What are the top 3 USB cables being used today in reference systems?

I'm a fan of Black Cat Silverstar digital cables. I have two of their 75 Ohm SPDIF cables and recently purchased the Silverstar USB.  Neither are outrageously priced, under $300 but you'll be hard pressed to find any at a discount.  I suppose many people like me find them a very high performer and hang onto them. 

asahitoro,

I own the Venom USB cable and am very happy with the sound quality when used to stream Tidal from my laptop to my Hegel HD-12 DAC. One of the attributes of the Venom USB cable that I found noteworthy was the extra isolation of the power wire from the signal wire.

I haven’t compared it with ultra-high $$ USB cables, but suspect it to be a high price-to-performance value, along with the Hegel HD-12 DAC.

Dave

Thanks dlcockrum,

I just picked one up for a great deal so I'm hoping it will help get the most out of my modest setup.  I'm considereing an AQ Jitterbug too but am not sold on that idea yet.

Good decision asahitoro. I think/hope you will be happy with the Venom USB.

The jitter-reduction interfaces (the ones with galvanic isolation) do provide some improvement with some DACS - I would wait to see how your system sounds with the new USB cable and go from there.

Dave

We have tested slightly under 400 different cable models, not manufactures but models and we did A/B approximately 20 USB cables. The list included many of the cables being discussed. We tested the Total dac cable, Curious, Audience, Wireworld, Supra, SR Active SE, and the Inex to mention a few of them.

I agree with Mitch 2 that it will be system dependent. The top 2 USB cables from our testing were the Curious USB 1st and then Total dac cable 2nd, in that order. These 2 cables were another level for us. We will be testing the Inakustik USB cable next month.

Currently I use the Curious cable in my reference system. We did find that the shorter the Curious cable was, the better it sounded.