USB Cable

antigrunge2

Have a drink, mate and pls try to relax.

The guy has problems, for sure. He sees fairies and magic dust everywhere. Most odd.

So let me get this straight, you have a DAC and a Streamer-Server that only has USB that is bad? That using a USB cable from a company like DH Labs is foolish even though the cable is not that expensive. That the DAC and the Streamer builder are not using 5v protocols, it is still bad even though the DAC and Streamer engineers built their respective devices around these  protocols. Please explain this to me @tvrgeek I must be stupid. As must these engineers at all these companies. 

USB is the defacto-standard. Anyone who wants to be in the marketplace needs to follow the market trends.  It is not the best transport, but it is what we have. 

PCM, coax or fiber, relies on the HOST to providing clocking information. Notoriously poor. USB uses the DAC or STREAMER internal clock. It can be as good as the designer wants.  For $100 it can be excellent. 

Some new higher end DACs also buffer and re-clock the PCM, so it would them be just as good as the USB Mode 2.   

Stupid engineers? Yes, if they do not design their interface to deal with the realistic world.  An AMD galvanic isolator is a 50 cent chip, yet why don't $5000 DACs include one? Incompetence!

I will say ONE MORE TIME, I measured the noise injected into the analog output using "free-be" cables which cut open were very poorly shielded. I measured none with well made to spec.  I measured none using a $12 external galvanic isolator. 

Just trying to provide factual information.   Not everyone has a technical background so they may be more susceptible to snake-oil or may more easily fall into placebo conclusions.   A little knowledge helps.   

If someone is not interested in factual information on this subject, you do not need to read my posts. I  try to present facts so people can make up their own mind.  If you have any actual evidence other than "You believe", please present it. 

I hope a $90 USB cable is well made and works as well as a $6 one that is made to spec.   If you feel better using it and can afford it, fine.  Just understand it does not actually perform any better. 

Wow someone is up on their soapbox, I asked a question, I am here to learn.

Though the focus is on PC and I will not use a PC in my audio chain as they lack shielding and introduce noise. I like a well built cable as opposed to the cheap crap from Amazon. 

Can there be an audible difference with proper implementation. I do think so and this will be more evident in well engineered higher end equipment not the stuff from AMZ or AEX.  Not saying anyone is wrong just that your mileage may vary. 

Yes I did a little research (alibet very little) and lot's of cutting and pasting.  Enjoy there is some really good information here in my opinion and supports some of the posting in this subject. 

Now to @tvrgeek point these people point out here:  EDN (2012).

Here in this article EDN claims that Colcking is the major hurdle for quality audio over USB:

https://www.edn.com/select-your-usb-audio-mcu-with-care-scary-stories-from-the-test-bench/

https://www.edn.com/usb-audio-simplified/

USB is a versatile interface that provides many ways to propagate and control digital audio; however, it is important for the industry to follow a standardized mechanism for transporting audio over USB to secure interoperability, which has been the cornerstone for the adoption of USB. To respond to this fundamental request, the USB organization has developed the Audio Devices Class, which defines a very robust standardized mechanism for transporting audio over USB. The USB audio class specification is available to the public from the USB Implementers Forum (www.usb.org).

One of the major issues with streaming audio over USB is the synchronization of data streams from the host (source) to the device (sink); this has been addressed by developing a robust synchronization scheme on “isochronous transfers,” which has been incorporated into the USB specification.

https://www.edn.com/can-you-hear-the-difference/

Now, I can understand not buying the cheapest of USB cables, but I'd do that for reliability, not audio quality.

Don't fool yourself. Paying $695 for a USB cable will not get you better audio. You will get the same audio quality from a $6.95 cable. The audio quality is a function of the original encoding, the decoding, the analog signal processing and amplifier, and the speaker. Go ahead, prove me wrong. Get yourself a top-of-the-line audio analyzer and show me the difference in audio quality between cables that carry digital signals.

Take a look at the linked page above. Be sure to read the comments over there as well, and then tell us what you think.

https://www.edn.com/fundamentals-of-usb-audio/

Found this and calls out some hardware limitations in Audio/Music transmissions (2013) and that clocking can be the issue?

https://www.edn.com/usb-audio-asynchronous-is-the-only-choice-for-compromise-free-audio/

“…understanding of audio may have passed the current generation of microcontroller suppliers by, resulting in a generally rather poor standard of audio replay. This may be down to a tendency for pure-play MCU companies to treat audio as just another data interface format… Some of the methods proposed and implemented for generating the audio master clock… have no place in a high-quality audio product”

On one thing, however, we do see eye to eye: the article concludes with the advice 'look for a vendor team that clearly knows what it's doing in the audio field.' With that, we couldn't agree more!