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Which USB Cable best for my new USB DAC

Just bought an AUDIO ALCHEMY DDP-1 USB DAC for my computer. It’s due to be delivered on Monday and I don’t have a USB cable for it. I’ve never bought a USB cable for audio before so I thought I’d ask if anyone has particular experience buying USB cables for this particular product. Or if not this particular product, then which audio USB do you like.  I listen to classical music and opera and have a fairly good stereo set up for my computer, a Musical Fidelity A3cr Preamp, Adcom Amp and Spendor S3/5 Monitor Speakers.  It’s all quite musical and hopefully the Audio Alchemy will fit in nicely.

This article has given me some ideas, but it’d be nice to have some second and third and more opinions.

http://passionforsound.lachlanfennen.com/massive-usb-comparison-test/

128x128echolane
jim204
881 posts
 
Hi there , I dont know anything about your Audio Alchemy as I use a modifed Oppo Sonica Dac and the cable I use is the Telurium Q Ultra Silver cable. I listen to classical music also and find this cable once burned in just the ticket. It is not cheap , over here in the UK it cost £450 but I think it is well worth it. To burn in I just put it on a spare laptop and connected to an old dac and played BBC Radio 3 for a fortnight. After that I put it on my main rig and listened and it really was superb. The low basses in Mahler's Symphony No 2 had a growl to them I hadn't heard before and as I went through more of my music files I had similar experiencies. The treble is the last thing to settle down seeing as it is silver instead of copper I experienced from day to day that it would sound wonderful one day and brash and aggresive the next day. The bad days get fewer and fewer as time goes on.
echolane's avatar
echolane OP
111 posts
 
Thanks for your comments on your Telurian Q Ultra Silver Cable.  They are pricey!

 Your comments about breaking in remind me again how amazed I always am when I read about the necessity to break in our audio products.  I suppose that is a tell tale sign that I’m not a trained engineer that understands what happens at the electron level.  Nevertheless, it seems to be a real effect, but I must say it complicates choosing cables when long break in periods are needed.  
david_ten
5,480 posts
 
@echolane  Congratulations on your new DAC. If you are U.S. based, you can utilize The Cable Company's Lending Program to trial a few USB cables. They will be fully broken in and you will be able to test them out within your own system to determine which one works best for you. 

Thanks for sharing the link to the USB cable comparison. You may also want to look at Audio Bacon. They have a number of USB cable reviews / comparisons.

All the best.
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amg56
887 posts
 

@echolane Firstly, the USB cable will be a type B from your PC to a type A to the DAC. I am not aware of your PC setup, however music player straight from a PC USB port will have jitter error. There are intermediate plug in solutions for that mentioned somewhere in the current topics in A'gon.

Again, I am not sure what program you are using to play your music, but file format and driver can effect the music quality. You might be tempted to source an expensive USB cable up front, but from my experience, don't, at least not yet. Get $20-$50 cable and you will see that the music is not bad. It may be quite acceptable for quite a while as the main issue is the PC. I am not sure why posters immediately quote $300-400 cables first up!

Have a look for products on this forum for re-clockers such as Synchromesh, unless your DAC already has a jitter eliminating clock.

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