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Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

RE: +1 Thank you

My comments were not made specifically to this thread. They are a culmination of numerous comments read in this forum and many others.

I have seen many comments how one digital cable sounds brighter than another and the effects blamed on capacitance. This is clearly a lack of understanding how digital interfaces work.

Again all electrical signals are analog. A digital stream is analogous to an FM radio signal. Amplitude is not critical as the information is represented by frequency changes, not absolute voltage. A digital stream acts much the same way.

There are both good and bad analog and digital cables. However a poor digital audio cable has a far different effect than a poor analog cable. Very different yet the fundamental cable LCR parameters are the same and have the same effect on the signal being carried. What is much different is how the audio signal is represented between analog and digital cables.

I think the issues with USB cables are from the use of the +5 volts to power a DAC and also due to round loops inducing noise into the DAC. USB does not need a ground. The data signal is balanced and bi-directional. Similar to RS485. You only need the two data signals to feed a locally powered DAC. Just cut the ground wire and +5v at the DAC end and I'll bet many of these issues between cables go away.

For me, my music server and DAC are on the same chassis using a 1 foot USB cable so I really don't have any issues with my USB cables.


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