Best USB cable to use between computer and dac?

[fpalm69]

Has anyone thought of this?

Two USB cables at the PC - one for data, one for power, combined to one connector at the converter input.

 

...Frank Palm

 

[ggking7]

I'm about to set up a USB isolator + battery power solution. The total cost will be well under $100. Here is the isolator called the "Ultravox":

 

http://diyparadise.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=124

 

It uses the Analog Devices chip plus a linear voltage regulator. I think this is the only device on the market using the AD chip that was made specifically for audio.

 

I'll be using it with a Wavelength Proton USB DAC, and both the Ultravox and Proton will be powered by SLA battery.

 

[tarquineous]

If people are hearing a difference, the reason is not: " It's all in their head ". That is about as un-scientific as you can get.

 

I have heard differences in cables, speakers, amplifiers etc. that all had great specs ! I have no exact answers as to why, but I will certainly not say that I am imagining things.

 

There was a period of time before scientific measurements were possible, when people made musical instuments. Some sounded better than others, hence the evolution of what musicians play today. Was it all in their heads ?

 

[Tog]

It is silly to say that "If you hear differences it is unscientific to say that it is all in the mind" -since your mind is doing the processing. It may be true to say that a particular piece of kit may have an impact but it is unlikely to be a cable made from purest Cat Fur at $200 an inch.

 

yours, mindlessly tog

 

[Tipper]

 

I’ll state here and now, I make all my own cables and in general on the issue of cables I belong to the skeptic’s camp.

I can’t say that cables do not make a difference; if I believed that I wouldn’t make my own. I would just buy the cheapest and be happy.

My system used to sound better when the freezer was switched off. Now that seems to be a preposterous statement until you consider the amount of mains born interference the appliance generates. It’s measurable and a bit of intensive mains cleaning sorted the problem out. The point of the illustration is that it is measurable, repeatable, and the application of the remedy, mains conditioning scientifically proven to work.

 

My first point is a matter of cost effectiveness.

If one is prepared to spend say 30% of the price of a component at either end of a cable on the cable itself, might one not get better overall improvements on spending that money on a better component?

 

My next point is this. Let’s accept the not all that we perceive can be measured. The measurable features of a cable can be measured by any cable manufacturer with the necessary equipment.

Have those manufacturers that make cables and state they give a considerable improvement in sound quality found some way of measuring a cables performance that the rest of the Industry hasn’t?

 

If there is such a thing as a better cable then once this design has been found and accepted through either subjective testing or measurement why don’t the other manufacturers adopt this design? This seems to be the norm in virtually every other Industry.

 

There have been numerous tests carried out concerning a person’s ability to remember sound. It has been pretty much accepted now that we have great difficulty in remembering exact qualities of even a single tone let alone a relatively complex piece of music. This means that listening tests are pretty meaningless. If you can’t remember accurately what the previous sound sounded like how can you compare it to the current sound?

 

There is an example above somewhere using wine tasting to suggest that a trained palette can tell a better wine. The problem with this analogy is that the taster’s judgment is developed within a particular value system. It is not reasonable to state that one wine is better than another; all that can be said is that a group of people who have acquired a particular preference for a particular taste (with all the different pressures and influences belonging to such a group brings with it) consider this to be preferable to that.

The same applies to art. I personally can’t see what all the fuss is about when I look at The Mona Lisa but those who would have us believe they are the experts in the field would dismiss me as a peasant.

The same kind of argument pertains to vehicles for example. A wealthy motoring enthusiast may say that their Aston Martin is a better car than your TVR. It rather depends on what you see as the purpose of your car and what images that particular brand conjures up. The main purpose of any car is to transport you from A to B after that you have measurable performance and the considerations they bring and after that it tends to get subjective and value based.

Hi Fi is no different; Signal from A to B. measured performance, value based judgement.

 

Measurement gets us away from the subjective and if we are not prepared to at least make measurement our starting point when evaluating a product then we leave ourselves at the mercy of value ridden subjective judgment and with that comes all the mysticism, snobbery, inaccuracies and those prepared to take advantage of the unwary and unquestioning..

So, I state with my hand firmly clasping the bible of science and rational thought that there is no cable better than another unless it is proven to be so through measurement. After that you are welcome to subscribe to whatever beliefs you care to. However, be aware that they are just beliefs and until satisfactory proof is produced (believing ones own senses doesn’t qualify) I’ll remain in the skeptics camp and carry on making my own cables in the vain hope that one day I find the cable that I find perfect in my system.

 

 

[Tog]

Nope ...still not getting this cable thing least of all with usb cables. I can accept that a truly dire, cheap n nasty bit of bell wire is not going to do a decent amp speaker combo any good but the mumbo jumbo talked about the audio effects of expensive cables is nonsense.

 

The most important aspect of using usb is how it is implemented by your dac not the fact that the sole point of the Apollo missions was to source sufficient Galaxos 9 to create a unique product for "Bolloxica Audio's" TM latest cable.

 

How about spending the money on some music... just a thought !

 

Yours, laughing all the way to the bank, tog

 

[timztunz]

"....However, be aware that they are just beliefs and until satisfactory proof is produced (believing ones own senses doesn’t qualify)...."

 

Incredible how two viewpoints can be so completely opposite. Believing my senses is the ONLY thing that qualifies to me. If I were to hear a difference, whether good OR bad, but:

 

a) Then have to tell myself that I CAN'T believe what I just heard because of some inability to put it on a chart or graph.

 

b) Or conversely something CAN be charted or graphed (but I can't hear the difference), that I should buy it anyway because its "proven" to be better.

 

Now THOSE are what seem like a ridiculous notions to me.

 

[ggking7]

Tipper,

I can't believe you mentioned the freezer thing. I'm having the exact same problem. How did you do "a bit of intensive mains cleaning"?

 

timztunz,

That was a stellar post and it sums up my feelings on the subject exactly.

 

[barrows]

first of all, I agree with you to a point. I would not recommend that anyone running an Onkyo Receiver go out and purchase $20K interconnect cables.

 

"My first point is a matter of cost effectiveness.

If one is prepared to spend say 30% of the price of a component at either end of a cable on the cable itself, might one not get better overall improvements on spending that money on a better component?"

 

The above point of view is flawed, here is why: Think of a cable as a filter (because that is what they are) no cable is perfect, there will always be some signal loss happening in a cable. Therefore, any cable is going to degrade the signal coming out of any component. The conclusion to draw here is that to get the best performance out of ones components requires the best cables possible, as close to zero loss as is feasible.

 

It is too bad that some cable companies do sell snake oil type products to some extent: there are some expensive cables on the market that really offer no benefit over more affordable cables, and many cable companies do not offer coherent explanations of why their cables perform better-these practices make consumers skeptical about cables (and rightly so). But there are companies that make better cables, and some of them actually explain why. If one is interested in learning about the differences between cables, I would suggest doing some googling on the following topics: dialectric effect, skin effect, eddy currents, and the nefarious triboelectric effects. Then do some research on cables that intend to address these (real, scientific) effects, like Nordost, Stereolab (formerly Stereovox), and Audience.

Better yet, find a sympathetic dealer of one of the above cable brands, and try a listening test. To really hear the differences, bring in some of your own music, and make comparisons in the dealer's best reference system. Start with really good cables in the entire system, then just swap in one ordinary (say Blue Jeans) interconnect from preamp to power amp-the difference will be very evident; once you learn what to listen for you will hear the differences in cables more easily.

Back on topic, try comparing a Wireworld Starlight USB cable to a generic one in a good system-at my home the difference in this comparison was huge (granted this was with an adaptive USB DAC, I would not expect the difference to be as large with a good Async USB DAC).

 

[Tipper]

ggking7

Housing in the UK has in general two types of internal wiring ring and radial. The majority have ring, older houses may have radial. You need to find out what type you have for your house.

The cheapest and easiest is to power your Hi Fi from a ring that doesn’t have any freezers, fridges, air conditioning units attached to it. Get an extension socket with a long lead and plug it into the ring that supplies the bedrooms assuming you live in a two story house and see if that works.

 

The best solution maybe not the most expensive either judging from the prices asked for some mains conditioning units. Get an electrician to install a dedicated supply for your Hi FI. Instead of running the ground to the mains inlet ask him/her to make a local earth installation. All this involves is running the ground to a copper pole buried in the ground.

 

I have done this at a few places I’ve lived now but as with anything involving mains current if you’re not confidant about what your doing don’t try it. Mains current can and will kill.

 

The in between options are; build a mains conditioner. (If you a interested send me a PM and I’ll pass you a simple design I have found works and it’s cheap)

 

Buy a mains conditioner. My suggestion if you decide on this route is to avoid any mains conditioner that has anything “audiophile” about it. Most are a total rip off. Instead look at a commercial UPS. You can pick them up very cheaply on ebay and elsewhere and you get a couple of 12 Volt batteries and a charger thrown in which may be handy for powering pre amps etc. Something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/APC-SMART-UPS-1500-UNINTERUPABLE-POWER-SUPPLY-/180527046960?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Computing_Networking_SM&hash=item2a08402130

 

The only thing you need to be careful of is that you ensure the supply can cope with demand in Watts of what you plug into it.

 

Going a step further.

I have replaced all my equipments power leads with 1.5mm cored, foil and braid shielded power cable and I use a conditioner and distribution block. All my power plugs are of the round pin design and all my power cords have ferrite rings. If you can wire a plug you can make this yourself. Audiophile power leads are just versions of the above with pretty cable covers and a very imaginative price tag added for good effect.

 

Barrows on sun.

I have heard most types of cable over the years and when I was still working as an engineer in avionic communications had the opportunity to test the properties of a few. Apart from some interesting variations in capacitance I didn’t discover anything exceptional about any of the cables I messed about with. That’s one of the reasons I started to make my own cables. In fact, I make or mod most of my Hi Fi these days. My most recent purchase has been an asynchronous Dac and I bought that because the technology involved in asynchronous transfer is beyond my capabilities.

I’ve never been too sure whether effects such as the skin effect of a conductor makes an audible difference. It’s a bit like the copper v silver debate and the solid v stranded debate. I’ve heard most now and I can’t say one is better than the other or even be positive that I can tell the difference between one type and the other. But, yes you are correct in that such effects exist. I do accept that the dielectric properties of the separator in current carrying wires may influence the sound of a cable but there are only a few dielectrics to choose from. My current favorite cable uses PTFE. It’s my favorite not because it sounds noticeably better than any other cable I’ve made but because it was a nightmare to make and for all the trouble it took it better sound bloody good or I wasted my time.

As a rule I try to avoid showroom demos. If I can’t take it home and listen to it in my system then they can keep it.

 

 

[ggking7]

Thanks Tipper!

 

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[Currawong]

In my opinion, if I was going to spend money on USB, I'd spend it on the Halide Bridge or the HiFace, or, if you really want to get serious, the Sonicweld Diverter. If the USB implementation in your DAC is affected by the cable, then you would be better off using 75 Ohm coax instead, which is what these converters change to. Spending a lot of money on a custom-made length of wire (as opposed to an actual circuit) to fix what is a an inferior interface in the first place is insanity.

 

[barrows]

Interesting point of view. Have you actually used the Sonicweld Diverter? I have, and it definitely needs a good USB cable to perform its best.

I disagree with your analysis from my experience, and others using Wavelength and Ayre DACs with very good asynchronous interfaces have reported that they also sound better with a good USB cable.

 

[tarquineous]

It is already well known that cables can make a significant difference. Martin Dewulf of Bound for Sound has been selecting and publishing which powercord works best, in each of his amplifier reviews, for 12 or more years now.

 

This practice has progressed to almost all cable types and interfaces.

 

So it gets quite redundant to try to be nice and intelligent to people who are ignorant enough to deny it, for whatever reason they may entertain ( usually that other people are "hearing things").

 

When it comes to USB cables, or any other cable for that matter, it's a question of how much you want to spend, and how much time you want to spend in seeking out and trying the cables.

 

Firewire cables, by design, are potentially somewhat better, but the sound quality of the cable and more importantly the sound quality of the connected equipment are major factors.

 

So an excellent USB convertor, DAC, USB cable, analog interconnects, and powercord will just slauter a lesser DAC with Firewire and a bunch of cheap cables.

 

This of course assumes that the rest of your system has good sound quality.

 

So if you already have good equipment to your satisfaction, and want better sound quality, then go for better sounding cables. All of them !

 

Enjoy your investment and music.

 

[Tog]

Posit 1. It is already well known that cables can make a significant difference

2. All components use cables

3. Cables can make a significant difference to all components

 

Great, glad we established that....

 

But... it is also well known that "the right to bear arms" or carry a handgun improves your safety, huge bonuses for investment bankers are perfectly reasonable and that Windows is a brilliant OS.

 

Come on guys we are talking about usb here ... next we will be suggesting that the old parallel port on the PC Junior could have been improved with a top of the range Chord printer cable.

 

Most of the fine detail processing of sound takes place between your ears and I would suggest spending huge amounts of money on a cable used to transmit 1s and 0's is rather less important than ensuring the quality of the source and the quality of the decoding in the dac.... especially if you are using usb ..."you are using asynchronous aren't you ... no? ...how much did that cable cost again... would you like to buy some encyclopaedia?"

 

 

yours, mesmerised by the logic, tog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[I. G.]

Once upon a time I bought a USB tv tuner (for analogue broadcasts). I installed it with the included usual cheap beige noname USB cable and to my horror, the tuner window showed horizontal interference lines running down over the video. I thought that was too much of a simulation of analogue tv but instead of panicking I swapped the USB cable to a cheap but branded cable (Belkin Gold or something). The running lines disappeared! Since then I know that USB cables can make a difference. Maybe that was a difference between a really bad cable and an average cable, not between an average cable and a $5000, cyro-treated, chiropracticed, quantum mechanized, Large Hadron Collider-baked audiophile USB cable, but you may never know...

 

[tarquineous]

Tog,

I wonder if you have done any listening tests with the cables mentioned.

 

I really don't think you have. I do hear rambling on off topic like an idiot.

 

If you can't hear differences, or refuse to, please admit to it.

 

The topic is: Best usb cable between dac and computer. Not tog's ramblings of world events.

 

Please be respectful to people that can hear a difference, and actually care.

 

That is the basic reason why we are audiophiles. Everything in an audio system makes a difference to one degree or another, especially anything electrical.

 

Let's move on and do some testing !

 

 

[BobH]

generic USB cables, a Belkin gold and a Russ Andrews. I tested them all and preferred the Belkin because it reached as far as I needed it to. I preferred the Russ Andrews, when I didn't need the cable to reach as far, because it appeared to me to be better made than the others.

 

In other words, my testing of USB cables concluded that I could discern no audible difference between them. Please fell free to add this conclusion to the general pot of conclusions.

 

Please note, I am not being disrespectful. Nor am I being humorous. I do believe that there are differences between cables. I believe cable choice to be much more important in the analogue domain than in the digital domain. I do not expect one single other person to agree with me.

 

I believe all forum posts about cables should be automatically deleted on the grounds that they interfere with useful discussions.

 

[Audio_ELF]

"But... it is also well known that "the right to bear arms" or carry a handgun improves your safety, huge bonuses for investment bankers are perfectly reasonable and that Windows is a brilliant OS."

I support the right to arm bears!

 

Eloise

 

[Part-Time Audiophile]

"But... it is also well known that "the right to bear arms" or carry a handgun improves your safety, huge bonuses for investment bankers are perfectly reasonable and that Windows is a brilliant OS."

 

I support the right to arm bears!

 

Personally, I support the right to bare arms. Well, at least in most cases.

 

[Part-Time Audiophile]

Look, all this has been covered before:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/USB-Cables-High-End

 

Is there a difference? Well, yes. (Sorry, Tog).

 

But the differences are entirely limited to the structural. Two-wire, separate runs, or lifted grounds -- all versus any other cable, regardless of make, manufacture, or material (even if made by naked virgin nuns in the Himalayas from nine-9s pure unobtanium). And, perhaps not surprisingly, these structural differences do in fact yield audible differences. Improvements, even.

 

The open question is whether the $500 premium you pay for those structural changes are "worth it", especially since you can get the same results (or better, if your DAC supports it -- see the threads on Pat's ART Legato) by making these cables yourself for something like $20 worth of parts and an investment of your precious time.

 

But in Tog's defense, cables are silly investment. You can find superior spec'd cable that will outperform unobtanium cables -- ON EVERY SYSTEM, EVERY TIME -- for peanuts (relatively speaking). Let the sane folks at Blue Jean Cables be your guide out of the wilderness -- and go spend all that unobtanium cable money on music.

 

[BobH]

Is there any difference between a speed limit of eight laying down, as you have it, and eight standing up, as it would normally? (I'm assuming miles per hour).

 

[Part-Time Audiophile]

The beauty of language is that it can admit of differences that physics will not.

 

[jkeny]

I support the right to arm bears!

Personally, I support the right to bare arms. Well, at least in most cases.

 

I also support the right to bare arms although in certain sunny climates it can lead to skin cancer

 

I'm not so sure about arm bears as I don't think an arm could bare the weight of a bear on an arm?