What USB cable to get?

calvinandhobbes, have had the same Pangea for years now and just received a DH Labs Mirage USB cable. Didn't really know what to expect with a digital cable upgrade (just ones and zeros and all that). The difference is startling and it does make the Pangea sound harsh. This is between my N100h and a Qutest. Got it on sale for $150 this week. Just wow, don't understand how, but it sounds much better.

I think I'm finally starting to understand what real analog sounds like. 

@ghdprentice 

I think we have similar setups: Wifi router > wireless bridge > Aurender. But you have an ethernet regenerator in place before the Aurender? I was assuming that the conversion (regeneration) to wifi would be adequate. I'll also assume you see an improvement if it's in place, can you please elaborate?

Thanks...Tim 

@ghdprentice 

I appreciate you sharing your insights. I too am a long time IT guy, and the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is mess around with my home network which I'm confident is pretty strong. I do however enjoy playing around with my system, learning and trying new things. 

I'll premise my comments by saying, just because I don't understand something, doesn't mean it's not real.

I'm in the same camp as you, in that I feel a quality streamer is most important. While streaming Qobuz, I unplugged the ethernet cable on my Aurender and it continued playing for almost a minute so clearly it's caching. Also, hi-res files that reside on it's internal hard drive, sound no different than when I live stream them. That's enough for me to move on and ignore the networking side of things, at least for now.

My recent experience with a new usb cable got me looking into other tweaks for the digital chain.....and down the rabbit hole I went lol. Reclockers, DC blockers, LPS, fiber and coax media converters, everyone claiming to help fix inherent deficiencies in USB. So besides having the potential of higher bandwidth (which most folks don't need), why the heck is USB so prevalent? Does a quality streamer and Dac make this a mute issue? 

So I'm going to try something odd, I found a great deal on an Aurender UT100 which is a USB to Toslink converter that mounts directly on the back of my N100h. I've got an Audioquest Cinnamon Toslink cable I'll use to connect. Reasons for this experiment:

1. I'm an audiophile so I'm nuts.
2. I've read that my Qutest dac performs best with S/PDIF inputs.
3. Toslink will afford all the benefits of electrical, RFI/EMI isolation.
4. Many solutions on both the networking and digital chain side, point to fiber as being the ultimate solution for cleanup. So why not try that as the actual medium between the streamer and dac?
5. Repeat number 1.