The Great USB cable debate poll

I must say that I'm really intrigued by this pill that makes your cat speak German...heck, I don't even like cats.

 

Sorry, but you're wasting your time...the guy whose blog I link to is an electrical engineer, discusses serious audio and has designed the ODAC.

If you want to be blind to that then be my guest, but coming on here, attempting to mock a credible site and members on here who support what he does just makes you look foolish.

Particularly when you've nothing to add beyond "yaa boo" type comments. Pretty bland really.

 

...I couldn't resist...and yeah.

 

In your view, what causes these effects and differences? Design or materials? Which designs and materials are better, and which are worse, in your experience? And how would you describe the effects and differences?

 

As we all know the dielectric covering has more to do with sound than the conductor, old school stuff.

 

Sounds like sour grapes on your part.
We all have different priorities, you should learn to respect that.

 

For people who claim it is all ones and zeros, is there also a belief that there are no differences between digital cables and USB-spdif converters? If all ones and zeros are the same then all connections/combinations using USB cable to USB/spdif converter to digital cable to DAC should sound the same.

I can certainly understand the ones and zeros theory as applied to USB cables but am curious how far people are willing to take this theory.

 

What I'm genuinely interested in finding out though is what information we rely on -- what specific information about materials and design, and whether and to what extent those things affect transfers over USB -- when we say with confidence that "old school" principles apply to USB cables, or that someone who might disagree with that claim must not know what he's talking about.

 

I got my USB cable from Monoprice. So far, so good.

 

Yeah, that's pretty damn silly... Here I thought stuff like Siltech and Neotech (the silver cables not the copper) was expensive. I stand corrected.

 

Here's some USB cable tests that have been debated several times here:



No measurable or listenable difference, according to the person doing the tests.

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/04/measurements-usb-cables-for-dacs.html

 

His stereo isn't good enough.

 

I'm pretty sure those have clocks in them, or at least various parts in them that in theory could be better then other parts. That being said, the two I own, the Musical Fidelity V-Link and the Peachtree Audio X1, don't seem to impart any sonic signature of their own. I've really never done any critical testing, which I guess is possible as it would be pretty easy to A/B them as long as you had two USB ports and two DAC inputs of the same connection.

I do recall when I got the V-Link I was expecting it to be an improvement based on reviews I read, and felt pretty let down when it seemed transparent. Really, I'm not sure I'd want a device of this nature to "sound" like anything, it's mostly just performing a function. But I acknowledge there's more to the digital chain then just the DAC. Just not the USB cable

FWIW, there seems to be a dramatic price jump in the two I own to the likes to the ones made by Bryston, Berkeley Audio, DCS, etc.

 

Why is it that digital music is special or maybe even magical somehow?

Yet the translation of countless gigs of non-musical data is all just a daily occurrence that goes flawlessly for the most part, and we pretty much take for granted at this point.

Why aren't there wildly expensive USB cables available designed to make generic "ones and zeros" data transfers better for non-music applications?

 

It's remarkable that "cable C" was essentially indistinguishable from the others.

 

Agreed...I'm pretty sure "cable C' was the green one, too.

 

I have often said that digital video is far more complicated than digital audio, particularly when you get 4k/5K/6K cameras that are shooting upwards 20MB per frame, 24 frames a second. Some of them do as much as 1TB per hour, so we're talking tons and tons of very, very, very complicated pixels. One dropouts in a drive transfer could be absolutely catastrophic to the production. In general, it almost never happens, and trust me, they're using just very casual off-the-shelf data cables for 99% of these transfers. Maybe not 50 cent cables, but certainly not $1000 cables.

 

so this isnt worth it? http://www.nordost.com/products/digital-interconnects/HDMI/blue-heaven-high-speed-hdmi-cable.php

 

"When it comes to the challenge of designing high-performance audio cables, the HDMI lead presents a “perfect storm”. With 19 conductors, including high-speed digital transmission lines, each with precisely defined termination and impedance characteristics, analog signals and even DC, all shoehorned into a plug of diminutive cross sectional area, it has never been so difficult to deliver consistent results – or so easy to get it wrong, especially over the longer cable runs so often required in AV systems. To stand any chance of meeting HDMI’s exacting specification and transfer standards demands exceptional consistency from both the cable and the termination – and the only way to guarantee that is to bring manufacturing and quality control in-house."

...It's like they're talking about a CERN particle accelerator or something.

 

can't say its not fun!

 

No, it is not how it is. As I said before, there are always errors. Digital communication is not the silver bullet. Sometimes you can correct them, if the communication protocol allows it (and we know usb audio does not). When the error cannot be corrected the DAC will try to interpolate the signal and will and analog signal which is his best guess. Only when error rate is bigger than a given threshold, the output signal is switched off.

I am one of the people who voted that a premium USB cable will not make a difference, based on the fact that the threshold are choose to assure the presented analog signal is good enough for the viewer or the listener (I mean, the end user).

But this is something completely different that thinking that a digital signal is always prefect.

 

I am not quite shure why, but it seems that usb cables are particularly annoying to them. It could be the novelty factor and also the fact that this format originated in computer industry, so they think it's somehow immune to "hifi nonsence".

The fact that all other digital cables sound different (inluding ethernet cables), even though there is no power going through them, is totally out of their interest.

 

I have seen cases where cheap HDMI outputs delivered dodgy signals, particularly in terms of weird chroma and video levels. I have no doubt if they use crappy A/D converters, the sound could be equally bad. But it's not the cable or jack's fault -- it's the electronics inside the receiver and the design.

If a USB cable was inherently bad, believe me, you'd be getting stuttering playback from files, bad file copying, and all kinds of error messages within the operating system.

 

No, it's HDMI, ethernet, coax....take your pick...

 

Sure, my pleasure. What if the post USB receiver part of the device used the signal edges to derive the clock for the data? Then variations on latch timing on signal transitions could translate into clock variation.

If more noise introduced on a ground that was also used by the clock ground, that would change the effective clock reference voltage and thus the step function shape, also introducing additional time variability