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

Br3098... please, please, please speak from audio experience. i.e. actually using different USB cables on a quality DAC with a quality computer such as the MacMini.

Give it a try... actually build some real listening experience with this equipment and cabling... and then come back to us with your listening experience on your own system, with your own DAC, your own computer, and your own music... not your book learning and theory derived thereof.

I respect learning from the academy. I am a product of it and an active member of it myself. But it has its limits, and this is one.

If I sound annoyed, I am.

I am frankly so tired of "authorities" who have not taken the time to gain their own audio experience misleading newbies with the "truthiness" of their book learning and university degrees on chat forums such as this one and in other places.

You wrote:

>>all of my 30+ years experience in the physical sciences, data collection and computer systems design leads me to believe otherwise.<<

Listening experience matters. This is not an article of belief or faith as in your statement >>leads me to believe otherwise<<.

:) listening,

Ed

Thank you Steve

Rafael

I have done exactly what you suggest Istanbulu and I could turn this arround on you. I agree with Br3098! Not just because of some education or the science of electronics but from experiance. I am not going to argue with what you say you hear, just that for most "newbies", as you call them, they are MUCH better off putting their money in the best equipment they can afford in the body of their system! Body= speakers, amp, line stage and dac. If I sound annoyed, I am.... for at one time I was a newbie and listen to such gibberish. If a usb cable makes a real difference it is so limited to my ears I can not hear it. Now that is not to say that if your cable has a loose connection or is so poorly made it may not hinder the transpher of digital information. It does not take an expenssive cable to complete this task. But, as long as the digital info is transphered completly, the sound quality is determind by the dac/clock conversion, the line stage's ability to magnify and transpher, without any added harshness or denigration to the amps, which must do the same for the speakers. Spend your money where you wish. It is your money. IN MY OPINION, Not on digital cables. Take it or leave it!

"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."

I'm afraid that this is a tired argument. I've read the same argumant dozens of times on the forums. This shows a misunderstanding of the difference in audio streaming and other data transfers.

This is real-time. All other transfers from a computer are not real-time, except maybe some video.

Because it is real-time, it is subject to timing variations. These timing variations can have an impact on the USB interface, ranging from direct jitter affects, power effects, grounding effects, RFI effects and transmission-line effects.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

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.