Custom USB A to B Help.

The Furutech GT2 series is what I use, and it's a great value.  

Ah, I was sort of thinking you meant that.

To make a good USB cable, you want to isolate the 2 power wires from the 2 data wires.  The data wires have to be a twisted pair, the power wires do not, they can lay side by side.  Companies like Locus Design (which arguably invented the super-isolated USB cable and made a good living doing it) put the power lines and data lines into separate shielded, dampened cables.  Of course, you can just braid 4 wires together, put the USB ends on, and be done with it.

However, to try to conform to the spec as much as possible, the data lines are supposed to be 24-28awg and the power lines can be 20-24awg (correct me if I'm wrong anyone, I think that's pretty close, from memory).  The metal shell of the USB plugs on each end needs to be connected, usually by a braided metal shield that you solder onto each plug's outer shell somewhere.  

There are many ways to build a correct USB cable...have fun with it.

You need a big enough sleeve to go over the cable, one that expands a lot.  Flexo Noise Reduction Sleeve might work.  Then you need glue to secure it and heatshrink to cover your work.  

Dude, it's not worth it to build your own USB cable.  They're built to a pretty strict specification, and I doubt you'd be able to meet that by making it yourself...not to mention it's utterly impossible for "high-end" USB cables to make a difference.  Even the guys who actually made the USB spec say this...

It's up to you though, but I wouldn't go crazy with what you build it out of.  Honestly if you want something that simply looks nicer, just throw a cool looking sleeve over top of a cable you already have.

I really doubt that when USB cables were designed, that streaming audio was their goal.  USB signals for audio are not sent in blocks and are not error proof, while they are made of ones and zeros they're subject to losses and timing errors and other digital nastiness.  I do believe in Locus Design's philosophy of separating the power wires from the data wires, there's no benefit to them being close together other than to make the cable smaller.  You can adhere to USB 2.0 spec while still having some creative license to experiment.  That said, they are not the most important part of the audio system or the most important cable, to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by scootermafia 

I really doubt that when USB cables were designed, that streaming audio was their goal.  USB signals for audio are not sent in blocks and are not error proof, while they are made of ones and zeros they're subject to losses and timing errors and other digital nastiness.  I do believe in Locus Design's philosophy of separating the power wires from the data wires, there's no benefit to them being close together other than to make the cable smaller.  You can adhere to USB 2.0 spec while still having some creative license to experiment.  That said, they are not the most important part of the audio system or the most important cable, to me.

Well, granted that may be the case, an amateur with no knowledge making USB cables specifically is far more likely to build a broken USB cable than one that works properly.  In real-world use, a short USB cable's error rate is miniscule.  Far, far lower than what can be heard or even measured without extremely specialized equipment.

The way a USB cable transfers data is far more complicated than how an analog cable transfers data - instead of being an A-B thing, it's more of a "get from point A to point B in such a way that the receiver can actually read it or you won't get any sound at all" sort of a thing.  After all, there is a reason why USB cables can only be so long before the spec doesn't support them anymore.  But at distances of a few feet, data loss is insignificant.

Has anyone seen a reasonably priced source for custom (non-standard configuration) USB cables?

Searching a bit has yielded only one source at $50 (which may be reasonable considering it is a one off part).

It looks like they take two molded cables and then join them in the middle with a splice.