[cconnaker]

Hi guys - I've heard from a few sources that the Synergistic Tricon USB cable is actually work the $800 it sells for. That's pretty steep so I am trying to get my hands on one before I take the plunge.

I really do like the Kimber USB cable though.

 

[cerbie]

$800?! At the $40 price of the Kimber, you're paying for aesthetics. There's no voodoo. It's just a matter of having acceptable quality. Once you hit, "good enough," there really is no room to move up. Those Newnex cables look pretty nice.

 

[OutdoorXplorer]

i am using sony's full copper usb cable which cost me approx usd35 for the link between my pc and rsa predator. it sound great...

 

[olblueyez]

70 dollar usb cable? Must be some good stuff.

 

[wacomme]

Other than not using a cheap USB cable, there doesn't appear to be any definitive answer whether a $15 or $800 cable will make any difference to the quality of the sound. Perhaps, then, the $15 is my best choice.

Michael

 

[tk3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by OutdoorXplorer /img/forum/go_quote.gif i am using sony's full copper usb cable which cost me approx usd35 for the link between my pc and rsa predator. it sound great...

Did you notice any improvement against the stock cable you were using before?

 

[Garret Jax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quaddy /img/forum/go_quote.gif garret, we are talking about real time digital streams as in music being transferred across said cable to a very fine implement such as a dac, no one is arguing that its mission critical for a hard drive to have such a quality cable for the mere purpose of storing and using data files. its like comparing a telecoms companies policy of always on broadband. if you read their smallprint, most if not all actually dont guarantee you data (adsl) down the line, they only are willing to provide a high percentage of QOS and uptime for voice. reason being voice is robust compared with 1's and 0's this can be equated to the differences between storage and streaming of music which is more finicky and prone to error, streaming is not as error adaptive as even broadband (with its interleaving) and plain ol' data storage, which often has the host OS to deal with blips, CRC redundandcy checks or alike. its not a case of having to prove it one way or the other, if it was i am sure we would ask you non-believers to prove that it doesnt have a beneficial outcome with using a higher quality/noise rejecting cable its simply a case of peace of mind for most, i know it is with me, having spent a lot of money on a dac, hours and hours of managing music and the highest quality interconnects etc etc, i will sleep easier knowing i spent a few more bucks on a cable that is less likely to have a negative affectation on my music listening!

But at the hardware controller level, the USB ports do not know what type of data is being sent, do they? Unless the USB controllers have 'integrity' mode and 'speed' mode, where 100% accuracy is not mandated, then what you're saying is irrelevant - the USB controller that reads/writes on the wire does not have any clue what the 1's and 0's are being used for, so it ALWAYS ensures 100% accuracy.

 

[Garret Jax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wavoman /img/forum/go_quote.gif USB disk reads and writes have error-correcting and re-tries built in. No problem. This has nothing to do with USB digital audio transmission, which has hard real-time constraints -- deliver the bitstream in time as the music plays. This comes up over and over again. I'm gonna have to dig up a bad cable and do a demo somewhere.

I don't need a cable demo, I need a link to the part of the USB specification where it says real-time data does not have to be 100% accurate. It's not that I think you're all full of hot air, but I would like to see some definitive evidence, and only relevant sections of the USB spec would qualify here. Otherwise it's just so much hearsay.

 

[OutdoorXplorer]

yes, interference was immediately disappeared upon changing this usb cable comparing to those standard usd3 usb cable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tk3 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Did you notice any improvement against the stock cable you were using before?

 

[Quaddy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by OutdoorXplorer /img/forum/go_quote.gif yes, interference was immediately disappeared upon changing this usb cable comparing to those standard usd3 usb cable.

get those ferrites off there - t'is blasphemy!

 

[OutdoorXplorer]

may i know why? i thought it suppose to reduce emi.. Quote:

Originally Posted by Quaddy /img/forum/go_quote.gif get those ferrites off there - t'is blasphemy!

 

[Quaddy]

yes it does indeed reduce emi by a small percentage see a few posts back - its low level at the end of the day and no-one is pretending that it manifests itself in a overt way but this may well go on at a low level

 

[Chri5peed]

Lol, I thought those type of ferrite beads were just rubbish cable shorteners.

 

[gyrodec]

Garret - I personally have serious doubts a USB cable can sound different, but there is a clear difference between streamed audio and data moved to an external HD. For streamed audio the digital clock is sent encoded in the timing of the data pulses. If there is noise, the clean transient edge of the signal will be degraded and this WILL add jitter to the clock part of the signal. Block mode data transfer, as used by HDs, obviously does not have any clock part and so is much more robust from a noise stand-point. The EMU 0404 USB DAC also uses a bluck-mode scheme, and that might be one of the reasons so many people think it sound great.

Does the timing jitter from a cheap USB cable produce audiable affects - ??? Does an expensive USB cable actually provide better noise surpression and hence lower jitter - ??? Does the lower jitter give you better sound - ??? However, there is a real difference between data transfer and streaming audio.

 

[DefectiveAudioComponent]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quaddy /img/forum/go_quote.gif reason i went against kimber and ended up with the cryo-parts, is that kimber has inbuilt ferrite cores which are, from a certain school of thought, deleterious to the realtime stream, fine for data transfer .

That cryo cable (the middle one) looks exactly like the stock 0404USB usb cable.