USB Cable

I'm thinking of going on Rennlist, 992forum, 911uk.com and posting:

"Please don't spend high $ for a Porsche. Well made cheap Honda's work the same!" 

I honestly do not know, you can start a new thread and conduct a poll. Million dollar or inexpensive music streamer/server…they all have a processor at heart. The premise here is, a general purpose PC is not optimized or optimal for audio streaming. You can add fiber or filters as alluded by @antigrunge2 ahead of a DAC to reduce noise but a general purpose PC will never sound as good as dedicated streamer designed specifically to stream audio. Fortunately, there are plenty of decent choices out there at all price points.

What is a computer or streamer doing? It gets the bits from one end to the other. If it is using a guaranteed network delivery protocol, then we are not losing bits.

So, all streamers should sound the same, no they do not. The streamer device connected to the DAC does add some sonic flavor to the sound. However, my argument is that the optimization of a computer for streaming is doing a couple of things. It is lowering the noisy internals found in a computer and it is adding some flavor to this clean sound.

In my case, I say spending on an optimized streamer to reduce noise is an expensive way to this. A simple fibre optic cable just before the DAC (which is all that matters) will also kill the noise. A simple test with Ethernet vs Fibre on most DACs will show the difference. Now adding an expensive streamer after the Ethernet input and then output AES, USB, et al into the DAC should be as clean as the fibre I advocate for.

You spend much more money to do this but gain some convenience. That convenience will be very important for most, but I am very comfortable with this type of things.

I recently had 3 streamers that got the stream from a cheap DELL computer (placed in another room) that I compared side by side and they sounded different. This is the cream of the crop streamers:

• Sonore OpticalRendu
• Lumin X1 (sold it)
• PlayBack Designs Streamer-IF

The sound was great on all. The Lumin was louder, the Sonore was quieter, and the PBD was shocking to me. I have not been able to use the PBD with fibre yet because I do not have the PlayBack Designs Dream DAC yet.

I have been using the PDB with a Benchmark DAC3B via SPDIF input. That also sounds great. What I think is happening is that there must be some fibre inside the PBD streamer. The guy who makes the PDB is considered a digital genius. Using fibre would be a genius move.

PDB designs has now come out with a very expensive streamer. Let’s assume I am mega rich and can afford it. I would not buy it over the demo $2K Streamer-IF I now own,

@yyzsantabarbara streaming is not bit perfect.  File transfer is.  but music can't use bit perfect FTP.

Let me start with a disclaimer: my system is modest in comparison to those of others who have responded to this question. A move to a smaller home 10 years ago forced me from my multi-component tube based Counterpoint system, fully upgraded by Mike Eliot, to the single box solution offered by Devialet. Since then, I have been using the DAC built into the Devialet.

RE: recommendation that you consider going to a dedicated streamer: I streamed digital files through computers for 15 years. I built each of my music server computers - all small form desktops, operating from a position on the stereo stand, that I controlled using a remote keyboard. I payed careful attention to power supplies (always linear), removal of all extraneous OS features and background functions, etc. I believed, undoubtedly mistakenly as there always is work to be done in the garden, I was as close to an optimal dedicated streamer as one could get, at the time I built each of them. A couple years ago, for reasons unrelated to sound quality and system performance, I replaced the computer with an Aurender N200. In my system and to my ear, the Aurender was an upgrade well worth its price. 

RE: cables. I’ve owned and enjoyed several sets of Transparent analog ICs, but I can’t speak to the performance of their digital cables. I’m a long-standing fan of DHLabs, who offer, I think, tremendous bang for the buck. So, when I decided to upgrade my usb cable, theirs was the obvious first step. In my system and to my ear, compared to the Pangea it replaced, the cable significantly tightened the bass presentation and sound stage, and improved tonal qualities at the top. 

One final note. I agree with the recommendation that you try to shorten the length of your USB cable. About 40 years ago, I read a review of Von Gaylord chinchilla ICs published in International Audio Review by Peter Moncrieff. In the course of his review, Moncrieff observed that the 2m cables sounded better than the shorter or longer lengths. Now, at the time and from anyone else, I would’ve dismissed such a suggestion as nonsensical. But, I had had quite a bit of experience with Moncrieff by then and had come to respect even his most unlikely observations, of which there were many. So, a couple of friends of mine and I contacted Von Gaylord and asked that they send lengths of their chinchilla cable ranging from 1-3.5 meters. After extensive listening, we came to the same conclusion as had Moncrieff. Still today, all my analog and SPDIF cables are 2m. So, when I decided to experiment with usb, I naturally started with several lengths to compare. In my system and to my ear, the 1m DHLabs usb sounds better than the 1.5m and 2m.

Good luck with your project and have fun with the process.

@hce1 

Nice post.