iZ Technology Corporation

I need 3 Tdif to Tdif digital cables to run fron my Radar II to my O2R. What is the safe/maximum length for this type cable. I know I can run long lengths with AES/EBU but don't have that option. I don't want to sacrifce performance because of a noisy fan, regards Tim

Tim:
The longest run I've made with TDIF has been 20ft. I've never tried anything longer. In fact, I've never found TDIF cables longer than 20ft, but that's been a few years, too.

In one room we have a pair of Radar V's lite-piped to a Yamaha DM2000, and in the other room we have a pair of Radar 24's TDIF'd to a Yamaha DM2000. The TDIF cables are 10ft.

A few years ago (our pre-Radar days) we had cascaded a pair of O2Rs with 6 DA-88's via 20ft TDIF cables. The only catch was to have the word clock cables the same lenght to all devices, regardless of proximity.

Good news!
Needed long cables for a new room we're building - almost 20 metres in fact. After trawling the net I found references to the BBC finding that CAT5 network cable worked for AES digital so I tried it for TDIF. Did it work? Yes but only by sending a seperate coax for wordclock. A bit of further research turned up a recommendation for CAT7 cable for HDTV and Digital Audio, so we got a drum in. After all the rest would do for running a gigabit netwok if the cable didn't work for TDIF.
We've just tried it and found that indeed it does work. And what's more the clocking is more reliable with a 15 metre length of CAT7 cable than using a proprietry 3 metre TDIF cable! The downside is that the cables aren't so tidy, but is they're inside a duct, does that matter? Also, being foil screened, the cable is quite stiff so using it for something which needs frequent connection/disconnection would be a bit awkward.