovery encoding effective doubles the audio data rate. Preamble ID code, Stop code, start, stop hand shaking! Some old ID protocols make this bit-stream much more than just our musical whims.
