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Which USB Cable best for my new USB DAC

Just bought an AUDIO ALCHEMY DDP-1 USB DAC for my computer. It’s due to be delivered on Monday and I don’t have a USB cable for it. I’ve never bought a USB cable for audio before so I thought I’d ask if anyone has particular experience buying USB cables for this particular product. Or if not this particular product, then which audio USB do you like.  I listen to classical music and opera and have a fairly good stereo set up for my computer, a Musical Fidelity A3cr Preamp, Adcom Amp and Spendor S3/5 Monitor Speakers.  It’s all quite musical and hopefully the Audio Alchemy will fit in nicely.

This article has given me some ideas, but it’d be nice to have some second and third and more opinions.

http://passionforsound.lachlanfennen.com/massive-usb-comparison-test/

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david_ten
2,509 posts
 
@echolane  Congratulations on your new DAC. If you are U.S. based, you can utilize The Cable Company's Lending Program to trial a few USB cables. They will be fully broken in and you will be able to test them out within your own system to determine which one works best for you. 

Thanks for sharing the link to the USB cable comparison. You may also want to look at Audio Bacon. They have a number of USB cable reviews / comparisons.

All the best.
amg56's avatar
amg56
666 posts
 

@echolane Firstly, the USB cable will be a type B from your PC to a type A to the DAC. I am not aware of your PC setup, however music player straight from a PC USB port will have jitter error. There are intermediate plug in solutions for that mentioned somewhere in the current topics in A'gon.

Again, I am not sure what program you are using to play your music, but file format and driver can effect the music quality. You might be tempted to source an expensive USB cable up front, but from my experience, don't, at least not yet. Get $20-$50 cable and you will see that the music is not bad. It may be quite acceptable for quite a while as the main issue is the PC. I am not sure why posters immediately quote $300-400 cables first up!

Have a look for products on this forum for re-clockers such as Synchromesh, unless your DAC already has a jitter eliminating clock.

echolane's avatar
echolane OP
52 posts
 
Thank you david_ten for the tip about The Cable Company’s lending program.  Sounds absolutely the right sort of way to go about choosing a cable and that’s what I plan to do.
echolane's avatar
echolane OP
52 posts
 
Hello amg56. I don’t have a program to play from a NAS yet! I am in the difficult stage of trying to put everything together and without a good means yet of testing things out. For example, my nephew has my new Naim Uniti Core and most of my CDs which he is going to rip for me. He will also help me install and test everything. He’s in Louisiana and I’m in California and things will come together when he makes the trip here in about a month. And the Naim Uniti Core goes in my living room stereo system which is at the other end of the house from my computer system, a significant complication.
Meanwhile, the Audio Alchemy is the first piece of gear I have so far in the new streaming process. I will have to test the new Audio Alchemy at this point by playing YouTube or Deezer. I won’t have an app or a NAS until my nephew shows up at which point I will get technically challenged again because I’m not quite sure what I will have to do to send the NAS music through the Audio Alchemy.  It all just seems so complicated right now and constantly challenges me!

jim204
207 posts
 
Hi echolane,I'm sure you find this all daunting but once through the initial process it will become easier. I notice one poster was having a dig about us recommending more expensive cables and saying for you to get a cheap one first. I'm afraid I find this a bit of a false economy as if you ever want to resell it you will only get peanuts for it. I tend to get a really good cable first and the chances of wanting to change it later are very small plus I don't see why I should break in a cable for someone else to get the benefits. Jitter was also mentioned and there are many ways of fighting that little chestnut some very expensive and some not so. The one I would recommend is a program called Fideliser Plus, what it does is shut off lots of windows programs that actually contribute a lot of jitter thereby taking an imense load off the processor and forcing the processor to just use one core on audio based programs. It works a treat and is super value for money. I find as we get older we get more and more afraid of technology and we shay away from it. I have just built a new PC for my friend and set it up for him and he has taken it up like a duck to water and he is 72 so it can be done. Good luck in your quest and if you need any help at anytime just post it up and I shall do my best to help.Jim.
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