[domer]

If you really don't care then hey, don't reply!  Let me ask this: Do you care about the cable that transfers music to your digital music player?  (Maybe it's your phone, or Fiio X5, or whatever.)  I'm mostly just curious.  I mean, the correct answer is no, but a yes would be no more crazy than the rest of this thread, so I'm ready for anything.  You tell me.

 

[bfreedma]

lmao like I said before try before you open your mouth or buy some good equipment before testing.  im not going to argue over this, I spent a whole night testing all three cables and I can tell you what cable was plugged into my dac without looking. please don't respond to this post I don't care what you have to say.

Unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence supported by vigorous hand waving or known science supported by actual measurements indicating no possible audible difference. What to believe.....

 

[hmorneau]

  wow still people don't believe there a difference in sound with usb cables, wow! again.
I don't know the how or why but I can hear it. ive went with a belkin gold usb and it sounded good. I decided to try a pangea usb w/ 4% silver a few months ago and wasn't thinking I was going to here anything, wow I said to my self that's sound so good, better then the belkin.
a week ago I bought the pangea pure silver usb again wow! I heard more detail clearer highs.
 
the people saying theres no difference must not have high end equipment or never tried a good usb cable.

I do believe that you ear a difference, that's why company (with big money) still "waste" their time with placebo. Placebo are effective, sometime even more then the real pill. Here we are not arguing that sugar pills doesn't heal people, we simply say that there is no basis for a cable to make a difference in the sound. That's why there is a double blind test (double is actually that the person listening to it doesn't know which cable is plugged AND (that's where the double come from) the person who ask you doesn't know as well.
 
Try it for fun, buy a cable even more expensive (who care about the quality) just get the most expensive you can find, you will see that it sound better. That's how human we are made. That's why there is the homeopathie, placebo, etc. There was even an article I saw that was talking about the placebo effect of the fake surgery. Some people get cured without receiving the actual surgery, they basically open them up and close them without doing anything. Result are very impressive (and ethically challenging as well) and we still don't understand how it's even possible. Ha that little thing that nobody fully understand yet, called the brain. Now do you hear a difference, ho yeah! Now do there is a difference, that's an other topic... Are you crazy? No, just human.
 
Now do I have listen to those expensive usb cable? No, as I'm not inclined to take a sugar pill or homeopathy as well. The audiophile cable there is no logic what so ever being this. Hey, read this: http://gizmodo.com/363154/audiophile-deathmatch-monster-cables-vs-a-coat-hanger
 
Maybe I should start selling coat hanger as audiophile cable, since they sound as good as monster cable. Now here the real reason why people sell homeopathie or "audiophile" usb cable: http://consumerist.com/2008/02/08/monster-cables-monster-ripoff-80-markups/
 
Ho yes, what a surprise, money!
 
I recently looked at those audiophile cable, well a friend was over and he did not believe that people were paying up to $1000 for a cable. I explained him that yeah, people beleive that last 6 inch (for a power cable) will actually made a difference big enough even if that 6 last inch is meaning less if you take into the account all the cable you have inside the wall of your house, or other appliance that do a lot of interference and inject those directly into your electrical system, the shield of the last 6 inch when you look at it in that perspective, is well, meaning less. But still people beleive, that's good. Anyway, I was looking closer, and yes, they put carbon fiber on those connector.Yes it's expensive, and it's light, super cool on a car or on bike, well for something that move, but do you really NOT think that it's a big waste on a connector? Ho well. There is no point of using precious material like gold or silver in a cable as well, but still, so much nicer sounding. 
 
You may like the look of your cable, but the sound change, seriously, if you want a new sound, change your headphone, amp or even you dac. 
 
Here a picture of my 5$ usb cable, it's going into what I would call of mess of electric cable before going into my computer (full of noise a computer by the way, but who cares when you shield the last 6 feet). And even if I put my auditor to the max I don't hear any noise. If my usb were adding anything I would logically ear it, if you do, you have a bad dac, get a new one. 
 

You can see all my non-audiophile cable. Does my setup sound nice? Hell yes, it's simply amazing. 
 
That was my last post on cable, not that I don't want you to reply, I think everybody is free to argue that my setup is **** and that I'm missing so much, but in fact we never miss what we don't know we could actually be missing.
 
Have a nice one

 

[Lorspeaker]

ya, that last inch of brakepads dont matter...same with the tyres. 
u are not gonna hit on the brakes, u wont feel the lost. 
good for u. enjoy your ride

 

[sANDEKERU]

I'm sure audiophile usb cables adds to the wow factor of your setup, but the difference is only cosmetic.
Any USB cable built within the USB standard for quality (copper thickness, twisted pairs etc) and length will do the job just the same (for data transfer) provided there are no defects in the cable.
 
Audiophile USB cables is pretty much redefining snake oil.

 

[Lorspeaker]

nah...

 

[BirdManOfCT]

  nah...

+1.

 

[hmorneau]

  ya, that last inch of brakepads dont matter...same with the tyres. 
u are not gonna hit on the brakes, u wont feel the lost. 
good for u. enjoy your ride

I will reply even if I said that I won't because it's simply stupid.
 
Brake pad thickness when new: 12mm
When pad need to be replaced: 3mm
 
Same for the tire:
New tire: 9/32 (for a typical car)
Replacement at 2/32 (better to do earlier).
 
So we are talking about of a 9mm of margin for brake pad, and 7/32 of a inch for tire. 
 
Now your "audiophile cable": 6 feet
Electrical distribution, at least here in Québec where we get our electricity from: ~1330km 
Electrical lenght in your wall, around 50 feet, maybe more or less.
 
If we put those number in perspective, 6 fts vs 50 fts, it would be like your brake pad have a thickness of 14020mm when new and would still be good until they are down to 3mm... So yes, I would not mind of that last 12mm if I had 14008mm still left on my brake pad. 
 
Not only that, but it doesn't make any sense what so ever, because brake pad are doing the actual braking and it's not sharing it's work with anything else. Your cable doesn't do all the electric distribution, but just the last 6 inch, it would be like arguing that the cable is more important on the sound quality then to actually have an amplifier to connect to it. 
 
How can people even make an argument like that is over me.
 
Here some instructive stuff to put a bit of balance in this world: http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

 

[Lorspeaker]

just bot an audioquest micro-usb cable for my portable ext harddisk... lets see how this 0.75m cable affect my library

 

[sANDEKERU]

  just bot an audioquest micro-usb cable for my portable ext harddisk... lets see how this 0.75m cable affect my library

It won't affect anything except your wallet. Buying a "audiophile" 0.75m USB cable is like buying sand in sahara (I'm trying to make a terrible comparison) as the main issues with USB arise once you go outside the specs of max USB cable length and there's too much delay.
 
Edit: the limitation in cable length is actually caused by the speed of the electric signal regardless of how much you pay for the cable or if it's made of silver or copper.

 

[Lorspeaker]

nah...
 
tried it b4 with a furutech, i gotten a cleaner, more bodacious sound...v easy to hear.. like a defoamed580
 
i leave the 010101 science/logic to u scientists  

 

[Chris J]

I will reply even if I said that I won't because it's simply stupid.

Brake pad thickness when new: 12mm
When pad need to be replaced: 3mm

Same for the tire:
New tire: 9/32 (for a typical car)
Replacement at 2/32 (better to do earlier).

So we are talking about of a 9mm of margin for brake pad, and 7/32 of a inch for tire. 

Now your "audiophile cable": 6 feet
Electrical distribution, at least here in Québec where we get our electricity from: ~1330km 
Electrical lenght in your wall, around 50 feet, maybe more or less.

If we put those number in perspective, 6 fts vs 50 fts, it would be like your brake pad have a thickness of 14020mm when new and would still be good until they are down to 3mm... So yes, I would not mind of that last 12mm if I had 14008mm still left on my brake pad. 

Not only that, but it doesn't make any sense what so ever, because brake pad are doing the actual braking and it's not sharing it's work with anything else. Your cable doesn't do all the electric distribution, but just the last 6 inch, it would be like arguing that the cable is more important on the sound quality then to actually have an amplifier to connect to it. 

How can people even make an argument like that is over me

Ummm.....a lot of that harmful electrical noise is generated in your own house by your own equipment?

 

[hmorneau]

Ummm.....a lot of that harmful electrical noise is generated in your own house by your own equipment?

Ho yes, it's such an important issue that there is regulation around this to limit the source of Electromagnetic Interference (EMI):
 
From Wikipedia:
 
"In the United States, the 1982 Public Law 97-259 allowed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the susceptibility of consumer electronic equipment.^[6]
Potential sources of RFI and EMI include:^[7] various types of transmitters, doorbell transformers, toaster ovens, electric blankets, ultrasonic pest control devices, electric bug zappers, heating pads, and touch controlled lamps. Multiple CRT computer monitors or televisions sitting too close to one another can sometimes cause a "shimmy" effect in each other, due to the electromagnetic nature of their picture tubes, especially when one of their de-gaussing coils is activated.

Switching loads (inductive, capacitive, and resistive), such as electric motors, transformers, heaters, lamps, ballast, power supplies, etc., all cause electromagnetic interference especially at currents above 2 amps. The usual method used for suppressing EMI is by connecting a snubber network, a resistor in series with a capacitor, across a pair of contacts. While this may offer modest EMI reduction at very low currents, snubbers do not work at currents over 2 A with electromechanical contacts.^[8][9]"

 

While a cable with a good shield will prevent radiative noise from those appliance, it won't shield against what is already in your electrical network. EMI transfer as well on conductive (so if it's connected on the same electrical network (which by the way it is, that's why we call it an electric grid), it can get by the cable). 

 

That's why you sometime see cable that look like this:

 



It's a ferrite bead, it can be used to cut interference before it get into an appliance (one of the most effective and least expensive way). It can also cut interference going out of an appliance to meet government regulation. Now why the gov did regulate on this? Because it was cause issue. Electric network have to filter interference as well so they don't transfer between house, and to do that successfully, the best way is to limit them directly at the source. So yes your electrical network is clean enough, but there is already noise in it, but not enough to cause issue with your sound and nothing that your expensive cable will filter out since the shield only block what could radiate into it. And even then a Ferrite bead would be actually better, it will not only filter out the EMI from that got in on that 6 feet cable just before getting into your amp, but it will filter what was actually already on your electrical network. Personally I have already try a cable with one, and I did not notice any difference, probably because the equipment I use already have all the filter embedded in them or they are simply not sensible to them by the way they are designed. 

 
I know it won't convince anyone, and since a cable with a ferrite bead is so less expensive then your $1000 cable, the placebo won't work as well. So you will actually notice a degradation in sound quality. 

 

[hmorneau]

  ya, that last inch of brakepads dont matter...same with the tyres. 
u are not gonna hit on the brakes, u wont feel the lost. 
good for u. enjoy your ride

Ok, I find an other way to counter that logic.
 
If you are ready to pay 1000$ for a cable to get the most out of an amp, why would they settle to pay way less for critical equipment in hospital that maintain human alive? Hospital Grade cable are made from copper, no shielding, nothing magic. If one of the people you love was connected to one of those machine, do you really wanted that any radiate nasty stuff could have any effect on the machine performance? Not, but still, that's what they use. And if you believe that your amp is way more sensitive, you are wrong, those equipment are made with tons of very precise electronic. Even for just a risk factor, if some piece cost few thousand not to say few hundred thousand, why would they take any risk by being cheap on that "last 6 feet"... But instead here a case with very critical equipment that "that last inch dont matter..." They just need something that is proven (grade hospital) to be good enough (and that doesn't include magical specification).
 
Now if you counter argue by saying they must be build to deal with EMI or RFI, then why your soo expensive amp is not build that way as well? (which I assume is probably designed that way). Which prove again that an electric cable should not change the sound. 
 
Read more here: http://www.head-fi.org/t/171172/the-truth-about-hospital-grade-power-cords

 

[Lorspeaker]

 
the heart of the matter is....... 
 
 
 
in the hearing.