Will a quality USB cable make a difference....

I have done exactly what you suggest Istanbulu and I could turn this arround on you. I agree with Br3098! Not just because of some education or the science of electronics but from experiance. I am not going to argue with what you say you hear, just that for most "newbies", as you call them, they are MUCH better off putting their money in the best equipment they can afford in the body of their system! Body= speakers, amp, line stage and dac. If I sound annoyed, I am.... for at one time I was a newbie and listen to such gibberish. If a usb cable makes a real difference it is so limited to my ears I can not hear it. Now that is not to say that if your cable has a loose connection or is so poorly made it may not hinder the transpher of digital information. It does not take an expenssive cable to complete this task. But, as long as the digital info is transphered completly, the sound quality is determind by the dac/clock conversion, the line stage's ability to magnify and transpher, without any added harshness or denigration to the amps, which must do the same for the speakers. Spend your money where you wish. It is your money. IN MY OPINION, Not on digital cables. Take it or leave it!

"Sorry, but it's just not possible. Keeping it simple, USB is a digital data transport bus, not an analog port. All it moves in the data path is 0s and 1s."

I'm afraid that this is a tired argument. I've read the same argumant dozens of times on the forums. This shows a misunderstanding of the difference in audio streaming and other data transfers.

This is real-time. All other transfers from a computer are not real-time, except maybe some video.

Because it is real-time, it is subject to timing variations. These timing variations can have an impact on the USB interface, ranging from direct jitter affects, power effects, grounding effects, RFI effects and transmission-line effects.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Ed, do you know me or anything about my audio experience? I worked in the audio business for several years in the 1970s, and while I am in the computer business, for the last 20 years my firm has specialized in systems for the A/V and digital media industries. We design and setup systems every day for recording studios, editing houses and post-production facilities. We have also designed audio DSP systems for the Air Force and the Navy. I hate to make posts about me, but I have tested, used and LISTENED to a larger variety of analog and digital cables, probably more than you ever knew existed. If you want to believe that a digital cable can make a difference in a small section of the (converted) analog signal, be my guest.

Bill's Corallaries:
1- If it's true to you, it's true (to you).
2- Just because you want it to be so doesn't make it so.

Sakahara, I apologize for hijacking this thread for my own selfish purpose.

If you are in my neck of the woods, come by and take a listen for your self. I have both cables and don't plan to get rid of one.
lee

Steve, I didn't read your post until after my little rant. Please keep in mind that USB is not an audio interface - it's a source to peripheral device connectivity bus. As far as USB is concerned, there is no difference between audio files and jpeg photos, an Oracle spreadsheet or java code. The "audio interface" part starts on the outbound side of the DAC.

I agree with you about timing variations. There's also latency, packet loss/corruption, and a host of other issues that can affect USB (or any almost any other data connectivity protocol). But I was responding to a poster that claimed that changing USB cables provided " The top end air, the transparently and better defined bass are easily distinguished differences." That's not a phenomena that can be attributed to error correction, or timing, or latency, or voltage regulation, or phase lock, or... whatever.

It's easy to say ignore or dismiss the science involved in audio. Over the course of human history, anything we can't explain (or didn't want to take the time to understand) is described as magic. Well, guess what? There is no magic in audio, just a lot of science. Circuit design is a science. Tube design is/was science. Acoustic speaker and cable design is science. Transformers, resistors, capacitors - all based on good, hard scientific principles.

About two years ago we had a job for a major aerospace company, designing a system to collect and sample broad spectrum analog audio feeds some remote sources. Very remote. Anyway, when we used USB 2.0 for part the low-res portion of the system, and in our testing we found that for cable runs of up to 20'-25', the actual cable (manufacturer, country of origin, jacket, etc.) made no difference. The connectors use for the USB cables made a measurable difference in the amount of packet error correction that was required. Upgrading the USB connectors on the source systems and target devices made a huge difference, dropping the packet error rate down to almost zero; even if used with the least expensive commercial cables.

My last word on this incendiary topic: all this information is available online. Anyone who wants to can find and read Gordon Rankin's excellent white papers on USB and specifically asynchronous mode operation. They provide an excellent explanation on how USB works, so nobody has to guess.