[allhifi]

One thing I'd like to mention is that even when I say there is noticeable difference... it takes me a lot of back and forth testing to discern it... if it wasn't for others verifying the same thing without me telling them... I'd actually half-doubt my own judgment and wonder if it's all just some form of proverbial kool-aid that I am on. In other words, while there is a difference, I've never noticed it to be day and night so to speak. If somebody switched cables on me... it'd probably take me a few hours to actually wonder if there was perhaps something different. While I still pour in tonnes of money in the quest for small improvements and to get that little bit closer to my definition of perfection, I acknowledge that USB cable for me has been more of a fine tuning exercise than a game changer.

Having said that, I really can't wait til my new DAC arrives so I can test my Black Cat Silverstar on it. If that isn't an obvious improvement I will be very disappointed given how much I spent on it.

System resolution capability is rather important. I'd suggest/recommend to audition a AC Regen. (for source/particularly digital gear). The gains in SQ are immense.

pj

 

[allhifi]

I just responded to a different thread regarding digital interconnects. People often invest unnecessary money on digital interconnects. Unlike analog connects, they do not sound different from one another, as the analog audio signal does not pass through the cable. They are used to transmit a binary stream of 1's and 0's. As long as all of the 1's and 0's are transmitted on $30 cable A, then it will not sound any different than the $200 cable B that is also transmitting all of the 1's and 0's. Even the cheaper cables rarely experience data loss.

Your "brilliance" is staggering !

pj

 

[allhifi]

Some things are a matter of opinion and some are not. This is not about thinking ones opinion is better than the other. This is truely as simple as saying that they have different physical characteristics, but the comparison ends their. We are talking about how the same pattern of 1's and 0's getting to the DAC. It is not until there is analog conversion or transport that we can compare differences in sound. You cant hear 0's and 1's. It's like an original CD vs the sound of a copied .wav file on a PC. Both converted by the same DAC will not sound any different.

scotsman: Find another topic so as to flatter readers by your intelligence.

pj

 

[allhifi]

Hard disk? I personally don't know about that ... (if you were serious, of course). But if it was a joke, it was a good one

NOTE: I did try Starlight 7 with a portable hard drive, for the sake of a scientific experiment , and all I can tell is "it works".

I tried to copy a large (5.5GB) file to it using different cables (regular then S7 then regular then S7...). I found that once the file was cached by OS, the time it took to copy the file stopped shortening and stabilized to exactly the same value (up to a second - 1:55, 3 attempts). So in my limited scientific experiment I did not find any improvement.

Seriously speaking though, USB cables like S7 are designed for streaming digital audio and not for data transfer, which would be a different design goal.




Totally agreed, and I could not have said it better: "There is more to USB audio cables than just 1s and 0s".

Speaking of silver (plated/clad) cables though. Silver is an excellent conductor, especially for high frequencies. This does result in smaller loss and less signal degradation, which I have seen in all kinds of cables including audio, digital audio, USB, and HDMI cables. Examples: (1) Pangea HDMI HD-24PCe would be one great example (try it for yourself and see how it changes color, contract, and clarity); (2) performance of Kimber Kable AGDL Silver (digital audio) is way ahead of anything I tried in this price range (including higher end AudioQuest cables). Yet another example would be Kimber Silver Streak - it sounds much cleaner, more smooth, and with more details than, for example, a typical copper cable, including Cardas Quadlink 5C (same price).

Wireworld Starlight 7 is also a silver-clad cable, btw.

I have not tried pure silver USB cables due to the cost factor, so I cannot speak of their performance, but even looking at a simple fact that such companies as Wireworld do make them (top of the line Wireworld Platinum USB), makes me think they do provide even greater performance and make sense for someone who has a very high end system (and can afford them ).

And indeed it would. Solid post.

pj

 

[allhifi]

You may think I'm ignorant and you are entitled to your opinion but that doesn't necessarily make you right either. You may have a masters in EE but you do seem much less familiar with basic neuropsychology.

Re- The link, The guy that tested these cables is a TV Calibrator with no apparant hidden agendas and he did study image quality closely... good enough for me!

I am more than happy with the picture quality provided by a bluray on my HDTV, it is so good that I can't imagine it being improved by much if at all. Even if it was possible that it could be improved by a small percentage, I certainly don't think it would be noticable at my12-15ft viewing distance through a pair of 38 year old MK1 eyeballs.


I can understand not buying the cheapest of USB cables, but I’d do that for reliability, not audio quality. As Bones stated in the last page. On average, digital links deliver one bit error for every 1012 bits sent. You can’t possibly hear that!... a fact highlighted by blind ABX tests, an example of which I'll happily provide a link for, if you so wish?


Noise on the ground plane caused by wrongly chosen, poor spec switching diodes in budget equipment is quite obvious and apparant at low volume levels with certain systems and can probably be improved in some cases by better sheilding, ferrite beads or even providing a seperate ground plane altogether to avoid 'ground loop'.

'Jitter' caused by timing discrepancies in non asychronous DAC's is identifiable to the trained ear and cannot alter the overall sound signiture. This is another subject all together and although linked should not be a factor with a correctly designed cable that meets the design specifications just as much as it is not with a so called 'audiophile' cable.



You suggest I A/B test a particular HDMI cable? Don't you see an inherant flaw in that suggestion? Never underestimate the power of the subconscious. In my first year studying Aero Eng we looked at the 'Human factors' which can contribute to pilots making errors in judgement, refusing to believe what their instrumentation was telling them, be it from fatigue, information overload, arrogance, lack of visual cues or a combination of these factors. We then went on to study how the brain works, how it uses visual cues to predict a scenario based on previous experiences often filling in the blanks which can make us even see and hear things that simply do not exist.

Last summer I was cleaning the bottom of the pool with a brush for maybe 30 minutes or so. Once finished I climbed the ladder and looked across the meadow at Tina (my Girlfriends horse) I suddenly became aware of a fairly intense, deep strawberry red coloured tint to my vision, in shock I even looked up at the sun to see what was causing it ... nothing there!, It was merely that my brains colour balance had been skewed from staring at the bottom of the aqua blue pool for so long.

Try this experiment. If you have a graphic or parametric equaliser, reduce a band somewhere in the midrange area (say, between 500Hz and 1kHz). Listen for about 15 minutes, then restore the missing frequency range. Suddenly it will sound as if it has a hugh peak in the midrange, and for a time will sound awful. Within another 15 minutes or so, everything will have settled back to normal. Therefore, can you trust what you hear? Do you know why? Do you even care?


With regards to audio/visual cue impairment, here is a good example called 'the McGurk effect' (Google it if the UK link doesn't work for you) which perfectly demonstrates how what we see can make our brains interpret what we hear to sound completely different.



It might seem far removed for you, but yes, what I am suggesting is that without blind ABX testing you are leaving yourself open to what you hear (or see, in the case of HDMI) being influenced by your preconceived, subconscious idea that this beautifuly built, well designed cable with it's lovely finish and colour WILL produce superior results.

There are two particular things to which one can easily fall prey - the 'experimenter expectancy (or bias) effect' and the 'placebo effect'. Both are potentially very powerful, and can shape the outcome of a test at the subconscious level. If you change a passive component in a system and expect to hear a difference, then you probably will. What actually caused the difference will be curdled by your brain (at a subconscious level), and you will be left thinking that the component change made the difference, when in fact it was 100% imagination. This is why all proper medical tests are double-blind, to guard against these well known phenomena. It is a BIG mistake to think that you are immune - no-one is immune because we don't even know it's happening.





"'Critical thinking, logic, reason, science — these are all terms that apply in one way or another to the deliberate attempt to ferret out truth from the tangle of intuition, distorted perception, and fallible memory. The true critical thinker accepts what few people ever accept — that one cannot routinely trust perceptions and memories. Figments of our imagination and reflections of our emotional needs can often interfere with or supplant the perception of truth and reality. Through teaching and encouraging critical thought our society will move away from irrationality, but we will never succeed in completely abandoning irrational tendencies, again because of the basic nature of the belief engine."

James Alcock- 'The Belief Engine' - http://www.csicop.org/si/show/belief_engine



As an open minded objectivist- If you can present me with a solid ABX test that supports/backs up your findings/perceptions I'll certainly be more than happy to re-evaluate my current views on the subject.



Ari

Way too much time on your hands. Do something useful with it.

pj

 

[atsq17]

System resolution capability is rather important. I'd suggest/recommend to audition a AC Regen. (for source/particularly digital gear). The gains in SQ are immense.

pj

Since I wrote that post a long time ago, I've found items like the Lightspeed 10G cable and the Curious USB Cable to make changes noticeable even to a clueless person doing a quick A-B test.

USB Cable is now one of my priority fixes and no longer a nice-to-have. The nice-to-haves in my list now are power cables, power boards, network cables etc. The scary thing is I have heard very noticable differences from some power cables and power boards as well.

I have USB cleaners, power cleaners, LPS cables, Singxer SU-1 USB to I2S converter (super steroids edition) with every major part swapped out for some of the most expensive money can buy. I also use Ultrarendu. I figured if I was going to do it, I'd go as far in as my budget allowed.

EDIT: I did buy a UPS with regenerating sine wave. Problem is it has a noisy fan and I intended to open it up to replace it with quieter fans. I never got around to doing it though. It's collecting dust in my hifi rack. Wasn't a straight forward replacement. Would need to dig into the inner components and then cut the wiring and re-attach. No easy molex or 2/3 pin plugs.

 

[scottosan]

Your "brilliance" is staggering !

pj

Ahh the passive aggressive insult.