The Absolute Sound "review" of USB cable reads suspiciously like a press releaste


I mean c'mon—can't you even throw in a few according-to-the-manufacturer's?

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/nordost-purple-flare-usb-cable/?mc_cid=1f41b2b3b4&mc_ei...
john_g
The rags are not the hobbyist, today they are sales for audio companies, they are partners. Anyone can see that by reading and how they create trends for companies and many at times are short lived and folks are stuck with a product with little to know value. At best they only write opinion and get to have free\long term loans and the best perk if they wish buying at a industry accommodation, but why they would when they get contact gear to review is beyond me. Mags are there for them, how else can they charge so little for their year renewal. Fun to read, fun to see the ads, but this hobby is 0.5% of the consumer who buy, thus as we age and the market slowly dies you see the marketing and cost focus on the well off with lots of disposable income, where the middle class spend money on their kids, education and putting food on the table. $1,000 power cords, $5,000 amps even buys them a lot of food, education and family needs. THe mags don't write for them and manufacturers don't either.   
Again, the OP link to the TAS article is a not a review.  It is clearly an advertisement for the USB cable.  
Are there two bdp24's? I don't even know what UBS means. You musta got me mixed up with one of the other good lookin' guys.
I'm a Design Fellow Emeritus for Analog Devices and for a number of years I designed retiming PLL and DLL loops for various interfaces etc. including USB. The 1s and zeros that you refer to are generally caused by current changes into a fixed load at the receiver that matches the characteristic impedance of the "transmission line" that is the USB cable in order to minimize reflections.The data is also sent in packets retimed at the receiver. This retiming occurs "perfectly" as long as the transitions from 1 to 0 and back occur in a given period of time- a so called retiming window- the purpose of which is to eliminate the effect of the finite bandwidth and jitter of the interconnect/transmitting system. The receiver adds its own imperfections to the reconstructed data stream, but as long as the cable, transmitter and receiver comply to the standards the resulting data stream will have a one to one correspondence to the source. In addition, the data is checked upon reception using a CRC and if the packet is corrupted it will be dropped and the host can be asked to resend it. So, obviously, the system is not a dumb one and in reality- spec compliant cables CANNOT matter in an analog sense. 
USB2.0 is also able to transmit 480Mb/s so audio bit streams are well below the max. 
I've heard audio streams where the USB data is actually corrupted and packets are being lost.
The result is not subtle...