Will a quality USB cable make a difference....

The Diamond usb cable is so much better ,it is across the board better than the carbon usb cable. The top end air, the transparently and better defined bass are easily distinguished differences. Don’t let anybody kid you there is no difference among usb cables. The difference to me is just like all the rest of the cables. They all sound different.

Sorry, but it's just not possible. Keeping it simple, USB is a digital data transport bus, not an analog port. All it moves in the data path is 0s and 1s. If a different USB cable results in a change anywhere downstream then you have a major problem somewhere in your system. I know that you think that you are hearing what you say that you think you are hearing, but all of my 30+ years experience in the physical sciences, data collection and computer systems design leads me to believe otherwise.

Ed, do you know me or anything about my audio experience? I worked in the audio business for several years in the 1970s, and while I am in the computer business, for the last 20 years my firm has specialized in systems for the A/V and digital media industries. We design and setup systems every day for recording studios, editing houses and post-production facilities. We have also designed audio DSP systems for the Air Force and the Navy. I hate to make posts about me, but I have tested, used and LISTENED to a larger variety of analog and digital cables, probably more than you ever knew existed. If you want to believe that a digital cable can make a difference in a small section of the (converted) analog signal, be my guest.

Bill's Corallaries:
1- If it's true to you, it's true (to you).
2- Just because you want it to be so doesn't make it so.

Sakahara, I apologize for hijacking this thread for my own selfish purpose.

Steve, I didn't read your post until after my little rant. Please keep in mind that USB is not an audio interface - it's a source to peripheral device connectivity bus. As far as USB is concerned, there is no difference between audio files and jpeg photos, an Oracle spreadsheet or java code. The "audio interface" part starts on the outbound side of the DAC.

I agree with you about timing variations. There's also latency, packet loss/corruption, and a host of other issues that can affect USB (or any almost any other data connectivity protocol). But I was responding to a poster that claimed that changing USB cables provided " The top end air, the transparently and better defined bass are easily distinguished differences." That's not a phenomena that can be attributed to error correction, or timing, or latency, or voltage regulation, or phase lock, or... whatever.

It's easy to say ignore or dismiss the science involved in audio. Over the course of human history, anything we can't explain (or didn't want to take the time to understand) is described as magic. Well, guess what? There is no magic in audio, just a lot of science. Circuit design is a science. Tube design is/was science. Acoustic speaker and cable design is science. Transformers, resistors, capacitors - all based on good, hard scientific principles.

About two years ago we had a job for a major aerospace company, designing a system to collect and sample broad spectrum analog audio feeds some remote sources. Very remote. Anyway, when we used USB 2.0 for part the low-res portion of the system, and in our testing we found that for cable runs of up to 20'-25', the actual cable (manufacturer, country of origin, jacket, etc.) made no difference. The connectors use for the USB cables made a measurable difference in the amount of packet error correction that was required. Upgrading the USB connectors on the source systems and target devices made a huge difference, dropping the packet error rate down to almost zero; even if used with the least expensive commercial cables.

My last word on this incendiary topic: all this information is available online. Anyone who wants to can find and read Gordon Rankin's excellent white papers on USB and specifically asynchronous mode operation. They provide an excellent explanation on how USB works, so nobody has to guess.

Steve,

Streaming data is streaming data, whether it's audio files or instrumentation data. It's either bit perfect and time correct or it's not. Yes, jitter is problematic but, as I'm sure that you would agree, not nearly as much with USB2 as it was with USB1. I'm sure that my next comment will further endear me to the peanut gallery, but frankly, I will say that I believe that most audiophiles can't discerne jitter (w/ USB2), and wouldn't know what it sounded like even if if they could. What's the worst jitter you have measured for USB2 gear that was in spec? Probably not more than 125uS or so, and I don't know anyone who can detect that. I believe that most of the sound effects that are erroneously identified as jitter are in fact the result of elasticity buffer stack overflows.

Re: my comment for Gordon Rankin - I was not making a wholesale endorsement of Gordon or his products. I have never met the man, but I'm sure that he (like you) is a smart guy. I was simply recommending his whitepapers to another poster as a good primer on USB, since there seems to so much misinformation bandied about on this forum.

Ed,

Dude, did I run over your cat or something? I apologize if I inadvertently besmirched one of your audio idols. But I would appreciate it if you would stop lecturing. As I have said previously, you don't know me or anything about me. Your assumptions and guesswork are both incorrect. If you want to know something about me, just ask. I am an open book.