More audiophile nonsense (USB cable related)
Discussion
The review began...
What utter twaddle.
This to justify a USB cable with costs £298. (and I'm sure there are many much more expensive cables out there).
Review said:
Normally, when you push music through a USB cable, the data, which arrives in blocks, includes narrow bits which represents the high frequency portions of the final music. Within current USB cables, these bits are largely lost because the cable isn't fast enough to cope, the sampling continues but the narrow bits are largely ignored because they are seen as errors.
So, the review is (kind of) implying that a cable that carries a digital signal is analogous to a cable carrying an analogue signal.What utter twaddle.
This to justify a USB cable with costs £298. (and I'm sure there are many much more expensive cables out there).
TonyRPH said:
Hi Fi World this time!
They used to be (sort of) ok, but are now getting silly with some of the "digital" reviews.
I think it's more a question that they have to try to find new things to write about to keep magazines alive. If it's a 'review' of a HDMI cable or in this case a USB cable they can't just write a sentence or two describing how it looks and what it's made of, so they have to pad it out with rubbish and worse still, try to explain it with pseudo techno talk. They used to be (sort of) ok, but are now getting silly with some of the "digital" reviews.
Here's your chance then:-
http://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/index.php/letters/462-...
(if you can type a letter whilst trying not to fall off the chair laughing at their stupidity)
http://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/index.php/letters/462-...
(if you can type a letter whilst trying not to fall off the chair laughing at their stupidity)
This is still the best audiophile cable ever....it's just an ethernet cable.
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-C...
Read some of the comments
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-C...
Read some of the comments
TonyRPH said:
So, the review is (kind of) implying that a cable that carries a digital signal is analogous to a cable carrying an analogue signal.
High-speed digital signals are basically analogue. A lot of my time is spent designing electronics to shove 3Gbps digital signals down 100m of cable. For analogue signals, all signal degradation during transmission lowers the quality of what you end up with.
For digital signals, as long as the receiver can still reliably recover the bit stream, you get exactly what you put in. If the signal degradation is bad enough , you cant recover 1's and 0's reliably any more. You tend to get all or nothing.
In practice, the bit error rate on even a cheap cable will be so close to zero that it's not worth worrying about.
USB data does arrive in blocks but there are no narrow bits.
rotarymazda said:
High-speed digital signals are basically analogue. A lot of my time is spent designing electronics to shove 3Gbps digital signals down 100m of cable.
For analogue signals, all signal degradation during transmission lowers the quality of what you end up with.
For digital signals, as long as the receiver can still reliably recover the bit stream, you get exactly what you put in. If the signal degradation is bad enough , you cant recover 1's and 0's reliably any more. You tend to get all or nothing.
In practice, the bit error rate on even a cheap cable will be so close to zero that it's not worth worrying about.
USB data does arrive in blocks but there are no narrow bits.
I appreciate that it's "just a square wave" being sent down a cable.For analogue signals, all signal degradation during transmission lowers the quality of what you end up with.
For digital signals, as long as the receiver can still reliably recover the bit stream, you get exactly what you put in. If the signal degradation is bad enough , you cant recover 1's and 0's reliably any more. You tend to get all or nothing.
In practice, the bit error rate on even a cheap cable will be so close to zero that it's not worth worrying about.
USB data does arrive in blocks but there are no narrow bits.
Is it sent in packets, or as a continuous stream (I seem to recall it's a continuous stream)?
I don't understand the "arrives in blocks" part. I thought it was like a carrier, with the bits superimposed upon said carrier?
TonyRPH said:
I appreciate that it's "just a square wave" being sent down a cable.
Is it sent in packets, or as a continuous stream (I seem to recall it's a continuous stream)?
I don't understand the "arrives in blocks" part. I thought it was like a carrier, with the bits superimposed upon said carrier?
You have a carrier wave in FM and AM transmissions, where the medium is radio and you need a carrier wave upon which to superimpose an analogue signal.Is it sent in packets, or as a continuous stream (I seem to recall it's a continuous stream)?
I don't understand the "arrives in blocks" part. I thought it was like a carrier, with the bits superimposed upon said carrier?
However with a digital signal it's on or off. In radio this can mean "signal" and "no signal". In a wire this can mean "voltage and no voltage". So the "square wave" which contains the digital info is basically just a sequence of "volts" and "no volts".
What's interesting is that in reality it's not a totally square wave, since the rise starts quickly and tapers, and so does the fall. It's more like a saw tooth which is then interpreted back into digital form (i.e. bits) in processing, and then the data is extracted from these bits.
Don't forget to upgrade your power cable too http://www.highendcable.co.uk/Nordost%20ODIN%20Pow...
andrewrob said:
Don't forget to upgrade your power cable too http://www.highendcable.co.uk/Nordost%20ODIN%20Pow...
Whilst I'm not going to suggest that spending £9,000 on mains cable is anything other than daft, I have spent money 'upgrading' the mains cables in my main system.There are a couple of reasons why you might want to do this - one is connected with making your system sound 'better', the other is connected mainly with aesthetics.
The stuff I use is this: http://www.hificables.co.uk/10865/Supra-LoRad-2-5-...
Dealing with the aesthetics first, I have a lot of boxes, and if I used standard two metre length kettle leads, I'd have an awful to of cable to hide behind the equipment rack. So all the cables I have are cut to just the right length to get from the distribution block to the piece of kit in question.
This leads on to the second point - making the system sound better. That's a bit misleading really, as my objective is really to make sure that the mains cable doesn't make the system sound worse. The Supra cable I've linked to is shielded so effectively that you can run a mains wire detector over it and it won't register at all. This in my book has to be a good thing, because all of the mains cabling in my system has to run fairly close to signal leads, and the objective here is to make sure that the mains cable doesn't adversely impact on the signal cables, which in some cases are carrying signals that don't reach a few microvolts.
OK, I could maybe get round the issue by using balanced connections, and I do do that for most of the connections between source and pre and power amps, but I can't do that for my turntable and phono stage.
Some people may snigger at what I've done, some may pooh pooh the rationale, but for the sake of maybe £150 spent on cable and connectors, and a couple of hours of my time, I'm happy.
And, I can turn the volume up to 11 on my phono input with nothing playing, and there is no hum, no hiss, just inky black silence.
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