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

rollintubes63 posts06-28-2019 11:20am@clearthink
@wynpalmer4 is simply explaining in technical terms that most trained people use, but will be foreign to the lay person.

Technical jargon can also be useful in obscuring the issues. It’s also an Appeal to Authority to the extent that because someone has technical knowledge it doesn’t mean they automatically win all or even any technical arguments. Two technically competent individuals may have entirely different views on a given issue, for example.

Stochastic is random, such as the addition of noise to a voltage level.
Deterministic is due to the interference of the pulses (they're usually called symbols) with each other due to the fact that the bandwidth of the interconnect is not infinite and as a result the edges get "smeared". Because the edges are at variable times relative to one another the amount of interference varies from each bit of data to the next. This causes the point in time at which the data is detected to also shift from bit to bit causing jitter relative to the average. These two effects combined (plus other second order effects) are responsible for deterioration in the sound if they are not corrected. If the shift is too large the transition will not be correctly detected at all and the bit is either lost or misplaced and a data error occurs and is flagged by the CRC.

I'm not using technical jargon to obscure the issues. Quite the contrary.
I'm happy to explain, however I'm also trying to avoid being condescending (and imprecise) in avoiding its use. Sometimes terms with precise meanings are necessary to add clarity to an issue, and sometimes those terms require a great deal of explanation that would just cause people to turn off. Better to try and explain as requested...

@wynpalmer4,

I appreciate and respect your background on this matter and would like to know, or clear up, the matter of the signal being corrupted when being transmitted by a poorly made USB cable. 

First, did you read the link I provided on the previous page and if so, did it correctly describe what happens with USB transmission?

Second, if so, then does it make sense that a corrupted data stream cannot be faithfully reconstructed on the receiving end?

All the best,
Nonoise

Download your digital media onto a computer. The ripping process includes CRC checks for bit perfection. That way you can be certain that the bits out are what was intended to be recorded on the original medium and any discrepancies will be flagged.
This also applies for any lossless compression schemes such as FLAC.
After that, well you still need to have quality retiming etc.