Another sad fact can be that audiophile equipment can be badly designed so that factors that should not matter actually do ? :)
Power amps that's gets unstable without special speaker cables etc . Or circuit design with very bad or none power supply rejection ratio ,which demands uber designed power supplies to perform decently at all . To high output impedance so that speaker impedance influence frequency response and impulse response of the total ssystem... ( just fill in more of these ) . I have no plethora of examples of junk design in digital interfaces , but did not some garage company actually designed a tube driven digital output and as per the usual MO claiming that it's "sounds better" due to the tubes but without any proper explanation or testing ;) Btw the to much gain thing can happen to good brands to , it's not unusual that brand x pre and power put together has to much gain , this limits performance . Btw I don't think you have to pay even 20$ for a proper USB 2 certified cable in a computer store , I'll also bet that the freebie cable you got 10 years ago also works properly for such an undemanding task as audio . But you migth find the fringe case with the very cable hence unlikely . I do like the unlikely term better as there could be many factors at work . But keep track of what's probable . If you actually by measurement or well conducted ABX test do find differences in USB cables , do not jump up and down in joy off finding the perfect USB a cable ,rather worry about what's wrong with your system . Or what went wrong in the test . -------------------------------------------------------------------- Main hifi: Touch + CIA PS +MeridianG68J MeridianHD621 MeridianG98DH 2 x MeridianDSP5200 MeridianDSP5200HC 2 xMeridianDSP3100 +Rel Stadium 3 sub. Bedroom/Office: Boom Kitchen: Touch + powered Fostex PM0.4 Misc use: Radio (with battery) iPad1 with iPengHD & SqueezePad (in storage SB3, reciever ,controller ) server HP proliant micro server N36L with ClearOS Linux http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mnyb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4143 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=102632 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles