A new cable is simply not worth the money. It will have either no impact on the sound, or virtually no impact on the sound. Neither of which are worth the money.   Spend the money on music, another headphone, concerts. Or, if you absolutely want to improve the sound quality of the music you...

Out of curiosity, which albums were only lossy download? I havent heard of that yet.   On topic: Calling 256 kbps 1/4 of the quality of lossless is absurd. As is calling lossy 'dumbing down.' Mp3/AAC offers identical sound quality for much liss storage space (both in your computer and in...

Depends what you are coming from. If you have nothing but 96 or 128 its probably worth it but there is also no guarantee that iTunes will match all of your songs.   I use it for the portability with my iPhone, but I upgraded a few tracks (and downgraded some that were 320).

They will both work just as well as the stock cable.

What are you using to ensure level matching when switching between the different components?

TooManyCrabs, you misunderstood my analogy but I feel no need to belabor so the point so I will leave it at that.   The timing issue that you are talking about assume that the ones and zero are being incorrectly converted into an analog signal because of supposed 'speed and timing'...

Quote:   'Better' how?   Your more accurate time theory would be more interesting if it made any sense. More accurate how? 1 and 0s dont make it in time? This is pretty well understood science. USB cables all function identically. Your claim is like saying you have a better lightbulb...

Quote:   Return them, you wasted your money. 1.5k, could be spent much more wisely on, well, anything else really.   You might want to try a more speaker-centric forum to ask your question, AVS for example. I think you would be surprised by the advice given.

I could be wrong, but I think USB to Coax is more difficult to implement as it is not simply an audio out but a digital data feed. As a result it is more expensive. In no way is it 'better.'   Id go with optical to coax as it will do the job just as well.   As a sidenote, it is a...

As long as your previous interconnects are functioning there will be no reason to buy different ones. Save your money.

You will get significantly more for your money in upgrading the speakers than 'upgrading' the DAC. But, of course, your budget plays a big part of that.   There is significant disagreement over whether DACs have any influence on the sound at all. It is, however, absolutely certain that an...

Loss aversion + confirmation bias.   Its a relatively simple explanation. Its not that people refuse to admit the truth, its that truth is constructed by each individual's brain in a way that will make them happy.   The real problem is when people try to to use reason to win arguments.

I hope the recommendation of an 'at least' $150 cable to go with a $110 DAC should speak for itself.

There is no need to try it out, just as there is no need to 'try for yourself' what the boiling point of water is. There are many things that we know, and certainly the frailty of the human mind is one of them.   Just go to monoprice and be done with it.

There is no such thing as a cable upgrade. You are much better off using your money elsewhere.