USB Cable


I'm considering upgrading a generic 5 meter USB from pc to DAC.   Opinions please on DH Labs Mirage vs Transparent Audio.  Has anyone had an opportunity to compare  in a quality system?

savant19970

Worse yet, where is just looking at the actual problem?  What is wrong with your current USB cable?  If a dime store cable, probably poor shielding and it can introduce noise into the ground of your DAC.  A "decent" cable, say one from Belden 8733 series cable. Do be sure it meets USB2.0 spec. Cone cheap cables are not. In theory, if both ends are USB C, then it should meet USB 3.0 standards.   Then does your DAC have galvanic isolation? Most better newer ones do but not all.  An external transformer, about $12, will break that ground and shield so it won't inject noise.  Maybe that is all you need. 5M is vary long so quality of the cable does matter, but price and quality have almost  no correlation when the word "audiophile" comes into play.  

You could always grab several off Amazon and see if they have any positive sonic effect before going down the "audiophile" rout.  I used to trust Monoprice, but not sure now. Belkin cables should be to spec. There is also the USB to fiber/tranceiver game for a cable that long as 5M is the max length by USB2.0 spec. 

I believe using a PC is vastly better than a streamer as it gives me the opportunity to manage buffer and digital gain so as not to introduce digital filter clipping. A few DACs take care of that themselves, but few. Host based, I have some control over what is happening to my bits. I also like my 20 inch touch screen as the interface, not some stupid phone ap.   A quality streamer will hopefully have better digital processing than a cheap one, but I'm keeping my PS and not paying ROON to access my local FLAC library!  The DAC is where those bits become music. Not in the PC or streamer though the software in both can screw things up. Good streamers I hope have better processing software. 

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I believe using a PC is vastly better than a streamer as it gives me the opportunity to manage buffer and digital gain so as not to introduce digital filter clipping.

This is, to say the least, a controversial statement.  I’ll take the other side of this one and choose a good streamer over a PC any day.  Anyone else wanna chime in here?

@soix

No further affirmations needed! There are several folks here, who took the initiative to audition a high quality streamer over PC; heard the obvious improvements and couldn’t go back to PC as their prime source for streaming.

The 1’s and 0’s and bits are bits believers won’t understand the value proposition of a well designed streamer. Just leave them be.

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