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

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...

@wynpalmer4

Bravo!

I come from the IT engineering profession as well. I have that Amazon USB cable on my high-end system and it sounds stellar. I’ve tried several different cables, just to prove the theory, and there is no difference. If the DAC is good quality it is what makes the sound with it’s clock. The computer/server doesn’t know the difference. This is science we have known in IT since USB came of age.
Thanks for the straight talk from an expert!

Rollin.

Hey, look here, another 1s and 0s argument! 🤗 We got our own 1s and 0s argument going over on the CD thread right now. “Theoretical question about how CDs work.” Experts urgently needed to straighten us out! The 1s and 0s argument is used to prove that CD really do produce perfect sound forever. We had a similar thread regarding digital cables recently. Yup, same 1s and 0s argument.

The arguments are dissimilar.
This is not about whether a digital format produces a perfect reproduction of an analog source or otherwise.
This is about whether the USB data transfer protocol is bit perfect as long as the interface is spec compliant- including the transmitter and receiver.
The answer to the latter question is yes, it is.
The answer to the former question is far more complex.
There is some possibility that the USB can introduce noise through the ground connection. The USB receiver can be designed to eliminate the possibility of ground loops. However, sometimes the problem does occur.

By the way, to put this in context, my system is tri-amped with a sub woofer and a pair of slightly modified ML Montis, The electrostatic panels are driven by one of the following- Rogue M180s, Hypex Ncore 400s or a Benchmark AHB2, depending on my whim. The non electrostatic units are all driven by DSP equalised class D amps.
The preamp is a modified Hovland HP100 or a home made phono amp driving a digital ADC/DAC- the RME ADI-2 PRO FS. My cables are all home made (except for the USB ;-))
My cartridge is a Miyajima Madake. I also have many 15IPS 1/4" 2 track tapes- safety masters or similar- that I play on a Otari MX50.
I have digitized many LPs/tapes and I play them back with the RME device using a USB connection.