I have some sympathy with meltemi’s deleted post. Here is a quote:
“A remote converter which sounds different when reproducing, for example, the same Compact Disc via the digital outputs of a variety of CD players is simply not well engineered and should be rejected. Similarily if the effect of changing the type of digital cable feeding the converter can be heard, the unit is a dud.”
Surely this converter behaviour (ie., immunity to jitter in the source) is what we’ve been hoping for as customers - but not really getting - for about 30 years, despite all the manufacturers’ efforts and often over-optimistic claims. And we know that the external clocks are beneficial, but not really why (apart from the usual “hand-waving” audiophile explanations). I remember reading in a pro audio magazine a test of the use of external clocks on some converters: there was no measurable difference in jitter in that test. So it remains a bit of a mystery, to me at least.
As for clock cables, I can well believe that the key to high performance is the connectors and impedance. After all, aren’t some of us happily using basic Apogee/Belden/Canare clock cables that correspond more or less to the simple recipe posted? What I have read in Belden’s literature about pushing 75 Ohm coax cable to perform better is all about what happens in the GHz range and at long lengths - not really relevent to our application.