Frode saidPSAuadiofan said apparently this cable is "USB compliant" for whatever it's worth...)…and this is worth a lot, IMO
Yep, apparently about $4
Yep, apparently about $4
I’ve tried two ~$100 .5M USB cables from MacAir to DSD:
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iFi Mercury cable (http://www.amazon.com/iFi-Mercury-USB-Cable-Meter/dp/B00HE6ALDY)
I bought this thing without looking at it much, because it’s what the store had in the > $10 category. Having used it and looked at it for a while, I would not recommend it, and would describe it as over-styled, over-designed, and under-engineered.
It starts with huge 35mm long machined USB connector covers with engraved logo. The actual connectors are just standard gold-washed USB plugs. These have no strain relief at all, and the cable comes out of a square hole.
Then you see the three RF chokes, each 30mm long and flat, for no engineering reason, with yet more logos and a serial number tag on one. The user is cautioned to move these around for best sound. Good luck with that, because they are most likely to be moved mostly to allow the cable to bend.
My conclusion - very techno looking, no performance advantage. Not Recommended -
Kimber Kabel B Bus Ag (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NB6VJT6)
After reading a few reviews online, and excellent experience with a couple of Kimber Select KS 11xx interconnects, I bought their one-step-above-bottom USB, and it is a whole different animal: totally about the engineering, materials, and manufacture, and not the esthetics. It’s just covered in blue poly, and the connectors are connectors, but it’s got pure silver conductors and heavily silver-plated pure copper shield and drain wires for lowest resistance, and the wire connections are both crimped and soldered. Much better engineering and materials, and manufactured by hand, they claim.
Recommended
Am I going to try to describe sonic differences? No, in a word. I got away from that harmless pursuit back in the days of tube-swapping.
Another blind shootout last night that my friends had the audacity to do without me. Cheap-o Belkin beat out several selections from Transparent.
So far, that’s Nordost, Audioquest, Analysis Plus and Transparent… to our ears, anyway.
Interesting. Does each person get a shot and they all independently reach the same conclusion? If so, this is striking.
We might mumble a little bit to each other so it is not the most scientific of investigations but we do keep the hookups blind. It is intended to be fun, not authoritative in any way and should be interpreted as just that (and there is alcohol involved…
).
Very fun.
It is as legitimate as any other test in audio.
Can you say which Transparent ?
Glenn, were all the other audiophile cables Nordost, Audioquest, Analysis Plus and Transparent broken in ??? 
@rogerdn: both (I think they just make two versions, but I was not there)
@Dev: I can’t say if they were or not. I can tell you that, since I use the Bridge II, the cheapy would surely not qualify as broken in.
So the Belkin was the Gold USB ?
Yup!
the only thing I don’t like about the Belkin Gold is that the only length I can find is 6ft, waaaay to long for my needs…
PSAuadiofan said the only thing I don't like about the Belkin Gold is that the only length I can find is 6ft, waaaay to long for my needs...I have a 1m I think, had it longtime don't recall where I got it though.
I’m not even sure that it has to be a genuine Belkin Gold. I’ve never done a “cheapo” cable shootout.
A couple of years ago I yanked the +5v and ground off of a cheap USB cable and I thought that it sounded better than the Belkin. Now this seems to be all the rage in USB, filtering or removing the “juice” from the cable. It is a bit of a moot point now that the DS DAC needs the +5v for a handshake. Some of the comparisons that we did were done on a DS DAC, some on a Devialet and others on both. The Audioquest and Analysis Plus were compared on the Devialet only. I am not sure that they would perform any differently on the DS DAC but I just want to be clear. Again, the Belkin is so cheap…
Is your Belkin 2m? Are the comparison cables shorter?
I ask as some believe USB is subject to the same type data reflections S/PDIF are said to suffer from and that, like S/PDIF, USB cables need to be at least 1.5m to sound their best.
Unlike S/PDIF which (because of the RCA connector) can’t be terminated properly, USB can. Also (unlike S/PDIF) USB transmitters and receivers do dynamic preemphasis/deemphasis… There shouldn’t be reflection issues limiting the length of a proper USB cable.
If I may.
Waiting for my DS Junior to arrive. Very intrigued by the findings on this thread and I was wondering whether the reasonably cheap cabled I have got at the moment will match well with it, SQ wise as well as functionally. I’ve got NuForce Impulse, and The Chord Company Silver Plus.
Have you guys had any experience with either brand/model? Would I be OK with them or you’d recommend maybe going for AQ, WW etc if at all able to get some of those in the country I live in?
Cheers
I thought I’d update my findings after a short test yesterday.
I had been using a Transparent Audio Premium USB 1.0m cable from a Mac Mini to an Uptone Audio Regen to the DS.
Based on opinions I’ve seen here, I’ve been breaking in a Curious Cable USB to the Regen, plus a Curious pigtail to the DS.
After A/B testing, the Curious wins by a pretty good margin. I reckon it might have something to do with isolating the power leg, which isn’t the case with the Transparent.
I also tried removing the Regen… no go… it makes a difference in my system.
If I understand correctly, the 5v vbus is needed for the DS to do proper handshake initially and not used later on. My question is does the presence of 5v affect the SQ of DS ? If there is a USB cable where I can disconnect the 5v line on the fly after the initial handshake is done, would it benefit the DS ?
That depends on many things, your USB hubs, other things plugged into the USB ports, your USB hardware in your computer, the OS you are running, etc. Violate the spec and you break assumptions that any part of the system might have made and the result can be very unpredictable.
Before Yale a fair number of people could us the DS without the VBUS line connected and some more could get their system running and then disconnect the VBUS.
To allow connecting in more systems we had to change Yale to declare that the DS doesn’t use power form the VBUS, ironically that ended up causing more people to need to keep VBUS connected to keep their USB connection, but it enabled people to use devices that couldn’t power the USB bus and made other connections much more reliable.
There are other compromises one could try besides disconnecting the VBUS:
A lot of people find that which USB connection they use on their computer makes a difference (if you’ve looked at how the wires for various connections are dressed inside a typical computer this isn’t very surprising.) And hence you might also find that on a given computer a USB 2.0 connection is better or worse than a USB 3.0 connection.
There are cables that use separate shielded connections for the data and for the VBUS (two separate cables from one connector.)
There are cables that use optical connections for the data (but most can’t use optical for the VBUS connection.) The Corning USB 3.Optical cables work for some, I’ve had good luck with it at times and at other times I end up pulling my hair out.
One could also use a USB hub just before the DS and provide great power to that hub, hoping to drop some of the noise on the floor. (I do this: well I use a wall wart plugged into a dedicated power line 
)