USB Cable type AB recommendation

[sidvee]

Gentle members - all the jitter discussion is making me jittery:clapping:. Anyways on a practical note, I did my first test today of connecting my hp netbbook running foobar 2000, with my el-cheapo usb cable to the Ayon Cd2s. To Ayon's credit the computer recognized the player with no difficulty and loaded the driver. I then proceeded to play FLAC files of Jimmy Smith (jazz) & Death Cab for cutie (pop). My first impression - Not satifactory at all - The sound sounded uninvolving, dull, lifeless - there was decent soundstage depth and width and imaging was good as well, frequency extension for bass was also well defined & extended, but there was something missing. Next I am going to rip WAV files of some of my reference CD's and do a direct comparison to see if I can tell the difference.
At this stage there are too many variables that may be contributing to my negative impressions: Intel Atom processor, cheapo computer, cheapo USB cable, bad implementation of USB in the ayon etc. Well the journey begins - I have to now eliminate each variable one by one to find the source of my bad listening experience - this is the fun part:lol:
Cheers,
Sid
Ps: and another Variable -the wasapi setting that ROC was so kind to point out.

 

[reignofchaos]

Sidvee make sure you are using wasapi as your output. The default directsound mode is horrible sounding.

 

[sidvee]

Sidvee make sure you are using wasapi as your output. The default directsound mode is horrible sounding.

Thanks ROC. Since I am technologically impaired - can you kindly guide me.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[Hiten]

If audio is hobby/passion it is always good to know things. But when it comes to spending hard earned money on audio stuff a little self restraint with amount of money spent and improvements one can get should be kept in mind. I confess I have not read all the posts, but I think we are talking about jitter. Ethan Winer may not be the last word in audio and lots of professional people do not agree with him. But here are his audio artifacts test which everyone can take with good quality headphone.
Artifact Audibility Comparisons
I respect people who have high resolution high fidelity system and when they say power cords and cables make difference (improvements?) their opinion should be respected keeping in mind it is subjective matter. But in the above given link the test will show that we can not distinguish distortions added to sound sample leave alone jitter. People with better ears than me and having good system can post their views. It would be interesting.
Regards

 

[reignofchaos]

I assume you are using some strain of Windows Vista or 7.

Please download the following foobar component

foobar2000: Components Repository - WASAPI output support

Please copy the files in the zip file into the components directory of your foobar install. (Typically c:\Program Files\foobar2000\components)

Then go to foobar preferences and select output and then select WASAPI: Ayon CD-2s or whatever the cd player got detected as.

It will be DS: Ayon CD-2s by default which means it was using directsound.

Wasapi completely bypasses the windows mixer and is a bit perfect way of outputting data.

 

[sidvee]

It will be DS: Ayon CD-2s by default which means it was using directsound.

Wasapi completely bypasses the windows mixer and is a bit perfect way of outputting data.

I read about this but was not sure how to go about it. Many thanks again ROC, will do it and report back.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[odyssey]

Thad, Two things -

you said - "jitter, in this context, is the mistiming of individual bits,"

thats exactly what I mean - each bogey in my example is a bit and its the mistiming of bits on the receive side (since its not matched to the transmit side) that results in jitter.

On the cables - I did put a caveat which you either did not read or did not register - but I will say it once more - a cable that has in-phase response across all frequencies and has sufficient bandwidth will not introduce jitter. Obviously I am not talking about cables of ridiculous lengths. If the cable attenuates the square wave - its simple - either its too long or its a poor cable. Here's simple logic - fibre optic transmission happens over 10's of km before its recovered and retransmitted - how is it that these systems dont see insane amount of jitter? very simple - the cable isnt the culprit (and believe me they dont use $100/ft cable here), the clocking mechanisms they have in the transmitter and receiver are of very high quality - usually 50 ppm or even better.

The other post is correct in saying that I am talking about jitter in digital transmission systems which this is - whether the data is video or audio or telecom data makes no difference - the principles are the same.

I never talked about the order of the bogeys or the bits being wrong, in a synchronous time slot based system, this is impossible - you cannot have them in an incorrect order. It is not a packet switching system

My post is not to prove you wrong, I have nothing to prove, you can be as stubborn as you like , its clear from basic jitter questions that people dont understand jitter. When you separate the jitter principles from its application - audio, or otherwise it will be easy to understand.

High end DACs - almost all studio DACs will have an external clocking mechanism - ask yourself why - they dont use $20K cables, they know what they are doing, after all they are the experts.

cheers
Sridhar

There is always a chance that I have misread!

But (and I do like a good analogy!) what seems wrong to me is thinking that bogey 2 is bogey 3. As per the articles we have discussed, the error is in thinking that bogey 2 is in the station, when it is only half in the station. This (straining the analogy, sorry) if it is the number of windows that matters to us, we misread. because we only see what has reached the platform, and not the part that hasn't.

I think Odyssey may be talking about principles and practice that apply to telecoms rather than to the particular methods of audio transfer that we are discussing here. He mentions packet switching.

Apart from that, his comment about cables appears to be wrong.... Although, if he meant to say that properly specified and manufactured cables do not induce jitter then I'd have no problem.

Have I got the wrong end of the stick (every stick has two ends, a wise man once said, but too early in history to label them 0 and 1)? I don't think so ... but it'll all come out in the wash, as they say . Sure, I'm as stubborn as a donkey, and I'll stick to my guns, but if it turns out I have to eat my words, then pass the plate!

 

[hydra]

@sidvee, I'm pretty sure you will end-up liking the coaxial input more.

I was stuck with using my DAC via USB (cable borrowed from a scanner in my office) off my Laptop for about 2 weeks, as my PC was down. Now that I've got the PC up and running, I've been able to use the DAC via Coaxial-out from the soundcard in my PC. (Both cases using Foobar2000 with WASAPI).

There isn't a night and day difference between the two scenarios (USB vs. Coaxial), but the coaxial input sounds far better -- the soundstage is far deeper, individual instruments stand out more, and overall the music sounds far more involving. The difference was immediately apparent to me from the point I switched over to the coaxial input of the soundcard.

This is just 'anecdotal', and my setup is in no way a highly resolving setup. I'm sure the difference will be far more apparent in a setup like yours.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

My post is not to prove you wrong, I have nothing to prove, you can be as stubborn as you like , its clear from basic jitter questions that people dont understand jitter.

Cheers, Odyssey... that's exactly what I think too

Whilst all this too-ing and fro-ing might seem a bit hot-headed at times, it is all working out to increasing the understanding.

Points taken. I did notice your mention of cable cable characteristics, and should have more closely associated the statement that cables don't cause jitter with it.

sidvee... It is a tough test, but I don't think you should be able to tell the difference, if you rip a CD, between playing the CD and playing the files from the computer. I gather that is your aim, and I think it is reasonable --- but I wonder if it will happen in this real world? I hope so. Looking forward to your continuing tests. I don't think there ought to be a difference between the results from FLAC and WAV, but I'd use WAV for testing, just to leave out that possibility, real or not, both in the physical world and in the mental world. One less thing to think about

 

[sidvee]

sidvee... It is a tough test, but I don't think you should be able to tell the difference, if you rip a CD, between playing the CD and playing the files from the computer. I gather that is your aim, and I think it is reasonable

As they say Thad - "Every journey should have a clear destination" (unless of-course the journey is the goal itself :lol: and I know many audiophiles who fall in this camp) - anyways my destination is arrive at a point where I will be unable to distinguish Red book Cd playback from ripped files (either WAV or FLAC). At that point I will rip my approx. 1000-1200 cd collection and will not look back.

--- but I wonder if it will happen in this real world? I hope so. Looking forward to your continuing tests. I don't think there ought to be a difference between the results from FLAC and WAV, but I'd use WAV for testing, just to leave out that possibility, real or not, both in the physical world and in the mental world. One less thing to think about

I hope that I will not have any issue with FLAc vs WAV, as I would prefer FLAC and even knowing memory is cheap, dont want to have too large file sizes.

Cheers,
Sid

 

[sidvee]

Sidvee make sure you are using wasapi as your output. The default directsound mode is horrible sounding.

ROC - I just realized that I am running windows XP and wasapi is not compatible. Is ASIO an option? It seems to work with XP.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[hydra]

...I hope that I will not have any issue with FLAc vs WAV, as I would prefer FLAC and even knowing memory is cheap, dont want to have too large file sizes...

WAV has the added disadvantage that it is near to impossible to tag properly. A large collection of WAV files is not easy to navigate. I can't seem to get Foobar to index WAV files and categorize them either.

WAV files do have the huge advantage of being universal. You can get them to work on nearly all hardware players (including iPods).

... Is ASIO an option? It seems to work with XP.
...

Yes, for Windows XP you should be using ASIO.

If your laptop's soundcard does not have an ASIO driver, you can use ASIO4ALL. (Most laptop soundcards are not ASIO compatible).

I think the ASIO4ALL .dll file is not available on the Foobar website. It is available on www.asio4all.com.

 

[reignofchaos]

ROC - I just realized that I am running windows XP and wasapi is not compatible. Is ASIO an option? It seems to work with XP.
Cheers,
Sid

Yup ASIO should work in xp. Download the asio plugin for foobar and asio4all. Then setup your ayon as the output device for asio4all and then use asio4all as your output in foobar.

It'll sound almost as good as wasapi.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Ethan Winer may not be the last word in audio and lots of professional people do not agree with him. But here are his audio artifacts test which everyone can take with good quality headphone.
Artifact Audibility Comparisons ... People with better ears than me and having good system can post their views. It would be interesting.
Regards

Well, I probably have worse ears than you, partly due to misuse in my youth and early employment in engineering factories. Certainly I was able to hear the things that EW said "everyone will be able to notice this" but as the demonstrations of masking moved up the scale, I probably lost the noise a bit earlier than younger, better ears would have. It was a fascinating article, and a very good example of how sound works, and what matters and what does not.

Have you tried the audio samples in the Sound-on-Sound article I linked to? The demonstration of dither is particularly fascination. You take a noise, that one might think undesirable, and it actually corrects an audio problem!

 

[sidvee]

Thanks to ROC & Hydra, I used the Asio plugin for foobar - and what a difference! The sound quality improved by leaps and bounds to the realm of listenable - in fact- I just concluded a 2 hr listening session.
Again though, I feel I have not yet reached Cd quality. I played Jack Johnson (pop), Patricia Barber (jazz) & Herbie Hancock (jazz). On Hancock's "Watermelon Man" a song I have been hearing for the past 10 years or so, I felt that the overall resolution of the soundstage was a notch lower than the corresponding CD playback over the Ayon - I used FLAC for the comparison, next will be a WAV rip. Also I noticed a slightly elevated level of ear fatigue after the 2 hour session, which was absent with Cd playback - when the volume level was constant. So now I have a glimpse of what can be achieved thru' a comp. based source. Next steps - I will use WAV files, then change the no name USB cable to Audioquest cinnamon and finally an USB bridge with my trusty Tara Labs Coax.
Then as a bigger step up, I want to get a dedicated music computer, either a custom built Widows based one or a Mac Mini or laptop.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[reignofchaos]

Thanks to ROC & Hydra, I used the Asio plugin for foobar - and what a difference! The sound quality improved by leaps and bounds to the realm of listenable - in fact- I just concluded a 2 hr listening session.
Again though, I feel I have not yet reached Cd quality. I played Jack Johnson (pop), Patricia Barber (jazz) & Herbie Hancock (jazz). On Hancock's "Watermelon Man" a song I have been hearing for the past 10 years or so, I felt that the overall resolution of the soundstage was a notch lower than the corresponding CD playback over the Ayon - I used FLAC for the comparison, next will be a WAV rip. Also I noticed a slightly elevated level of ear fatigue after the 2 hour session, which was absent with Cd playback - when the volume level was constant. So now I have a glimpse of what can be achieved thru' a comp. based source. Next steps - I will use WAV files, then change the no name USB cable to Audioquest cinnamon and finally an USB bridge with my trusty Tara Labs Coax.
Then as a bigger step up, I want to get a dedicated music computer, either a custom built Widows based one or a Mac Mini or laptop.
Cheers,
Sid

If you are planning to use an m2tech hiface, I'd suggest you upgrade to win 7. The performance over asio in win xp was nothing to write home about. I found my emu card outperformed it totally in win xp. However a switch to win 7 with wasapi and the tables were totally turned. The m2tech was far more resolving and probably equals or outperforms the inbuilt transport.

Cheers!

 

[stevieboy]

Hi Sidvee,

Seems like a great exploration you're undertaking here. I like one part - the way you're going about eliminating element by element from source file format to media (cable) format to find out what suits your ears. Really nice way to go about it!

Regards

 

[hydra]

...Also I noticed a slightly elevated level of ear fatigue after the 2 hour session, which was absent with Cd playback - when the volume level was constant...

I've noticed the same problem with asio4all on my (not-at-all-optimised-for-music) work computer running Win Xp Pro [FLAC > Foobar > asio4all > Creative Audigy 2NX > Sennheiser HD555].

The HD555 when used with the Xonar STX (Win7 +WASAPI) does not have this issue, even after 2-3 hour long listening sessions.

This problem will most likely go away if you use Windows 7 with WASAPI.

 

[sidvee]

Hi Sidvee,

Seems like a great exploration you're undertaking here. I like one part - the way you're going about eliminating element by element from source file format to media (cable) format to find out what suits your ears. Really nice way to go about it!

Regards

Thank you kindly Stevieboy - In the absence of full blown DBT test this appears to be the next logical way. Two symptoms I am aiming to avoid is buyers remorse and upgraditis itch:lol:.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[gobble]

I have no conclusions to make, still learning as this discussion piques my curiosity. But here a good and easy read about what happens to PC clocks (and what can happen to the average DAC clock also I suppose?) : Clock Quality


-G0bble