100$ usb cables recommendations? worth to pay more? suggestions!

Pangea Audio Premier SE USB Cable is great and only about $50.

 

I purchased the Pangea SE and I've been happy with it. I did not do any comparisons but the price wasn't ridiculous compared to other high-end usb cables. Was definitely in my budget.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001MSU1HG/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My system sounds great with my laptop connected to my dac with this cable.

 

I was skeptical about USB cables until I had a chance to buy a Curious cable for cheap (retail they’re way too overpriced IMO). It sounded very different (better) from the Monoprice one I had before. And it sounds better than the Kitsune one that came with my Holo Spring DAC as well.

Since then, I decided to try an AQ Carbon cable, and prefer the sound of that one over the Curious. I’ve tried a couple others as well that I didn’t like as much as the curious. I personally find they all sound slightly different - some better, some worse, some just “different”. I don’t advocate spending piles of cash on one, but I believe you can find some that give a slight flavour towards something you prefer, or just sound cleaner/clearer. Can’t explain why, but I hear it. Maybe I’m delusional, that’s certainly possible. I hear similar things with speaker cables and interconnects. But I’m still not willing (or advocating) to spend scads of cash chasing the “ultimate” in someone else’s mind on any of my cables. I generally look for a mid-priced used cable, try it, and if I like it I stick with it. If not, I flip it.

I also run a relatively expensive streamer, rather than from my laptop because I find it sounds way better (not just a little).

YMMV.

 

Lots of people repeat that, since it seems so simple, but reality is likely more complex. Many people will quote this 2011 USB.org email on USB cables recommendations, however they don't seem to be actually reading it. Like the key points here:

USB supports isochronous transport which is a timely delivery of data. The
isochronous transport has guaranteed bandwidth on USB. Isochronous
protocol, however, does not support error recovery. In other words, if data
is flagged as an error by the receiver, there will be no attempt at data
retransmission. So if the receiver is using the isochronous protocol, then
there can be errors in data. Most webcams use the isochronous transport.
High-end audio/video equipment that does not mandate real-time delivery of
data should not use the isochronous transport because accurate data delivery
is not guaranteed.​

But, per the USB spec, USB audio streaming relies on the USB-IF Audio Class which uses isochronous transfer mode, the one that can't recover from errors, unlike data file transfer which use bulk mode (like a USB thumb drive). So, yes, if you're using USB bulk mode, cables likely don't matter much, but USB audio, per the spec, doesn't use bulk mode, but the unrecommended isochronous mode.

From there, most decent DACs will use the asynchronous sub-mode of isochronous transfer mode as it allows the DAC be to be the master clock instead of the PC ...

... And my understanding is that's very important because with USB audio we don't just need most of the bits to arrive intact, but to arrive at the right time; this is because those bits are live music samples and the DAC's job is to translate those square waves ("digital") into sine waves ("analog"). To do that, the DAC needs to know exactly when to make the sample's mapped voltage X volts - if the DAC sets the analog sine wave voltage at -2.05v slightly before or after the source, it may not sound right because you just changed the reproduced analog wave from the source analog wave.

In short, the USB audio spec (isochronous) cannot re-ask for missed packets like USB bulk-mode can, and thus can be vulnerable to errors (per the USB.org email referenced above!)

So the questions are:

(1.) Can those errors (lost packets or timing errors) be heard?
(2.) If so, can USB cables help prevent those errors in a way that's audible?

The answers are likely that it depends on how good your ears are, how good your equipment is, and how prone to other issues your system is.

@atomicbob has a nice thread on USB cable testing and I've heard that blogger DMS3 is planning a USB cable show-down with Paul from PS Audio at RMAF - Paul has agreed to do a video of him blind testing USB cables. Should be fun!

 

@Gruss Gott Well said, and I guess I would add, how would one know if one of the data points was translated as a 0 instead of a 1 given there are 44,000 of them in one second on standard redbook cd. aka, there is no logic to check.

 

Not marketed at audiophiles, but by far the best specs on a usb cable to be found.

https://www.phoenixcontact.com/online/portal/us?uri=pxc-oc-itemdetail:pid=1655784&library=usen&tab=1

FWIW on the debate, I have had crappy usb cables screw things up. With a crap cable, the DAC can lose sync and then you get white noise or silence. I can’t see how one would get less-good sounding but otherwise normal audio unless it were right on the edge. In any case, I just use the Schiit pyst cable @atomicbob tested and found to be decent. The one I link to above is probably overkill.

 

Regardless of transfer mode, its still digital. If a cable meets specs, then its as good as it gets.

A very informative thread. I learned something new reading.

 

Well, kindof, it is actually sent as an analog voltage over the usb cable and is converted to digital by the dac receiver then decoded to analog again after the chip does it' s math magic.

EDIT: I may be wrong about the conversion, it may be voltages varying over time all the way through, reading up on it to understand better.

 

Data is encoded NRZI in a USB data stream. There are no 0s & 1s as such (true of pretty much every PHY level implementation). There are 2 voltage states, high & low (from memory, high = 1v). At each clock cycle, no change in V compared to previous clock cycle = 1, a change in either direction = 0. The voltage swing has to occur within a certain window of time and at a minimum % of 1V. When you look at the possibilities of voltage swing in either direction, you see an eye pattern.



How well you control coupled noise and signal attenuation affects window the size of the eye which affects Bit Error Rate (BER). Common minimum BER is 1 x 10-9. I have no idea at what BER you could start to hear errors, but I can imagine a particularly shitty cable (allows lots of coupled noise from an external source or from adjacent power pair) might be audible. The power pair in theory is just 5VDC, but in reality there can be significant noise on the power pair depending on how well the motherboard, soundcard, etc. were designed.

Edit: I realized I used 'window' to mean 2 different things and corrected above. Shame I can't figure out how to do strike-through

That's pretty optimistic. Made in China in batches of thousands at a manufacturing cost of pennies per cable, are you sure they're maintaining the twist rate as close to the connector as possible, and connecting the shielding with good integrity? You can get away with a lot of sloppiness and it will still 'meet the spec', but whether it can pass isochronous data at an acceptable BER, well I dunno.

Good explanation of bulk data vs isochronous from @Gruss Gott , by the way.

 

same here
curious sounds better then what I used before. supra usb i thought was worse then 1$ usb cables. its not a night and day difference, but certainly observable. maybe im also deluding myself. at the end of the day, my curious usb cable cost more 150$ so not the end of the world if its my imagination or not

 

Very interesting. By saying, meets spec, I mean, performs properly. Any 2 non-defective USB cables SHOULD sound identical. If a company isn't assembling them properly, then I'd call that a defect. Again, if you have to pay extra to get a working cable, then so be it. You don't have to pay more than $10-20 to get proper cables. I would pay extra for more durable connectors, strain relief, and flexibility. None of that is related to sound though, until the cable wears out from repeated connecting, flexing, abuse.

 

Yes, it's a bunch of lies to children. Unless something is grossly defective, there's no difference.



It's just like the facepalm-inducing threads about reclockers. Pretty much all you can do with USB is not fail the spec, and optionally disconnect VBUS/provide cleaner power. Not falling apart and looking pretty are optional. All else is magical thinking for the credulous.The quality of the receiver is important, its clock source and electrical isolation, but the cable? Spend hundreds on that and I have a bridge to sell you.

 

I read again the USB 2.0 PHY electrical requirements. There is a spec for the bulk cable, but there ain't much to it. And nothing for the complete cable assembly, so if you use a conforming bulk cable, you 'meet spec'.

Ethernet patch cables, for example, would specify crosstalk, voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), total insertion loss and more; which require a certain standard of assembly workmanship

 

Besides receiver quality importance, I can't agree with other things, sorry. Over the years I've had a number of DACs at my place (from very affordable to crazy expensive) and found most to be subject to various USB products such as reclockers, galvanic isolators and cables, especially those with Amanero receiver inside. That's what my experience tells me.

 

Grabbed an MIT Stylelink on ebay years ago for cheap. It nukes my Staples cable, curious if anyone else will ever try it.

 

That's, like, your opinion man.

Unless you're digital signals processing engineer who's designs this equipment for a living. Cause the ones I talk to who do this work for the military disagree with you.

 

As a retailer, we loan out (with deposit) our USB cables for folks to demo at home all the time. Some guys borrow the pricey stuff just to try it and don't have an interest in buying a USB cable for a couple hundred bucks. Some guys just try out a few of the more inexpensive ones and pick out one of two.

My experience so far has been most guys end up at least getting something as they generally just wanted something a little nicer than their stock cable.

 

Oh look, "appeal to authority". Figures.

 

Agreed, if it's not failing the spec it's just fine *for audio*, unless you're not doing crazy lengths or stuff like that.
Isochronous can't check for errors, but one bit in a billion hardly matters. Async and sync nowadays should both be just fine too. Only problem I've seen is when you try to connect a source that supports only async mode to a device that supports only sync mode. They can get out of sync and start sounding very very choppy and distorted.
Also, similar stuff with spdif, with my experiments and misuse of that standard, I've only been able to get it to be one of three states: working perfectly, not working, or being super distorted and choppy. No in between. At those frequencies cable lengths and impedances matter a lot, as the wires are transmission lines.
I'm by no means an expert on digital signals tho, and I need to shut up and know my place, right?
Any *decent* quality cable should be fine for audio - there is a point at which it's good enough and above that it shouldn't matter. Even shitty cables are most likely good enough, though that's why you spend a buck more and get not a total shit.
Now, nobody's saying a more expensive cable can't improve your personal experience, but I bet all the cables within spec or better won't have any significant measurable difference to them.

tl;dr
I'll go sit in a corner now.

edit: I use a galvanic isolator based on an adum chip (if I can recall the name correctly), cause ground loops suck.
Also, reclocker helped me stabilize my spdif array, so that might have some merit in stabilizing everything, but if it's working properly, it's working properly.
Also, I'm a sucker for silver cables. I like them for no reason.