Dual Conduit USB for audio: the future?

[jirij]

No of course not, no double blind from the claimants and no 'proof' from the manufactures. it's all just bullshit to make you feel better about having purchased something unfit for purpose from a 3rd rate vendors of 3rd rate brands.

Since I'm not really an advanced electro engineer (though I can build almost anything given a schematic) or physicist (just what a university has taught me), I'd be interested more in real measurements and equations calculating the actual properties of normal vs "audiophile" USB cables (done by somebody else than me).

I'm not buying the idea that the cables have any effect on the sound, I'm just interested whether they have *any* advantages, given the low voltage and current (+5V line, ?V signal lines, ?mA on signal lines). Ie. whether ~50m of "audiophile" cable has less deviations on the signal lines than a normal USB cable. And if so, whether it does that by adding extra shielding or by increasing the conductor diameter (which could insert more problems).

The point being whether those cables are just re-branded standard USB cables or whether they could have any positive effects, even under very extreme circumstances and/or bad equipment (excluding the cable).

 

[adamdea]

Not contradictions at all! Just not as simple as 'noughts and ones'.

Your point about USB vs SPDIF is apples v oranges. However, it tends to support my point: the reason many journalists don't rate USB is that they haven't allowed the USB DAC to perform properly by using a proper USB transport and cable.

When SPDIF sounds better than USB, it's nothing to do with the inherent properties of those protocols: there are way too many variables to permit comparison.

As we've said ad nauseam (see 'Cheap DAC, Expensive Transport thread), if you boss a DAC with a very good SPDIF transport, it stands a chance of being the optimal source; USB performance is limited first and most inviolably by the DAC's design, then (fixably) by the computer.

All just blah blah blah. Since there is no evidence of audibility everyone can say anything they want about what sounds better. It's all contradictory; but who cares? Keith Howard in this month's hifi news says that all steaming dacs sound better via digital audio inputs than via Ethernet. Pretty much every Logitech transporter user says the opposite as do most pwd users. USB is better than SPDif because it's transport independent. No SPDIF is always better than USB. I noticed years ago that proponents of foo computer transport tweaking often concluded, after saying how brilliant the transport now was, that it was still not as good as their CDT. WAV sounds better than flac.? Ethernet sounds better than wifi. Cat 5 sounds better than cat 7. Win 7 sounds better than linux. Up sampling always sounds better. No wait! up sampling always sounds worse.

It's all just so much hot air. And such a waste of digital audio. Still, the masses get it.