USB Cables

FROM USER SuperQ

Thanks for playing, you lose.

I thought this site was going to be a good place for information on digital audio gear.. But I guess it's just another idiot posting to the web about things they know nothing about.

Just to be sure I wasn't missing anything, I read the USB Audio Specification document provided by the USB standards organization.

http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs/frmts10.pdf

Section 2.2 talks about the Type 1 format used by most usb audio playback devices to reproduce PCM bitstreams (sound card mode). This is not to be confused with the Type 2 format used to transfer MPEG audio streams.

USB is a packet bus. Each portion of the audio stream read from the hard drive is encoded into a packet with a sample rate and bit format. This audio snipit is a fixed format and does not have to deal with any low level "over the wire" USB signaling. Packets are buffered on the client (DAC1, M-Audio, Bel Canto DAC3, etc) and played back in order. There is NOTHING in the spec that would allow for subtle differences in transport.

Please Please Please stop doing the computer audio world a dis-service by posting articles like this.

FROM USER SuperQ

Hi SuperQ - Thanks for the comments. I was hoping disagreements and contrary opinions on this site would be more than sophomoric quips like "thanks for playing, you lose" and "...guess it's just another idiot posting to the web about things they know nothing about.." While I do value your input to the site I would appreciate a civilized discussion that other members and readers can benefit from. I stand by my statement that I will not censor any opinions about this review.

About your technical information. Can you please state your qualifications to interpret this pdf and to make very blanket statements about it as you have done here. My information comes from some of the most respected digital audio engineers in the world and I would be very happy to discuss with them your scientific reasoning as to why you believe what you believe.

I also stand by my review 100%. I highly recommend this USB cable to everyone and encourage those who try it to post their opinion.

Also, to help the readers understand a little more about where you are coming from can you let us know a little about your preferences such as what file formats you listen to and at what bit rate and it you listen to lossless & believe bits to be bits etc... This will help us all understand where you are coming from. Thanks SuperQ.

FROM USER audioengr

USB cables CAN make a difference, depending on the USB protocol used by the converter. For instance, Synchronous adaptive mode of isochronous transport relies on the frequency of the incoming stream in most chip implementations (mostly TI chips). If you read their treatise on their difficulty in desinging this interface for audio streaming, you will understand how difficult this problem is. In any case, the two design groups Burr-Brown and TI both have implementations that work, however the audio quality that results from each is quite different due to the jitter. The buffering is minimal in most TI chips and the digital PLL locks onto the incoming stream frequency in adaptive mode. It is quite resistant to jitter in this stream, however not completly insensitive. The PLL does react differently to different USB cables.

The reason for this is similar to that on S/PDIF cables:

1) differences in dielectric absorption - insulation materials differ
2) differences in skin-effect - some USB cables are 26 gauge and some are 28-gauge
3) differences due to ferrites or lack thereof

Ferrites are a bad idea IMO and can lead one down the garden path. They are nothing more that low-pass filters that turn signal into heat. On a real-time digital transmission-line it is never a good idea to do filtering rather than impedance matching etc.. The resulting slowing of edge-rates will introduce more jitter at the receiver because of increased uncertainty in the edge detection accuracy.

Just because one listener likes the cable does not mean that it is doing a positive thing. There are lots of tube systems that listeners like because they roll-off all the highs. This does not make them more accurate. There are even forms of jitter that seem to be euphonic, but that does not make them better. Lower jitter is best in my book, and in my system.

Steve N. Principal Engineer
Empirical Audio

FROM USER audioengr

Steve,

Actually no one uses SYNC mode it never really worked, that was let say USB's answer to SPDIF. That is why they instituted Adapative and ASYNC modes.

Remember the controller is lot locking onto the stream. Instead it locks onto the reception of the SOF (Start of Frame) packet. The SOF packet is a little misleading it is a control packet that you can specify for any 1ms period from 1-255. In audio and in most cases the this happens every 1ms. All of the TI controllers have both an SOF detector and a MSOF detector. The Missed SOF (MSOF) indicator happens if the controller misses an SOF frame. This keeps the part in balance.

Remember gang there is no clock associated with the data on a USB cable so there is no jitter in the USB interface. There is however "intrinsic" jitter that resides in the USB receiver chip, dac and digital filters. In the USB receiver chip there are two main places for jitter. The first is the derived clocks from the SOF frame. Since this clock changes every 1ms or so the output clock is always changing (Except in ASYNC mode). The second place is the source clock that feeds the derived clock. This is created by a PLL and is always some multiple of 12mhz the USB clock. But it is really hard to derive like 11.2896MHZ from a 12MHZ clock no matter how you do it.

Ok so why do cables make a difference.... Let's look at how they are made:

data there are 2 wires that are compose the data that are usually 26-28ga. These are made to run up to 480mhz in a twisted pair. They are also shielded and that shield ground goes to the earth ground of the cable.

power & ground are 2 wires usually 18-20ga that carry 5Vdc up too 500ma and ground. These two are also shielded and that is drained to earth ground.

Overall the cable is then shielded again with both bare ends of the connector tied to earth ground on each end.

~~~~~~

Here is how I test cables:

Computer ====== USB UUT =====>USB Analyzer===>TI TAS1020B DEV Board & Emulator

I usually get a 5M cable for testing. I can set the Unit Under TEST between my USB Analyzer and the TI DEV board. In my code for the TAS1020B I have error counting enabled and therefore I can set the computer up to send say a Sine wave at 1KHz. Then see the errors via the USB Analyzer and the TI DEV board. I can run the test between 44.1 and 96k at 24 bits and get an idea of how the cable preforms. At 44.1 there is basically 264.6 bytes transfered every 1ms. Actually it does something like 9 packets at 264 and one packet at 270. This happens either on the MAC or the PC. At 96k it does 576 bytes ever 1ms.

By using the longest cable you can better see how it would work at shorter distances. This would not be normally true of network cables as distance can screw with results. But with USB this is pretty easy because the cable distance is only a max of 5m.

The geometry of the data section of the cable can make or break audio. MSOF's that happen will throw off the calculations for the derived clock. Also errors in packet data can happen.

The shielding adds capacitence which can slow down the waveform. The eye patteren (data+ and data- shown on an oscilloscope) can also show how well a cable preforms.

I have not talked to Ray about his use of Ferrites on the cable but as we can conclude all pc's have switching power supplies and the ferrites on both ends will repel high frequency radiation from entering the receiving endpoint (dac in this case).

It was shown by Guido Tent that the use of Ferrites in digital audio was a good thing. Guido worked for years in the Phillps R&D to determine ways of reducing jitter and noise in digital & video systems. Guido likes to use ferrites between components to reduce jitter and noise in regulated systems. You can read some of Guido's work on his website at TentLabs.com.

Steve you sell a tube dac. I know this is not your design but you heavily modify it. Did you choose it because if rolls off the highs? No I am sure you chose this dac as the bassis of your modification because of it's price preformance.

Tubes don't roll off any more than solid state does. I use tubes because it requires less devices between the input and the output. At CES we won Best Standout Demo from Sound Stage. We had only 4 active devices between the dac chip and the speakers. Three of them were directly heated triodes, one indirectly heated triode.

I mean dacs in general only go out to 45kHz (for 96k sampling). It's a piece of cake to get tubes to go out past that. They Royal preamplifier I have is basically a Crimson but as a preamp and it goes out to 110KHz at -1dB.

Anyways totally off the subject but in general doing this with solid state requires tons more active components and my feeling is that some of the music is lost every time you go through one.

Thanks
Gordon

Gordon & Steve - Thanks very much for your input here. The readers of Computer Audiophile will benefit greatly from this information.

so
any idea when the first 1000 dollar usb cable 3 feet will be on the market ?
;)
Kyrill

PS very informative and glad i get to know this site :D

Yes I actually do have an idea when such a cable will be released. I'll leave it at that for now :-)

Thanks for participating on the site!

Do (FireWire) cables between your storage and your computer make (as) much of a difference as USB cables between your computer and your DAC? If so, does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks,

Bill

Cables between your computer and storage device don't effect the sound in the traditional sense because I believe the data is transferred via block mode. A a hard drive whether external or internal is treated the same i.e. firewire cable, usb cable, sata cable, scsi cable, etc...

If these cables do effect the sound it would be because the cable was not up to spec and data was lost on the way to the computer.

Transferring audio via USB is a bit different.

I'm not sure what you mean, but I'll take your word for it. (Ah, one less thing to worry about: That works for me)

;-)

Bill

Hi all. My first post. USB Waveterminal U24 to upgraded EAD Theatermaster Ovation Plus to Dared 300b monos to KEF 104/2's.

Does Kimber have a chunky USB end version available?

Also I've read that some prefer another to the Kimber:

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?cabldgtl&1225405384&/Poiema-Usb-M...

I'm ready to buy a Kimber, so let me know if you know of a B connector version, which I can't seem to find.

I am 99.99% positive you can get a Kimber USB cable with any termination on the end. If you can't find one online email Kimber directly. There are very nice people at Kimber!

http://www.audioconnect.com/html/kimber_usb_cable.html

You can select which termination you'd like.

Kimber does offer this USB cable with a B type connector- I have one that I ordered from my local Kimber dealer. If you want to buy online:

http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=KKUSBB

I like this cable and I concur with Chris' review of this cable.

Blake

jumped on the kimber as it was the last one on stock.. type b connector. i can't be happier :D.

sound is quite clear.. i haven't heard this kind of sound in any of my s/pdif cables.

thank you Chris !

ok.. so i decided to try an experiment. the stock usb cable that came with my dac had a ferrite bead. i had some guys take out the hard plastic and break the ferrite ring around the cable. hooked it up and found it better sounding than the kimber...

so..

i got my cutter.. cut off the rubber covering the ferrite bead on the kimber and broke the 2 ferrite beads..

sounds the most open i have ever heard my system.. and this is, well, to me quite a challenged system.

short story:

i cut off the ferrite rings and it sounds much better :). i think even beats my small collection of s/pdif cables on the same dac running spdif in.

Reading through this I've seen technical statement and then a equally compelling counter tech statement.

At the end of the day this means only one thing.

Just simply go with what sounds best to you!

There is no scientific evidence or DB studies that prove that a $30 Blue Jeans interconnect is inferior to one priced at $500 and above.

However if you are convinced by the marketing, you can buy the best interconnect cable in the world for less than $1 a foot and add whatever connectors you desire.

Power cord/speaker
http://cgi.ebay.com/25-Ft-Mil-Spec-12-AWG-Silver-Coated-Wire-Red-Teflon_...

interconnects

Lots of good information here! thank you.

I have not heard the Kimber USB so i can not comment on its performance. however i have been gifted with a WireWorld USB (5meter) and like it very much. I've found that it delivers better than the "storebrand" USB I had previously used, especially concerning continuous data streams. besides that I've been told it's flat design (not twisted) improves data transfer. to me it's all 1's and 0's but I know a producer and engineer in a well-known Miami studio who swear by it. but they're ridiculous perfectionists and the least noticeable detail gets them in a freakin frenzy.

i have not found any reviews for Wireworld's USB? are there any comparisons available? i'd be interested to know.

viva la musica.

I have been using the Wireworld USB (2 m) and sounds much better than standard cables. They claim 7 m for USB 2.0 transfer rates, specs are 5 m. This may be a stupid idea but it would be interesting to see the maximum length of cable that is able to handle the USB 2.0 transfer rate and correlate that to how good it sounds. A way to determine the ability to transfer discrete information.

I love how conspiracy people jump in and call people stupid, and get egg all over their face!

If you haven't done A/B testing, or better yet, blind A/B testing, then you absolutely don't know what you are talking about. I don't care what author or scientist or engineer or company you quote, trust your ears, in a BLIND A/B test. Buy your buddy a six pack and have him swap cables and or other components while you are not looking and listen to the same 30 seconds of the same track, over and over and decide what sounds best in YOUR system.

I love Chris's quote in another post from Einstein: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

This is a really appropriate statement here. I will say again, that I don't believe that we can measure everything we hear at this point, or we are not sure which measurements affect each sounds we hear.

I tested the $50 Kimber USB cable this weekend, and it is very easily the quickest and cheapest improvement to my system I have done. The difference between the Kimber cable and a standard Sony cable, was very apparent. Not nuances, not small, but HUGE!.

OK, non-believers, flame away......

Re: Kimber vs. Wireworld -- here's what I wrote to the Cable Co.

I got the chance to test the Wireworld Ultraviolet 5 squared and the Kimber Kable USB side-by-side (with a computer kit consisting of Audioengine A5s on Auralex stands, connected by Kimber Kable 8PRs and plugged into a Cambridge Audio DacMagic via a Chord Company iChord 2M, all to a newish MacBook), and I have to say the latter is better -- but not by so much. The Wireworld presented a slightly more coherent and balanced soundstage, and made the Kimber Kable sound a little muted by comparison. Other highlights:

1) The Wireworld chord did better with John Coltrane's sax in the Miles Davis song "So What" -- felt more foregrounded, full.
2) The Kimber Kable chord handled the shifting imaging of the cymbal in the same song slightly better.
3) In "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai, the Wireworld handled the bass intro better -- it felt a little sizzly on the top -- and brought out the synth as an equal instrument. Movingly dynamic.
4) The Kimber Kable did reveal more of the mid-bass in the Erykah Badu song "Honey."
5) The Wireworld filled out the upper end of the vocals on John Legend's "Ordinary People."
6) In "Extrapolation" by John McLaughlin, the Wireworld didn't emphasize the drums as much as the Kimber Kable did.

Especially given that the price of the two is about the same, I would recommend the Wireworld over the Kimber Kable.

Thanks for your informative comments on the state of the USB cable. I just ordered my Kimber USB and am quite exited about it. I have one quick question for you Chris: What app or program do you use to rip your music to the AIFF format? I've been able to rip music files using CIRLINCA, however, the app doesn't recognize or deal with AIFF files, only FLAC. Any advice?

Thanks in advance and thanks for keeping us informed.

Hi Renerator - Welcome to Computer Audiophile. On Windows I use dBpoweramp and on Mac OS X I use iTunes to rip AIFF.

Any one that can not hear a difference in usb cables has a hearing problem. Just like the bits is bits argument over spdif, usb cables do sound dirfferent. I have tried an assortment of cables that I have collected over the years from various usb equipment. Each one sounds different. I havn't tried the Kimber usb yet, However Has any one tried the new Wire World USB. It would be of some interest to try both. by the way an above $1000 usb cable is already out there from Polestar.
Any one using the Cayin Dac 1, Change out the tubes. i SWAPED OUT the EH 6n's for NOS cryo Anode 6n1p-Ev What a difference.

Rebuttal ... Any one that can hear a difference in usb cables has a ear/brain interpretation problem (see arguments over is A/B testing is valid). Just like the bits is bits argument over spdif, usb cables do not sound dirfferent. I have tried an assortment of cables that I have collected over the years from various usb equipment. Each one sounds the same. I havn't tried the Kimber usb yet, However Has any one tried the new Wire World USB. It would be of some interest to try both. by the way an above $1000 usb cable is already out there (right OUT there!! perhaps) from Polestar.

Sorry but your comments add nothing to a sensible discussion except for a "There's a difference" ... "Oh no there isn't" ... "Oh yes there is" kind of argument. What are the differences you hear ... just because a company is selling a $1000 cable, doesn't mean it has to sound good. I'm actually in the open mind camp - I've never heard a difference but listen to both sides of the argument and both have merit and logic.

I guess this could be just counted as a troll ... but them the Three Billy Goats Gruff was always a favorite story of mine.
Eloise

Hey doc. I very interested in your comment about swapping out the tube in your DAC. I have a Music Hall DAC 25.2. I've been told that swapping the stock tube out will make an awesome improvement. Any advice on how to make the proper match for my DAC? Thanks in advance.

Actually i am not a tube expert just have found some tubes sound better(different than others} I have not heard your dac. I have found that most manufacturers use EH tubes for cost and supply reasons. I have never met an EH tube that i liked. Let me know what tubes are in your dac and I will try to suggest something. Tubes like cables are a very personal choice and will sound different in different systems.

In the dac's manual it identifies the tube as a 1 x 6922 Electro-Harmonics. You called it correctly! My dac uses 1 tube. It's been suggested that I use a NOS 6DJ8 tube. I googled this spec and found that many are of this spec. Very confusing for someone like myself who is just stepping into the deep waters of computer audiophelia. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Amperex Bugle Boy ECC88 6DJ8 tube with halo getter works great in the Music Hall D25.2.

FYI--the "Polestar" is my $249 USB cable, the "over $1000" model is called the Nucleus.

Peace,

Lee

Renerator,

Is that a Min Pin?

He most certainly is.

I trialled the brown Kimber USB; nice improvement over the 2 'generic' cables I had lying around (one bought from an Apple Store).

But I took a punt and had the Wireworld Ultraviolet cable shipped to me as it wasn't available in the shops here to enable a trial. I've had it for 2 weeks since. This cable is even better than the Kimber.

With the Kimber, USB playback was 15% shy of my CD playback quality. With the WW, USB playback is maybe only 5-10% shy of my CD playback SQ.

The generic cables were 25% shy of my CD playback. In fact I was really disappointed with my Mac/itunes/Benchmark playback until I found solace in a 'quality' USB cable.
An analogy: WWorld USB vs generic USB, a bit like comparing 96 mp3 to 256 mp3..... In my system, the cable differences are night and day.

BTW, I prefer USB over optical. In my system, Mac optical output, um, 'sounds digital'.

(I use Miles Davis' ESP, John Lee Hooker Serve You Right to Suffer, Paul Anka Rock Swings, QOTSA Songs For the Deaf and NIN Year Zero and NIN/JA sampler for test tracks. AIFF when ripped from CD.)

Eloise,
I was going to let your terse rewrite of my comment pass. However it started to bother me. If you can not hear an improvement in sound with different cables good for you. Maybe you are lucky, as you do not have to "waste" hard earned money on our sometimes rediculous hobby. However, I and many others do hear a difference, that we feel is an improvement of the enjoyment of our music listening experience.
Yesteday I purchased and installed the Wire World Ultraviolet USB cable. To my ear it took my computer sound system almost up to my CD sound. in my system. It is my goal to have computer based sound as similar to CD sound as possible, and have both as enjoyable as those black plastic discs( Analogue).
If you can not hear a difference why are you reading this thread anyway.
setup- Cary SLP 3 pre, Vas Citation II amp, Sa Ranger speakers, Hp pc laptop running vista 64, and various different cables

To Got Tinnitus,

Me too what a nusance.
However I enjoyed your comparison of the Kimber brown vs Wire Worls Ultaviolet. Now I do not have to try the Kimber and can be happy in the fact that I made the right choice. i was waffling between the two. I live very close to Wire World so my local dealer picked one up for me. I also found the Improvement amazing. about 10% less than my cd rig sound. Happy listening :)

My main problem with your post was you started it out "anyone who can't hear a different has a hearing problem" (sorry if quoted incorrectly but that was the jist. Many people feel quite the opposite and neither camp will ever agree.

Eloise

Some hear the music, others hear the system.
I hear both but knowing my system could improve with a $1000 USB cable just makes me cold. Cables are not THAT important.
Keep it real.....
J

here is where I unsubscribe to this thread.....

I read the posts about how a phase locked loop might react differently to different cables. Can someone explain how this produces uncorrectable errors? I would like to know how the data in the buffer on the PC side of the usb differs from the data in the DACs buffer and why error correction is ineffective. The reason I'm asking this is that if the data is identical then the discussion is reduced to timing issues.

Later there is a post that states the the jitter is intrinsic to the DAC. If the data has the sample rate encoded in it and it is in a buffer, how can the intrinsic jitter from the usb bus and SOF packet effect the production of the analog signal. Why can't the DAC use its own clock? I'm not understanding how a usb cable can have any affect at all on the analog produced by a DAC with its own power and clock. There was a post that explains how some cables are constructed but nothing about how this creates differences in data. Only that there can be occasional packet loss.

I guess my question is this:

If you have digital data and sample rate information in a buffer on the device and it is identical to what was transmited why does the medium through which it was transmitted matter?

What am I missing?

The best place for all of this sort of stuff is from the people who decide what's actually needed to ensure the data travels safely. Those people are the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). If you go to the Documents Section you can download the Universal Serial Bus Revision 2.0 specification and also the upcoming Universal Serial Bus Revision 3.0 Specification if you feel like getting the gen on the new stuff!

Once downloaded and unzipped the document you need, for USB2, is usb_20.pdf. Chapter 6 - Mechanical will tell you more about USB cable construction than you thought you needed to know! For USB 3 it is Chapter 5 - Mechanical in USB 3 0 (11132008)-final.pdf

The answer to your question of course is that it matters in so far as achieving identical data at both ends requires a minimum standard of cable and connector construction. (This is going to become more of an issue once we all start using machines with USB 3 connectors in them because the construction and quality standards are much stricter than for USB 2. Due mainly to the need to provide backwards compatability).

Arguing that, once the data has arrived safely, the medium through which it was transmitted becomes irrelevant is a little too philosophical for me!

The documents I referred to above do make very interesting reading, if this sort of thing floats your boat!

Have fun!

Thanks for the info! I noticed that USB 3.0 cards have begun to emerge.

I read through the USB 2.0 one earlier today and I'm particularly interested in USB audio. I stumbled upon this website while I was looking for info about USB DACs for the PC based system I've decided to build, and I found more questions than answers. I've never used a USB DAC before, but from a data standpoint my impression is that USB is reliable. For instance I copied several terabytes from a NAS earlier this week.

Bob>>"Arguing that, once the data has arrived safely, the medium through which it was transmitted becomes irrelevant is a little too philosophical for me! "

But this is my core question, and what makes me uneasy about spending money on cables. If the data is identical and the buffer contains all the information needed to reproduce the sound how can it possibly matter how it was transmited? This is what I don't understand.

This link has a little info as well. Gordon Rankin is the guy to talk to about this topic in my opinion.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Best-USB-cable-use-between-com...

On the subject of expensive USB cables, I recently talked to a dealer who carries both Synergistic and Wireworld. He said he was doing a shootout "with various USB DACs" (I think the Music Hall tube DAC was one he mentioned) and in that USB cable shootout, both the Starlight 6 (Wireworld) and the Tricon (Synergistic) were compared to off the shelf cables. Apparently, the progression in performance was pretty linear -- the Starlight 6 "blew away" the stock cable ... and the Tricon "blew away" the Starlight. Translating from audiophile-ese, I was able to gather that there was a non-subtle performance gain. ;-) Not sure if anyone has heard of this cable or much less heard it, but for comparisons sake, the Tricon pricing is roughly 5x that of the Starlight 6. Ouch!

Anyway, I'm considering getting both cables on demo to run into a (planned purchase of an) Ayre QB-9 to see if I can hear any difference at all. I confess, I'm dubious.

I plan on buying a QB-9 as well. In the next couple of weeks anyway. I also went ahead and ordered a kimber usb cable to play around with, but my reservations about expensive usb cables remain. I read the other thread about stream vs block devices, but that really just boils down to a bandwidth issue. You shouldn't need a 400 dollar cable to keep the buffer full. This rolls back into my first question. If I have a full buffer why does what is happening on the usb bus matter.

I have some cheapo usb cable I'll do a blind AB test with the kimber when I get everything set up. To satisfy myself I need to be able to identify through listening only which cable is which. If I cannot do that then it doesn't make much sense to go on and declare a preference.

From my initial work with various USB cables, it seems abundantly clear, obvious and apparent even to casual listeners who stop by, that the choice of cable, and its length, makes a huge difference in sound quality.

Now, to avoid the variable of listening across brands, or even across different technologies within the same brand, I concentrated on the Wireworld Starlight 6 USB cables. These are relatively inexpensive, $100 for 1 meter, $120 for 2 meters, and were used with the Lavry DA 11 DAC, driving Rokit 8 KRK powered studio monitors via a reference pair of Audioquest RCA cables.

The 2 meter cable produced clear, detailed sound, and was radically superior to random OEM computer-type USB cables pulled out of the cable box. So, off to a good start: the $120 cable made a noticeable, positve improvement in musical quality.

That cabling matters "even" for digital "bits" should come as no surpise, in that digital signals are highly complex waveforms in terms of their spectral characteristics, and thus cabling is even more critically important for transmitting them reliably compared to relatively docile analog. Sure, their shape looks simpler, but that's not how the cable sees it. Nature abhors a square wave.

Thinking that digital and analog are completely different at the signal level is somewhat misleading, in the sense that both signal formats are voltage versus time; the difference is in their higher-level "interpretation" within the playback chain, which is a separate issue from point to point transmission.

Anyway, it occured to me, why not try the less-expensive, $100 cable of the same type? Perhaps it will sound differently? Within the first few seconds of playback it was apparent that it sounded considerably better than the 2 meter cable, which itself was hugely better than a regular OEM part.

When something that's cheaper sounds better, this is a step in the right direction! Although the differences were apparent in several areas, such as sound stage width and depth, the overall naturalness and ease of listening was considerably improved with the shorter length. The longer cable sounded somewhat edgy, tighter, constrained, compared to the shorter one.

Even shorter runs, 0.5 and 0.2 meters, are on order, perhaps costing even less, and it will be interesting to see how they compare.

While I certainly agree that cabling should not be used as a tone control, or to otherwise cover up specific issues elsewhere in a system, it's clear that even relatively inexpensive non-OEM USB cables can have a highly positive effect on the sound.

Next up, how do these USB cables compare with high-quality, glass (not plastic) fiber TOSLINK?

http://www.wireworldcable.com/products/75.html

So, if I understand you correctly, you tried a pair of Wireworld Starlight 6 cables -- the only difference being length -- and your conclusion is that the shorter run sounded better. Is that correct?

Have you/could you try the Ultraviolot as well? ;-)

Yes, that's exactly correct. The cables are identical except for length.

Subsequent discussions with their designer, David Salz, confirmed that this is exactly what he expects and hears as well. It will be interesting to hear how even shorter lengths sound. You may recall from the TAS interview with David recently that he has actually soldered preamps and amps together, to elminate the cabling entirely. This is his design model: make the cable disappear.

I don't have the Ultraviolets on hand, but my guess would be that the same observations would obtain, namely that shorter sounds better.

I tried various stock USB cables, one from Transparent Cable and one from aqvox (a german company www.aqvox.com). I prefer the Transparent. This was a recommendation of the german distributor. Have not tried the kimber. Dont make your final choice after you have at least 200 hours on the ayre!

Claudius

thanks for conducting the test and posting the results. Can I assume that the equipment was already warm prior to conducting the test? My vp is a big fan of shorter cables for all aspects of playback. I use to discount this, but I have recently changed my mind and I'm on board with this approach.

Regards

Jesus R
www.sonore.us

When I did my tests of several USB cables of different length (from 22" to several feet), quality and construction for purely doing what they were designed for, transferring data, they all performed/benchmarked pretty much the same.

Since then I just use which cable looks the nicest.