Quote:
...USB cables are digital, and that as long as the signal can be decoded, there is no loss of quality, AT ALL.
In theory (according to USB.org), a USB audio receiving module can decode a stream it receives and assert that is has decoded without error, but (if there is no re-clocking on the receiving side) there could be a timing error, since USB audio must be transmitted and decoded in real-time. Thus some 1's in the source might be decoded as 0's (because the receive timing is off) or visa versa, and if there are enough of these the primitive error correction will not handle it, and so the DAC will have a slightly different bitstream to work with, and therefore will produce an analog signal less correct than if this timing error had not happened.
USB.org, an official body, claims this can happen if you use a big-ass ferrite bead around the cable (to pass various tests) which is why such cables are strictly speaking out-of-spec (Kimber and others use them nonethelss).
I beleive any such errors (if they actually happened in the real world, which I doubt) would be
inaudible. Besides, all audiophile DACs for sale that I know of re-clock, so this is moot. Nonethelss, it is (slightly) wrong to think that if a digital signal is decoded without an error flag being raised, that the transmission is correct, and also (slightly) wrong to think that digital cables just have to pass ones and zeros (they have to pass them under tight timing constraints -- easy to do, but still).
There are many $10 USB cables that will never drop a bit or miss a timing constraint. If you spend $1000 on a USB cable it is because you like its looks of the way it feels, or you like the way
you feel when you buy something expensive, or the way it makes your buddies feel when they see it in your system. These may be decent reasons for buying the cable for some people. You would fail a DBT comparing the audio properties of your $1000 cable to the well-made $10 one, I have no doubt about that.
I bought a $1000 spdif cable on ebay for $300 for no reason other than having it to do blind tests for people vs a $2 radio shack video cable (same specs as spdif). No one has ever passed the blind test (it is a single blind test btw, not a DBT, and does not use ABX, which I hate, but does use swindles -- false comparisons -- and other tricks; I am a professional statistician and know how to test). I am sure if I tested USB cables I would get the same result -- no difference.
Nonetheless I bought a nice USB cable (not the uber expensive one) from the very manufacturer that was made fun of in this thread because (a) I needed a custom length, (b) I like the way it looks and threads thru my rack, (c) I like the dealer, he has done me some favors, and I felt good putting some money in his pocket.
This is a hobby. We like custom paint jobs. We don't think they make the car go faster.