Does the Quality of the USB cable matter?

Let’s set the record straight here. For your use case, this is the signal flow:

External drive --> USB --> Laptop

Laptop --> Ethernet --> Squeezebox


With this specific setup, the USB cable will make zero difference. This is why. Communication between your laptop and the external drive attached via USB will result in bit perfect transfers to the laptop _EVERY_ time due to the error correction built into the protocol used to transfer data to/from the PC and USB mass storage devices. The data is then sent from your laptop to the Squeezebox using a standard networking protocol (either TCP or UDP as I’m not sure which the Squeezebox uses). TCP has error correction built in. If the data sent from the sender to the receiver does not match the checksum, it is resent. This is GUARANTEED because of the TCP protocol. The Squeezebox then buffers the data in local memory and then processes it for output. Because of the communication protocols in use between your devices, you are guaranteed bit perfect delivery to the Squeezebox. What happens from there is a matter of exactly how the software on the Squeezebox has been programmed to handle the data it has locally buffered.

USB cables only make a difference when the signal path is directly from source to processing device (e.g. PC USB output to DAC USB input). This is because the transfer of data over USB for audio purposes does not utilize any error correction. Zero, zip, zilch, none, nada. Errors in signal transmission are never corrected because there’s nothing built into the ’protocol’ to perform the necessary operations to achieve error correction.

Ozzy,

For your current setup, yes, the USB cable does matter. This is because you're directly connecting your source device (Bryston BDP-2) to the processing device (PS Audio Direct Stream DAC). As mentioned in my previous message, there is no error correction of the signal transmitted via the USB cable for that usage scenario.

Because of the error checking/correction functionality of the USB mass storage protocol, it doesn't matter what USB cable you use to connect your external storage drive to your laptop. It only matters in the scenario above.

This is an excellent article for understanding why USB cables make a difference when used for audio purposes directly between source and processing equipment:

https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/why-usb-cables-can-make-a-difference/