Usb cable differences?

[GP Hill]

Ive got my new Topping D50 dac hooked up and it sounds great. I’m using a generic 15’ usb cable from Amazon and was wondering how much if any a mid range usb cable, say up to $200, would improve the sound, if any. I’m not trying to start a pissing contest, just interested in folks who have experience and can shed some light.

 

[gvl]

It depends, but given the async interface in the D50 chances are there will be little difference. That said, get a shorter cable if you can. Schiit Pyst cables are good and reasonably priced.

 

[E.Auer]

15' is a bit on the long side as gvl mentioned. Another option if you have to have them that long is to simply go for longer interconnects instead.

I use Belkin USB cables and have no issues with SQ in my setup. 6' long.

Eric

 

[Larrymclain2]

15' is a bit on the long side as gvl mentioned. Another option if you have to have them that long is to simply go for longer interconnects instead.

I use Belkin USB cables and have no issues with SQ in my setup. 6' long.

Eric

 

[Larrymclain2]

Hey guys sorry just come to your conversation but i was reading about your usb cables and i was wondering if one of you could shed some light on that for me?

 

[E.Auer]

Hey guys sorry just come to your conversation but i was reading about your usb cables and i was wondering if one of you could shed some light on that for me?

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s/do-usb-audio-cables-make-a-difference.1887/

Eric

 

[jberenyi]

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s/do-usb-audio-cables-make-a-difference.1887/

Eric

My sentiments exactly. Just get some 6' Gold Belkins on Ebay for about $9 and call it a day. Don't waste your money on expensive USB cables!

 

[mjw21a]

I discovered that the inexpensive ($30) Valab / Aucharm silver plated copper cables made a difference. Blacker background and ever so slightly improved sound stage. Surprised that there was a difference but there was

 

[olderroust]

Nice comparo by Archimago:

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/04/measurements-usb-cables-for-dacs.html

Even cobbling together a three part USB cable out of extenders wandering around the house resulted in a cable that scoped and measured like the others.

The DAC in my office has optical inputs as well as USB, and lately I'm using them because the USB interface was crashing on its own occasionally, and bluescreening my workstation occasionally. The guys at the local shop recommend dedicating a laptop to nothing but music playback and leaving it on all the time. I'm liking the optical handoff a great deal more, though - I'm not remotely accessing the controls, and I can put the system to sleep and not wonder if the DAC or workstation will be happy when I wake it up.

 

[olderroust]

What DAC and what OS? I have not had any USB crashes with my main PC being used by me AND as a JRiver server. I am using Win 10 PRO.

It's an Arcam irdac-ii. When connected via USB, I could crash the DAC a couple of ways. It has a remote, and the remote can be used for play/pause and track advance in a music app, as well as source selection and volume control. When I used jriver as the media player, no matter what I tried for settings in jriver, the play/pause/track stuff wouldn't work, and would eventually lock the DAC up requiring I power cycle it. Foobar was able to get the commands relayed to it via the DAC much better. I think I still managed to lock it up once or twice with the remote in Foobar, but very infrequently. I think there may have been a command buffer that was filling up with unacknowledged commands and eventually spilled over? The other thing that was happening less often but occasionally was that I'd put the system to sleep for the day (Win 7 pro) and in the morning I'd wake it and the system couldn't see the DAC via USB. The coax and optical inputs on the DAC were fine in that situation, it was just the workstation not seeing the USB device. That could be fixed by power cycling the DAC.

But what really got me moved away from using the DAC over USB was the second or third time I installed a program and the system bluescreened either during the installation or at first run and when I ran the minidumps through windbg the system was pointing to the audio stack. Once it was some dumb game I'd installed, once was a piece of a virtualization environment. My impression is that there are some pieces of software that are either not looking for an external DAC or are looking to be able to proble audio and so running a DAC in wasapi or asio exclusive modes is problematic.

What's interesting to me is that I haven't had a repeat yet despite running the device in ASIO exclusive mode on the toslink feed. For whatever reason that presents less conflicts than WASAPI or ASIO on USB for this particular device.

 

[Silentnet]

USB cables (and other purely digital signal cables, like HDMI) do not make any difference in sound quality so long as they are used for signal only.

Even if used for power, they will only make a difference if the equipment connected via them is poorly designed (insufficient power filtering, poor shielding, poor power / signal separation).

Do not waste your money.

 

[4-2-7]

Ive got my new Topping D50 dac hooked up and it sounds great. I’m using a generic 15’ usb cable from Amazon and was wondering how much if any a mid range usb cable, say up to $200,

I tried a few USB cables in the 3 meter range and it's important to have a good one. But when I got a Audioengine D2 24bit WiFi DAC to use only for it's WiFi to my McIntosh D100s DAC, my eyes opened up.

I would spend the money and go wifi, it's far more convenient and sounded better to me

 

[olderroust]

Well - ASIO is the cause of your issues. WASAPI is built in to Win 10. ASIO is not needed and is NOT designed as a proper driver with ANY version of Windows. I would first check to make sure you have your INTERNAL soundcard disabled as that can cause issues with USB. I would make sure you are using the latest driver from Arcam as that is the issue not Windows.

I'm running win7 pro, not win10. Is WASAPI native in win 7 as well?

I do have the latest Arcam drivers installed, and before I moved to Toslink, verified that there were not new ones.

I didn't try disabling the internal card. If I decide to revisit how this is run I'll try that.

But I'm fine with the performance over Toslink. I'm not trying to hear DSD files, most of my audio is FLAC and quite a bit of it is 16/44 FLAC so I'm not, in theory, losing bits over the interface.

 

[pete_mac]

I discovered that the inexpensive ($30) Valab / Aucharm silver plated copper cables made a difference. Blacker background and ever so slightly improved sound stage. Surprised that there was a difference but there was

I'm not surprised at all, based upon my own experience.

A few years ago I bought a nice USB reclocker combo (Uptone Regen Amber, a big beefy SBooster BOTW power supply, and a Curious Cables 200mm long 'Regen Link' USB cable.

I had every intention of keeping the Uptone Regen and reverting back to the original power supply, and selling the SBooster PSU and Curious Cables USB cable to make this a 'cost neutral' purchase.

The PSU definitely improved the sound over the original Meanwell switchmode unit, so it stayed.

I then compared the Curious Cables USB to a few generic USB cables, the original short stubby USB A to B connector that comes with the Uptone Regen, my own DIY USB cable (with solid silver conductors and separate data/power runs) and the Curious cable.

To my wallet's disappointment, the Curious cable did something to the sound that I just couldn't walk away from. To my ears, there was certainly a difference. Not 'night and day', of course, but repeatable and audible. The difference was less obvious than the difference between certain RCA interconnects though.

The Curious cable has stayed put.

As always, when it comes to audio, each to their own.