$500 USB cable

To those saying spend more than five or ten dollars on a USB cable ... when you bought that aftermarket mains cable, did you R&R the wall socket? What about the wire in the wall? Or in the breaker box or from the house to the pole? Why not? And that $500 run of speaker cable - did you replace the cable within the speaker box? It’s standard cable off a spool, not $50 a foot. More like .50 a foot. So why didn’t you replace it? Doesn’t the relatively inexpensive wire used inside your amp/pre obviate the use of inanely expensive outboard wire? This can only mean that you are willing to believe that high dollar wire not only sounds better, but it removes any and all bad audio stuff from the ’substandard’ cables earlier in any of the chains. Like it or not, that’s magical thinking.

Edit: And in the case of speaker wire, later in the chain, as well. The waves leave the amp through standard wires and connectors, travel through $50 a foot boutique wire, then inside the box to wire you could buy at Home Depot. But the $50 a foot wire improves what comes before and after it. No wonder it's so expensive!

Cable sales hinge on confirmation bias and gear G.A.S. I've done blind testing with interconnects and speaker cables. I failed miserably, and I'm a musician. Then I examined the science. Cables are snake oil. There's nothing else to be said.

The salient reason why blind testing cables doesn't produce results favorable to the expensive cables is that people can't hear any appreciable difference. If you can't tell the difference then why do people buy them? Confirmation bias and gear G.A.S., that's why.

treebeard1
02-04-2017 11:15am

To me 1s and 0s are just that, but @geoffkait makes a very good point about just being representations of 1s and 0s. That tells me it’s about the source, not the cable. Personally, I think one must consider the resolution of the system. Maybe a difference with $10k components but probably not $2k components.

My primary system would price out at roughly 10k. I bought 3/4s of it secondhand, so I spent a little more than half that much. I’ve done the testing and I cannot hear the difference. And you can buy decent secondhand cable at bargain prices from guys ’upgrading’ their cables. That’s what I did. But I didn’t spend more than $25 for a pair of used interconnects.

Logically, you have to say to yourself that if high-end audio component manufacturers don’t use pixie-dust wire inside their components then I don’t need to either. Something that faithfully carries a signal and rejects interference is the only requirement. And that same metric stands for every connection made in the system. A fancy braided jacket and reams of wholly unsubstantiated marketing jargon do absolutely nothing to improve a signal. The manufacturers know this because they know the science and have done the testing.

If spending up to $5 (w/bulk purchasing) for some braided covering over Belden, or similar quality wire, made a measurable -- by any metric -- difference over jumper bars, don’t you think a speaker company would install them on their speakers in excess of $1000 a piece? Certainly on $5000 speakers, right? But they don’t. And probably because they value their integrity enough not to claim that glossy picture worthy jumper cables open up and warm the soundstage without sacrificing depth or richness of timbre while making their cat happy or [insert more marketing horse**** here]. It’s simply something a company with class would not want to risk.

What you have in consumer audio concerning cable is exactly what you have on the music-making side with the endless G.A.S. people who claim they’re "searching for the sound in their head" when all they’re really searching for is another way to use their credit card.

jkbtn OP
01-30-2017 4:11pm

Why would some people spend that much money on a USB cable when they already know what it does?

I hoped someone could explain to me in a manner that doesn't require a professional degree in electromagnetism.

Magical thinking and G.A.S. Or it just looks cool.

I don't require a degree if I analogize it with DTV. Many of us grew up with rabbit ears and distant transmitters. We'd fiddle with the antenna to reduce static in the audio and clear up the picture. With DTV, as long as you can receive an uninterrupted signal stream you will have a great picture. Owning an expensive roof antenna vs a cheap FlatWave thing hanging on the wall makes absolutely no difference to that picture quality. Same concept with a USB cable and audio.