USB printer cable VS USB audiophile grade cable?

Yes I agree the USB cable makes a difference. I bought an Audioquest Diamond USB a while back to replace a ridge street audio cord and the Audioquest cable tuned things in just that much more to my liking. I wouldn't call it night and day difference but certainly one that I didn't want to give up either. I have another DAC I use in a recording studio situation and that uses Firewire and I've been thinking of trying the Diamond Firewire cable for that and see what improvements that can bring me.

When it comes to playing back digital music files, everything matters. If you
have a system resolving enough to re-create the natural micro-details that
convey musicality, you will easily hear the difference between standard
USB data cables and well-designed audiophile grade cables. The best I
have heard so far are the brand new versions of Shunyata's Venom USB
and the Chord Company's Signature Tuned Array USB. They both get
much closer to S/PDIF and AES/EBU performance than any stock USB I
have ever tried. Both companies' websites do a decent job of explaining
their approaches to this interface.

While I haven't tried different audio grade USB cables, their impact on sound is well documented by users on other fora. exaSound might be the exception and their DACs indeed neutralize what is going on upstream - be it at the computer or the cable - by using a buffer inside the DAC from where data is retrieved exactly at the DAC's clock pace.

Lewinskih01,

True for synchronous older DACs, better USB cable will not contribute to additional jitter from incoming PC. However, the majority of newer DACs like Benchmark DAC2 HGC and probably exaSound which you mentionned, use asynchronous clocking device which get rid of jitter from incoming PC. The audio impact of USB cables is not well that documented IMHO, for these asynchronous DACs which are more recent. The majority of USB cable reviews that I've seen in audio trade magazines are 2-3 years old, and performed on sychronous DACs variety.

So I am suggesting that jitter is not part of the equation here when using asynchronous DACs. The audiophile variety of USB cables are doing something rigth to the incoming streaming data, but at which level exactly?

The audio improvement is very noticeable, very similar to replacing a middle range to top of the line interconnect from same manufacturer line.

Any suggestions?

There are a number of possible explanations that occur to me:

1)Electrical noise that may be transmitted from the computer to the DAC via the cable could to some degree couple "around" the DAC's buffer memory and jitter rejection circuitry (via grounds, stray capacitances in the circuits, etc.), and thereby affect jitter at the point of D/A conversion. The bandwidth and impedance characteristics of the cable will affect the amount and the frequency content of that noise.

2)Some of that noise may result from groundloop effects between the computer and the DAC, which in turn will be affected by the resistance and inductance of the ground conductor within the cable.

3)USB signals have substantial content at RF frequencies. The quality and characteristics of the shielding in different cables may result in differences in radiation of electrical noise from the cable into unrelated parts of the system (including cables and power cords as well as components), which may be sensitive to that noise to varying degrees at various frequencies. The sonic consequences of that can be expected to be arbitrary and unpredictable. The fact that your cable, or at least the previous Belden cable, is or was 12 feet long perhaps increases the likelihood of those effects.

4)Earlier Benchmark DAC's employed an Asynchronous Sample Rate Conversion (ASRC) approach to jitter reduction, which I understand is a technology that is not always 100% bit perfect when faced with significant amounts of jitter on the incoming signal. I suspect that is not applicable to the more recent DAC2 HGC model you are using, but perhaps it too is not 100% bit perfect under some circumstances?

I would add, however, that IMO none of this necessarily suggests that a high degree of correlation between performance and price should be expected among the various audiophile-oriented cables that are available. It also does not suggest any reason to expect a high degree of consistency between the sonic results provided by a given upgraded cable when used in different systems.

Regards,
-- Al