[Trenn]

Take a look at the apple lightning connector. It's brilliant. The USB cable was designed by engineers with a focus on low cost. As a result, everyone is down on their hands and knees under the desk trying to plug it in, flipping it over, trying again, flipping it over, trying again and then the stick your face closer to try and see the receptacle to make sure it's not ethernet. Yes, a USB is the same width as ethernet (but not the same height). 
 
Apple's connector is wonderful. It is rectangular, but it can go in either direction. the plug and receptacle are both tapered so the slightest push will align everything for easy entry. And it clicks into place with such a wonderful feeling. 
 
It's really night and day. 

 

[proton007]

Quote:

Take a look at the apple lightning connector. It's brilliant. The USB cable was designed by engineers with a focus on low cost. As a result, everyone is down on their hands and knees under the desk trying to plug it in, flipping it over, trying again, flipping it over, trying again and then the stick your face closer to try and see the receptacle to make sure it's not ethernet. Yes, a USB is the same width as ethernet (but not the same height). 
 
Apple's connector is wonderful. It is rectangular, but it can go in either direction. the plug and receptacle are both tapered so the slightest push will align everything for easy entry. And it clicks into place with such a wonderful feeling. 
 
It's really night and day. 

 
I think the USB connector is designed to prevent it being plugged the wrong way.
Even then, people stick connectors into every thing, you'll read reports of the lightning connectors getting stuck inside usb ports. 

 

[AJHeadfi]

I believe that the USB organisation standard for audio transmission is the minimum requirement and includes recommendations for achieving quality transmission. USB isn't as simple as it seems.

 

[stv014]

The USB logo is usually on the "top" side of the plug, that is, if you look at a laptop with some USB devices plugged in from the above, for example, you should see the USB logo on the plugs (except for the occasional non-standard ones). That is less helpful when the ports are oriented vertically (like at the back of a desktop PC in a "tower" case), but you can still find it out out from the fact that the "top" side of the ports is on the top when the motherboard is placed horizontally with the component side on the top.

 

[jake120]

I havent heard of USB making any differences to audio quality as a means of getting greater quality..,
 
my assumption at first hand would be that the usb cable increases performance by removing EMI, but when i look at that it actually tells me you;'d be running a lot of power by the usb cable and the amounts would have to be incredibly high and that'd be unlikely for most, the exception would be studio and professional audience as their gear might actually have a lot of different equipment set up and ready to be used at a moments notice.
 
the only other likely situation is that the cable does not fit enough and might jiggle around and thats feasible to fix with a quality cable that fits over the usb housing enough that it does not easily unplug, but that would likely to be a problem with jiggling the unit or moving the unit often and or cable slack pulling the plug out...

 

[Caution]

I'd be interested to see how many people here who claim USB cables don't make a difference have actually tried a variety of cables from different price ranges in a revealing system. I doubt many...

 

[proton007]

Quote:

I'd be interested to see how many people here who claim USB cables don't make a difference have actually tried a variety of cables from different price ranges in a revealing system. I doubt many...

If the cable is not a factor in the operation of the USB standard, then it doesn't matter. You don't need to try different cables.

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

I'd be interested to see how many people here who claim USB cables don't make a difference have actually tried a variety of cables from different price ranges in a revealing system. I doubt many...

Have you tried coating your USB cable in corn syrup? It helps the sound a bunch. Pay me a couple grand and I'll do it for you, with a special home-made audiophile corn syrup.
 
Don't dismiss it until you try it!

 

[Lenni]

Quote:

I'd be interested to see how many people here who claim USB cables don't make a difference have actually tried a variety of cables from different price ranges in a revealing system. I doubt many...

 
no one. none.
 
Quote:

Have you tried coating your USB cable in corn syrup? It helps the sound a bunch. Pay me a couple grand and I'll do it for you, with a special home-made audiophile corn syrup.
 
Don't dismiss it until you try it!

 
the analogy doesn't work. it's quite obvious it wouldn't help at all, because syrup is food! you're comparing food with digital audio signals -- even if you're being sarcastic the analogy is pretty bizarre and inexplicable, as someone else  would say.
 
speaking of food: everybody at some point will have come across food they thought they didn't like until they tried it.

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

 
the analogy doesn't work. it's quite obvious it wouldn't help at all, because syrup is food! you're comparing food with digital audio signals -- even if you're being sarcastic the analogy is pretty bizarre and inexplicable, as someone else  would say.
 
speaking of food: everybody at some point will have come across food they thought they didn't like until they tried it.

You have no right to dismiss something you haven't tried. As ridiculous as it may sound to you the truth is that it does make an audible difference and if you have ever heard my candy coated cables you'd realize that. But you haven't. So your opinion on the matter means nothing, regardless of any empirical evidence you may have against these cables.

 

[Lenni]

 OK 

 

[Strangelove424]

Quote:

Take a look at the apple lightning connector. It's brilliant. The USB cable was designed by engineers with a focus on low cost. As a result, everyone is down on their hands and knees under the desk trying to plug it in, flipping it over, trying again, flipping it over, trying again and then the stick your face closer to try and see the receptacle to make sure it's not ethernet. Yes, a USB is the same width as ethernet (but not the same height). 
 
Apple's connector is wonderful. It is rectangular, but it can go in either direction. the plug and receptacle are both tapered so the slightest push will align everything for easy entry. And it clicks into place with such a wonderful feeling. 
 
It's really night and day. 

The USB cable was designed by engineers with a focus on compatibility, and the first computer that had USB was actually an iMac. Apple was on the bandwagon first, and helped to spread universal serial bus ports (originally developed by Intel) into the rest of the market. They sorely needed access to peripheral, storage, and printing products developed for PC to regain their crumbling market position in the 90's. Adoption of USB led to a modern ecosystem where mice, keyboards, cameras, phones, thumb drives, fans, and mini-fridges work on any USB port, PC or Mac. Fast forward to this decade, when Apple's market position is stable, and now you're using expensive proprietary lightning cables which, as easy as they are to plug into the socket, offer zero speed or bandwidth advantage over the older iPod cable, or USB 2.0, not to mention USB 3.0. And don't forget that only one end of the iPhone cable has a lightning connector, the other end is your old friend USB. It needs to be USB because USB is universal, and Apple couldn't stay in business without it. Which is exactly why Apple pushed for market-wide adoption of USB in the first place. 

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

 the first computer that had USB was actually an iMac.

I'm not sure how true that is. USB 1.0 came out three years beforehand.
 
Apple just likes to make people think that they actually come up with their own ideas.

 

[Strangelove424]

Quote:

I'm not sure how true that is. USB 1.0 came out three years beforehand.
 
Apple just likes to make people think that they actually come up with their own ideas.

If you're not sure how true that is, Google it. And I already stated that the idea was originally developed by Intel. But that's totally beside the point and you missed the meaning of my post completely. Apple was an early adopter of USB for market strategy reasons. USB is universal. USB is the reason Apple is still alive. Lightning cable is a USB 2.0 cable in a fancy wrapper. 
 
  

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

If you're not sure how true that is, Google it. And I already stated that the idea was originally developed by Intel. But that's totally beside the point and you missed the meaning of my post completely. Apple was an early adopter of USB for market strategy reasons. USB is universal. USB is the reason Apple is still alive. Lightning cable is a USB 2.0 cable in a fancy wrapper.
 
 

I didn't miss the point of your post, no need to get in an argument about that. Just saying that particular fact isn't quite true, they weren't the absolute first to use it. While they may have helped it jump off, they didn't start until USB 1.1.