Longer is better?
No “the Office” jokes here! Ok literally had a retailer tell me I should want a longer digital cable (USB to be specific) vs a shorter one. That even if you had to coil the cable it would provide better sound. A shorter cable worsens the sound, per this guy. So . . . Never heard anything close to this anywhere. Goes against any understanding of physics or general audiophile learning I’ve accumulated. What say you? Is this guy a sleezball salesman (because we all know longer cables cost more!) or am I missing some sort of mystic voodoo?
There is a little bit of proof to that , a 1.5 m in a high quality cable sounds slightly better why via the shielding slightly better filtering , Audience ,has show , and my uncle being a digital engineer had measured on testing scopes and found msybe 1-2% better if you have gear and loudspeakers ultra resolving then maybe yes to longer ,if not 1 meter minimum. |
Now there’s a bad salesman for you. Bad mouthing my equipment is definitely a way to keep me from going back to his shop. But he was sort of right about one thing, you might have issues with a to short cable. At least a meter, 1.5 meter is supposed to be best. Having said that, I have two digital cables. One is 1/2 meter and the other is one meter and I can’t tell the difference between the two. |
@curiousjim It seems like @mitch2 's post above and, the AI summary bullets I posted above nailed it. Confusion between S/PDIF and USB likely. And, per AI, consensus from engineering & objective tests — shorter, well-made, properly shielded USB cables (0.5–2m) are reliably better or neutral. At least for me, case closed. |
Going by this scientific measure
and having heard multitudinous covers dwarfing originals (Marilyn Manson’s cover of "You’re So Vain", and especially Ministry’s masterful reinvention of whiny old Bob Dylan tune Lay Lady Lay come to mind), the shorter the USB cable the better. |
@devinplombier ha ha ha! |
