This cable replaced a Supra cable in my system, but I could not hear any difference so ended up selling the supra and keeping this, just to match the fake Odin ICs I had. The fake Odin IC were clearly better sounding than the Mogami and other pro cables I used to use.
Another great cable. In my system (Audio Analog Anniversary Maestro, Mola Mola Tambaqui, etc..) a quite noticable improvement. Better Transparency, Highs and Midrange. With my second, more modest system, improvements are present, but not as pronounced as in my main system. Note to myself: Dont forget to replace all cables in your system with high quality ones. Using cables from the same company allows for a conistent sound. This is another great review.
I had 4 different versions of this one two years ago……., where it was only replaced by the Xangsane Sterling Silver ( pure silver ) usb cable which in itself is the best sounding usb cable iv3 heard, regardless of price, where I chose to tap out cost wise at $945 makes.
I'm using a premium gold-plated Belkin USB with blue LEDs at each end and shielded data wires. But if you are starting off, why not get something like this
I use a shielded 4m Supra USB cable because I necessarily have to have that distance between my laptop and my DDC convertor. It's said that such lengths (up to 15m in fact) are OK for the Supra, and my evaluation is that 4m is indeed OK. The price (£65) is bearable. The "Nordost" is pretty I suppose, but would probably be around the same price for 4m if they do it, and wouldn't be shielded.
@@johncallaghan3097 yes the long runs are different story, pricewise and noise wise. I don't know if any "audiophile" manufacturer actually does runs that long
I have two of them as 50cm ethernet cable. They replaced some of the "better" (7 €) Amazon cable. They sound clearly better from start, but getting even better after some extensive burn in time. One of the golden ones I use as AES EBU cable. Sounds realy nice.
I used to own fake Odin cables, power cords and IC's, they all sound the same - very detailed and clean with huge depth and slightly thin treble. Actually I owned genuine Nordost Valhalla as well and fake Odins were not worse in some aspects even better so I sold Valhallas but in IC fake Odins needed connectors replacements to sound hi-end (the fake WBT's were crappy and it was the bottleneck of the entire cables IMO).
I am not too sure an unshielded line level interconnect cable is well suited to be a USB cable...apart from the lack of shielding, the needed impedance of 100 Ohms is probably way off. Certainly in SPDIF cables an impedance mismatch demonstrably produces unwanted reflections that superimpose over the original signal. Having said that, this USB cable has been highly praised for its subjective performance regardless of what its measured performance is like. The helical spiraled construction here may somewhat reduce the need for shielding. I have a set of these Fauxdin RCA interconnects, and find them to outperformed by equivalently priced SKW ones.
@@ToumalRakesh True but with exotic speaker wire and RCA you can. I dream of having Nordost speaker cable and RCA. I will try and buy Nordost tonearm wire when I buy a new turntable.
hifi people are so damn ignorant. usb is an active protocol; it has error detection and correction. it guarantees bit perfect transfers. and. it is totally outside of the audio reproduction chain. just get a standard usb cable, and stop being so gullible. same with power cords.
Lol so I guess you haven't read USB serial audio stream specification after all :) I'm IT guy btw so thank you for your "damn ignorant" - gotta show this one to the guys in the office. Seriously, just look it up. Serial USB audio (this particular protocol) has no data correction nor retransmission whatsoever. Or don't look it up and stay so blissfully sure :)
@@k4syx IT guy...guffaw. tell me you went to community college without telling me. i did look up "Serial USB audio" and it still involves sending digital data. and that is as i said, completely outside the music processing chain. and as i said, involves error detection and correction, how could it not? the alternative is corrupt data on occasion. if i am wrong, please post a link detailing the absence of error detection and correction.
@@carljung9230 Lemme google that 4 ya, as you apparently have no idea what you should be looking for: www.usb.org/sites/default/files/frmts10.pdf - thats on asynchronous serial data streams used for audio, and if thats too much pages, something simple from Silicon Laboratories. There is no error control nor retransmission as its live STREAM, even the clock sync is something you do on hardware level. And thats all you can do, fight buffer overflows or underruns. So, would you like to repeat one more time for our readers here you KNOW it involves error detection and correction _because_it_is_ USB? BTW we dont have community colleges in Europe. I dont know whats your level of education, but I wouldnt dismiss so easily something that helps people to learn and educates them. Seems silly and patronizing to me, but YMMV. In my case, "IT guy" means degree from technical university and 20y of experience working for the best and biggest brands (including US ones). So anyway, enjoy a good read - it really is interesting lecture - and EOT from my side. Cheers!
@@k4syx here you go: =============================== Does USB audio have error correction? Isochronous mode is used for transfer of audio samples. As you say, there is no error correction, though there is error detection (checksums) which would allow damaged packets to be dropped. Interrupt and control transfer are used for other purposes. =============================== so while there is no direct error correction, the detection of bad packets causes a resend request. now how hard would it have been for you to look that up? ironically i enjoy your channel and am a subscriber. i value your focus on clone products, and have recommended you to other people. all of which i will continue to do. :). but hifi people are prone to fads like painting the edge of cds green, or putting cds in the freezer, or buying $2k interconnects. keep up the good work, and thank you for your efforts.
@@annebokma4637 yes the bling is strong with this one. I needed something cheap and short and maybe better than printer cable - so very serious reasons here - but it turned out to be pretty good actually.
Serio? A ja bardzo lubię jak Właściciel tego kanału mówi swoim stylem, jakoś wszyscy rozumieją i nikt się nie czepia więc po kiego ch... się czepiasz? Masz coś do powiedzenia w sprawie Audio? Nie, to wypad na wykłady z literatury angielskiej. Taki tip dla Ciebie...
You have to have a very crappy USB cable which fails to deliver such a low bit rate what is needed for an audio stream. With the speed of a 3.0 USB 5 Gbit per sec, streaming your audio data shouldn't be a challenge to any cable even if it is a 50 cent cable. What you hear? I do not know. Probable you shouldn't hear any difference. But to be sure you should check the data on the two ends of the cable, I doubt if you will find any difference.
Actually you will find changes. And thats the problem. USB serial audio streaming standard doesnt have any correction and there is no retransmission for damaged data. So once its gone, its gone and thats it. All other protocols for usb do check control and correction data and in case of any errors request retransmission. Imagine my surprise, but thats literally defined as a standard. And the same goes for MPEG streams for HDMI or IIS audio streams - nothing CRC, not even a simple parity check, and no retransmission in these cases.
@@k4syx Than it really makes sense to check if your stream goes through the cables without alteration. And if this is the case that certain cables corrupt the data than you can objectively prove that a certain cable is better than the other. Setup two computers, make a USB connection between them. Use the protocol you mentioned. Log the sent data and the received data. And compare the two. That's easy to prove your point and many other hifi guys who are promoting expensive USB cables. I do not understand why no one did it yet.
@@cf2431 That scenario which you decribed here is actually a laboratory setup that you are working with in first year on technical universities (and even earlier if youll choose college that was profiled towards designing electronic ICs and devices). You are literally sending data over serial connection, testing the output against input and designing (yes designing as we were required to desing our own solutions and explain them) transfer protocols that would be solving these problems. Also, you learn at the same time about ways of shielding the cables and influence of EMI and RFI. That last bit is actually fun because our bodies are working like antennas focusing all the electromagnetic fields (like radio waves, 50hz coming from wall mounted 220V lines etc) so even moving your hand over the serial transmission line can result in random digital noise :D Well at least thats what they taught us there 22 years ago ;) Anyway, USB is just a serial data transfer line and you have correclty designed an experiment for measuring noise and learing how to prevent it or countermeasure it. (no irony here) Cheers!
Have this one for 2years now, sounds good.
@@ferryvandijk3008 wow I had no idea they were available for that long
I have some Nordost knockoff balanced interconnects and it did more for my system than any other cable I've ever had regardless of price.
This cable replaced a Supra cable in my system, but I could not hear any difference so ended up selling the supra and keeping this, just to match the fake Odin ICs I had. The fake Odin IC were clearly better sounding than the Mogami and other pro cables I used to use.
Another great cable. In my system (Audio Analog Anniversary Maestro, Mola Mola Tambaqui, etc..) a quite noticable improvement. Better Transparency, Highs and Midrange. With my second, more modest system, improvements are present, but not as pronounced as in my main system. Note to myself: Dont forget to replace all cables in your system with high quality ones. Using cables from the same company allows for a conistent sound.
This is another great review.
Thank you and thanks for sharing!
I had 4 different versions of this one two years ago……., where it was only replaced by the Xangsane Sterling Silver ( pure silver ) usb cable which in itself is the best sounding usb cable iv3 heard, regardless of price, where I chose to tap out cost wise at $945 makes.
awesome now i know which usb cable ill be getting lol i do all kinds of research on cables and can never make a choice so this helps a lot thanks!
Hey, this is the exact same cable I am using in my current hifi setup. I bought it at aliexpress.
I'm using a premium gold-plated Belkin USB with blue LEDs at each end and shielded data wires. But if you are starting off, why not get something like this
I use a shielded 4m Supra USB cable because I necessarily have to have that distance between my laptop and my DDC convertor. It's said that such lengths (up to 15m in fact) are OK for the Supra, and my evaluation is that 4m is indeed OK. The price (£65) is bearable.
The "Nordost" is pretty I suppose, but would probably be around the same price for 4m if they do it, and wouldn't be shielded.
@@johncallaghan3097 yes the long runs are different story, pricewise and noise wise. I don't know if any "audiophile" manufacturer actually does runs that long
The Mark Ups on this jewellery when it passes along the supply chain and ends up in shop windows etc what shud we say 850 GBP +
@@matthewtaylor7355 and that would be anniversary sale price ;)
Greetings, the information is much appreciated because not all of us have the possibility of purchasing expensive items and devices.
I had many usb cables and every single of them had a uniq sound! This one is the best!!!
I have two of them as 50cm ethernet cable. They replaced some of the "better" (7 €) Amazon cable. They sound clearly better from start, but getting even better after some extensive burn in time. One of the golden ones I use as AES EBU cable. Sounds realy nice.
Try a lush^3 usb cable... Incredible. Can tweak the shield orientation and it absolutely makes a difference.
I used to own fake Odin cables, power cords and IC's, they all sound the same - very detailed and clean with huge depth and slightly thin treble. Actually I owned genuine Nordost Valhalla as well and fake Odins were not worse in some aspects even better so I sold Valhallas but in IC fake Odins needed connectors replacements to sound hi-end (the fake WBT's were crappy and it was the bottleneck of the entire cables IMO).
@marcinwasilewski5414 the cheap RCA connectors may well be the reason why I was not particularly impressed by the Odin RCA cables!
@@rontoolsie will have to check it then with some amphenol and neutriks I have somewhere..
Marcin love your music. I'm listening to Live right now. 😁
@@andrewstaub2132 and Marcin doubles as football/soccer player too :)
@k4syx not the neutrik, try something else.
So now I understand why my dongle dac misbehaved until I changed the OTG cable for a DDHiFi one.
I am not too sure an unshielded line level interconnect cable is well suited to be a USB cable...apart from the lack of shielding, the needed impedance of 100 Ohms is probably way off. Certainly in SPDIF cables an impedance mismatch demonstrably produces unwanted reflections that superimpose over the original signal.
Having said that, this USB cable has been highly praised for its subjective performance regardless of what its measured performance is like.
The helical spiraled construction here may somewhat reduce the need for shielding.
I have a set of these Fauxdin RCA interconnects, and find them to outperformed by equivalently priced SKW ones.
Unshielded stuff has some audio benefits, just look at vovox cables...
@@rontoolsie yes I was actually surprised that's it's not bad as I expected, but pretty good. Spiral pattern works also for Nordost power cables too.
@@realmcerono I had some Vovox XLRs a few years ago, pretty good.
I have the 12 strand version of this cable and it is really, really good. Better than an Audioquest Carbon which is much more expensive.
Thanks for sharing!
I bought one over a year ago, unfit it didn't work for me. I really like the Odin RCA and Cat 8. Thought they sounded neutral and clean.
Whos gonna tell him?
Tell what
@@jdsofar 1's and 0's
@@CinnabonMcTasty ???
@@jdsofar You cannot hear a difference. There is no difference. It's digital.
@@ToumalRakesh True but with exotic speaker wire and RCA you can. I dream of having Nordost speaker cable and RCA. I will try and buy Nordost tonearm wire when I buy a new turntable.
hifi people are so damn ignorant. usb is an active protocol; it has error detection and correction. it guarantees bit perfect transfers. and. it is totally outside of the audio reproduction chain. just get a standard usb cable, and stop being so gullible. same with power cords.
Lol so I guess you haven't read USB serial audio stream specification after all :)
I'm IT guy btw so thank you for your "damn ignorant" - gotta show this one to the guys in the office.
Seriously, just look it up. Serial USB audio (this particular protocol) has no data correction nor retransmission whatsoever.
Or don't look it up and stay so blissfully sure :)
@@k4syx IT guy...guffaw. tell me you went to community college without telling me. i did look up "Serial USB audio" and it still involves sending digital data. and that is as i said, completely outside the music processing chain. and as i said, involves error detection and correction, how could it not? the alternative is corrupt data on occasion. if i am wrong, please post a link detailing the absence of error detection and correction.
@@carljung9230 Lemme google that 4 ya, as you apparently have no idea what you should be looking for:
www.usb.org/sites/default/files/frmts10.pdf - thats on asynchronous serial data streams used for audio, and if thats too much pages, something simple from Silicon Laboratories. There is no error control nor retransmission as its live STREAM, even the clock sync is something you do on hardware level. And thats all you can do, fight buffer overflows or underruns.
So, would you like to repeat one more time for our readers here you KNOW it involves error detection and correction _because_it_is_ USB?
BTW we dont have community colleges in Europe.
I dont know whats your level of education, but I wouldnt dismiss so easily something that helps people to learn and educates them.
Seems silly and patronizing to me, but YMMV.
In my case, "IT guy" means degree from technical university and 20y of experience working for the best and biggest brands (including US ones).
So anyway, enjoy a good read - it really is interesting lecture - and EOT from my side.
Cheers!
@@k4syx here you go:
===============================
Does USB audio have error correction?
Isochronous mode is used for transfer of audio samples. As you say, there is no error correction, though there is error detection (checksums) which would allow damaged packets to be dropped. Interrupt and control transfer are used for other purposes.
===============================
so while there is no direct error correction, the detection of bad packets causes a resend request. now how hard would it have been for you to look that up?
ironically i enjoy your channel and am a subscriber. i value your focus on clone products, and have recommended you to other people. all of which i will continue to do. :). but hifi people are prone to fads like painting the edge of cds green, or putting cds in the freezer, or buying $2k interconnects. keep up the good work, and thank you for your efforts.
Eye diagram better as thousand words. Not even USB High-Speed logoed.
Nice looking cable for sure
@@annebokma4637 yes the bling is strong with this one. I needed something cheap and short and maybe better than printer cable - so very serious reasons here - but it turned out to be pretty good actually.
@@k4syx but can it handle full color prints too? 😂😎
@@annebokma4637 and if you'll copy your FLAC over it it will do noise reduction too :)
@@k4syx my wife found the perfect noise reduction... She turns the power off at the fuse box 😞😎
If you wanted to do something really helpful you would take apart this $30 cable and show what's really inside, simple as that.
I was answering the comments starting from the top so I just got here after answering your comment on power cable
Mały tip który znacznie poprawi twoją wymowę. W angielskim „i” wymawia się jak polskie „y”. Np. Sick = syk.
I enjoy the accent!
Serio? A ja bardzo lubię jak Właściciel tego kanału mówi swoim stylem, jakoś wszyscy rozumieją i nikt się nie czepia więc po kiego ch... się czepiasz? Masz coś do powiedzenia w sprawie Audio? Nie, to wypad na wykłady z literatury angielskiej. Taki tip dla Ciebie...
You have to have a very crappy USB cable which fails to deliver such a low bit rate what is needed for an audio stream. With the speed of a 3.0 USB 5 Gbit per sec, streaming your audio data shouldn't be a challenge to any cable even if it is a 50 cent cable.
What you hear? I do not know. Probable you shouldn't hear any difference. But to be sure you should check the data on the two ends of the cable, I doubt if you will find any difference.
Actually you will find changes. And thats the problem. USB serial audio streaming standard doesnt have any correction and there is no retransmission for damaged data. So once its gone, its gone and thats it.
All other protocols for usb do check control and correction data and in case of any errors request retransmission.
Imagine my surprise, but thats literally defined as a standard. And the same goes for MPEG streams for HDMI or IIS audio streams - nothing CRC, not even a simple parity check, and no retransmission in these cases.
@@k4syx Than it really makes sense to check if your stream goes through the cables without alteration.
And if this is the case that certain cables corrupt the data than you can objectively prove that a certain cable is better than the other.
Setup two computers, make a USB connection between them. Use the protocol you mentioned. Log the sent data and the received data. And compare the two.
That's easy to prove your point and many other hifi guys who are promoting expensive USB cables.
I do not understand why no one did it yet.
@@cf2431 That scenario which you decribed here is actually a laboratory setup that you are working with in first year on technical universities (and even earlier if youll choose college that was profiled towards designing electronic ICs and devices).
You are literally sending data over serial connection, testing the output against input and designing (yes designing as we were required to desing our own solutions and explain them) transfer protocols that would be solving these problems. Also, you learn at the same time about ways of shielding the cables and influence of EMI and RFI.
That last bit is actually fun because our bodies are working like antennas focusing all the electromagnetic fields (like radio waves, 50hz coming from wall mounted 220V lines etc) so even moving your hand over the serial transmission line can result in random digital noise :D
Well at least thats what they taught us there 22 years ago ;)
Anyway, USB is just a serial data transfer line and you have correclty designed an experiment for measuring noise and learing how to prevent it or countermeasure it. (no irony here)
Cheers!
This is such a waste of time I’m sorry I clicked on it,never again