Habst Ultra III USB cable - an unusual discovery on bandwidth

[flkin]

During a recent CA group purchase for Habst clock cables, I came across the Habst Ultra III USB cable http://www.habst.de/index.php/usb-ultra-5n-reinsilber.html. From my experience with the Habst BNC clock cable from the Mutec Ref 10 to my tx-USBultra, the sound improvement compared to a good quality stock Japanese BNC cable or Pasternack RG216 double shielded BNC cable was huge.

 

The change was so shockingly good, I wondered if the Habst technology would extend to their USB cables. As I was about to receive my SOTA streamer the Pink Faun 2.16x and wanted a good USB cable to use with it.

 

When I explored more, I found they featured the cable on the front of their website http://www.habst.de/index.php/home.html  so I took it that they were proud of the cable and upon further communication with Daniel Steinert, the proprietor of the Berlin company, he further claimed that :

Quote

"The USB Ultra III has so far beaten every other USB cable. In Germany and also in Europe this is quite well known .."

 

Strong and confident words! With my interest piqued, I further discovered that the cable is made of 8 solid core strands of 5N silver specially made for them. And that the silver cores are enclosed in a air tube of Teflon (PTFE). The power side is separated from the signal side completely with a separate cable wound around the signal cable. Apart from this, internally I dont have a clue what the shielding is like nor why the cable is pretty stout and heavy for only 8 strands of silver. One thing I did note was this was the first time I have seen a USB cable with copper connectors. Upon asking Daniel about it, he said it's for the shielding only. No signal runs through it. 

 

Looking around the net and CA for others that have used the Ultra III USB cable, I couldn't find any feedback. What I did find out was that Triple M Audio doesn't like silver cables. These are the guys behind the Pink Faun. I gather they recommend to use copper only and the upgraded cabling inside my PF is all copper. So perhaps not a good move?

 

 

It's a bit of a risk but I'll try anyway. @Kritpoon my hifi buddy in Bangkok also joined in for a group purchase and so we picked up 2 cables to try. He was about to get his Antipodes Cx+Ex super server too and I think he had the same thinking in mind about getting a matching high end USB cable too.

 

So it arrived sometime back and now after putting over 500 hours on it I'm ready to comment about it's characteristics. 

 

I bit of background about the devices it's connected to.  I'm using it with my Pink Faun 2.16x steamer which has a OCXO clocked USB output. It's connected directly from the PF to my Vinnie Rossi LIO, DAC 2.0. My PF has embedded HQPlayer software and I am using it to upsample to DSD 512/48 with filter/modulator poly-sync-xtr-lp-2s and AMSDM7 512+fs.

 

The sound - wow ?

 

 

The 5N silver Habst it sounds unlike the usual silver sound which is usually thinner, brighter (more airy) and more detailed, it is not like that at all. It manages to show all the details and air in a relaxed way but keeps a body like a refined copper cable.  The treble is so refined and at no time piercing with very tight bass. From my listening notes, I wrote

 

- voice more 3D clearer in space

- mid bass cleared up

- sound is so detailed, full body and dynamic

- refined, real sounding and holographic

- Music jumps out of the speakers in front of you

 

I didn't have any significant USB cables around to trial against apart from my Curious, Lush, SOtM basic and some generic cables. The Lush is too short to connect my system and so I will have to extend it with a connector and 2 Lush cables (at a later date) and try again. Against the SOtM basic and generic no comparison. Just messy and loose image.

 

But with the Curious a better comparison. Both are silver cables and both have the power leg outside of the main cable body. Both 1m long too. But again it's quite a difference in sound character. The Curious maintains the best of silver sound - detailed and airy and holographic, very nice. I would be happy to use it normally (and did for sometime) but in comparison to the Habst, looses out in body and refinement. It's just unusual to find realistically thick 3D sound with the smooth refined details that the Habst offers. Very nice and polished sound.

 

And this is when I discovered some interesting about USB bandwidth. It's different for different cables. I read about this already and was aware of it but to see it play out is quite something else. 

 

When switching back and forwards between the Habst and Curious cables, I had difficulty getting the tracks to play. Roon would play with no sound or simply hang. Spend a lot of time rebooting and trying all tricks to get it to work. Finally figured it out. Curious USB cannot play upsampling to HQPlayer 512/48! Perhaps it's my particular setup but Habst plays fine and Curious either cannot play or hangs mid-track. When switching back to 44.1, both play fine.

 

I have been experimenting with upsampling with other machines and at the higher upsampling rates, I found difficult in playback and attributed this to the player issues. Now I realise it may have been the USB cable that was not allowing me to reach the top most upsampling rates. The bandwidth of the Habst is higher than the Curious. How curious! ?

 

Does bandwidth limits have an effect on sound? I wonder. But in my case, I don't really have a choice but to use the Habst now as it's the only cable that actually works at the rates I am experimenting with.

 

And so that's it. I love the Habst USB Ultra III sound with my PF and it allows me to upsample to the highest rates with HQP. The next thing comes to mind - I wonder what Habst XLR interconnects sound like..... ?, save up some money and wonder again later!

 

Hope that's fun reading for all, Regards, Kin

 

 

 

- Usually disclaimers: Not in the business, no affiliation to Habst, no conflict of interest etc.

 

Also as OP I would like the scope of this thread to be about listening impressions. Any discussion on cable skepticism, measurement demands, etc are off topic. Thanks!

 

[flkin]

Ok, I had a chance to try the Lush cable against the Habst. Managed to rearrange my system to accommodate one shorter 0.7m Lush instead of trying to join 2 Lush cables together.

 

Same result as with the Curious, the Habst still has more body than the Lush while maintaining the correct dimensions in space and offering a lot of details. At several times the price, I suppose it's not surprising that it outperforms the Lush but whether it's worth it or not is the real question.

 

One thing for sure, after using the Habst in my system, it's difficult to switch back to something else, so for me it's worth it! ?

 

And now something even more interesting - is there a way to improve the Habst? or any USB cable for that matter?

 

From some other thread here in CA, I picked up this one about a company selling MuMetal conduits for shielding wires.

 

http://custommagneticshielding.magneticshield.com/category/magnetic-shielding-for-wiring-applications

 

The sell a conduit at 0.75" for $21.45 per foot run and this just fits the Habst slotting over it easily and held in position by way of rubber bands making up the space. This conduit is made of their MuMetal Spyra-Shield material which they claim provides maximum attenuation of EMI even greater than their AA cable shield material. I was wondering if these conduits could be used as a way to isolate cables without having to use the JSSG360 technique. As a conduit, I can move them around to test the contribution on different cables or take them off to reconfirm my listening tests.

 

And so I purchased a 10 foot length and made up the following:

 

 

On the Habst first - a immediate change can be heard. Darker background with a massive increase in information. So much so it was almost painful. ?

 

Actually too much, upsetting the tonal balance of the cable. Bass lines were much tighter and the perceived balance moved to favour treble too much. Attempted to adjust for this by changing the filters in HQPlayer setting and this helped quite a bit. Prior to this, I felt that the Pink Faun Streamer benefited from upsampling to 512/48 but perhaps not anymore?

 

At the end of the test, I am still adjusting for the new information coming through and not quite happy with the sound yet but it's getting better. A further improvement was seen after I grounded the conduits using a croc clip to earth.

 

One thing for sure, these Spira-Shield Conduits make a difference. A big one.

 

 

 

 

[flkin]

7 hours ago, Panelhead said:

  Does Hapst still make motors for turntables?

 

This is the Habst company run by Daniel Steinert based in Berlin. Perhaps its a different company?

 

18 hours ago, davide256 said:

@The Computer Audiophile    chris can this thread be moved to the DAC section?  A USB cable is a DAC peripheral discussion, not a network device/solution

 

Thanks for the proper repositioning.

 

19 hours ago, auricgoldfinger said:

I had been wondering about those conduits myself, so I find your report most interesting.

 

I had a similar experience to yours when I replaced the Lush with the SOtM dCBL-UF (silver wire) USB cable.  Also over the top in price but I certainly wouldn't want to switch back.

 

Ah I've been wondering about SOtM's USB cables. It's the one with the signal cleaning box right? I have their ethernet dCBL-CAT7s and iSO-CAT6 box and they work very well. 

 

Can you hear the silver in the dCBL-UF?

[flkin]

Following up from the MuMetal conduit tests, after 2 days of listening to very high amounts of details and tight bass, I tried removing the conduits to return to benchmark.

 

There's an immediate drop in perceived information and looseness to the music. It's like a comfortable sofa. Large more relaxed listening without the wow factor. Still detailed bit less tight and wider soundstage.

 

I felt that I missed the details and tightness in the sound of the conduit but it's easier listening without the conduit.

 

Question is how to have both? What can I do to get best of both worlds? Perhaps use 1/3 or 2/3s conduit lengths? Not very scientific but practically it may reduce the more extreme effect of the conduit. 

 

How is it the conduit makes such an extreme perceived difference? Is EMI  management that important for cables or is the conduit affecting the signal in the cable too?  Don Lammersfeld the engineer at Magnetic Shield Corporation informs me the conduit is most effective at low level, low frequency applications.

[flkin]

3 hours ago, lmitche said:

Flkin, do you have a split USB power, USB data cable like a lightspeed 2g? It would be interesting to put one or the other leg in the conduit to learn if the power or data leg is the most impacted.

 

Also, did you use the conduit anywhere else, like other DC cables, or Ethernet cables? Your USB cable is at one end of the chain. You may need to treat the downstream components to raise the quality at the DAC end.

 

Both the Curious and Habst has split power but joined permanently at both ends so I can’t slot the conduit on only the data leg. Yes, that would be an interesting experiment to see what differences may be caused with the data or power leg wrapped. 

 

I suppose I could cut the power from the USB cable using the USPCB connector and an adaptor. I have a couple lying around. But my DAC needs the power leg for communications to work.

 

And I’m using also using the MuMetal conduit on a Ghent JSSG Ethernet cable from router to the Pink Faun streamer and on a POE DC cable that supplies power to my router. This POE DC is of my own design that has two Lan cables rather than one (4 wires in the first Lan cable for power, the other 4 unused wires looped around using the second Lan cable). I put both cables inside the conduit like the picture below. The picture shows the DC conduit on the left side and the router conduit in the middle also. Router's at the bottom of the picture.

 

 

 

Too many variables to hear the effect of conduit on each of these places. But I will in time. My plan is to get all the conduit on and sounding great first (cant help it, too excited about the effect of the conduit). Then when I’m used to the sound, to take off one at a time and hear the difference.

 

[flkin]

An update about the sound of the MuMetal conduit over USB cable to DAC. My earlier findings of enormously improved details and tightening of bass remains. Unfortunately it comes with a recessed soundstage and less organic sound. The balance of sound moves towards being brighter but not in a harsh way. Initially impressive but for longer listening periods of say 3-5 hours, music becomes less engaging as the presentation is details with less emotion and engagement.

 

So at this time, full length MuMetal conduits over USB changes the music significantly but has downsides too. Working on partial lengths of conduit to see if I can bring back some of that engagement while keeping the details and tightness of bass.

 

That tightening of conduit bass is addictive. When playing SuperBass tracks or double bass tracks it's pretty amazing. It's something I want to keep if possible. These are the bass tracks I use as a test - for those into natural bass instruments, these are must have discs. Check out Track 3 in King of Bass - Bass, Bass, Bass, Bass, Bass & Bass by L'Orchestre de Contrebasses.

 

[flkin]

The Habst USB cable is a good one and in my system far surpasses the Lush I was using previously. The change is pretty obvious and not subtle. But I haven't compared it with other high end USB cables to date.

 

[flkin]

Just want to update briefly that I haven't spent a lot of time testing the MuMetal conduits but have cut some third lengths and short 3 inch lengths to test. 

 

I'm still unable to optimise easily a position to get a better sound with the conduits over my Habst USB. But they definitely affect the sound - in some ways amazingly better bass tightness and clear treble but loose organic feeling and reduced size of soundstage. Currently I prefer not using the MuMetal conduits.