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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
david_ten
5,480 posts
 
Firstly, the USB cable will be a type B from your PC to a type A to the DAC.

It is Type A on the PC and Type B (generally, but not always) on the DAC.
echolane's avatar
echolane OP
111 posts
 
Good to learn the connector ends are different - thanks for that bit of info!

I tend to want to use at least “better” quality on the scale of good-better-best.  Besides wirh cables becoming really expensive, I just cant afford to play in that kind of high stakes game.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Echolane, Try different USB cables before you buy. There is a chance that it won’t make any difference. Guy who made video, in the link you posted, is a little bit confused. He describes two things that might happen to digital USB signal: bits might not be recognized properly or timing jitter will convert to noise. As for the first - you need only cable with good shielding and no power wires. As for the second - there is no jitter involved at all since your DAC has asynchronous USB input, meaning that timing/clock of the data has nothing to do with timing/clock of the DAC. DAC receives data in packets (frames) at about 1kHz rate and places this data into buffer, signaling back to computer buffer under/overflow status to which computer adjusts size of the next frame. DAC takes data from this buffer at its own clock rate. The only jitter involved is internal clock jitter that is affected by the system noise. USB cable might inject some noise into the system but it is more likely dependent on you DAC sensitivity to it, cable design and not the fancy materials or high price. It is possible that you will hear difference between USB cables, but there is also possibility that you will hear none. Don’t spend a lot of money before you try. You can also investigate USB conditioners that will rebalance, reclock and possibly even add optical isolation between computer and the DAC.

(He also talks about extremely low USB 2.0 input levels and bits being not recognized properly because of electrical noise, but forgets to mention outputs levels, where high level is 2.8-3.6V. In addition it is differential)
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