It *cannot* just be about 1's and 0's - surely?

[esldude]

51 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

are you measuring the volume with a volt meter at the speaker terminals?

 

you mentioned a mic, but try the above

This plus 5 million.

 

Get a voltmeter and see what is happening at the speaker terminals.  What you are claiming is INcredible.  I'm not questioning your motives or honesty, just that your method of measurement isn't a very good way to check this.  For the money involved in all these cables order some okay multi-meter for cheap on Amazon ($40).  It'll be useful at other times in your audio adventures. 

 

Or maybe you know someone with a basic multi-meter that could measure the voltages. 

 

Are you laying your phone in one location and changing cables without moving the phone at all and checking this? If you are hand holding it then all bets are off.  

[esldude]

1 hour ago, Mazza said:

 

Thanks @crenca, yes you are correct. No speaker terminals. So I used a Behringer mic on tripod, REW software to measure. Test tones played off a file on server. 

 

USB cable connects to digital controller of the Kiis. This connects to the two speakers by cat 5 cable. 

 

@esldude: don’t use phone for measurements. No options for test meter etc etc because no speaker terminals

Okay, I missed where you said it was Behringer measurement mic.  And didn't realize it was the Kii speakers. 

 

I'd suggest as someone else has that you try a plain USB cable and see which version it matches up with on sound level. 

 

It wouldn't be beyond AQ to have a little circuitry to boost volume so their cable 'sounds' better.  In which case it is just about the ones and zeroes.  Would be nice if you knew someone with a recording interface that could record the digital signal coming out of the AQ cable and a plain one. 

[esldude]

5 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

There is no harmonic structure or any dynamics. The USB cable is passing DATA. The USB cable has no way of knowing what the data represents; it could be e-mail messages, video, 3-D rendering, anything! The fact that it is audio should be totally irrelevant. That's what makes this so damn puzzling. If the USB cable is changing the audio, it means it's changing the data and it can't, It's just a pair of wires in a sheath with two other wires carrying a nominal five volts. 

Except in this case George there is a big electronic box on it.  Larger than some portable DACs like the Dragonfly.  Would be easy to have some chips that provide a digital boost to the data making it 2 db louder.  So in this case maybe it isn't just two power wires and two differential data wires. 

[esldude]

2 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

It could be anything. I know what AQ says is in it; a 72v battery to "bias" the shield, but who knows? After all, as you point out, they pack a decent sounding USB DAC into a package that is about the same size as a "thumb drive" memory stick! It could easily have a circuit that acts to re-clock the digital volume by +2 dB, although I'd hate to think that they would do that. 

I'd think it is something they would do.  I'd like for someone to test it and see if that is what is going on. 

[esldude]

5 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 Mazza

 Do you have a suitable USB Female to Female adaptor that you could plug a USB memory stick into ?

 You could then save the outputs of the different USB cables and look at the checksums to see if they are still identical. 

That is not a bad idea.  However, they could be altering only the Asynch signal and not others. 

A simpler test might be to try the AQ Diamond on a printer and see if it prints. No adpapter needed. Maybe the fonts will be 2 db thicker and darker.

[esldude]

9 minutes ago, Hugo9000 said:

AQ is a company with zero integrity.

 

Take a look at this page:

 

https://www.audioquest.com/cables/digital-cables/usb-a-to-b/diamond

 

And this bit from that page:

 

First of all, it was Philips that came up with the "pure, perfect sound forever" marketing phrase, not Sony.  Second, that "attitude" that they ascribe to or blame on Sony is pure b.s., as Sony and Philips each claimed to have better-sounding CD players than the competition.  Either AudioQuest is abysmally lazy, or willfully dishonest, or both.  At any rate, before slandering another company, they had the responsibility to fact check their own claim.

 

As far as the marketing of "pure, perfect sound forever" goes, in their ad copy this was accompanied by comparisons to LP, which suffered wear with every playback.  It was marketing, with a bit of hyperbole/wishful thinking (there was no way of knowing if a CD would truly prove to be archival, but it was certainly superior to an LP for longevity/imperviousness to wear and tear through playback).

 

Here is some marketing material from Philips.  Compare what Philips claimed back in the day to AQ's dishonest representation of that era:

I also notice AQ in their USB copy saying:

All insulation between two or more conductors is also a dielectric whose properties will affect the integrity of the signal. When the dielectric is unbiased, dielectric-involvement (absorption and non-linear release of energy) causes different amounts of time delay (phase shift) for different frequencies and energy levels, which is a real problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio. The inclusion of an RF Trap (developed for AudioQuest’s Niagara Series of power products), ensures that radio frequency noise will not be induced into the signal conductors from the DBS field elements. (DBS, US Pat #s 7,126,055 & 7,872,195 B1)

 

While audio is multi-octave the transmission of data about that is irrelevant.  This is just balderdash to sound technical to those not thinking about what this means. 

[esldude]

5 minutes ago, elcorso said:

 

Less noise = more music reaching the ears / brain system?

 

I do not know if it will be an additional 2dB of loudness, I do not do these kind of measurements, but I do know the noise that the USB cables emit (to the near environment), particularly USB 3.00

 

The above regarding the Lush ^ 2 USB cable shielding.

 

Roch

I know if it will be an additional 2 db of loudness from noise reduction.  The answer is no it will not. 

 

Plus you are thinking about it wrong.  Less noise would actually measure as less signal even if it somehow sounded more clear.  The OP is saying it sounds louder, and measures louder.  That isn't from less noise. 

[esldude]

3 minutes ago, elcorso said:

 

Your brain can fool you by making it look like loudness ...

 

Not mine (now). I just feel the music more clearly now, but at the beginning I got confused too !

 

Roch

So did the Behringer measurement mic get confused?

[esldude]

Perhaps  @Mazza could remeasure with white noise or pink noise using REW and report if the values are about 2 db different with that signal.  Displaying the REW graphs would be nice too even for the tones if you kept them.  

[esldude]

8 hours ago, Solstice380 said:

 

I think @PeterSt may be onto something - frequency spectrum change and maybe room interaction - so @esldude ‘s recommendation of looking at the frequency data from REW and not just the dB level may provide clues.

I really don't think that is likely, but doing a noise or sweep measurement would show that.  For instance suppose it is a minor frequency change that just happens at 1 khz to cause a peak where the microphone is and another cable lets it run at 1.0002 khz and you get no peak.  In this case we'd have to have that also happen at 100 hz, 1khz and 2 khz.  That is unlikely. 

 

I'd think if you have a solid 2 db or near it volume change then the cable or other activity of the gear is changing bits.  You are not going to get this effect from unnoticeable dropouts or other things that have been mentioned.  

[esldude]

45 minutes ago, davide256 said:

I agree it can't change the data... but the clocking of that data seems to be the fail part of USB . I do find it interesting that Audiolinux  makes an ISO Regen reclocker not necessary on the same devices where other OS's did need its help.

This makes little sense.  A strength of USB input is the clock right next to the DAC gets used.  That clock is also freely running (the best most accurate way) without being timed to anything else.  While poor implementation could let noise across the USB effect that clock somewhat, the whole idea has been wildly  over-blown compared to issues with almost any other connection method (all of which slave a local clock to another one).  

[esldude]

1 minute ago, gmgraves said:

Nothing wrong with Behringer mikes. I have a number of them that come in-handy for vocals, choruses, spot mikes and the like. 

My comment was not to disparage the Behringer mikes.  It was about a comment that our ears get confused hearing less noise as louder.  My point being so since the mikes measured it louder did they get confused as well?

[esldude]

2 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Good question. Glad somebody thought of it. Another thing just occurred to me as well. If the AQ cable did have circuitry in it that re-clocked the digital bit stream to boot the level by 2 dB, what powers it? That 72 Volt battery? Digital circuits don't need, (nor can they abide) 72 volt power supplies. Even if they did "siphon off" a few vilts to power some digital circuitry, while the rest was shield "bias", that battery couldn't and wouldn't possibly last as long as AQ says it will (according to the "bias" theory, the battery is not actually being drained it just provides a static field on the shield (permit me to be skeptical here) and therefore will last for the shelf-life of the battery). That can't be if there is active circuitry on board. ???!!!!

They'd be using the voltages in USB which power USB DACs or extenders or any number of devices.  It is right there for that use.  No need to touch the 72 volt battery. 

[esldude]

2 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

DUH! Stupid me! Of course. The USB cable carries 5 volts. What could I have been thinking? Nothing of course! That's why I'm in this factual pickle! Thanks, esldude, for the correction. Are they gonna take my degree away from me now? They should! 

Well I see some degreed cable designers.  As long as they have a degree yours should be safe.