Is computer audio a bust?

Audiolabyrinth - S/PDIF and USB cables run the gamut and the price is no indication of the sound quality you will achieve IME. I make a S/PDIF cable that is closely matched to 75 ohms, uses silver and expanded Teflon and only costs $250. No customer of mine has found a better cable, and they have tried. Based on my experiments, I believe that it is the termination of the coax to the plug connector that is most critical, not so much the plug-jack interface. The termination of my 75 ohm cable to the 75 ohm BNC is virtually flawless.

The USB cable is another thing however. There are a lot of companies making exotic versions and most don't match the 90 ohm spec. With new XMOS-based USB interfaces on a number of DACs (I'm doing one as well), I have found that the cable makes an even bigger difference. The signal integrity and power delivery are both important for XMOS interfaces.

Gordon Rankin claims that the error rate is high on many USB cables, and this shows up in SQ degradation. I believe that the SQ is mostly impacted by the power in the cable based on my experimentation, at least for XMOS based interfaces. I have a software tool now that logs errors over USB that I can use to compare cables. I have several USB cables and I'll be testing these over the next month or so to see which ones cause a lot of errors.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

That's good stuff from AE.

For every grey haired old audiophile there are 100 kids listening to music on computers. And which one do we think is headed for extinction?

Audiolabyrinth "The most exspensive USB cables made are very inexspensive and the performance is about the same as the vincent RCA interconnect, there is some USB cables that are $300.00 under $1,000.00 period, ask your self why is that?, lets see here, USB is NOT for audio, it is for data...."

Well you answered your own question. One cable carries analog and the other data (or 1's and 0's anyway). An analog cable is way more specialized due to the fact that it is carrying the analog waveform. The USB cable just dumps the data and the equipment interface does the rest. It doesn't have to be "designed for audio". You are comparing apples to, well,not even another fruit.

.....not to say the USB cable doesn't have to be designed well, but it just has to get the data from A to B with no errors. But it's a no-brainer why it can cost so much less.