USB cables size matters

[danadam]

On 10/31/2023 at 10:10 AM, Currawong said:

Passion for Sound just did

Just? That's from 2 years ago.

[danadam]

17 hours ago, Archimago said:

Note that with ADC and DACs there is temporal drift which needs to be accounted for. I don't think he accounted for this and that's likely the leakage he's seeing from the simple inversion he's doing.

 

He should really put the samples through DeltaWave to actually see the correlation null when corrected.

Yes, already mentioned in the comments 😀

[fas42]

IME, and even with DeltaWave on the scene, it's no easy feat to point to where in the waveform the gremlins lie - trivially easy to create a difference file, which shows "something" ... but how relevant is it to what the highly subjective listening mind is picking up? A lot of work would have to go into picking exactly the right source material to highlight the meaningful differences ... and what has been achieved by this effort?! Almost nothing ... because you now have to work out why the difference occurred, and engineer a robust, long term solution ...

[chrisc]

My mains supply comes from a solar-powered inverter.  This was installed 6 years ago.  Precise 230VAC at 50Hz

 

Since then, changing (most) cables has made very little difference, especially USB (HDD to DDC) and AES (DDC ro DAC).  The AES cable has 110ohm impedance

 

Some speaker cables altered the sound signature,  The best ones were not a particular brand, but 4mm diameter cables having 150 strands

[Kimo]

Struck up discussions with a few high end dac designers, who shall remain nameless.  Didn't seem like make, model, or length concerned them much with their designs, provided the cable wasn't too long.  2m seemed to be around the max.

 

In line filters weren't dismissed, but deemed generally unnecessary, provided the source was of good quality.  Especially the power supply.

 

Outboard convertors were generally dismissed as lower quality than what was already on tap, with one exception.

 

So I guess that size does matter, but only if it gets too long.

[fas42]

The whole business of getting best sound from a playback chain is about eliminating all the weak links. If the length of a cable matters then, you have found a weak link. You can play around for years, decades, to try and find the "best length" ... but you haven't solved anything ... really.

 

The best playback rig is the one where you can put in the most expensive, and cheapest, connecting cable that's needed to make the system work, of any length. And it makes no difference whatsoever to the SQ - which always remains excellent. Because, this says that the engineering where it counts is good enough ...