The Great USB cable debate poll

You seem to miss the fact that many of us auditioned them first with full refund capability and came to the conclusion that we liked whatever subtle difference we heard enough to want to keep it.

 

Is it as simple as that, really? How are the 1s and 0s are transmitted down a USB cable? How about the issue of when the 1's and 0's arrive?

 

Are you talking about the transfer rate, or the checksum that's applied to check if packet data's been successfully received?

 

A psychological preference? People are told something exists or there is a perceived difference by people they believe, they look or listen hard for it and they find it.

 

You going to tell me there a digital cable can effect Jitter that you can hear?
Surely your not going to be telling me that, I would sincerely hope.

 

I just swapped my $35 Audioquest cable with a $2.52 cable I bought off Amazon for my printer. Equipment used:

Macbook Pro Laptop (FLAC and mp3 files)
Arcam irDAC
NAD 7140 receiver
Philharmonitor speakers

There is no discernible difference in the sound coming from my speakers when I switch the cables.

 

I voted no, but to play devil's advocate... perhaps the higher priced USB cables that do improve sound (if any exist) aren't achieving this by improving on the 1's and 0's being passed since they can't.

BUT... perhaps they ARE doing something that improves how that cable is affecting other components. Maybe they are better shielded from RFI/EMI noise that other parts of a system pick up on. I'm not an engineer, so I have no idea. Just hypothesizing.

 

I enjoy my audioquest Carbon USB's. It sounded more natural and musical
from the stock, but It was a small change in my mind at the time and have no interest to do more testing instead of listening to music. I have a CIA DAC and Emperical Audio Off Ramp 4 as the USD interface.
To each there own and to the enjoyment of music, and thanks for the discussions.

 

Earlier today I A/Bd my Coffee against the much lower priced Forest that I still own and there IS a difference. It's not pronounced and might not be worth it to some people but it does exist. Best way I can describe it is that the better cable makes things sound a bit more musical and alive. You can really hear it on vocals and horns if you know what to listen for. There really is a difference. I once had my beautiful and very loving wife stand there and swap out the two and I heard the difference every time. Because I knew what I was listening for. The improvement is not dramatic and really might not be worth the cost for some people but to me it was.[/QUOTE]

 

I am agnostic on the issue, and look forward to seeing the results of double-blind/abx testing posted here to convince me.

 

i voted yes. I use an upgraded USB cable and can easily imagine all kinds of things that could impact the signal - even though it is bits there are tons of things that happen through the driver stack that could be impacted by the physical media.

Wifi, for example, looks like a bit stream to your OS but ancillary thigs I pact the sound of streaming audio files across a wifi connection. It is very easy for me to imagine something impacting the bandwidth available on a USB wire that could cause buffers to get depleted and ultimately degrade the output from the DAC.

 

Lol. Me too

 

Personally I don´t think that test is interesting enough. As I see it the outcome is obvious. It´s like putting up the same test using exactly the same cables.

 

BZZT. Read the forum rules on the subject

 

I don't think that most everyone says that cables make NO difference but more accurately that depending on the application, well-designed cables with well-designed connectors that meet MEASUREABLE specs
are good enough to not lose anything significant in whatever signal is being passed.

I'm also not going to say that people who claimed to hear differences are not hearing them.
It would seem to me that the case of USB cables would be a perfect use case for a rigorous blind ABX or whatever the protocol is called since it is a single variable that can be easily tested.
Being in the IT industry for many years, I will say that digital cables are built to perform to a certain spec\protocol and that's what it used.
Digital transmission is all about integrity of the signal and the cable used is just one part of that.
I've never heard of a data center using Audioquest or other boutique, exotic material digital cables.
As with many things, only in the consumer end of audio do these things seem to get any traction.

 

Delphi Aerospace builds the Master Built line of cables for Von Schweikert Audio using cable technology they developed for aerospace applications which includes the use of UPOCC copper in a foamed teflon dielectric. Many audio cables use similar design principles.

While it is true audio frequencies can be carried by just about any cable, the ones that adhere to certain aspects of design that are mandatory in high frequency applications sound better. And in digital the same principles apply as well, they just affect the sound in a different way vs analog cables.

 

What subject?

 

i have zero knowledge on subject so don't think its appropriate to vote, but i'm curious... can someone share with me what the % are ?

 

There should be a button that allows you to see the results, but in any event, as of right now slightly more than one-third (42 of 122, or 34.4%) have answered yes.

 

What checksum is that?

 

Wish there was an option for "don't know" so I could click it and then see the results.

 

"Your vote will be publicly visible.
Results are only viewable after voting."

Allowing users to view results w/o voting is an option OP can select when creating the poll. OP chose not to.. No big deal, but I didn't want to vote because I seriously have no idea, and have been wondering the same thing.

 

Ah, got it. Having voted myself I couldn't see that anymore.

 

I found this article on USB audio helpful: http://www.edn.com/design/consumer/4376143/1/Fundamentals-of-USB-Audio
With USB, all audio data is transferred over isochronous transfers. "Isochronous transfers are used to transfer data in real-time between host and device. When an isochronous endpoint is set up by the host, the host allocates a specific amount of bandwidth to the isochronous endpoint, and it regularly performs an IN- or OUT-transfer on that endpoint. For example, the host may OUT 1 KByte of data every 125 us to the device. Since a fixed and limited amount of bandwidth has been allocated, there is no time to resend data if anything goes wrong. The data has a CRC as normal, but if the receiving side detects an error there is no resend mechanism."