USB Cable Shootout

thsmith

Now that my DAC 2 is burned in I have been researching USB cables. Like any other cable the debate is religious so I have decided to try it for myself.

The shootout will be the following cables.

Stock W4S cable that came with DAC 2, need to measure the lenght. Cost is price of owning DAC 2
Belkin Gold Series, 6'. Cost $7
Nirvana USB 1m without power leads. Cost $60
Kimber Silver 1m. Cost $50
Audioquest Carbon .75m. Cost $118

All cables will have at least 50 hours before evaluating.

Red Book, 24/96 and 24/192 files will be used for evaluation, need to pick which songs.

My system plus a friends with Mach2 Mac Mini and Audio Note DAC will be used to evaluate.

W4S and Belkin are already burned. AQ Carbon will arrive this week and the Kimber will ship today. Jason will start building the custom cable today (without power leads) and ship tomorrow.

Figure it will be end of the month before everything is ready to evaluate.

Stay tuned if interested.

sucks2beme

My bet- shortest cable wins.

Obsession18

Being that a USB cable transmits digital information I just don’t see how there could be any differences. As long as the cable has good snug terminations that are free of corrosion those 1’s and 0’s won’t know the difference. It’s the same as HMDI cables, I’ve used both the expensive Monster (stupid I know) and the cheap monoprice stuff, no difference. Analog is a different animal, shielding definitely comes into to play, not so much the case with digital.

thsmith

Obsession18 wrote: »

Being that a USB cable transmits digital information I just don’t see how there could be any differences. As long as the cable has good snug terminations that are free of corrosion those 1’s and 0’s won’t know the difference. It’s the same as HMDI cables, I’ve used both the expensive Monster (stupid I know) and the cheap monoprice stuff, no difference. Analog is a different animal, shielding definitely comes into to play, not so much the case with digital.

Religious debates abound so that is why I am going to prove it to myself. In the end what I hear is what I am interested in.

I am not interested in debating this at all, just search the web and you can find the debates by a lot smarter people than me.

I am sharing my plan, cables I will test and the results. in the end if I do hear a difference I am sure people will dimiss that which is fine. If I do not hear a difference then I will be satified and will have at least tried it for myself and not relied on what someone else has told me.

SolidSqual

I don't know why all the anti cable folk always claim 1s and 0s are the same as if it is the end all argument for digital interconnects. Everyone who knows anythings about digital agrees that 1s and 0s are 1s and 0s, but the arrival and timing of each 1 and 0 may be affected by cabling, clocking, etc. That's where the distortion occurs. Everything matters. Cables may matter less than a good reclocker, but the difference can be heard between a **** cable and a well-made cable. I agree the difference between a well-made cable and a super expensive cable may not exist, but I"ve never made a comparison in this respect so I will hold any comment.

thsmith

It was the link the SB guys posted in one of the FLAC file threads that got me thinking and deciding to do this shootout.

Highly dynamic and non-linear load conditions - not necessarily the absolute CPU load - quality of software drivers, the base operating system, parameter configurations, power fluctuations and instability, RFI/EMI, clock interferences and intermodulations, common mode noise and many more sources, inside a computer - the Touch can be considered a mini computer - impact the physical conditions such as timing or the shape of a single (physical) bit and the quality of the entire bit stream. It's very tricky to get them all under control.
Some of those distortions even directly interfere with the electronics on the receiver side (e.g. your external DAC).

It doesn't actually matter if you run analog or if you stay 100% digital all the way to the SPDIF output - everything is affected!

The myth that "0s are 0s and 1s are 1s -- it's all digital don't care about" is simply said wrong and misleading.
It's not about just digital 1s or 0s actually. The data receiver must be able to read a certain analog voltage and need to declare it a 1 or 0. Since timing and shape of that bit and its distortion are continuously changing and usually far far away from being ideal, the receiver will see all but a clean rectangular evenly separated noise-free signal.
In the majority of cases the situation is that bad that a receiver is not able to recover respectively refresh that incoming bitstream properly.

If people are talking about bit-perfection or bit-transparency, it won't tell you anything about the actual sound quality. Bit perfection just says that the value of a bit (or sample) arrived as it was sent - as a 1 or 0 - but it doesn't say at what time resp. in what condition it arrived (or even it's reflection arrived) and if and how the receiving end is able to cope with that condition. And that's a key issue.
The vast majority of DACs out there are just not able to properly cope with quality issues on the incoming bit stream respectively connection.

This is not only applicable just to the Squeezebox btw. It's also valid for any other Transport (e.g. PC or MAC based). Most of them cause pretty serious trouble.

thsmith

SolidSqual wrote: »

I don't know why all the anti cable folk always claim 1s and 0s are the same as if it is the end all argument for digital interconnects. Everyone who knows anythings about digital agrees that 1s and 0s are 1s and 0s, but the arrival and timing of each 1 and 0 may be affected by cabling, clocking, etc. That's where the distortion occurs. Everything matters. Cables may matter less than a good reclocker, but the difference can be heard between a **** cable and a well-made cable. I agree the difference between a well-made cable and a super expensive cable may not exist, but I"ve never made a comparison in this respect so I will hold any comment.

That is why I choose the cables I did, $7, $50-$60 and $118. I would like to try a couple more and may if I can find them used on Audiogon but they go quick.

steveinaz

To add confusion to the whole debate, theres an older Stereophile article about jitter effects on cheaper cables, and how changing the direction of some of the cables made a significant improvement in measured* jitter. They did say that the "better" the cable was, the less directionality played a part; and the lower the jitter. They couldn't explain why changing direction of the cable would have such an impact on jitter levels. Interesting.

*Miller jitter analyzer

You know, we can all sit in our boxes and just accept that "this or that" won't make a difference; but what the hell fun would that be? Experiment, I say. The above example shows that sometimes real-world results fly right in the face of science, and what would be considered common/accepted knowledge.

Face

I've been meaning to try Wireworld's digital cables, I like how they separate the power and signal conductors.

thsmith

Face wrote: »

I've been meaning to try Wireworld's digital cables, I like how they separate the power and signal conductors.

Me too. That is why I am having Jason make me one without power.

tonyb

steveinaz wrote: »

You know, we can all sit in our boxes and just accept that "this or that" won't make a difference; but what the hell fun would that be? Experiment, I say. The above example shows that sometimes real-world results fly right in the face of science, and what would be considered common/accepted knowledge.

Spot on Sir......spot on.

Lietuvis91

Excellent idea! No better way to learn than through first hand experience. As long as you can stay truly objective, your input will be very valuable. Can't wait to see what you discover. :biggrin:

May I suggest a blind test, where someone other than you switches the cable and you or someone else tries to identify an acoustic difference. Just a thought

Drenis

I'm interested and following.

steveinaz

Sometimes things aren't always as simple as they appear. Isn't that why they call it a "hobby"?

Like I've said before, if "bits is bits" we'd all be sitting around rockin out to our Hello Kitty boomboxes, thinking we're shittin' in tall cotton.

thsmith

Lietuvis91 wrote: »

Excellent idea! No better way to learn than through first hand experience. As long as you can stay truly objective, your input will be very valuable. Can't wait to see what you discover. :biggrin:

May I suggest a blind test, where someone other than you switches the cable and you or someone else tries to identify an acoustic difference. Just a thought

I trust my ears and open mind and will not use the blind test. I will have 2 other people judging with me and 2 different systems.

I dont have an expectation one way or the other. The 2 other people will not know what cables I am using as we evaluate 3 different songs for each cable in each system.

tonyb

You got a million of 'em, eh Steve ? LOL!!!

Is there a 2 drink min. for this show or can I just pay the cover and enjoy ?

SolidSqual

Love Wireworld digital cables. Great product for not a lot of cash.

thsmith

steveinaz wrote: »

Sometimes things aren't always as simple as they appear. Isn't that why they call it a "hobby"?

Like I've said before, if "bits is bits" we'd all be sitting around rockin out to our Hello Kitty boomboxes, thinking we're shittin' in tall cotton.

Dig that !

tonyb

I know there's an obvious difference in coax digital cables, even a less discerning ear could pick out. Don't see why USB would be any different. I have read that the shorter the usb the better though.

falconcry72

Consider me "tuned in".:biggrin:

http://www.wireworldcable.com/categories/usb_cables.html

I'm using a Wireworld Ultraviolet USB cable. It's their cheapest one, at about 60 bucks, and was an improvement over the generic USB cable in my system.

falconcry72

steveinaz wrote: »

You know, we can all sit in our boxes and just accept that "this or that" won't make a difference; but what the hell fun would that be? Experiment, I say....sometimes real-world results fly right in the face of science, and what would be considered common/accepted knowledge.

Amen. I go to great lengths to try stuff out and compare equipment. I hate when people "know" things based purely on what they've read that other people have written. You gotta try stuff to know stuff, and even then, you only know it for yourself, not for the rest of the world.

sucks2beme

I tried a couple of cables. Nothing more expensive than a AQ low end USB.
I've read to avoid the ones with a filter installed. Listening seemed to show this to be true.
But I found the $15 3' usb cable(Belkin? I'll have to check) to beat out the AQ 6' forest usb.
Not much of a test, but it did show me there were cables that made a negative difference.
I went through about 5 of them. If there's a winner and a runner up, I'll have to come
over and buy the runner up!

steveinaz

...and alot of times it's not that a cable is missing something; but that it simply has a different tonal character.

steveinaz

I would think toslink would be very difficult to tell differences, since there's no "electronic" connection or properties acting as variables. It would likely boil down to dB signal loss, if any; or possibly an inferior connector that doesn't hold the fiber in the proper position.

falconcry72

anonymouse wrote: »

I tried this with optical SPDIF. To my ears, there was no difference between a generic radio shack 10', a generic 3' and a premium glass 6'. Interested to hear the results of this test. I'll be needing to connect a laptop to a Peachtree Decco via USB soon.

I've only tried a couple different Toslink cables, but I also did not hear a difference. I have heard a difference in different digital coax cables, though, with the best being a solid core silver cable built by our very own pepster.

gimpod

Cables, Wire, IC's, When are you guys going to get your heads out of your butts and realize all you need is a roll of duck tape, a big box of rusty paper clips and some acid core solder. You don't even need any of those fancy smancy connecter thingy's, just jam a paper clip in the hole and get to solder'n and tape'n. It's cheap and sounds oh so good. After all "bit's is bit's" and "wire is wire" and your just connecting point A to point B. And for all of you that say you can hear a difference your on drugs or you should be.

tonyb

Wow, thanks for that insight Gimpod, I best run over to staples for a box of those high end paperclips then. Should I get the ones with the silver coating, or the gold ones ? Gold is suppose to be better and the ones with the shiney smooth coating must transfer signal better than the ones with the rougher nickel coating.

Drenis

Pffft... lamp cord > anything.

SolidSqual

thsmith wrote: »

Now that my DAC 2 is burned in I have been researching USB cables.

I'm surprised no one has addressed your crazy idea that electronics undergo a "burn-in" period. Pfffft. This especially can't be true for a DAC which is merely a processor of 1s and 0s.

zingo

SolidSqual wrote: »

I'm surprised no one has addressed your crazy idea that electronics undergo a "burn-in" period. Pfffft. This especially can't be true for a DAC which is merely a processor of 1s and 0s.

A DAC does have an analog output stage, so wouldn't that have to burn in?

zingo

Here is my bottom line on the cable debate; if you enjoy listening to cables, knock yourself out. If you don't, that's fine but don't poo-poo someone who does. Whether the cable chaser is right or wrong, that is how they enjoy spending their time and money, and that's great for them. Please don't be so bitter or negative that you can't allow someone else to do something that they enjoy, even if you don't enjoy it or understand it.