The discovery thread.! NEW Jant71's take on the new ATH-CLR100 Pg 618.. Zero Audio Carbo Basso PG... - Page 372

Well, I might look into getting this cable, I'm still waiting for my ELE but I went to the local electronics shop the other day and ended up picking a cheap $2 cable. It's 0.8m, it's shielded, it also has 24-gauge AWG conductors and kinda makes me think what more the Pangea cable can offer? Seems kinda impractical to get a $30 cable to use with a $18 DAC, especially a short cable (this does sound weird when I say it while I have a $50 4-centimeter interconnect cable on my portable rig LOL)

I wanted my observations to match what you are saying when I decided to try my printer cable with my DAC.  They didn't.  I don't have dumb ears.  It was obvious by observation that the two A to B USB cables that I have present SQ differences when replaced by each other, keeping everything else constant (Ceteris Paribus).

 

Dsnuts said that with the generic cable, his setup had lower volume than with the Pangea cable.  What reason should I have not to believe him?

Edited by Alberto01 - 12/12/12 at 2:14pm

http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/USB_cable.htm

http://marlene-d.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html
 

Two interesting articles on the USB cable debate with some actual empirical test results.

One thing that you can do is test your 24 AWG shielded USB cable against other generic cables to see how it sounds.  That is how I found out that my DAC's cable would get beat by the Pangea.  My generic printer cable beat it by a noticeable margin.  That gives me a reason to expect the Pangea to be an upgrade over my DAC's cable.  So, test it against other cables and let us know how it goes.

Hm surprising about the cable. Simply doesn't make sense that there should be an audible difference. Oh man I hate spending money lol.

I used to sell the things and I still told people expensive cables were scams for the most part lol

 

That has been said not only about digital cables, but also about analog cables.  Each of my analogue cables (RCA and 3.5mm connections) has its own sound profile.  Some of them when compared side by side, sound quite similar and I could take someone telling me that there are no differences in SQ between them.  But, others just sound different enough that I would have to lie to myself if I said that it is possible that they sound the same, just to keep someone else happy.  I just tested two digital cables and found out that there are differences in SQ, just like they happen with analogue cables.
 

 

The data is transmitted in ones and zeroes with CRC, and flipping one of the bits may mean very little (say it's just the least significant digit) or a lot (the most significant digit, it gets even worse with float point numbers).  The DAC may decide to check the CRC and drop entire packets that are corrupt, or it could happily carry on with these random flipped bits and / or missing packets, and these errors *may* be audible, but it doesn't seem like 'less volume' would be one of them.   At 44.1khz there are 44100 such packets per second, if errors are being introduced that randomly flipped the bits you would be more likely to hear variations in tone rather than uniform loudness change.  You don't need mythical listening tests for this - you can literally construct a device to test the reliability the same way I could test packet losses across ethernet networks.  If you are buying a cable and some manufacturer claims to have the best cable on the market I would expect them to show you some empirical evidence, not buzz words and a diagram of the expensive materials it contains.

 

An equally valid explanation for the differences you hear is that you simply have a pair of really ****ty usb cable to start with.  Put it this way, you could probably find some $200 cables that perform 'better' compared to your printer cable, that doesn't mean it can perform better than another pair of $20 ones.  At some point it's not even about diminishing returns, there's no difference and you're just paying for the marketing - see Monster cables.  Ask someone else to swap the cable behind your back and do some blind testing - that's the only way to reliably way of doing listening tests.

 

I don't want to derail the thread any further about this, we've got an entire forum with past threads dedicated to this discussion.  As long as people are happy with their investment then it really doesn't matter if it's placebo or not. 

Edited by macbug - 12/12/12 at 3:24pm

I wanted to do the blind test before writing this post:

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/586909/the-discovery-thread-new-ericp10-take-tdk-dual-dynamic-ie800-pg-354-ele-hi-fi-usb-18-dac-pg-328/5550#post_8948480

 

I just did not have anybody around that was interested/involved enough in the subject to do the cable swapping and related moves to be able to perform the test.

 

 

This is where I became interested in testing a different USB cable in my DAC.

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/586909/the-discovery-thread-new-ericp10-take-tdk-dual-dynamic-ie800-pg-354-ele-hi-fi-usb-18-dac-pg-328/4860#post_8880133

 

 

Here is a victim of the supposed placebo effect to the extreme:

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/602228/comparisons-between-usb-cables-what-have-you-tried-and-in-what-systems#post_8253762

 

The effect was so great that he/she did not even bother to do some A/B tests as he/she would always do.  Other posts just like this one made me realize that there were differences.  The vast majority of people who make an appreciable investment in a cable will tell it quickly if the difference in SQ are not proportional to the price paid.  Technicians who say that people will find a difference because that is what people want to hear because they paid good money for a cable, do not know beans about psychology.  The higher the difference in price, the quicker most people will say that the new cable sounds the same or close to the same as their cheap cable.  Knowing that, I went ahead and did my own test.  And I am glad I did, because I have a better cable now (the cheap one, by the way).  That is an unexpected upgrade while I get the Pangea.  Rest assured that I will post the results with the Pangea when I get it, whether it sounds better or not than my current cable.

 

We would not have USB cables without technicians, like macbug.  I respect that.  We would not have better USB cables without good observers.  I respect that, too.  So, instead of getting mad with the "because of the ones and zeros all sound the same" argument, I am looking forward to find a technician that would acknowledge what the observers are hearing.  My printer cable and my solidly built DAC cable do not sound the same.  I just observed that and I will not be mad at anybody for not believing me.  I am past at getting mad for stuff like that.  Way past.

Edited by Alberto01 - 12/12/12 at 6:34pm

I disagree about the psychology bit, but if you hear a difference then you hear a difference. We can take this to

 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/554008/dont-get-why-audiophile-usb-cable-would-improve-sound-quality

 

or other similar threads. 

Got my EL-D01 today.  Open the package, the item is blue.  I check the auction I closed, it clearly states black in the description and says you get what is pictured (4 pictures of a black DAC).  Ok, I can live with blue who cares.  I turn it over, big scratch across an entire corner.  Whatever, I bought it for it's function not it's looks.  Plug it in.  Left comes out of right, right comes out of left.  I contact the seller, slightly annoyed, and explain all of the problems.  They told me they would send a new one (no confirmation of shipment yet) so we'll see.  In the meantime I've had to make an IC specifically for this DAC with goofy footed connections.  Now that it's playing and I'm not thinking about the fact that I waited 3 weeks to get frustrated, had to build a new cable, and had to wear my headphones backwards to demo it until I could build the cable at home, I like the sound.  Very clean, nice sound.  If it's better than audio creation mode on my x-fi titanium it's not by much, but it's definitely better than my phone.  Happy to have something I can carry, connect to anything and have great sound.  Especially look forward to having a phone with OTG usb support in Feb.

Isn't that the PCM2704 family of DACs inside?  These have a headphone amp built in, with one version having volume up, down, and mute.  Another version has these plus play/pause, stop, previous track, and next track inputs to signal the player. 

 

I agree that these little Fort units look nice.  Is their increased price (anyone find them for <$40?) worth it for the nice case and the knob over the $18 DACs we're excited about here?  Any test results for how they sound?

 

Thanks!

Has anyone had any experience with Awei IEMs? They provide frequency response graphs for all of their IEMs, which I found odd for a company that sells them for >$10. According to my untrained eyes, the ES-100 and ES-300 look the best, FR-wise. Can anyone more apt at interpreting these things give them a peek and report their findings? Thanks.