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How can USB performance impact audio quality?

It seems it *should be* that once you've gotten the data outside of the computer via USB and its safely being read by your DAC, it must be clean, or at least clean-able.

It *should be* 100% the sound of the DAC you're hearing-- how it handles clocking/jitter, the quality of the A/D conversion, filters, analog circuit design and execution being the whole show. You're not listening to the USB, it just sends data packets to the DAC.

That theory has some holes though; for example reliable, inelligent folks report audible differences in USB cables. I don't want to believe that-- what could explain that phenomenon?

Along with this, I want to believe that my DAC won't be severely impacted by minor electrical noise coming in via the USB cable. Can it? How does one deal with that?

If the discussion comes down to nothing but the audibility of jitter, you might lose me. It mirrors too closely the debate over THD percentages in transistor amplifiers in the 70's!

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Topic - How can USB performance impact audio quality? - mr.bear 13:13:55 06/12/11 (79)
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