USB cables that work, or don't, with DS

And further I have no problem with people using whatever cable they like, but there’s no way to know if a non standard cable that works for one person will work for another. Still cables that are shorter than 5 meters, that hook up all of the wires and don’t have any explicit filtering will probably work fine.

Frode said I think the biggest problem here is that an expensive procurement has to be justified. I have no problem understanding the disappointment when the newly arrived cable does not work. I would also be looking for the guilty (and maybe punish the innocent along the road) ;)
Yes. And we are not accustomed to identifying the cable as the culprit.

Buying a non-certified USB cable and expecting to always work properly is like buying no-name products for your car engine and expecting them to always fit. Some will, some will not.

It has nothing to do with how expensive the USB cable is. It is not built to certified specs, there are times it will not work.

I again echo the recommendation for Belkin Gold for inexpensive, high quality USB cables. You can always separately buy a pretty wrapper for it so you can show it off to your friends. :)

I’m using a TotalDac1 with the PWD II and like it better than the Lightspeed. It’s also a heck of a lot cheaper, even with shipping and credit card fees from France. One reviewer thought the Lightspeed was better with the Direct Stream, but tonally that’s hard for me to understand. JCAT has a two-line USB cable coming out in October. Paul Pang’s two-line is $499 for the first meter.

Milan,

I thought that I had reported problems with the Silnote cable early in this thread.

While using the DS in 30-day trial, I had a dickens of a time chasing down issues until I isolated the problem to the USB cable from Silnote. Once I had determined that, the Silnote failed in virtually every circumstance.

Mark at Silnote said it was an issue with the DS. Ted said (and has repeated) that USB cables that are not compliant may cause issues. This is true.

I used stock, trash USB cables, a Pangea, and a Radio Shack Belkin without any problems. I put the Silnote back in, and experienced the same problems.

Mark at Silnote swore by his cable, and could not be convinced otherwise. (The Poseidon DID work with the PWDII, but not the DS.) He took my cable back, tested it, said it was good, but gave me a new cable anyway. (He would not issue a refund, as he felt the cable was fine.) I took the cable out of the box, and put it directly in my storage cabinet. I’ll be selling it.

The Silnote Poseidon does NOT work with the DS.

That’s odd. Are you on a Mac? If so, you might try ‘blessing’ the cable setup. If the problem is the computer doesn’t see the cable, while it’s connected, go to Preferences->Sound and see if it’s there. If so, you’;re in luck. Select it, then go to the Midi panel and make sure it is then selected as the playback device, the sample rate something less than 352kHz and it should work.

While some USB cables aren’t as good as others, I’ve yet to see one not work on DS.

Oh, sorry, I just noticed above it’s not a Mac and there’s pops as the issue. Ted’s right, this could be a cable issue. Sorry, didn’t read the entire thread.

Rob H. said Milan,

I thought that I had reported problems with the Silnote cable early in this thread.


Don’t be surprised.

The fact that so called audiophile cable suppliers have little or no clue on how to comply with standards is more a rule than an exception.

Oh, I’m not surprised at all. I believe this thread was started partly as a result of my issues with the Poseidon cable.

I must correct one thing I said above: When the new cable came back from Silnote, I did plug it into the DS and immediately noticed the same issue as before. Warbles, pops, crackles, etc. THEN I put it into the storage cabinet.

I was just trying to highlight to Milan that the Silnote Poseidon is a known non-player with the DS.

Wireworld platinum works fine.

2 points.

I have a cheap 5M cable that will manage USB 1.0 but not USB 2.0. I also have a better looking, though still no-brand, 1M that does USB 2.0. The 5M one passed the Bitperfect test, could play some tracks to the DS but failed with a Benchmark Audio DAC2HGC.

And what is this bashing high-end cable producers!! I thought their mission in life was to take the rule book and put it in the re-cycle bin.

While I’m still waiting for my jCat USB cable to arrive (ordered it two weeks ago) I went back to the bridge. Im able to use it with my NAS (see footnote) without a PC. I still prefer the SQ of the bridge over the USB. Same with my PWD, so I believe it’s the I2S input that makes the difference.

I will report here about my findings as soon as the jCat arrived and I was able to make some A/B testing with USB vs bridge.

blackicehurts said And what is this bashing high-end cable producers!! I thought their mission in life was to take the rule book and put it in the re-cycle bin.
Speaking for myself, I often ignore the rule books, but I try to do a lot of testing when I don't do something the normal or standard way. Whenever you do something different you are saying that you have more experience in that domain than everyone else that's been there (or that you are smarter than everyone else.) Granted most of the people that do things the normal way just copied others, but there's still a lot of practical experience that guides the normal ways of doing things.

Anyway in the case of USB there’s not much of an excuse for cables that don’t work: the USB specs clearly spell out the whys of each of the restrictions. It doesn’t take much reading to see that long cables are a real problem because of the speed of light - it’s hard to argue with that. Also it doesn’t take long to see that not hooking up VBUS (the 5V power) will cause a lot of systems to not connect properly or reliably. Any manufacturer that doesn’t hook up the power should state that clearly in their marketing material IMO.

Paul McGowan said My favorite still remains Paul Pang's work. You can get it here for 200 pounds - not sure what that is in dollars, probably around $300?
It took me three months and 300€ to follow that recommendation. Finally, I got it.

The jCat reduces the gap between the I2S inputs (PWT and bridge) remarkably and allows me now to enjoy the convenience of jRiver/jRemote for gapless playback until the bridge II will come up.

I was on the fence about Paul Pang’s USB cable (recommended by Paul.) I think it was the lead time and international shipment that caused me to…

Choose Transparent Audio Premium USB.

I installed it yesterday. Sounded good right out of the box, but it really opened up later in the evening. Huge difference over the stock and Pangea I had been using.

So, TA Premium works well and sounds great. We can add that to the list.

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Update on the Nordost, not sure what happened, but something started to behave inconsistently. The MacMini stopped being able to play through the Nordost to my DS, though the MacMini + 5M Nordost did work with a Benchmark DAC2HGC. A MacBook worked fine with the cable and the DS.

I ended up moving the MacMini and using a solid looking unbranded cable that came with a printer.

Nordost Blue Heaven, Type A to Type B USB Cable 5m works running from MacMini to my DS. Very nice to see that “DSD128 1” appearing. Futureshop.co.uk stock it.

Bit surprised to feel there is something obvious on the DSD128 recordings I have. A selection of Analogue Bibb, Eric Bibb, purchased from dsdfile.com is just very nice. Listening through a pair of Stax 009s there is that texture, depth, “pop” that you want on acoustic instruments. Likewise some choral from 2L. Beguiling. Wonder if Gardiner or Suzuki would re-record the Bach cantatas in DSD128. Just noticed “Hymn to the Virgin” on 2L was “Nominated for the 56th GRAMMY Awards as Best Engineered Album 2013” & is available in DSD128.

A good half of the Suzuki Bach cantatas are available on SACD (32 out of 62 albums). I have almost all of the recordings, but all on CD. They are delicious.

I have a whole selection of the disks, I just dont have an SACD player. I held off buying a disk player once format wars started all those years ago, and then downloads came along.

I have just receive today my USB cable from Paul’s Pang. On the Aries it work really very well. Big improvement over the Lavardin coaxial cable that I was using…

I am very impressed!

Earlier in the thread I mentioned the 1m TotalDac1 cable-filter I was using with a PWD. It works fine with the DS too.

Just plugged in new usb cable Audioquest Diamond 0.75m cant say to much as its only been 3 hours play in system and its needs more use , but I can say that straight away I noticed the bass was more defined and the vocals were more clearer and sharp I have only used 2 other usb cables and this is way much better.

  1. A cheap 8 year old printer cable sounds good but bass was a little soft and vocals at times seemed to fade and drift .

  2. Alpha Furutech cable 5 years old good bass ,when playing soft low level music very good but could not handle loud blues/rock