With people claiming that different coax cables can sound different because of the amount of jitter introduced, what about USB cables? Or does it not matter at all? Do external USB DAC clock the data itself after it's already gone through the USB cable? Should i go look for "audiophile grade!" usb cables? Nothing over... say 50$ please, as it's going to get ridiculous. Just technically speaking, is a coax cable better than a usb cable? Thanks.

Dude... no!

In order for USB computer peripherals to work, the bus needs to ensure 100% bit-perfect data transmission every time. An error of a single bit could alter an instruction and cause a disaster. USB hard drives could not be relied on if there was a non-zero probability of data getting corrupted in the USB transmission channel. The USB protocol has extensive error detection and correction facilities. Again, no.

As for your other question, do you mean whether a coaxial cable is better than twisted pair cable or whether USB is better than SPDIF? If the latter, it depends on purpose. I think the USB bus has higher bandwidth and better error correction facilities than SPDIF. But SPDIF is a lot simpler, has (much) lower latency and is highly specialized for audio transfer. USB is designed to attach peripherals to computers while SPDIF is designed to transfer digital audio with low latency.

I can understand that digital data is bit perfect. But (correct me if i'm wrong) an audio stream doesn't just depend on the data but also on the timing and that's why i can think that maybe a digital cable might sound better than another.
Again, if i'm wrong, please demolish my missconceptions. Thanks.

no

They are not substitutes. You can't replace one with another.


No, it's asynchronous, unlike spdif. Timing doesn't have to be exact.

Audiophile USB cables... this is so hilarious.

In Germany we have a saying: "Aus Scheiße Geld machen" -> "making money out of doo-doo"

alright thanks, that's as much persuasion as i needed

I've heard that most consumer-grade USB sound cards use synchronous data transfers, which could in fact be susceptible to timing jitter on the cable (or even inside the USB chipset). But

a) the reclocking circuitry in the sound card should be capable of dealing with this and eliminate the jitter
b) AFAIK, nobody's ever actually come forth with real measurements to prove this is an issue

Yes, exactly. USB is asynchronous so it's totally immune to the timing problems SPDIF might have. And it has to be because possibility of data-altering jitter would render the whole USB system unusable.



I think an instance of such a jitter would be detectable as a loud burst of white noise instead of anything in the fields of 'the bass is sloppier and the highs are not so refined', don't you agree? The tendency of some USB sound cards (including my M-Audio Transit) to produce loud clicks and bursts of white noise would also lend to this argument.

Under the assumption of jitter that is well within the specs (jitter that does exceed a limit from where actual data is being shifted), SPDIF coax cables cannot sound different. Bit-perfect throughput is bit-perfect throughput ... period. It's called bit-perfect for a reason.

The USB protocol (unlike SPDIF) does not have a single problem with jitter since there do exist sophisticated checksum and transfer control algorithms to ensure data integrity.

Just stay within the length limits of the corresponding USB spec and don't worry about sound quality ... if any given USB cable will sound different, your hardware won't operate properly because the USB cable is surely defective in that case.

A problem could arise when your external DAC's voltage is being supplied via USB, too ... some USB controllers (especially those on cheap mainboards) won't constantly sustain the specified 500 mA current at 5,0 Volts. Therefore, choosing a lower overall cable resistance (I do not know whether there are any real differences, though) might be a clever strategy.

Alright. So if my external dac has toslink, coax and usb, i should be using USB because it doesn't have the jitter problem of the other two right? Assuming the usb to spdif circuitry is as good.

Toslink and coax are both S/PDIF, which is a method of transferring digital audio data from one place to another. It is completely digital, it must sometime later go through a DAC to become audio signal. Well know to everyone except the 'audiophiles' is that transfer jitter is meaningless. It can be deliberately made very high but it still won't effect the audio signal because every reasonable DAC reclocks the data in the processing of gong D to A, completely eliminating the induced jitter.

All that cable jitter nonsense is marketing of the same sort as used by the traveling medicine shows of horse and buggy days.

USB is the only way to connect your device to your computer ... the SPDIF connects are for communication with external devices (like CD/DVD players, DAT recorders etc.) only.

Yeah, but some computer soundcards do have spdif outputs (that may or may not be bit-perfect) in the case you'd prefer using the external dac instead of the dac of the soundcard.