USB cable comparisons

[kennyb123]

Isn't the job of the computer and usb cable to deliver ones and zeros to the DAC and then the DAC job to assembles the data correctly?

 

It's an analog signal that's traveling through the wire. A cable's job is to pass this signal faithfully - nothing should be added and nothing should be removed. Easier said than done.

 

This will make perfect sense to you once you hear the LS as you will notice a reduction in noise/grunge.

[HIFI]

It's an analog signal that's traveling through the wire. A cable's job is to pass this signal faithfully - nothing should be added and nothing should be removed. Easier said than done.

 

This will make perfect sense to you once you hear the LS as you will notice a reduction in noise/grunge.

 

I ordered the split AA to B usb. Correct? Mytek does not need the power side connected correct?

[YashN]

Another thing we noticed very clearly with the DIY USB cable that I forgot to mention is reverbs: reverb tails and reverberating sounds are neater, more easily heard and distinguished. It would be good to know if those fortunate enough to own a LS cable hear the same.

[Turkish1480]

I mentioned I would give an update when I received the Elijah Quad Braid USB cable so people would have some more info when looking to buy. As I mentioned earlier I was using the Audioquest Coffee and I liked it, but didn't love it so I wanted to try some other USB cables. I took Jud, Blake and Reverendo's advice and tried out the Mapleshade Clearview Plus and immediately it was much better than the Coffee minus the fact that I wasn't in love with the bass. That did improve significantly with some time, so be patient unlike I was. I have sold the Coffee and living with the Mapleshade for the last three weeks and probably have about 125-150 hours on it. It is truly a remarkable cable for $135, but the Quad Braid MKIII (I may have received an even newer version than the current MKIII) is smoother, more natural, has better bass defintition and impact than the Mapleshade. I thought at first the trasparency and soundtage was better on the Mapleshade, but after swapping back and forth I realized it wasn't and infact the Quad Braid was just as trasparent with a deeper soundstage that was everybit as wide. The cable is very balanced form top to bottom and I feel as though I get the best of the Mapleshade with even better soundstaging and no bass issues that I was experiencing. At Michael's asking price ($235 plus shipping) this cable is truly an amazing buy and one that has me stopping my USB search for a while and quite possibly indefinitely. I am not saying this is the best cable on the market because I haven't heard nearly enough to be able to make that comment, but I feel as though it would be difficult to top especially for the 3-5 times the price of the Elijah Quad Braid. If you can not afford/justify the Quad Braid's price I say go with the Mapleshade as it truly is a great cable, but if you can swing the price go with Elijah cables as it is well worth the extra cash as I was comparing a non burnt in version vs. the Mapleshade with over 125 hours on it. Well done Michael and thanks to highstream for the recommendation!!

[kennyb123]

I ordered the split AA to B usb. Correct? Mytek does not need the power side connected correct?

 

Yes that is what I am using with my Mytek. The power side is not connected.

[sandyk]

Yes that is what I am using with my Mytek. The power side is not connected.

 

In which case it must be using the shield of the cable which is internally connected to the 0 volts (black wire) in most USB devices to function.If the PC is using a 3 pin mains plug then RF/EMI will still get into the USB device via the shield, although the situation will likely be improved over using a generic USB cable. A better option may be to use only the black 0 volts wire in the additional cable with the screens of both cables not connected to the actual USB device ?

So far I have been unable to find readily available and affordable lengths of correct impedance cables with 2 separately screened twisted pairs.The only cable that I can readily find has only a single screened twisted pair of the right impedance, but at 7mm thick it is too cumbersome to use a pair of them side by side and connect to single USB plugs at each end.

[YashN]

So far I have been unable to find readily available and affordable lengths of correct impedance cables with 2 separately screened twisted pairs.The only cable that I can readily find has only a single screened twisted pair of the right impedance, but at 7mm thick it is too cumbersome to use a pair of them side by side and connect to single USB plugs at each end.

 

For my part, what I did was base my cable on an existing one which I suppose complies with the impedance requirements for all four wires. I separated the power leads, and then added foil plus the shield from a satellite cable to those. I assume the impedance change with the solder points is negligible.

[sandyk]

It must have been awfully fiddly to extract the red and black wires without damaging the existing shielding and reducing it's effectiveness. I may try using 2 lengths of the single pair cable I mentioned, but remove it's outer jacket and put it all inside a length of heat shrink. The wire gauge will almost certainly be much thicker too.

[highstream]

I mentioned I would give an update when I received the Elijah Quad Braid USB cable so people would have some more info when looking to buy. As I mentioned earlier I was using the Audioquest Coffee and I liked it, but didn't love it so I wanted to try some other USB cables. I took Jud, Blake and Reverendo's advice and tried out the Mapleshade Clearview Plus and immediately it was much better than the Coffee minus the fact that I wasn't in love with the bass.

...but if you can swing the price go with Elijah cables as it is well worth the extra cash as I was comparing a non burnt in version vs. the Mapleshade with over 125 hours on it. Well done Michael and thanks to highstream for the recommendation!!

Glad it worked out well. I had paid for Michael's single line, no power Cu version, then another option - the Ultra Fi Usartza - came into my lap as part of a package deal and that's worked out well. Wish it was easier in terms of shipping costs to audition Elijah cables, as well as the Jcat. The Mapleshade should sell quickly.

[fmak]

In which case it must be using the shield of the cable which is internally connected to the 0 volts (black wire) in most USB devices to function.If the PC is using a 3 pin mains plug then RF/EMI will still get into the USB device via the shield, although the situation will likely be improved over using a generic USB cable. A better option may be to use only the black 0 volts wire in the additional cable with the screens of both cables not connected to the actual USB device ?

So far I have been unable to find readily available and affordable lengths of correct impedance cables with 2 separately screened twisted pairs.The only cable that I can readily find has only a single screened twisted pair of the right impedance, but at 7mm thick it is too cumbersome to use a pair of them side by side and connect to single USB plugs at each end.

 

Out of frustration in getting the right lengths of usb cable, I bought 7m of Wireworld Ultraviolet cable at a very reasonable per metre cost. I then used high quality A and B plugs to make up different lengths that I needed.

 

What surprises me is how 0.6m and 1.3m lengths can sound different in the same setup, and how critical the bleed

wire connection can be. With bleed wire connected both ends, the sound is different from that which is connected to the load end only, thus breaking shield ground.

 

The same applies to my experiments with an iUSB unit with usb A input, USB B power+data and USB B power outputs, and ground lift. Input and outputs are separated by a RF filter on the Data lines, a 6th order filter plus superregulator on the power supply. This feeds a WaveIO board spdif line with no isolation transformer on the output but isolated at the receiving end.

 

The sound is noticeably a lot more dynamic with better timing if:

 

The iFi usb is fed from a 9V preregulator

The data output carries no power with the V+ wire connected to usb ground

and with the bleed wire connected to the load end only

The iFi Power output is fed separately with a twisted pair cable into the WaveIO board

The Ground break facility on the iFi still makes a difference.

 

If any of the above are done differently, then the sound changes, such as feeding the WaveIO

thru USB + Data cable or if the iFi is fed from the factory wall wart. With the superficially

'right' and straight forward connection of the iFi, the sound is noticeably less satisfactory than

the 'tweaked' arrangement above.

 

I have concluded that there is a hell of a lot going on which simple rationalisation does

not answer.

 

I have bought another 5m of Wireworld Starlight to experiment on.

 

I have so far desisted from surgery on Silver Starlight cable because I have not worked out how to

connect DIY the Ground Shield of the embedded power cable in an orderly and satisfactory way.

Otherwise this could bring down the cost of a high end cable substantially. Perhaps someone with

an XRay could find out how the factory does it?

[sandyk]

I have concluded that there is a hell of a lot going on which simple rationalisation does

not answer.

 

You are not wrong !

I also found, just as another member reported a while back, that even unplugging the cat5e lead from the PC to the Broadband Modem results in a further small improvement.

In fact, I am wondering how much rubbish gets back into the mains via a Broadband Modem's SMPS wallwart.

[Jud]

It must have been awfully fiddly to extract the red and black wires without damaging the existing shielding and reducing it's effectiveness. I may try using 2 lengths of the single pair cable I mentioned, but remove it's outer jacket and put it all inside a length of heat shrink. The wire gauge will almost certainly be much thicker too.

 

Alex, shielding and covering everything and making the wire heavier gauge are all instinctively the "right" things to do; yet Mapleshade's highly thought of cable is the very opposite of that. Just as an interesting home experiment, you might try to make up something along the lines of the Mapleshade and compare for yourself (though their Plus line is cryo'd, and I'm assuming you don't have easy access to such facilities).

[sandyk]

Hi Jud

It appears to me to be a ridiculous situation when many people spend more on their USB cables than their DAC is worth.

Due to already using an external +5V Linear JLH PSU with around 4uV noise, modified cables and earthing arrangements etc. my system is pretty well sorted in that area, and any further gains will be minimal. I just like trying to push the envelope !

Even the Phasure NOS DACs are now doing fairly similar with the USB earth isolation area. As for the possibility of heavier gauge wire, it never hurts to have an as low as possible resistance earth/0 volts reference. Where the red +5V wire is not used, it may even be an advantage to double it up with the black 0 volts wire at both plugs ?

My USB leads are no longer than absolutely necessary, so probably not much further advantage for me. When we use USB cables with the +5V wire disconnected at the USB -A plug at the PC end, there may be further minor gains from snipping the + 5V wire right at the internal cable's USB plug where a front mounted USB socket is utilised ? If you have 2 front panel mounted sockets you would of course only do this for one feed.

Regards

Alex

[Jud]

Hi Jud

It appears to me to be a ridiculous situation when many people spend more on their USB cables than their DAC is worth.

 

Regards

Alex

 

Yep, one reason I was pleased with the Mapleshade is because it was half the price of the cable it replaced in my system.

[drez]

For sure - the thing about this hobby is that technically "better" performance is not always what people prefer. DIY USB works better than you might expect - it probably wont achieve the same hifi results as high bandwidth cables such as LH Lightspeed but there is more going on - I'm certain noise plays a role here, grounding too. In my experiments I seem to recall always preferring to leave the ground connected - maybe this is because the USB input is grounded to the computer and when the ground is lifted from the cable the receiver section is left without proper ground?

 

Reminds me this weekend will compare LH Lightspeed vs WWPS. Looking forward to that one.

[fmak]

You are not wrong !

I also found, just as another member reported a while back, that even unplugging the cat5e lead from the PC to the Broadband Modem results in a further small improvement.

In fact, I am wondering how much rubbish gets back into the mains via a Broadband Modem's SMPS wallwart.

 

I switch off modems and smpss for critical listening. They all make small differences. And I have separate regenerators for analog and digital !

 

One of the worse offenders is satellite TV.

[tboooe]

I am getting a demo of the Lightspeed USB cable early next week. I am excited to see if its any better than the Synergistic Research USB cable I currently have. I will report back my findings. BTW, did anyone compare the split versus standard Lightspeed cable?

[kennyb123]

It appears to me to be a ridiculous situation when many people spend more on their USB cables than their DAC is worth.

 

My USB cable was selected with future DAC(s) in mind. This was true of the power cord and interconnect I selected too. The goal was to stretch a bit further to end up with cables I would want to stick with for a very long time. The DAC, on the other hand, is something I envision upgrading on a more regular basis to take advantage of the latest advancments - kind of like I do with computers.

 

What's surprised me is how well my DAC has responded to being paired with cabling that would seem too pricey for it. There's not been a sense of diminishing returns - quite the opposite in fact. I'm now convinced that it would be ridiculous to throw more money at a DAC if the cabling isn't at a high enough level, as too much of the DAC's goodness won't be able to get through.

 

My Mytek DAC has surprised me by performing far better than it has any right to given its retail price. It would have been a mistake (maybe even ridiculous) for me to upgrade to a better DAC before upgrading to the Lightspeed USB. My former USB cable (WWPS) had been causing great harm - and those problems would have been carried over to the next DAC.

[Superdad]

The data output carries no power with the V+ wire connected to usb ground

and with the bleed wire connected to the load end only

 

fmak: Your report is VERY interesting to me, though a little confusing. Are you saying that you are grounding the 5V VBUS line coming out of your computer's USB port?! That can't be right.

 

Also, not commenting specifically on your set up, but rather to everyone experimenting with DIY USB cables: AFAIK, a single twisted pair of data-only will not work, regardless of your DAC not needing 5V (to confirm connection or run). Sure, I lift both my power and "ground" pins (1 & 4) of my USB cable, but the connector shells are still joining the grounds of the two devices. I have not heard of anyone being able to completely sever that connection and still have transmission work properly (iFi USB ground "lifting" not withstanding--I think that device somehow presents ground to both host and DAC but isolates them from each other).

 

BTW, I also use Lucian's WaveIO.

 

Regards,

 

Alex C.

[jtwrace]

fmak: Your report is VERY interesting to me, though a little confusing. Are you saying that you are grounding the 5V VBUS line coming out of your computer's USB port?! That can't be right.

 

Also, not commenting specifically on your set up, but rather to everyone experimenting with DIY USB cables: AFAIK, a single twisted pair of data-only will not work, regardless of your DAC not needing 5V (to confirm connection or run). Sure, I lift both my power and "ground" pins (1 & 4) of my USB cable, but the connector shells are still joining the grounds of the two devices. I have not heard of anyone being able to completely sever that connection and still have transmission work properly (iFi USB ground "lifting" not withstanding--I think that device somehow presents ground to both host and DAC but isolates them from each other).

 

BTW, I also use Lucian's WaveIO.

 

Regards,

 

Alex C.

I DIY'd my own USB cable without power (data only) and it works fine.

[kennyb123]

BTW, did anyone compare the split versus standard Lightspeed cable?

 

Not head to head, but…

 

My dealer first loaned me the standard version. This caused my jaw to drop. If you look at my posts in the Heimdall thread, you will see that it easily beat the other USB cables I compared it to.

 

I later purchased the split leg version, and use it with only one leg connected. I think this may offer a slight improvement over what I heard from the standard version, but it's really hard to say for sure.

 

The key point here though is that the Lightspeed's magic is there even with the standard cable. I don't think it would be correct to think that the Lightspeed's kind of magic will happen simply as a result of preventing the flow of power through another brand of USB cable.

[Superdad]

I DIY'd my own USB cable without power (data only) and it works fine.

 

Jason:

Did you literally do just a twisted pair and not have anything soldered to the shells of the connectors?! Skipping the power is one thing (I do that too), and not connecting pins 1 and 4 is fine. But I have been told that USB simply won't work with just 2 wires and no ground connection (typically via the shells). Perhaps your computer and DAC are seeing each other's grounds via some other path (mains ground pin?).

 

Please also remind me of your computer>DAC path (anything in between? what DAC?).

[highstream]

Not head to head, but…

 

My dealer first loaned me the standard version. This caused my jaw to drop. If you look at my posts in the Heimdall thread, you will see that it easily beat the other USB cables I compared it to.

 

I later purchased the split leg version, and use it with only one leg connected. I think this may offer a slight improvement over what I heard from the standard version, but it's really hard to say for sure.

 

The key point here though is that the Lightspeed's magic is there even with the standard cable. I don't think it would be correct to think that the Lightspeed's kind of magic will happen simply as a result of preventing the flow of power through another brand of USB cable.

I very much agree with your post about cords and cables. I now use Quad 12L powered speakers and HiDiamond cords/cables and more, so the cost has been even greater, absolutely and relative to the Ultra Fi beta dac, but it's been well worth it now and I hope as a long term investment.

 

I'm going to repeat that it would be useful to toss the Ultra Fi Usartza USB cable, which is roughly half the price of the Lightspeed, into the fray. Larry Moore is well known for his dac and cable and amp designs, both via Tranquility and on his own.

 

Speaking of split power/data vs. single USB cables, I found that a Ciunas dac, which uses a separate battery power connection, sounded noticeably better with both Usartza lines connected to the computer (along with the battery line) than only the data line. Larry said that's the way the cable is designed. In theory, it should be with the LS as well, but theory doesn't always win out.

 

P.S. Just noticed there's currently a returned Lightspeed demo up on eBay for $100 off (or offer).

[kennyb123]

I very much agree with your post about cords and cables. I now use Quad 12L powered speakers and HiDiamond cords/cables and more, so the cost has been even greater, absolutely and relative to the Ultra Fi beta dac, but it's been well worth it now and I hope as a long term investment.

 

The interconnect I'm using now with my DAC retailed for just shy of twice the retail price of my DAC. I originally purchased this to use between phono stage and preamp, as that price level is a better fit there, as I have lot more invested on the analog side. But it turned out the DAC had a greater need for the benefits this better interconnect delivered. That better interconnect probably has a lot to do with why the Lightspeed made such a big improvement too. Same for the power cord and Stillpoints under the DAC. Everything matters.

[YashN]

It must have been awfully fiddly to extract the red and black wires without damaging the existing shielding and reducing it's effectiveness.

 

Not at all: it suffices to make some space in the shield at the two ends, snip at one end and pull at the other, the shield is then replaced as before.

 

It is adding a new foil and shield to the now unshielded wires which is difficult.

 

Actually, I had decided against removing the power lines and removing the signal ones, but on doing it, took off the wrong ones.

 

The results are still good.