I'll only buy these cables if they're endorsed by John Vestman.

bitflipper


I'll only buy these cables if they're endorsed by John Vestman.

You know when I read that article I found it to be full of errors.

I suspect it must be because he used cheap cables to connect his keyboard and mouse to his PC  when he wrote it.

I'm quite liking the 'musical' bit reduction qualities of my £7.95 cables.

They remove any traces of gloss in the high end I may have inadvertantly picked up along the way.  And trust me, my ears know the difference.

I know squat about USB, but sin't there a checksum at the end of each digital packet, or whatever? And, since RME sent me a very nice-looking cable with my $2100 UFX, I think they'd put a decent enough one in the box.. I mean, the thing gets rave revues without any mention of "nice unit, shame about the cable".. :O)

You do need a quality cable for USB, because even though it's a straight data pipe that will not - cannot - alter sound, USB is not a protocol that guarantees delivery. It's like UDP versus TCP: you get one chance to transmit the data; if it gets scrambled, tough luck. So a flaky cable is bad news.

The good news is that a high-quality cable costs considerably less than $3500, about $3490 less.

So much misinformation exists on the web, wrapped in jargon and delivered by people who obviously know more about it than you do. Serious-sounding articles that explain how you can lose fidelity by copying an audio file from one disk to another, or that USB makes audio sound bad. Or how about "a $100 Apogee cable will make as much difference as a $3000 D-A converter"? It's no wonder so many folks are routinely duped into believing technically unsupportable myths - after all, it must be true if you've read it on the internet.

The really bizarre phenomenon is expectation bias, which really can make the $3500 USB cable sound better! Or a $2000 power cord, or magic rocks or green magic markers. If you spend any time on Gearslutz it will become obvious that gullibility runs rampant (actual example: "I have listened to many many things that null and are much different sonically...tests can be deceiving").

And don't think you're too smart to be fooled by expectation bias. None of us are.

bitflipper



And don't think you're too smart to be fooled by expectation bias. None of us are.

I expected you'd say that. 

Beagle

bitflipper



And don't think you're too smart to be fooled by expectation bias. None of us are.

I expected you'd say that. 

I did too but I thought it was going to sound better than it did, must be the cables across the Atlantic reducing the quality...

Jonbouy

Beagle

bitflipper



And don't think you're too smart to be fooled by expectation bias. None of us are.

I expected you'd say that. 

I did too but I thought it was going to sound better than it did, must be the cables across the Atlantic reducing the quality...

It did sound better, you just didn't bias it right.

bitflipper


 So much misinformation exists on the web, wrapped in jargon and delivered by people who obviously know more about it than you do.

And to make matters worse, if you read any of the production/equipment magazines, the truth is they get a lot of their information for technical articles directly or indirectly from manufacturers. And though the information/theory they present might be technically accurate, the real world impact is often vastly overstated.

And don't think you're too smart to be fooled by expectation bias. None of us are.

I always like to say, "There's a word for people who think they're too smart to be fooled by expectation bias - dumb".

I always like to say, "There's a word for people who think they're too smart to be fooled by expectation bias - dumb".

I'm dumb enough not to be fooled.