USB Cable Ridge Street Audio/Synergistic Research

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Why remain in the dark?

Why not borrow the SR & Kimber USB cables from The Cable Company.

Take Ridge Street Audio's (Robert Schultz) offer of 45 days for a no questions asked $ return and decide for yourself.

You could even compare and contrast these cables to your favorite USB printer cables (all of us have several of those lying around somewhere). Bring it on with a premium Belkin USB cable from Best Buy or Circuit City.

Check them out.

I have emphasized that there are marked differences. That there are differences is not in question.

The qualities and your preferences in relation to those (sometimes considerable) differences are what should be carefully considered.

The question wondering if there are differences is "elementary, Watson".

:) listening,

Ed

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Followup: for reasons that have been explained to me but which I seem to not fully understand: the USB lead from the peripheral HD to the computer doesn't seem to make a difference. It's the USB lead from the computer to the DAC that seems "mission critical."

:) listening,

Ed
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I am part of a group of audiophiles that compared the Ridgestreet to Kimber to Cryoparts to Synergistic to the Belden "Gold" USB cables. The good news is that the clear winner was the Ridgestreet USB cable (by a healthy sonic margin). Every single sonic parameter (that differentiates USB cables sonically) was clearly better with the Ridgestreet offering. As a side note, I must give Cryoparts some kudos here too for offering a clear step up the sonic ladder for very little money (by far the cheapest of the bunch but not cheap sounding). It's not nearly as good as the Ridgestreet but both of these USB cables are solid recommendations in my book. One as a low cost upgrade and the other that may represens the best sounding USB cable in the audio marketplace today (at this point in time mind you). I'm sure that Nordost will offer a $5.000 USB cable "for us" once we start seeing more USB dacs approaching the $20k mark ;-)

As for the other companies making USB cables (in this comparison) I seriously started to wonder if they really did their research as they created their offerings or just tried to "grab some marketshare" by quickly "baking up" something that "looks good" and put USB connectors on each end ;-)

Ehider,The good news you mention I would say is actually bad news.Good news in the sense you determined the best sounding cable,bad news in the sense 450$/meter or whatever the price is too much for many people in the neighborhood I live in.Thanks for the tip though.Its almost Christmas and I do like to dream,cheers,Bob

Ehider,

Did you use the iRoc for your tests?

Thanks