Curious Evolved USB Cable Review - Can USB cables really make a difference?
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- A review of the Curious Evolved USB cable including the results of the Mystery Test and comparisons with the AudioQuest Diamond USB cable.
You can join in the Mystery Test here and/or see the live updated results: / passionforsound
A huge thanks to Rob from Curious Cables for making this experiment and review possible! You can learn more about Curious Cables and buy direct here: curiouscables.com/
0:00 Introduction
3:46 Mystery Test results
12:31 Mystery Test conclusions
14:09 How USB cables COULD make a difference
22:22 Curious Evolved design
26:26 USB cable listening comparisons
31:20 A surprising twist
34:05 Final conclusion
Here's the big USB comparison test I did a few year's back: passionforsound.lachlanfennen....
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Desktop Sources Playback software: Roon roonlabs.com/r/St5em2YsbUqGXc...
Primary DAC: Chord Hugo TT2 tinyurl.com/y4vys4zq
with Chord M-Scaler tinyurl.com/y6hcm3kw
Secondary DAC: Schiit Bifrost 2 www.schiit.com/products/bifro...
USB cables: Curious Evolved curiouscables.com/
and AudioQuest Coffee amzn.to/3059qiA
Active Speakers: Bang & Olufsen BeoLab 3 Speakers
Amps
Bottlehead Mainline DIY kit tube amplifier bottlehead.com/product/mainli...
Topping A90 tinyurl.com/AposA90
Burson Soloist 3XP www.bursonaudio.com/products/...
Topping L30 headphone amp and pre-amp tinyurl.com/AposL30
Burson Audio FUN: www.bursonaudio.com/products/... with Sparkos Labs SS3601 op-amps: sparkoslabs.com/product/singl...
Headphones (that I regularly use)
Open: Meze Audio Empyrean tinyurl.com/y6gfyquz
Open: Focal Clear amzn.to/37Ihgky
Open: Sennheiser HD800S amzn.to/3oFtUdC
Open: HiFiMan Sundara tinyurl.com/AposSundara
Semi-open: Beyerdynamic DT880 Premium LE massdrop.7eer.net/L6633
or amzn.to/3bBg7xs
Closed: AudioQuest NightOwl Carbon (these may have been discontinued)
Portable
Phone: Samsung Galaxy S10+ amzn.to/37MzTUA
DAC for phone: Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt amzn.to/36AzpAB
Digital audio player: Astell & Kern AK240 Stainless Steel (no longer available) - other A&K players are available here: tinyurl.com/yy9ypfm7
Earphones
Audiofly AF1120 Mk2: amzn.to/2ZoTuHZ
Noble Kaiser 10 custom IEM (discontinued) - universal version available via Drop massdrop.7eer.net/vkaWy
SIMGOT EN700 PRO amzn.to/304xO3R
Shozy Form 1.4 amzn.to/3cIL0Az
or massdrop.7eer.net/499YL
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Nuraphone amzn.to/2N7G2Tu
AudioFly AFT2 amzn.to/3e8goKx
Nuraloop amzn.to/2HKVZzi
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Sony A7R III: amzn.to/3mnR0nS
Sony FE 24mm F/1.4: amzn.to/3kuHVIf
Audio-Technica ATR3350xiS lapel mic: amzn.to/33qL5Ww
Neewer Bi-color 660 LED lights: amzn.to/2E1BNrh - Наука та технологія
For anyone still believing that it's all digital and none of what I've said can make any difference, please check out the first section of this article by John Swenson, a well known designer of DACs: cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0660/6121/files/UpTone-J.Swenson_EtherREGEN_white_paper.pdf?v=1583429386
Thank you this link is appreiacted
Thanks for sharing! I need to check out the Regen at some point.
@thecomfortstation wait.. You paid £70 for a USB wire and now your system sounds more analogue... Because of the wire... Oh lord..
The Regen is a device that fixes USB signal issues, not a cable. 🙂
@@PassionforSound oh, it fixes the signal and makes it sound like vinyl, my bad, now it makes sense...
Nice review; I appreciate the effort you put in to it.
Thanks Eric! Glad you found it helpful
My thoughts, hopefully taken in the amicable spirit in which they are intended...
I downloaded the first pair of files and analyzed them in Adobe Audition, and they are different. Frequency analysis and amplitude analysis show minor differences here and there, and there were visible differences in the waveforms themselves. I also downloaded files J and K. I inverted one, and mixed it with the other, and got a flat line, which proves that the files are indeed identical. Yet, half the listeners thought they could hear a difference between them. From a statistical standpoint, this shows that the margin of error in these tests is astronomically high, rendering the data virtually useless. It's interesting, but scientifically, no conclusions can be drawn from this data.
We've all seen what happens when bits get flipped or dropped with a video signal. Pixels get dropped - sometimes a few, and at other times, large areas of the picture gets blotchy. We don't see a loss of color or contrast evenly over the entire picture. The same is true with audio. If bits are getting flipped or lost, it would not affect frequency response, or amplitude, or transient response, or stereo separation evenly over time. You'd hear pops, clicks, dropouts, or other random artifacts. Just like a video signal, the signal traveling through a USB cable is digital. It is not analog, and would not react the same as an analog signal. If you took the signal from a USB cable and fed it into an amplifier, you would not get sound. This proves that the signal is not analog, not audio, and would not behave like audio.
So, the first pair of files are different. There are countless reasons why that might be. The audio is going through various analog stages on either side of the USB cables, and if you monitor an analog signal on an oscilloscope a hundred times, it will look slightly different each time. So, when that analog signal is processed by the ADC before being sent over the USB cable, the results will be slightly different every time. Send the exact same audio file through an ADC, then a USB cable, then back through a DAC, and the resulting file will be ever so slightly different than the original.
So, until someone does a double blind, very carefully controlled, rigidly scientific study on this subject, with a very large group of listeners, it's impossible to say what's going on here. What would be interesting would be to take three different USB cables, and swap them at random dozens and dozens of times, on the exact same setup, with a listener who thinks they can tell one from another, without giving that listener any feedback on how they are doing, and see how often they get it right... Let the flaming begin...
Thanks for approaching this with measured and respectful thoughts, Michael. Having done this test multiple times now, I honestly believe I could hear differences between the cables in A/B testing. There's no way I could pick one cable from the next (i.e. I couldn't name them by sound), but I am confident on the differences.
I tried really hard to get two identical, higher end DACs for this process, but was unable to. Perhaps in the future I can arrange that. In fact, I might chat to the Stereo.net.au team about this if/when the next Melbourne International HiFi Show goes ahead.
As for the video analogy, I don't believe that's how it would work. An error of a single 1/0 at any moment would shift the output voltage by only a tiny amount thus deforming the output wave only slightly, not creating a square wave or dramatic spike which is what would create a pop or click.
Finally, here's an article that explains the Analog nature of the signal in a USB cable: www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/why-usb-cables-can-make-a-difference/%23:~:text%3DMany%2520argue%2520that%2520digital%2520cables,cables%2520do%2520indeed%2520sound%2520different.%26text%3DThere%2520is%2520no%2520such%2520thing%2520as%2520a%2520purely%2520digital%2520signal.&ved=2ahUKEwj5i4WIoJPtAhVOWysKHclQCtQQFjABegQIARAE&usg=AOvVaw0vWHjCk79NX4fnqNAnq5uu
The reason an amp won't produce a sound if fed the USB signal is that it's very high frequency and well beyond our auditory range
@@PassionforSound You're welcome. I find your channel interesting, and enjoy this type of cerebral conversation. I went to the link, and read most of the information there. The first issue I have with what was written is that all the authors are from companies that make USB cables. That's not to say that what they posit isn't at least partially correct, but they do have a profit motive, and as is often said, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Another analogy - ask a Fiat salesmen if the cars he is selling are reliable, he is going to tell you, in excruciating detail, that they are, despite the fact that Fiats are known to be terribly unreliable.
The comments below the article are as interesting as the article itself. The most interesting to me posited something I've thought of myself: There should be a way to monitor the "ones and zeroes" going into, and coming out of, a USB cable, and compare them, just as you would a computer file. For this to work, it would not be enough to monitor the actual signal. Due to capacitance, resistance, EMI, and RFI, what starts off on one end as a perfect square wave is not going to arrive at the other end in perfect condition. One would have to monitor what the output IC sent, and compare that to what the receiving IC interpreted when receiving the data being sent, and compare that. It should be possible to do this, but I can't find any evidence that anyone has tried.
Oh, oops - you're right. I'm thinking about a different article that had non-cable makers. Sadly, the best resource I've read on this topic was by John Swenson (a renowned DAC designer), but it's currently not available since Inneefidelity and Stereophile (I think) got bought out. Johns article made SO much sense and came at it from how the DAC itself is interpreting the data.
As for measurements, there are things called eye charts or eye graphs that show the deformation of the waveform through the USB cable, but I don't know how well they've been applied to meaningful cable measurements
@@PassionforSound "How the DAC itself interprets the data" - exactly. As I mentioned, the signal coming out of a USB cable is not going to be the perfect square wave that went in. So the question becomes, "How many ones and zeros get flipped, or simply can't be interpreted, and how does that affect the resulting analog output of the DAC?". That's the million dollar question, and I'm not sure how to answer it! And I miss Tyll and InnerFidelity. InnerFidelity and Stereophile could not be more different. InnerFidelity tended to be very objective. Whereas Stereophile articles and reviews make me roll my eyes until they hurt. I actually read them, just for laughs. I've never heard so much snake oil nonsense in all my life. I swear, I think they could write a twenty page thesis on the merits of a $20,000 fly swatter.
Love the preambles and definition of USB cable!
Glad you like it - trying to keep things lighthearted.
The definition is from one of the t-shirts in my merchandise store (link in description if you're interested)
Interesting findings. Did you try capturing two recordings using the same cable, invert one and listen to the summed audio? Or was the inverted sound done inside Audacity? The former might have revealed jitter side-effects that wouldn't occur if inverted in Audacity.
Hi Emma, all inversions were done in Audacity. I think the biggest issue was the potential variations in sample timing by the 2i2 acting as ADC.
Two simple reasons
1. Ground plane noise (any current flow creates a return current and charge build up in the ground and with fast switching ground bounces up and down and hard to filter)
2. Rf antenna effect (everything behaves as an antenna and the layout, shape, structure, shielding etc can change these).
The analog section of the amplifiers/dacs can be sensitive to these.
But before you go tweaking usb cables I'd recommend kicking off noise in the usb bus itself first. Either a signal regenerator (like a cheap doodlebug for 80$ diy to know what is being done, or ifi/uptone etc for big bucks and noticeably better noise filtering). But for me, the best one was a free tweak. Just change your music player software to one that plays from RAM and has minimal fetches (using the wider instruction sets like sse/avx etc). Every access has noise, so reducing access is a good way go bring it down. If you're on windows, I'd recommend trying Playpcmwin.
Bit errors are super rare. If there is an error, we have buffer underruns and it actually stutters (I could make it happen if I stress my pc). I have checked with a few others who have confirmed that bit errors are very rare enough. Rather it's all about the noise, from ground plane, or phy stress (if the data has non ideal noise/timing properties) the phy would be moving to a different mode hence causing more noise into the analog side.
Interesting inputs as always, Manuel. Thanks
Thanks Manuel, I'm not a fan of the bare bones players because my library is vast and I prefer the convenience of apps like Roon to help me enjoy the music quickly and easily.
As for the impedance side of things, another viewer said the USB spec is 90 ohm. I know coax is 75 ohm and I use BNC where possible to maintain impedance throughout for the reasons you mentioned. I hadn't thought about this in the context of USB before, but it makes sense.
@@PassionforSound ok I messed up the specs. Usb spec is 90 ohms. Bnc has two possible specs. One is 75 ohm another I forgot. Do note this is not a normal resistive impedance. Its a lump parameter called characteristic impedance (caused by r-c coupling).
I got my Oyaide neo d+ class B USB cable and it made a huge difference in sound quality in my audio interface and got rid of all the jitter introduced by the old usb cable that came with the audio interface thanks for putting out these videos they're very educational.
So glad I've been able to help and even happier that you found a product that's working well for you
Is this the best cable price wise?
That's very difficult to answer because it's so subjective when price and performance (and expectations) come into play
Appreciate all the time that went into this review. Heard good things about curious usb cables over the years as well as audioquest and particularly to the diamond. This review is important with respect to cables and how well they synergize with systems. I think an important thing to note is the conductor material used in the audioquest diamond is silver. They tend to used silver in their higher end stuff and wondered if perhaps this was a large part of what you were hearing compared to the others, which are copper. I believe the curious is copper or some variation and the lower coffee audioquest is copper as well. I could see where in a highly resolving system that diamond would be too much of a good thing if the system leaned on the cool side of neutral. Whereas the copper cables would add back that tone, space and body. Love audioquest stuff but with anything in this hobby it will come down to how well it all plays together. Usb cables have presented a bigger challenge to manufavters to design and get right as it was never designed for audio playback at high levels. It's difficult to deal with all that noise coming computers as well. Thanks for the review!
You're very welcome! The biggest revelation for me in this process was realising that the digital cables were changing the tonality of the original signal and that was ultimately the reason I preferred the Curious. USB cables are one place I don't think the tonality should be altered by equipment.
I've just got the exact same cable last week, but the connectors are copper, not gold as yours. Can curious cables clarify this?
That seems strange. Is it the Evolved (blue) or the standard Curious (yellow)? I don't think they'd use copper connectors because copper tarnishes / oxidises
Did you get it on E-Bay for $5.99? haha
I didn't even know about those UA-cam community posts, a short video about the mystery tests may have been helpful.
Fair point. I'll do something like that next time
i use foobar 2000 and there are settings in it for latency and buffering amongst other confusing settings wouldn't this make a difference to ? maybe you should do a video on source and files as this is the bigger picture, if crap goes in crap comes out theory !
That's true about crap in, crap out, but latency and buffering doesn't affect the USB signal as far as I know. It's more about the time allowed for the computer to process the file and sometimes is used to help prevent clicks and pops from devices during sample rate changes
Hello!
Lovley Video!
Question:
In "the closing arguments" in your video you mentioned Raspberry Pie with HifiBerry and an optical cabel being a cleaner signal than the USB. Since the RP-HifiBerry also can be used as a streamer for me that solution sounds really nice.. Would you recommend that over the PC+Evolved, which is a bit of a big package in 2021 and have a buzzing pc connected to it.. I also have a spare Chromecast Audio, so if I just buy a optical cable I could connect that to the Chord Mojo perhaps.. Mainly use Tidal and Spotify. But sometimes some Flacs.
Background :
My speakers are B&W 705s2 on FS-700s2 stands (not really Audiophile kind of speakers perhaps but not to shabby..)
I own the Curious Evolved & Chord Mojo & Audioquest Sydney & old laptop & Nvidia Shield 2019 Pro. (Sent a email to Curious but they did not recommend me to add a Jitterbug, it was just an open question if to add it in the equation would end up being "better sound".
I also own the Shiit Modi 3 & Supra USB cable if the balls on the Chord Mojo are to much of work to press each time it starts up.)
(Found a 'Raspberry Pi 3B with HiFiBerry Digi+ with coax and optical' for a low price, but heard Darko recommend the Allo hat instead, and perhaps that little extra money makes it worth it, especially if I no longer need the expensive USB-cable..
Thanks for all your hard work. :)
Hi Valter, the RPi was clearly a smoother sound than the stock USB cable, but the difference when using the Curious Evolved was negligible. That said, a RPi setup is a great option for a cheap and compact streamer, particularly if the Allo board is even better. For me, I use my PC for many things - editing videos, listening to music, watching videos, etc. so it's a question of convenience, but if it's pure listening you're after then the RPi could be great.
is there any budget (around 40-70 euro )usb cable you would recommend? greetings
I like the Supra cable the most of those I've tried. I've actually got a video coming out this week looking at the Supra, Wireworld Chroma 8 and Oyaide Neo d+
I'm looking forward to it!
Your channel should have 10x the subscribers. Excellent stuff!
Thanks Josh! I'm working on that, but it's a slow road for growth.
Thank you for discussing this topic. I agree that there could be variance in the signal and distortion. Perhaps the best way of identifying this and the cable that best addressed the situation is by viewing the output in a controlled environment. Do you have an audio scope you can use to measure the way form? If you have a standardize import and view the output you should be able to see any distortion or errors that occur in each cable. This might help to provide some additional scientific weight to your hypothesis. Thanks so much for discussing these topics.g
Thanks Jay. I don't have the right setup for this because I'd need an analyser that looks at the digital signal. I tried a different test in another video where I recorded the analog audio, but people pointed out that the timing of the ADC process when recording each version would have resulted in tiny timing variations which makes comparing the analog outputs misleading.
Hi Lachlan, I bought the AudioQuest Carbon USB based on your website comparison. Just WOW
So glad you're liking it!
I used to have 4 cables 1.5M which showed differences people could hear "Stock" un-shielded, "Stock" shielded, Then from here 24AWG custom made copper shielded & earthed (This one made harsh treble - Cymbals, Funny enough similar but different to the unshielded stock.), Audioquest Carbon (Similar to stock but consistently more sense of "space"/"air" between sound). There was also shorter ones for the old Dac. Now I just use the AQ carbon 1.5M because screw idiots wasting my time, get more music time now & its my personal comfortable sounding cable.
That's all that matters in the end - your enjoyment of the music!
I have a regular Curious cable that use with my Chord Mojo, it's very good It doesn't improve the sound signal but It removes electrical noises. It's a very good cable.
I tried the original cable ages ago and I remember liking it. Glad you're happy with your setup!
I'm looking forward to trying the Regen.
Excellent disclaimer. :-D
Thanks, Awake. Thought it was a bit of fun.
Thanks, that was informative; keep going deeper...
I will - that's for sure
Do we even need the 5v line when going from let's say a Bluesound Node to a DAC?
It varies from product-to-product. Many DACs use this as a handshake device to recognise that there's a connection made.
@@PassionforSound Oh I see thank you! I'll have to ask Denfrips for that.
Yes. They should be able to help 🙂
What happened to Mystery test 1 tracks A, B and C?
They were broken, Barton. There was a level issue that made Track A louder and that totally changes our perception of sound so I had to scrap it and start again ☹️
In my experience some DACs (they are responsible for tonality, aren’t they) are influenced in their sound and tonality by things like attached cables or also power supply, also grounding, or to be more specific, ground potential differences between streamer or pc, DAC and preamp. So unless you got this sorted in the first place, the usb cable can even influence tonality, or, to be more precise, different usb cables do so in different ways.
The other influence on tonality I have noticed is AQ‘s DBS system: if you disconnect the battery, the tonality of the connected DAC might change from well lit to mid centric. Again, ymmv dependent on components, power supply etc. Or input (in the case of my dac). Definitely if AQ‘s DBS is disconnected (or actually the battery set), the sound loses its polish, and becomes rather less fine, ie getting a bit more similar to a (quite rough) stock usb cable. FYI; I have moved up from stock to AQ Forest to Coffee and have experimented with alternative DBS voltages (using other AQ DBS battery packs) including 36, 48 and std 72V. In some configs my system sounded overall better w 48V (because there was a meatier bass, vs 72V, at the expense of treble smoothness, though) combined with a Jitterbug. Interestingly, using different digital source however did not confirm or reproduce this described change in tonality, and showed only less refined sound with lower DBS voltage. So, I conclude, the described influence on tonality, is a result of other factors at play, but not necessarily introduced by the cable.
Note, all tweaks & accessories not only influence quality but more or less subtly change tonality, whether fuses, AC cables, Jitterbug, ICs or LS cables. Key is to keep it in balance, e.g. by careful integration, including mains & power supply.
That's really interesting, Gio! Thanks for sharing
Just a quick note in case you can change it or add it in the description.
On the Mystery Tests, the percentages for Round 2 don’t add up correctly.
Oh, really? Bummer! I was cutting and pasting the text to avoid creating from scratch each time - I must have missed changing one of the numbers. I can't change it without uploading a whole new video, but thanks for letting me know! 🙂
@@PassionforSound I wouldn’t worry about it. I think your message still comes across clearly and it’s a great video.
I’m probably what you’d call a casual audiophile (love music, like the gadgets but don’t venture too far into seeking perfection) so an in-depth review of a cable without any BS is welcome in my book.
I don’t think the cable route is a road I want to venture down but I did find it interesting.
Thanks for the videos and the Schiit interview was great!!!
62% of the people saying they heard a difference doesn't mean there is a difference.
I wonder if an iFi iSilencer+ and a Supra USB cable combination might be a more cost effective way to connect a computer to a dac?
Funny you should mention the Supra cable. It's coming up for review next week!
I stuck the iFi iSilencer+ into my notebook. Had zero effect for me. Did not make any difference. 😢
@@hushpuppykl I used it on the back of my pc connecting to some active desktop speakers. I thought the speakers had gone wrong at first because the background noise disappeared. Even better, the sound quality also really improved across the board. I suppose they can only remove noise that's there.
DACs *DO* have error checking. The error correction is not the same as other data types (where the data is resent), that is true. But the DAC have usually 10ms to 100ms of correction headroom. Differences in the signal will be processed out by the DAC.
The Swenson article you cite: 1. is a white paper that was not peer reviewed, 2. is published by people selling stuff to correct the "problem" (i.e., bias), but most importantly 3. really concludes that if your cable makes a difference, something is seriously wrong with your system (e.g., current leakage).
I heard difference only when the volume was different. Always preferred a louder file. Everything else sound absolutely the same to my ear. Aeon Flow RT. E-MU 0204. Stock cable. BTW, thanks for the experiment and your explanation, everything sounds reasonable, but probably due to the format of the experiment it's hard to build any decisions. Looking forward to the Experiment V2.0!
Yeah, the experiment was deeply limited by the recording device. I've bought an audio interface so I can try again soon...
I have great respect for Rob @ Curious Cables. I had trouble with the original Curious cable between the Aurender ACS-10 music server and Audio-DG's HE-7 Singularity DAC. The Aurender has a USB Audio Class 2 out and the HE-7's USB input is galvanically isolated. When playing music (all of it plain 'ol Redbook rips to 16 bit 44.1 KHz) , I would hear extremely loud brief bursts of static crackling noises every 30 seconds and about every five minutes the music just couldn't be heard. The latter required me to press Pause, then Play, on the Aurender to resume hearing. Rob's obviously had a lot of experience with all sorts of DACs and players. We tried a few different things. For example, swapping the Aurender with a Windows 10 laptop -- that worked fine, so the cable was OK. Rob allowed me to return the cable for a FULL refund. (I'm now using a XSymphony silver cable, bought from Wildism Audio. Works fine. Yeah the sound is a teeney weeny bit 'brighter'. Couldn't say if this is the silver wiring or just a better USB cable than the Strightwire USB cable I'd been using for five years, or, I'm stilling burning in the cable.)
Interesting, Trevor. Thanks for sharing!
The question is whether it the price tag of these cables is worth it or not. the price of the cable is enough to purchase next level gear.
Hi J PJ, I totally agree and that's why I said towards the end of the review that these are 'last piece of the puzzle' items. People should absolutely upgrade DAC, amp and speakers/headphones first (not necessarily in that order)
So here's the real problem though, I barely can even hear a difference between two DACs, how will I hear a difference between a cable and another?
Hi Stan, there might be a couple of things going on there. Firstly, critical listening is a learnable behaviour (if you want to practice it - no need to). Part of the challenge when listening to different DACs is that they should all produce a mostly linear frequency response so you're not listening for treble, mid or bass emphasis like in headphones. Instead it's about things like soundstage shape and depth, imaging accuracy and focus, and the general timbre of the sound (edgy, smooth, grainy, etc.) These things are all a bit more subtle than with headphones and even some amps.
The second thing is the quality of the rest of your gear. Every system is limited by the lowest quality piece of gear. That doesn't mean cheapest necessarily, just which piece of gear has the lowest resolution, smallest soundstage presentation, etc. so it's also about understanding your setup and it's inherent limitations. If you have something that flattens the soundstage (e.g. an amp) then all DACs will sound equally flat.
Hopefully that makes sense and it's not to say you need to change anything - it's just about finding what you find enjoyable and pleasing to listen to.
Thanks
i can see you kept both a90 and d90, nice silver stacks!
Yeah, it's hard to part with them because they are a great refero piece for comparisons, etc.
There are some amazing comments regarding this subject - almost more intriguing than the video content. I am surprised we don't have any optical transmission specialists showing how they have to manage light degradation over certain mediums to avoid signal path issues and ultimately how they manage potential data variances over a given time domain to achieve certain levels of data throughput that can be classed as lossless.
Wire is simply another medium for a signal path and yes like many other methods of transmitting data there are methods involved to mitigate signal path losses over any given type of material. Hence the USB standards have evolved over the years to allow faster transfers without any data loss, with specifics including length and type of cable used and methods of keeping the signal path clean in the pins used for transmit and receive at the interface each end.
Once the medium you are sending data via has enough 'bandwidth' to cope within whatever standard of interface you are using (USB 2 for example) and the devices at each end are able to negotiate the standard protocols defined within the USB standards to acheive this , there is no theoretical data loss in the signal path between interfaces (PC and DAC for example) and as long as the amount of data needed to be sent without significant delays (and this is the key thing with a human perceived real-time audio data stream) can be reliably sent from source to destination without any error correction methods employed by the protocol used here (USB) there is absolutely no perceivable difference between any data source and the signal path used to transfer it.
But there are always manufacturing differences even in cables that are 'within' a given specification. Digital devices and their interfaces require these minimum standards so the methods used to transfer 'data' across them adhere to the interfaces they are connecting - in this case USB 2 which provides sufficient bandwidth (transmissable data without loss over a given time-domain as mentioned earlier) to transfer the amount of data needed by a high quality audio stream without loss or introducing any delays or even variable delays (jitter) to affect the device at the receiving end, in this case a DAC.
To add to all of this there are methods used within the standards of the type of data encoded at the PC and decoded by the DAC to employ further methods to avoid measurable losses in the fairly real-time critical nature of the audio stream (PCM for example). Methods used by standards such as ASIO to allow adjustments to the data buffers which affect the delivery of the audio stream by factors of milliseconds as buffers are increased all come into play when a DAC ends up processing the data stream and converting in a particular way (Burr Brown for example) to analogue for our ears.
In the world of digital only communications there are always challenges for designers to squeeze more data via devices that are either relatively close together like USB connecting our PC to our DAC which is designed to be a consumer level method easily used by anyone or perhaps interfaces that are many kilometers apart and need to handle gigabits of data (way more than is necessary for our DAC over USB) to send our internet traffic across countries without any theoretical data loss.
Hopefully this explains the real differences made possible by different USB cables that may or may not adhere to USB standards properly and those that are well beyond the standard needed to avoid any data loss between PC and DAC and therefore absolutely no difference in data and no perceivable difference in the audio data stream getting to the DAC.
That is enough without introducing converations about EMI shielding, crosstalk, capacitance and a whole host of things that can and do affect any signal over a cable used to connect digital interfaces.
The factors a high quality cable that meets and exceeds the USB standards gives us is to minimise the problems at either end of the cables with the USB port connector quality and what sits on the board it is attached to on either PC or DAC. On high quality audio equipment you would expect a DAC manufacturer to pay some attention to this part of their product. A PC manufacturer or motherboard designer will also vary on how important this is to them and try not to introduce other types of signal affecting the USB controller chip doing its job reliably.
There is always a way of doing something to just about get what is needed acheived and then there is high quality engineering and manufacturing to do it better.
Extracting money out of people for a product in a particular market that is 'better' in some way (visually, ergonomics, material quality or type) is a whole different ball-game !
If it makes you feel it improves the sound of whatever you are using it with, then it does. If it makes you enjoy what you are hearing in some subjective way, then it does.
It's definitely an interesting discussion and one where I still feel there aren't definitive answers. All I know is that blind testing has proven differences in sound between different USB cables to my ears so something beyond expectation/aesthetics etc. is going on. I've done my best to understand and explain it as best I can, but I'm always open to a balanced and respectful conversation about the topic so thank you for sharing your thoughts as you have. 🙂
Hm, it's not about the quality of the digital signal, as you say the signal is received or not. It's about transportating electrical noise from one device on another (for example from a noise computer to the DAC). If the DAC has a poor filtering of this noise, or a poor board design, this noise will be transmitted to the amplification circuit and then to the output of the DAC. A cable can or might diminish this noise
@@webersteve1547 A Japanese engineer, designer of hi end dacs and cd players, once said that USB is the best way known to man to bring noise into a DAC. This is the reason why he categorically refused to put a USB port in his dac. Admittedly, this was 5-6 years ago, maybe there are new technologies now, I am not sure. I have an Ethernet connection to my DAC, it sounds great with a 20$ cable from Blue Jeans Cables, due to the fact that the Ethernet is galvanically insulated and that the Ethernet protocol has error correction, resend mechanisms, and packet transmission is totally asynchronous and buffered, so no jitter is added and a good clock performs time-alignment directly in the dac.
@@DaveJ6515 a good dac should have a good Filterung againdt noise, and a good PC should have not much noise in the USB output anyway
@@webersteve1547 I thought the same. At the same time, the person who told me that has such a high reputation that it is quite possible that he is right and I am wrong. If it were about mathematics I would trust my knowledge, but in this case I am in his territory.
could you list your computer specs please ? and do you think higher end system's have a bigger advantage for music and what is the biggest upgrade required motherboard, processor, ssd, ram, etc, ect Maybe something to look at ? thanks
Hi Steve, this went to the potential spam folder originally - sorry about the delay fishing it out!
I'm not near my computer for the fine details, but it's a recent i7 running Windows 10 with lots of RAM (64Gb I think). It's setup for heavy duty photo editing and video editing so plenty of grunt. I run ally music from Roon and JRiver MediaCenter. OS is on an SSD with music on a HDD. I haven't optimised the PC for audio specifically. My next step is to buy and review the Matrix Element-H PCI-E USB card for audio.
@@PassionforSound thanks for the reply, do you think i can get the most out my audio equipment using foobar 2000 or do you recommend what you are using, if so do you think you could do a review on different sources, as it would be interesting to hear what other people are using, i think there is not a lot of information on this subject and its probably the most important, thanks once again
Foobar works well, Steve. I'm not sure if Roon or JRiver will provide any significant improvement on SQ, but the Roon interface is magic. I've been contemplating a review for a while. Guess I should make it happen!
@@PassionforSound thanks for response, I'm happy with foobar but some settings can be overly complex. looking forward to review on matrix maybe compare it to jitterbug (i hear its not that good ) and also the ifi products that may or may not work as well but cost a lot less thanks.
As always, stay tuned 😉
Even when copying files to/from external hard drive from/to a laptop can fool the OS that it copied the file successfully intact. But when you run a checksum scanner you can sometimes encounter a file that's not intact hence, I always verify the file signature (512-bit MD5) when replicating very important files. This is super great as I can somewhat confirm my better than average hearing ability (except that I admittedly heard a difference from the same cable :)) (Track J/K )) which proves that I'm still susceptible to placebo.
P.S. AND, I used a very mid-fi setup when listening to the tracks: Macbook Pro HP out + Zero Audio Carbo Tenore. I can use a better setup but I'm really curious if I can hear the differences with just a pair of earphones. And I always preferred the non-stock cable (and AQ Diamond over Curious Evolve).
Very interesting on multiple counts. Thanks for sharing, autoexec! (Great handle too!)
@@PassionforSoundhaha thanks. thank you for bringing us these very informative videos. Looking forward to more interesting things from your channel.Will recommend it to my friends, too! :)
I purchased a “Silver Dragon” upgraded silver/copper USB A to USB B cable for my Chord Hugo TT2 and to connect it to my windows PC. It makes a difference just like high end digital hdmi cables do over cheap ones. It depends how much data is being transferred across them as well.
Hi Hadley, thanks for sharing that. Glad you heard an improvement! I've actually just finished recording a new objective USB test video that I think (hope) people will find quite interesting.
I'm yet to play with HDMI cables, but look forward to that in the future when we upgrade our TV and sources.
@@PassionforSound hey on the chord TT2 do you recommend crossfeed on or off and if on what setting?
I think it's totally a personal preference. The crossfeed is very well implemented, but it inevitably alters the sound slightly so it comes down to whether or not you're seeking purity of sound or enjoyment (assuming you enjoy the crossfeed presentation more)
USB cables, or cables in general make huge difference to overall listening experience. It might not be a day and night difference and it might not mean that expensive cables are better, but I for sure can tell the difference in blind tests between cables. One example is that, with certain headphone a simple USB 2.0 cable that came with another standard PC equipment sounded actually better than an audiophile USB 2.0 cable that costs around 60 USD with LCD-X headphones, however in the same setup with Meze Empyrean the audiophile USB 2.0 cable sounded better, and again I could reliably say which cable was which in blind tests. If one can't hear the differences, great for them; but it is a fact that audio signature and sometimes quality changes by simply changing interconnects, USB cables, anything in the chain really.
I agree, Gökhan, particularly with the statement that everything matters throughout the source chain. I've got an interesting video coming up subjectively comparing some affordable USB cables so hopefully that will help continue the discussion...
Awesome cable.👍
Yeah, it really is.
I love the way my printer cable sounds with all the static... it's like listening to a Vintage Stereo system. 😁
🤣
Thank you for looking a data concerning perceived differences. I believe that you are genuinely trying to figure out the correct answer. I am very willing to be persuaded concerning cables.
The data do not support your conclusions in this case. You cannot add together the "prefer 1" and "prefer 2" together and compare that to "no difference." You are reducing categorical data to dichotomous and biasing the results. If there is a perceivable difference between cables, we would expect to see at least 70% of people agree that the "better" cable is in fact better, and that no difference exists when the the cable or file are the same. If the difference is clear, then we would expect greater than 90% agreement. Your results do not reach the lower threshold. In round 1, for example, only 27% identified the "better" cable correctly; 51% heard no difference. Also, your participants failed the manipulation check in that they claimed to hear a difference when none existed, and they preferred the "worse" cable about equally to the "better" one.
You can draw two conclusions. 1. The data do not support that using a "better" cable makes an improvement for your participants as a group. 2. People in this test, as a group, were not reliable in their judgements.
Hi Steven, I appreciate the tone of your response even though it's questioning my content - thank you.
The experiment ended up a bit of a mess, but I didn't want to throw it away after everyone took the time to respond. I'm very comfortable that I drew some conclusions that weren't really valid - that's fair.
Ultimately, this is about starting the conversation and exploration more than a definitive result. I hope to revisit the experiment in the future with a fixed setup so that everyone can hear the exact same setups in a completely blind way and therefore remove all variables except the cables (and some type of control). The logistics are a bit tricky so not sure how or when this will happen, but I hope it can occur in the future.
Once a smart audio engineer said to me: Digital is just a fast analogue signal, nothing else.
Exactly! 🙂
I, for one believe that a usb cable may sound better than another based on experience. However, I find the price asked is rather based on speculation than actual manufacturing cost, because any standard cable maker could make one of these, it's only putting more care in connectors and wiring (there are good generic usb cables available with good insulation for sensible prices). Having said that, by logical thinking I concede that impedance mismatch, EMI, RFI and specially 5V current signal might play a role. But jitter and most interefence already come from the source computer, not the cable itself, it may only exacerbate it. I find it more important to have a externally powered audio usb card in the first place to receive purer signal. Then my biggest wonder: from and to what extent does digital signal inaccuracy (i.e: a 0 instead of 1 in a 16-bit word) affect the analog audio conversion from an audible standpoint? Jitter effect is commonly perceived as 'glare', etc, although jitter tests for example in ASR most come out as inaudible (-120db, though it might permeate in real music). How come this spatial improvement, stereo separation, smooth sound, etc is atributed to signal inaccuracy? Wouldn't we rather hear clicks and audible noise instead from the moment digital errors accumulate? And last, dac usb implementation seems to play a role minimising jitter by smart decoding of the signal. Good dacs such as RME ADI-2 are known by excellent jitter management. I heard it even has a playable test pattern to check for bitperfect accuracy.
Thanks for the video and effort to share your findings on this sensitive matter.
Hi Diego and thanks for your comment! I'll try and address a couple of your points/questions.
As for inaudible jitter, in my interview with Rob Watts, he discusses the measurement and listening tests he went through when designing his DACs for Chord Electronics. He talks about how he was shocked that changes in the -200dB range and lower (I can't recall exact numbers) were still resulting in audible improvements. In other words, our ears are more sensitive than we may realise.
Secondly, (as I understand it) when audio bits are altered, the result will be a distortion of the wave form, not a total loss of sound or spike in sound. Imagine 3 samples with a piece of music. If those samples should represent audio output voltages of 1.5, 1.45, and 1.4 volts (i.e. a downward wave) then if the signal is affected by some data being altered by interference, the result might be 1.49, 1.46, and 1.41 volts. The waveform is still kind of correct, but not quite perfect.
“Which coloration was correct?” Exactly the headache with these cable comparisons. Haven’t found one that does everything great and the prices are more distractions than accurate indicators of what you’ll get. Although I have found as the prices go higher the sounds are somewhat. sharper. Great vid!
I agree about price and sharpness. That's where the Curious Evolved was such a change and why I initially, incorrectly, ranked it lower.
@@PassionforSound I’ve had the original curious cable for almost a month now and while it adds some space in the sound and more detail, on my system it seems to become slightly sharp and jumbled up top. I’m hoping the evolved is better.
I haven't spent significant time with the original and not for a long time, either, but I would expect the Evolved to improve that based on Rob's explanations of the two.
What else have you compared your Curious USB with?
@@PassionforSound Actually, the $60 audioquest forest and some other one I’ve had for a long time, can’t remember the brand, that was around $100. The forest might not be as open but I really enjoy the tone it gives and might even have a little more blackness in the background. Sounds pretty accurate with no sharpness. I just want more spaciousness eventually. The original curious cable seems to overwhelm in complex parts of classical music, whereas the forest doesn’t. But that could be because the forest is just bringing less information to the forefront.
The Forest was quite a good cable if I recall correctly. Not sure what's happening with the Curious, but the Evolved definitely allows spaciousness from the DAC and I hear no sense of brightness or edge compared to the AQ Coffee, AQ Diamond, stock USB or optical.
For me there’s a noticeable difference between a 4 dollars USB cable and an 50 dollars one. I always take into consideration to buy the 50 dollars USB cables every time I’ve got enough money for it.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Alexandru!
omg, super fantastic video. finally i understand usb cable in audio. does that mean ethernet has the same issues?
I haven't gone down that path yet, Tibor. I still have a lot of exploring to do to really understand how cables are affecting the end result of digital audio, but it's a fun journey.
Some additional tech info... Poor impedance match between source, cable and receiver can cause signal reflections as data is transferred at a very high speed in the USB cable. These reflections can cause time errors and jitter from the usb receiver that are decoding the signal from the cable. Depending on the usb receiver and dac design this time related distortion may well cause time/amplitude related distortion at the analog output of the dac. That's one reason why resampling after the usb receiver using a good clock can be important. To reduce the dependency of the usb cable but also to jitter from the source.
Thanks for the additional info, Anders!
Too bad this isn't Voice over IP, where jitter actually would be relevant as it uses no receive buffers.
This was an interesting video. Even though I've been in the computer business since dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was unaware of the low voltage switching that occurred with USB regarding audio. With that being the case, then yes I think the cable might make a difference if it's not perfectly accurate in carrying the voltages. So, even though I agree, without some kind of measurable guideline (resistance, capacitance, something) to use as a guide it's hard to know what you're getting.
Thanks for being open minded about it, Larry! I've got a new video planned in the future to do a thorough blind test and confirm with certainty of it is or is not a placebo effect. I'm pretty certain that there's more going on than simple placebo, but without the ability to measure why/how exactly the cables are making a difference, I figured the next best thing is to just prove if they are our aren't.
@@PassionforSound The voltage issue only makes sense, especially when it comes to properties like sound stage and depth. I'll bet the designer of the cable has figured out which electrical or dielectric properties make a difference. However, quantifying what they are would just make it easy for generic cable companies to copy those properties. To that point, I just ordered a very inexpensive set of interconnects from Monoprice on Amazon ($4) that sounded wonderful. Over the years I've spent a ton of money on cables (most of which I still have) and though these hands-down are better.
Yeah, more expensive isn't always better. In the USB world, Supra are a great example where their cables are quite affordable and IMO much better than some of the really expensive alternatives I've tried.
@@PassionforSound For the sake of experimenting with this, because I'm not exactly sure how sound is perceived if you have inconsistencies in the pure binary stream of data, wouldn't it be possible to code a music player which deliberately swaps 0s and 1s out at a user-defined, probabilistic rate, to investigate where the threshold for noticing these digital artifacts would start to emerge in human hearing? I have a heard time wrapping my mind around how this actually manifests in the real-world, especially taking different bitrates and just pushing through more audio data, into consideration. It probably isn't as simple as "suddenly noticing a few clicks and pops".
That's a great suggestion, Lincoln! It's beyond my technical abilities, but I'd love to see someone else apply this approach.
What I do know is that a dropped 1 or 0 here or there shouldn't cause pops or clicks because each data point is part of a complex waveform, not isolated moments of sound being on or off so missed data would theoretically just alter the shape of the complex waveform as I understand it.
Hi Please review T & A HA200 amp
That looks amazing, Deven! I'll see what I can do
In regards to expectation bias and not hearing the difference.
Years ago I added a multi-socket Mains conditioner/filter to my system but couldn't really hear much improvement (not even placebo), but I kept it anyway. After a few years I decided to sell things I (thought) didn't need and replaced the conditioner with a generic multi-socket strip. I couldn't believe what I heard, it was an emediate downgrade in quality (spacial and refinement). It really was so obvious.
My guess is that my expectation bias at the time was getting the better of me and I only really appreciated the 'upgrade' after living with it for a few years before disconnecting.
Really interesting! Thanks for sharing, CoffeeSnob!
The opposite happened to me, I removed the power conditioner I had been using for months because somebody recommended to at least try doing that. The power conditioner was talking the life out of the sound, it was as if using the power conditioner was like putting a sheet over top of the speakers.
So funny how the "fixes" and "improvements" aren't always better
@@PassionforSound What's even funnier is we need to try all of this stuff ourselves even though others have told us differently. In the audio world there is so much to know and sometimes we are just gluttons for punishment.
So true
I mentioned it in your last USB cable test, but it bears repeating: you need to measure the results between two samples of the same cable from the same mfr. If there is no consistency between two samples of the same cable from the same mfr, then none of the results from the tests you've done hear have any practical use, because one cannot say that if you buy a brand X cable, it will consistently outperform brand Y cable, or it will behave consistently better or worse than brand X or brand Z cables.
WOW opened up a audio can of worms, i was one of the 16 that did all your test tracks my results= i need a curious cable up sampled by you and recorded by you so when can i come over lol . you should ask for peoples cables they used me $60 Oyaide NEO d+ USB Class A cable i would not spend more reason being audio has to many variances' anyway equipment used, headphones, dacs, amps, and most of all source files that sound engineer's can stuff up so i have learnt over the years not to chase the dragon and just buy good, well made, reliable equipment and enjoy, also to my knowledge you should use as short a usb cable as possible, and not use the power of it as its not clean and use a linear power supply instead, once again great if not ballsy review.
Hi Steve, I do tend to agree that chasing dragons is a fruitless exercise. I probably wouldn't buy crazy expensive cables in normal circumstances, but it makes (hopefully) for interesting viewing and discussion.
Oh, and thanks for doing all the tests even though there were some major issues with them 🙂
Off topic: I recently came across this article by audioquest (a company I am generally skeptical of).
www.audioquest.com/theory-education/article/83-directionality-its-all-about-noise
This surprisingly makes sense to me. Wonder if you have further leads on articles for me to understand this better (the modelling of cable grain patterns, associated noise patterns etc.. pretty sure it'll involve quite a bit of electromagnetism).
Not entirely irrelevant. It goes to show quite well how seemingly insignificant and invisible characteristics in metals and the like can have significant impacts on sound quality
So this is like UDP vs TCP protocols.
it should then theoretically be possible to build a device that can measure USB cable quality by saving an audio stream over usb to some storage media. Then the audio stream can be transferred to a pc where files can be compared visually against each other, and maybe given rating of how much errors exist compared between the 2 files.
Unfortunately that will be a ton of effort, and its not something you going to sell thousands of, so development of this will probably never happen.
Will also need to keep in mind, you wont just be measuring the performance of the cable but also the circuit with the clock etc.
I do see it possible that this can be a feature of a high end DACs to test usb quality.
There are however 2 things i think still does not make sense to me: usb runs over 4 wires, and the data over 2 of those. We have a V+ and a V- so essentially a usb cable is running ballanced, so noise on the cable should in theory not be a problem: www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/200233/how-does-the-usb-protocol-work%23:~:text%3DThe%2520data%2520signals%2520are%2520sent,the%2520%252D%2520lead%2520of%2520the%2520comparator.&ved=2ahUKEwi5haH71sftAhVpRxUIHToXCBYQFjACegQIAhAE&usg=AOvVaw3aSI1XW_gZVNdMRzT3yBOG
The other thing that bothers me is, if there are errors in the data transfer, it should be random. I cant see how one cable affect the sound i a specific consistent way and another cable affect in a different spesific consistent way.
Two really good points about the balanced design and also the randomness of errors. My only (non-expert) thoughts are that the cables are creating consistent sound by adjusting (for better or worse) the number and frequency of errors and that the noise being introduced by the power line and ground are a problem more than the voltage. As I understand it, the time required for the voltage to ramp up and down (regardless of noise) will affect the voltage level at the time of each sample and then noise added from power or ground wires will change the reference for 0V and decrease the margin of error. That would all still occur regardless of balanced design so I think maybe that's playing a part, but it's just a semi-educated guess.
Just bought a Supra cable. Definitely a difference. Tamed the highs and deepened my base. Very pleased. Thank you for your previous video 👌👍🏻
My pleasure. Glad you're liking your Supra cable!
Very happy with the 1.5m Cinnamon to run my Hiby, $109. Cables matter. Best, D.
Glad you're enjoying it! I do agree 🙂
I just received my Curious for Mojo. I have put some hours on them and absolutely love the sound improvement over the stock cable. More weight to the instruments and more space and imaging. Noticed it pretty much right away. There is no going back.
So great to hear, Chris! I have an interesting video coming up exploring USB cables in a more scientific way that will hopefully support people like you and I who do hear a difference from one cable to the next.
@@PassionforSound Excellent.I will be looking out for it. Thanks
You should get an Intona USB cable. It’s the ONLY one, which is truly 90 ohm impedance and therefore the most “neutral” cable. Check out their infos, you will be surprised. AudioQuest, Wireworld, etc all do have a certain sound signature, as they are way off from the USB spec of 90 ohm. They all, incl. these home brewed Curious ( as the name says) do not state any specification about tolerance to the 90 ohm specification.
Maybe because they even do not have the professional measuring equipment.
With USB cables there is no difference to SPDIF cables, all these digital transfer cables should meet the specs within a tolerance of max 1-2%.
USB 90 ohm, SPDIF BNC 75 ohm and AES/EBU 110 ohm. But the home-audio and cable industry just ignores these specs, why would you sell a SPDIF cable with an RCA plug? Just because the fancy RCA plugs are 5x more expansive than good BNC plugs.
Hi Manfred, thanks for that info. As a big fan of BNC over RCA due to the importance of impedance matching, I'm interested to follow up on this with USB.
Great review again and some serious food for thought, your technical understanding goes way beyond mine even though you state that you're not that qualified as others. Anyway I was always of the opinion that USB cables merely transfer digital data ie: 1s and 0s but as you say it is in fact digital signal in analogue form.
I recently bought a topping e30ii dac being fed from my desktop Amazon HD feeding my A50s amp into Sundaras and I was very happy with the sound, having a spring clean I came across a box of cables many of us hifi enthusiasts collect over the years and I stumbled upon a Furtech formula 2 USB (£80 amazon) which I thought looked chunkier better quality gold plated terminals etc which I must have acquired from somewhere , anyway I decided to see if it made any difference not expecting it to as my previous bias to digital cables was negative (no expectation bias).
Wow! I was totally flabbergasted, sound was richer, bass was definitely fuller , sound in general seemed more fuller and crisper this was all in comparison to the stock USB topping provide.
So do USB cables make a difference to sound in a system?
In my opinion yes without any shadow of doubt
On another connected topic Lachlan what's your stance / opinion on the Audioquest jitterbug? I know it's another whole different deep rabbit hole to go down but I'm interested in your opinion on that.
I in my opinion think that it definitely works......
I'm so pleased you got to test this for yourself and were able to approach the test with a sceptical, but open mind. Sorry that it's probably opened a can of worms (or cables as it were) for you, but it can be a fun process and doesn't require spending a fortune to enjoy some nice tweaks to a quality setup.
As for the Jitterbug, I own two of the old ones, but don't use them anymore because I rarely use my laptop for audio and have other solutions in place with my desktop. I would need to go back and listen to them again with my additional gear and experience to properly answer. They definitely change the sound, that's without a doubt for me, but better vs worse is always hard to know.
Just adding that a recent explanation I read of the FMJ version makes a lot of sense that they are designed to essentially drain/absorb noise from the USB circuit and that should only be a good thing.
Thanks Lachlan for your speedy reply, yes this hobby is all about opening minds and views , I'm now of the opinion that USB cables DO make a difference and it can be considerable depending on what you're using now and upgrading to.
I had the standard jitterbug but upgraded recently to the fmj version which I think is an improvement over the standard version.
Now just going to have a look at your supra Excalibur review ..lol
Enjoy the Excalibur review!
You should know the dac has a buffer for musical signal and so the music signal is not fed simultaneously and also the signal to noise ratio is about 100db which means 10 to the power of minus 10 so if dac is not a garbage there is no way to occur any digital error between computer source and dac input stage .So the difference in the analog out put of dac is from the dac’s analogue part not frome the computer to dac transmission step which involves usb cable.
Digital data are transferred in packages and combined together using algorithm that guaranties that whole data and only sent data has been received. Some noise could also travel over that cable but that will not affect data integrity. What you hear is probably different electrical noise levels transferred that is affecting analog part of each DAC. That basically means that USB part of DAC is not designed to high standards (same for source). Logic is simple, if data packages are corrupted they can't be combined. Imagine transferring picture over usb and each time you send it you modify data because of usb cable. After some time you would not have picture any more (at the very least color would change after several transfers). Transfer speed of USB cables reduces significantly if longer cables are used . That is very important for streaming. So , use short usb cables and longer XLR cables for best performance.
That's true for printers, hard drives, etc. but not for audio. There is no data checking as I understand it. The DAC simply reproduces every bit as it arrives. As for DAC quality, I hear the same exact characteristics on the Schiit Bifrost 2, Topping D90 and Chord M-Scaler/TT2. Are you suggesting all 3 of these DACs are poorly designed?
Here's an article with some more technical info on the topic: positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/why-usb-cables-can-make-a-difference/#:~:text=The%20normal%20losses%20of%20cables,soldered%20back-to-back.
If I have everything set up to record to do this test with one of the USB cables and hit record, then I unplug that USB cable and plug in the other one, not changing everything else, hit record again then I have 2 recorded files and the test would be perfect.
My MIT SL-Matrix cable is superb, way better than anything else I've tried bar extremely short and extremely impractical silver in air in Teflon DIY connections.
Super smooth and relaxed, more natural sound and revealing of recording's inherent qualities vs say an AQ Carbon which is at the other end of the spectrum- brighter, harder, flatter, more gutsy but everything coloured with the same overriding tonality.
I haven't heard of MIT cables, but what you're describing sounds great!
I love the trigger warning!
Haha. Glad you liked it 🙂🙂
so fine differences are really hard to record and show on youtube for us.
Yes. It's unfortunate that I can't provide a direct experience for everyone
@@PassionforSound no problem, its enough if you explain your live experiences at your listening spot.
For me the data just shows nothing really statistically significant was shown. You are comparing 20ish percent vs another 20ish percent and saying people preferring one over the other. The fact that when you used same cable for both tracks and percentage of people nooticing a difference vs no different is half-half just shows that the null hypothesis is proven, i.e. it is not better than randonly choose an answer. On the other hand, I hope you do the same blind test between two dacs that are $500 apart, just to see if people actually perfer the more expensive one. This can proof/disproof you should just spend the $ towards a better dac over a cheaper dac+an expensive usb cable
I agree. Once I realised the recording device was messing with the incoming signal too much, this became an interactive bit of fun rather than anything particularly scientific.
I've since upgraded to a proper audio interface and will do some tests in the future that will include a DAC comparison at some point.
Science!
Excellent review and eloquent breakdown on why USB cables aren’t simply moving “1’s and 0’s”. Can you review the Stealth Audio USB cable?
I'll take a look and see. Thanks for the suggestion
Gooday P4S. thanks for a useful look into a really difficult topic. May we conclude that using optical is (usually) preferable (and more economical) than pesky electrical wires? Not trying to be a smart*$$ just genuinely curious. Many pro observers claim to prefer the sound of their top $ USB cables.over all other connectors. May this just be their musical taste or is it because of the (pro) kit that they favour and the associated USB handling modules in said (pro) gear? The possibilities for research appear to be broad ;¬D Greetings to one and All.
Hi Anthony, glad you found the video interesting. I haven't looked into optical in depth because I'm very much a PC audio guy. What I do know is that some DAC designers like Mike Moffat from Schiit don't like optical and there's an article linked in the comment I've pinned to the top of this video's comments section where John Swenson (another DAC designer) explains why optical is still imperfect. I think ultimately they all have their own drawbacks so we're best to find the most convenient solution for us and then maximise the quality of that connection with cables, devices, etc. that assist.
I've developed network components and I've developed digital audio systems.
USB uses data flow control and checksums for each packet transmitted.
IF a cable introduces errors into the data stream, the checksum would be off, the packet discarded.
A discarded packet results in a very ugly noise, just like a skipping CD player - a loud squeak followed by silence.
So errors on a USB cable are no subtle artifacts, they are very audible without any guessing and requiring trained ears.
If your music plays back smoothly, your digital signal is received 100% correctly.
How can you verify? Copy a file over that same USB cable for a thousand times. Take a SHA512 hash before starting those thousand transfers and after. You will recognize the hash is the same. Before you ask - SHA512 is good enough to base military security on. It won't not detect errors that your ears can.
So if you feel better with a different USB cable - fine, do it if you feel good about it, but it won't change a bit of your digital audio experience.
Oh and on that Jitter topic: it is irrelevant, as your digital audio system uses a receive buffers where the data stream is reassembled. That is why we have a latency issue for digital audio production and we need low latency drivers like ASIO to get closer to realtime.
Hi Wa, I discussed in this video the fact that audio does not get processed using checksums as there is no time for it when audio must be reproduced as the signal is received to avoid breaks in the music.
@@PassionforSound sorry, that's simply not true. The calculation of the checksum takes less than 1ns, the audio buffer is at least 5ms in a professional setup with ASIO, and typically 30ms in a HIFI setup.
There is no realtime HIFI audio - unless you go for the very first SP/DIF spec, which didn't forsee a buffer due to the cost of RAM in the 1970s.
"Isochronous transfers are used to transfer data in real-time between host and device. When an isochronous endpoint is set up by the host, the host allocates a specific amount of bandwidth to the isochronous endpoint, and it regularly performs an IN- or OUT-transfer on that endpoint. For example, the host may OUT 1 KByte of data every 125 us to the device. Since a fixed and limited amount of bandwidth has been allocated, there is no time to resend data if anything goes wrong. The data has a CRC as normal, but if the receiving side detects an error there is no resend mechanism"
www.edn.com/fundamentals-of-usb-audio/
@@PassionforSound exactly. The packet is discarded if the CRC is wrong, you get a digital noise and dropout.
@@PassionforSound as discussed before, the CRC (checksum) is used for audio as well. It just doesn't retransmit the packet, it discards the packet in case of error. Thus the digital noise and dropout for transmission errors.
I've heard it said that with digital, as long as the cable is "good enough" to reliably deliver all of the data, then it's fine.
That's the common story, but because of the factors I've mentioned in the video (EMI, RF interference, etc.) it's actually not the case for audio applications. The problem with the "good enough" assumption is that people are thinking of it as a digital signal when the cable is actually carrying an analog signal that represents digital information.
As long as the cable is up to the USB physical layer spec, you're golden in digital terms - also audio. Checksums and receive buffers are your friends that guarantee a perfectly reassembled audio stream.
What can change digital sound is the filtering strategy implemented on the DAC and the analog stage of the DAC. But not the transmission via USB or Ethernet.
As per my other reply, audio doesn't apply checksums due to the importance of timing in reproducing the signal as it's received. In addition to this, based on all the research I've done, the complex interactions between the DAC's zero reference which I believe is the ground plane, noise introduced to that ground plane and any irregularities caused by interference to the incoming signal, and delays in ramp up and ramp down of voltage in the cable and the DAC circuits can result in a 1 being registered as a 0 or a 0 as a 1. Each time this happens it will alter the output voltage for the analog signal slightly and produce a slightly distorted wave form. Keep in mind that music wave forms are complex and change rapidly both up and down unlike the sine waves used for testing.
@@PassionforSound sorry to burst your bubble. Audio does apply checksums. Realtime is simply not available. You have at least a 5ms buffer if you use ASIO, for normal audio applications roughly 30ms buffer. Plenty of time for the 1ns checksum calculation.
Read the official USB spec.
"Isochronous transfers are used to transfer data in real-time between host and device. When an isochronous endpoint is set up by the host, the host allocates a specific amount of bandwidth to the isochronous endpoint, and it regularly performs an IN- or OUT-transfer on that endpoint. For example, the host may OUT 1 KByte of data every 125 us to the device. Since a fixed and limited amount of bandwidth has been allocated, there is no time to resend data if anything goes wrong. The data has a CRC as normal, but if the receiving side detects an error there is no resend mechanism"
www.edn.com/fundamentals-of-usb-audio/
Those cables are more expensive than my entire setup
Yup, they're pretty crazy prices. I definitely would recommend people spend money on higher quality components well before buying expensive cables.
That's a good point, Paul. I think it happens with a lot of things like DACs with lower quality amps, amps with lower quality DACs or high quality headphones with low quality sources in general. There's also listening skills which sounds like a judgemental comment, but the reality is that critical listening is actually a skill that often needs to be learned.
I'm surprised no one has brought up cable burn in, fact or fiction ? also could you add Oyaide NEO d+ USB Class A cable to your ever growing list to review, as i came highly recommend to me and many pros (the musical kind) use it apparently. and its a reasonable price $67 au. Thanks for all the super details and debate this subject has had, maybe some peoples systems will improve thanks to you.
Hi Steve, thanks for the tip. Looks like I have another cable comparison to do. I might grab a decent optical cable and do a bit of a 2 or 3-way comparison with USB vs Optical and maybe Coax too.
As for burn-in, Rob from Curious burns in all cables prior to shipping so I'm guessing there's something in it. Metals definitely respond to the current flow at a molecular level as I understand it so I figure it makes some kind of difference, even if subtle. The way I look at burn-in is that it does happen in some cases, but I'll always start using a product immediately and let it burn-in while I listen to it. Trying to hear differences separated by hours is a fools game because our auditory memory is pretty crap for fine details. Unless you can put two identical products side-by-side where one is and one isn't burnt-in then I figure you might as well just start enjoying it 🙂
Finally, before I stop rambling, Dan Schmalle talked about Cryo treatment in my interview with him and found that auditorily speaking, Cryo just sped up the burn-in process. He was listening to a non-cryo treated transformer vs a cryo'ed one and the two became more and more similar as the non treated one burnt-in
@@PassionforSound thanks for detailed answer. could i recommend you try- Sys concept 1300-strands 24/192, Toslink Prem. Optical Cable need to order online cost $60us+postage trying to find out if they post to OZ if so happy to send it to you for testing and review. Hear its very good as its glass and not plastic
Steve, I've just ordered the Oyaide cable, a similar priced WireWorld cable and a similar priced Belkin Optical cable... Let the fun begin! (Review will be put sometime early next year I expect)
@@PassionforSound cool, looking forward to it
Agree. Oyaide cables are in the mix of best bang per buck including Supra. 90 ohms is key IMHO.
EMI and RFI could be a factor that should be controlled for. Each of the cables should either be running in a large shielding channel, or alternatively, if you want to test how well each of the cables does in terms of their own shielding, the cables should be swamped with equal levels of overwhelming RFI and EMI during the tests. The idea of listening tests just seems like playing Russian roulette. Hit or miss. The same person can have different impressions from one moment to the next due to the influence of countless psychoacoustic, environmental and biological factors its akin to measuring the speed of light with a tape measure and a pocket watch.
If you really want to debunk this myth, you need to redo this ‘mystery’ test but this time make sure all tracks are recorded with the same cable X and call them track X Y Z etc. You will get the same result.
before getting into the actual content, I think the introspective spirit you demonstrated here should be appreciated by the hi-fi community, or generally everybody in life.
don't want to over structure a youtube comment, just a few random thoughts:
1. not preferring the most expensive cable doesn't necessarily translate to not having an expectation bias. Even tho it is the most expected bias to have. Due to personal interactions, previous life experiences, look&feel, build quality, etc. we might subconsciously develop a tendency to like someone/something, which not always align with price tags.
2. as an audiophile myself, i very much can relate to the effort in optimizing the audio EXPERIENCE REPRODUCTION process. However, every part of the chain has a different weight in adding distortion in the process. As you theory explains, and I am very willing to agree with you, that cables make a difference. Since for most of us here, money is a factor, the only logical thing to do is to start optimizing the part of the chain, which adds the most distortion.
Personally I will follow this order: headphone/speaker -> AMP -> DAC -> Source -> Room -> Ear Canals -> USB Interface -> Cable -> Power Source.
3. Once we are in hobbyist territory, bang for the buck & value for money is getting less important when compared to psychological satisfaction. However, we are made of flesh and blood, our eardrums have only finite sensitivity and resolution, just like our eyesight. What money can buy to further enhance our EXPERIENCE are the things we believe that are going to make a difference. Scientifically they definitely do. Since those things are pretty much measurable, however oftentimes they are beyond human perception capability. Such as how few nano meter a diaphragm can be made, or how pure a cable material is, or how sound-treated a room can be constructed, and how lossless a new audio format can deliver, etc.
Do these things matter? psychologically they always do. Whether our ears can pick the differences up? Probably not always. Since the whole game is about making the ultimate audio EXPERIENCE (feel) better, feelings are what we are after, and they cannot be argued.
Btw, I have already bought LCD-X + E30&L30 stack as my first system. Recently having audio climax every day. 😂(Still expecting LCD-X with Audueze Reveal + Plugin Review, especially how does it stack up against Focal Clear)
Since you are already talking about USB cables, when can we expect the review of Matrix Audio Elemental H, PCI-E USB interface? If I get this USB interface card, should I also get a better USB cable at the same time? Any recommendations from EU market?
Hi Han, thanks for your comments and I agree on all counts. I didn't go into it in depth due to time, but my expectations going into the review process was that I wanted to like the Evolved more than the Diamond, but I consistently found myself subjectively preferring the Diamond and the Coffee. It was only when I questioned what I should actually be looking for that I came back around and preferred the Evolved - not because I wanted to anymore, but because it seemed to me to provide the truest representation of the music (with my reasoning as I explained in the video).
I am in the process of organising the Element H PCI-E interface so sit tight! It's on the way. The Audeze review may take a bit longer, but I haven't forgotten the request. :)
@@PassionforSound fair enough. thanks! ^^
wwwoooww, can't wait! I will be the first ones to like! :DDD
@@PassionforSound hey man, i just bought Focal Clear professional, on black Friday sale, they arrived 1 hour ago, now testing. I will let you know how I like them after 10-day testing.
But for now i kinda feel that they don't slam harder than LCD-X, eventho all reviewers do say the other way. It might be that LCD-X bass extends deeper and tighter, gives me the impression that they slam harder. Image clarity/detail retrieval I do still prefer LCD-X, Clear is kinda not that clear when doing busy passages. However, its hard to find faults in it, they are pretty all-rounder and balanced tuned cans. I am missing some sparkles tho, if you know what I mean...
LCD-X sweats harder.. Focal Clear is more relaxed, for now. I will update.. 😂
Interesting comments on the Clear, Han. Everything you've said makes sense, particularly in comparison to what I understand the LCD-X to be like. Thanks for sharing!
What length of cable did you use? I’ve found this to make a more significant difference than cable type.
I was using a variety of lengths. The Curious Evolved is 1m, the AQ Diamond is 0.75m, the AQ Coffee is 1 or 1.2m and the stock cable was about 1m too.
Learn how to listen? Listening is the problem. If you want to learn how to listen, study and understand how placebo works, otherwise listening is useless. Most "trained listeners" totally ignore that they may be experiencing placebo, so there's no use debating. Tho there could have been issues in the original comparison because of recording. You have to run the two signals live simultainiously and invert one. Same source thru two different cables and invert one.
I host an event every other month in my garage is call the audiophile cables challenge and whoever can tell me which cable is which 10 out of 15 times will win $3000 cash and would be paid right away. Basically everybody that was interested would come over and they were allowed to bring in their own audiophiles gears, such as amp, dac, headphone etc and also their own audiophile usb cables. They would then be in a close section where he can't see what usb cables that was hooked up to their system, so basically a blind test but with their own gears and cable vs mine. I would let them sit down and I would play their recommended tracks so that way he'll be familiar with it even more so. I would then pause the music and I would announce to him that I have switch cables and have him tell me which cable was switched. Also, there would be time that I would not switch at all but tell him that I did. My usb cable that I used in this contest is custom made by me, the material that I used is from the metal of a coat hanger. I've host this event for over 2 years now and so far no winners. The closes was he picked out the right cable 5 out of 15 times. That wasn't the mad part, is most people picked out my coat hanger usb cable far more than their own cable.
Nice idea. Are there only two cables being used?
@@PassionforSound It will be my cable vs theirs. They can bring more than one cable if they so choose to.
Interesting! I'm hoping to setup something a little bit like this (no prize money attached) in Australia some time once things settle down again.
Fortunately we got RME engineers still upgrading Adi-2 with updates. We can now record usb loopback. I’ll just buy curious cable and record the song, then with a stock usb cable. Then put them side by side to see if there is any difference when analyzed… Hopefully this will put an end to this non-sense.
Appreciate your efforts. Your data actually is evidence that the USB makes NO difference. There is no significant difference between you control study vs you study with the expensive USB cable.
You data is fine. Your interpretation (sorry) is not right.
Fair enough. I have limited time to produce videos and doing a large scale study with full data analysis is beyond what I can produce right now, especially starting with recordings that immediately damaged the integrity of the "experiment". I still thought it was fun to do and respectful to share.
Appreciate you being respectful about it even though you disagree with my conclusions (which I completely accept)
What doesn't make sense to me, IF there are audbie differences between USB cables, why are they manifested as tonality changes? If the DAC is sometimes receiving incorrect voltages from a cable, I believe this should manifest as digital noise or dropouts, not as a consistent tonality change.
Also, having been provided with the cable (presumably for free), you automatically have bias just for that reason, subconciously or not. I've had a lot of high end gear in for review and honestly cannot say for sure that my opinion wasn't in some way biased as a result. Impartiality is tough, I'm honestly not sure what the answer is.
Hi FM (great handle, by the way), the more I look into this, I think the issue might actually be the noise the cable is picking up/transferring to the DAC circuits as much as or instead of errors in the data (it may be both - I'm still not sure). As I understand it, there could be two things occuring:
1) voltage irregularities resulting in occasional readings of a 1 instead of a 0 or vice versa. This would result in a tiny variation to the output voltage and would distort the analog waveform slightly so it wouldn't produce massive glitches, but would change the overall realism of the music being reproduced
2) the cable picking up noise (EMI/RF) from the environment and or from the source and passing it into the DAC circuitry which would add distortion and result in some harshness or at least less smoothness
I'm still trying to get to the bottom of this because I know what I'm hearing, but don't yet have telhe technical understanding to explain it fully.
As for bias, at the time of the review I believed the Curious Evolved cable was on loan (it was later given to me to say thanks for the work put into the review). Further to that, I originally thought the two AudioQuest cables were better and only changed my opinion once I started realising that the tonality of the digital signal was being altered and then had to work out which I thought was the closest to the "correct" sound
@@PassionforSound This is all nonsense. There is zero difference. Proof: ua-cam.com/video/ZyWt3kANA3Q/v-deo.html
I think it may be worth your time to review cheaper USB cables. Stock ones are sometimes REALLY bad, dropping in and out, intermittent pops and clicks, etc. You may find a $20 cable performs just as well as a $500 cable, as opposed to a 50 cent stock cable. I don't think cables can change tonality because that means the cable has to consistently change samples to produce a different frequency response, and that simply doesn't happen. Randomly flipping bits will not change the tonality of a signal, it will come through as high frequency noise or pops.
Hi, I linked in the description to a full USB comparison I wrote once where I tried every single AudioQuest USB cable from cheap to crazy expensive so I understand what you're saying and I do agree that more expensive is not always better.
@@PassionforSound I can't take audioquest seriously after watching a seminar where one of their reps claimed PC specs make a huge difference in sound, but I'll take a look.
I'm no expert, but I would actually believe that to a degree because I've heard the sound quality be degraded when I've overloaded a computer (doing other things on it) while playing music from it. The biggest challenge with audio versus normal data is that you can't take the time to crosscheck and resend data because timing is everything for music. That said, even modest computers should be plenty powerful enough for perfect audio reproduction these days and I'm just theorising how that might be true. I can't say for sure either way.
@@PassionforSound If your computer's USB implementation is a steaming pile of hot garbage like mine is, that can definitely happen. I get extremely audible noise from my DAC whenever I do anything GPU intensive and had to switch to optical. BUT that's more of a noisy power + bad DAC USB power filtering thing.
Can I borrow all your equipment for, say, a year so I can conduct my own tests? I only have cheap stuff. :)
Haha. Sure!
Two questions, what's up with 250 hrs brake in time? And, what are you using this year? LOL This a year old You Tube posting. lol
Haha. Yeah, it's a long stretch. It's not like the cable would sound garbage before hand, but there's some physics to suggest that it's a real thing. Rob, who makes these, runs a burn-in machine to speed up the process IIRC.
As for what I'm using now? The Evolved is still the best USB cable I've tried. 🙂
You lost me when a couple of times when you were discussing the Diamond vs the Curious you said that compared to the stock the sound is "vastly" superior in both cases and that they bring a massive improvement to the sound over the stock cable. So for the past two months your TT2 with M-Scaler was sounding like a Soundblaster card? Choose your qualifiers wisely, especially for minute, barely detectable changes.
No, Rhino, I've been using the AQ Diamond and AQ Coffee for the past few years. And the difference isn't minute. I'll agree that I may have overstated the differences a little, but I do that sometimes - sorry about that. The difference is notable, but perhaps not vast.
@@PassionforSound So Chord are shooting themselves in the foot shipping a $5000 unit with an absolute crap USB cable? Someone should tell Rob Watts. On the forums Rob seems to think the stock cable, which is galvanized, is perfectly fit for purpose.
I spoke to Rob specifically about this so I expected no benefit based on his assertions. Unfortunately, I think he's wrong. Chord also ship basic BNC cables with the M-Scaler and I have seen Rob specifically recommend the WAVE BNC cables as a better upgrade. Rob also uses a battery supply rather than the switch mode power supply provided with the M-Scaler so I don't think we can make decisions about accessories based on inclusions with products. A lot of those decisions come down to price vs cost vs profit equations.
@@PassionforSound OK, thanks for the responses. Currently I am using a Chord Company (unrelated) optical cable. I look forward to perhaps a USB vs Optical with the TT2 video in the future.
That could be good. I only have the stock optical cable right now so I'd like to get a decent quality (nothing crazy) cable before doing the test
I’m shocked 😮
Yep, it's a whole rabbit-hole of fun!
$200 shipping to return to Australia
Wow, that seems extreme. It's not normally so much - I think COVID has resulted in higher prices and maybe some of the more affordable options are still on hold due to lack of flights
550$ for short cable, yes my first thought was : "get the f... out of here" :D On the serious note, this is ridiculous, someone can surely make proper USB cable for 10 times cheaper, same way companies like Blue Jeans make high quality cables, no bs and don't charge these absurd prices. Unfortunately they don't seem to make their own USB cable :(
Yeah, it's a high price for a short cable. I'm doing a comparison review of some affordable cables soon so we'll see how they stack up!
@@PassionforSound That's great! Anyway I certainly enjoyed the video, good work.
Thanks Flisker!
The technical explanation of channel-induced errors in a USB2 link at 14:10 is misleading and mostly incorrect. Slight differences in cables are not going to impact the eye at such low data rates and no, you can't hear the difference between 1e-12 and 1e-11 BER. Terminated differential signaling makes EMI is a non-issue in this context. No, the receiver is not going to get confused and sample the signal away from the center of the open eye. Again, it is really easy to do clock and data recovery on such a slow link. You are using technobabble made out of real words and concepts to sell snakeoil.
Well well well... never thought I would ever spend £33 on a USB cable from China and would actually appreciate it.
So are you saying that you did? Which one?
@@PassionforSound Yep! :D Here is the link to the cable I've bought. www.ebay.co.uk/itm/High-Quality-Silver-Plated-HIFI-USB-Cable-DAC-A-B-USB-Audio-Cable-A-to-B/202001443324?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=502009610221&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
@@PassionforSound It sounded quite bad at first to be honest. There was no bass to speak of while the highs were smoother. However, in just a matter of an hour, the lows came back with noticeably more control and the sound quality kept on improving for the rest of this afternoon. Oh yes, I only received it just before lunchtime today. Now the soundstage is much wider than with the cheap old cable that came with my Chord Qutest, which I bought about a month ago after watching numerous reviews including yours on YT. Oh almost forgot to mention. The depth of the sound stage has improved even more. Now I know what you guys have been saying about the depth of soundstage from the Qutest. One last thing - I can confirm all these improvements have come about after this one single change which is the cable and nothing else.
Thanks for sharing, W L
Unfortunately, as much as I want it to, I don't think the test data has much value. Not just the small sample size, but there may be other biases as simple as which letters you chose; I would have done A and B for all of them. The vocabulary for presenting such a test is also critical, and I don't know what's ideal. I get the impression that people were too inclined to try to find a difference and not consider 'no difference' as an option.
Some notes to consider on biases regarding letters: I'm slightly synesthetic and view letters and numbers as colors sometimes in my mind's eye, and that changes my preference. Also people may have associations with names of people, places, sports teams, etc. that they like or don't.
I thought about my naming protocols and that was actually why I mixed up the letters. What if someone prefers A to B? That will skew their response every single time. I don't think there's one right way to do this and I'm also no expert on gathering and analysing this type of data. I think the experiment was a little doomed from the start by my slightly crappy recorder, but it seemed like people had fun with it so I kept going as much for entertainment and to respect those who took the time to respond.
The idea of a $550 on a USB cable is ridiculous. A cable manufacturers by a reputable company like Apple or Belkin will meet the USB specifications and accurately transferring the data while also not costing a fortune. Yes, a bottom basement generic $5 USB cable may not have the same quality. No need to ever spend more than $20-$30. Audioquest likely designs their cables to deviate from specifications in order to induce a slight difference with the expectation that the customer will hear this as “better” due to expectation bias. At least that is what I would do to fool rich into spending hundreds of dollars on USB cables.
Hi Lathan, I have a review of affordable (i.e. $50) USB cables coming up soon which will include some blind testing so we'll see what I find. It'll come out in the first quarter or so of next year
The Q is if you can hear a differens. And if you can witch you like best. So I took 4 cables in almost the same prize range and tested them for an week per cable. I did´t though I could hear but in my suppries I did. One cable was really bad but the 3 left was quite like but not in the tone. Silver based cables sounded different than copper. So for me it was to get one uppgrade into my USB cable. So now I am a happier but poorer man
Yes, it's not a cheap process, but good on you for testing it for yourself! That's the best approach in my experience. Happy listening!
No easy testing USB cables. It depends a lot on the qualities of USB output of your source (PC, streamer) and the ones of the USB entry of your DAC. A USB cable can do a very good job from a basic PC but not the same from a very good streamer say Auralic G2. The better the USB sender and reciver is, less the USB cable is crucial. That is my opinion based on my own tests. I had for a long time an Analysis Plus USB cable that for me was globaly better than some cables that I had which were 4 an 5 times the price of the AP:.. Hifi is a creasy hobby...
It sure is a crazy hobby! I do believe the cables still make a difference from higher end gear because there are still external sources of interference in the environment, but you're likely right that there's less impact because quality gear should include better quality power supply, may not use the notoriously noisy 5V USB power lead, etc.
@@PassionforSound A PC on windows or MC is very very noisy, then a well done USB cable is crucial. A PC with Linux which only works for streaming is much better. But, like with modulation cables, a good USB cable will always do de job but not necessary an expensive one.
I've got a couple of well-regarded affordable USB cables coming up for review so we'll see how they compare...
Let get down to facts, ok?
1) Current usb data rate at usb version 3.2 is 2500 megaBYTE with 0.01% of possible errors to CRC check during the transfer. It’s 2500x8x1000000= avg 20,000,000Bits per second. In life we get around 100mBYTES/second or average of 800,000,000 bit/second
Usb2 real life average speed is about 35mBYTE or 280,000,000bits per second.
2) Current consumer RAM is not CRC checked, so in case of a ram problem you get blue screen aka BSOD. What percentage of BSOD’s people have OCCASIONALLY because of 1 single RAM error on good working computer? I’d say as low as 0. And currents consumer data rate is up to 25 GigaBYTES. It also basically connected inside computer through little tiny cables on a pcb. Now it’s 20,000,000,000bits per second.
3) Average high resolution would be 24-bit/96,000Hz. Let’s count! 96,000*24=2,300,000bits per second.
4) Even DSD512 is 22,5 or 24,5 MHz. Just counting again. 24,5mhz=24,500,000bits, or like (24,8mln/8=) average 3MegaBytes a second. Can you see the difference?
5) Usb data is exchanged not in a way so that tit would not easily be possible to be interrupted or noised. For kids to understand me, It like waving your hands, if you raise your right hand it’s 0, if you raising your left hand is 1 and receiver looks at you from far and being able to describe which hand your raising left or right. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO RECEIVER to GO LIKE, “UMMM IM NOT SURE WHETER IT WAS LEFT OR RIGHT HAND”, he sees it always, just maybe not too clearly, in case of example because of bad Usb cable, but it still does see whether it’s a right or left, it cannot confuse left with right.
CONCLUSION:
Even highest quality DSD512 uses rate of 3 Megabytes a second, which Usb 2.0 is capable technically 10-15times practically. Usb 3.0 however produces 30x times more rate and it’s okay with cheap but good usb cables. The rate of DSD512 would be so relatively small, so that even with if there will be errors, you can be sure you would not notice them in any way, the resolution is too big to loose any details.
However again BUS-powered dacs will depend on quality of the cable. But any cable able of providing all needed power to dac will be sufficient.
My OWN ADVICE to all. Just use usb 3.0 certified cable and it will be more than enough.
There are also programs that show errors rate during transferring data, can’t name one right away. Just check for yourself how much errors your cable produce, I’m sure you will be very very surprised to see 0 there, that while the speed is, in case of usb 2.0 is 30,000,000-40,000,000bits/second. Just check if you have any errors and swap until you get one that does not have errors during the work. But I assume you, you must have the shittiest possible cable maybe inadequately long to have any problems at all.
I am an audiophile myself, but you should check what is cat6,cat7,cat8 cables are. Then maybe you’ll have a scale of this cable marketing scam. They maybe 10$ per meter for one of the best and their shielding is what proved to work. Producer cannot get cat8 category licensing if the cable is not blocking noise at specified level over certain distance. Look what technologies are used in that field and use in audio equipment. That is what I personally do. Cat8 I used to make usb cable, speaker cables, rca cables everything. That’s is what just works with minimal inductively and noise. And coupling into 2 pairs makes them perfect audio signal cable. Rule number 2 is to shield the shielding of the cable to the case of receiving side and to check whether the grounding of powering cables are earthed to the outside cage of the unit. You’ll be shocked how often they are connected to the PCB, which is bad and better of to be cut of internally from the socket.
So my advice number 2 use cat8 cable for everything. It just works. Individually shielded twisted pairs with foil, second level of shielding over all 4 pairs with foil, third level of shielding outside hefty mesh shielding/grounding.
Tip number five: use common sense and physics rules to make decisions unless you want to pay 500$ for what costs 2-5$ in materials.
Also don’t get tricked into buying the different 10x-500x overpriced USB cables making it trend and earn extra$$$ to snake oil manufacturers. Just think with your brains for a sec, does idea of selling 5$ cables for 40x profit make sense? I can tell you even the cables made from pure silver will cost less than 50$ to manufacture, but it’s less preferred cause you can’t sell it for 40x profit like ordinary copper ones, maximum for 20-30x profit on silver.
If this post gets 100 likes I will start my own cable company and sell pure silver twisted pair cables for around 125$(im not greedy, 2,5x time the manufacturing price is okay for me) it doesn’t get better than this.
What's going to trigger people more is when more speakers have wireless protocols like the WISA which performs as well as the most high end cables... I wonder what snake oil companies will come up with when wired speakers become obsolete...
Interesting! That will be fun to watch. I might start developing special crystals to place in the room and alter the transmission of wireless signals 😉
@@PassionforSound I think you will make millions. See what profits companies have been making by selling copper wires. Imagine what you can do selling shiny crystals.
Exactly!
Wrong T-Shirt for this video! :)
Haha - I know! I totally forgot to wear the hoodie!
I find it odd that you compared the Curious Evolved to the AQ Diamond, while saying you subjectively prefer the AQ Coffee over the AQ Diamond. Since the review is based upon subjective impressions, shouldn't you compare the Curious Cable to the Coffee?
I also find it odd that you would use Optical as the final arbiter of "Truth" and yet not discuss the drawbacks of Optical while at the same time extolling the many virtues of Optical over electrically connected cables.
I believe the Coffee also got mentioned in this review quite a bit. My focus on the Diamond is because it's meant to be the TOTL from AudioQuest.
You're right that optical has drawbacks, but I have to limit the length of my reviews to a reasonable duration so I can't cover everything. In this case I needed a quick reference point and optical seemed the best choice.
What are your credentials on doing mesurements? Not trying to dis you, and I think you are raising the same questions on this video. Measurements done well are hard. This is what science is for and probably not good for all busineses related to audio. Good points on the fantasy world ignoring time domain. USB audio class 1.0 and 2.0 fantasy and reality readily available from the author Gordon Rankin.
Hi bobnot, I've done no measurements and am not qualified in any way to 🙂. I can't remember referencing measurements in this review, but if I did, my point about measurements of audio gear is that we can't yet measure many of the things that we can perceive. Rob Watts discussed this in my interview with him (and he's far more qualified than me in this space).
That was an excellent interview and should be mandatory viewing for any wannabe audiophiles. Finished my thesis in numerical mathematics so knew exactly what he was on about. You cannot close an equation (even interpolation) without considering the convergence characteristics. Pity I never got into electronics and the practical applications. The tragedy of digital audio seems to be that it is too easy when it is actually very hard.
Glad you liked it! Speaking to Rob is like drinking from a fire hydrant of knowledge on this topic!
Where are the measurements on Evolved Cables website? If your $500+ cable is actually better than the $25 amazon basic cable why wouldn't you provide the scientific proof that it is...
Hi Paul, the problem is that no-one seems to be able to prove (in either direction) that USB cables do/don't improve the sound. I've got a video coming out next week that goes a step towards this, but it's still not definitive about what's best/better, only if something is different.
@@PassionforSound check out Audio Science Review on UA-cam and their website.
Hi Paul, I'm aware of the conversations there and it's flawed science in the sense that all the measurements use sine waves only (because they have to for the measurements we're able to make with current equipment). Our music is far more variable than a 1kHz sine wave.
I'm still very open to the conversation and I'm willing to be wrong and be proven to have fallen victim to confirmation bias (although my blind tests would suggest that this is not the case). Stay tuned for my upcoming subjective test of USB cables playing actual music files and see what you think.
My takeaway ... NEED an M-Scaler in my life 🤩💸💸💸
Haha. Yes, everyone does 😂😂