usb or optical cables ECT, 1.5m, 3m, 5m what is that..

so i am looking at getting a usb cable for my DAC and i am asking this because i cant find any info on this. the cables i am looking at say 3m (10 feet) which is longer than 3 meters so i am not sure if that is the length of the cable rounded to the closest meter or something else.
Edited by dannylightning - 2/2/13 at 7:33pm

i am not sure if it was actually 10 feet i just thew a number in there. but it was something close to 3 meters maybe 9.5 or 10 feet but not exactly 3 meters, they also had 1.5m that was almost 1.5 meters and .75m that was very close to .75 meters.. i think they are just rounding to the closest meter. its just strange they would have a number like 3m and also tell you the length in feet and inches which is not 3 meters..

when i started looking at other brands of audio usb cables they just gave you the length so i figured they were just rounding up to the nearest meter

thanks for the reply

I was looking at these audio quest cables, pure silver inside the cable and it was around 1000.00

I found another brand of cable that is also pure silver and it was 100.00 amazon had a 50.00 off your order if u get their credit card so i got the cable for 50.00

I dont know if it will be any better than the cable i have now but i figured whar the heck. I do think a good cable can inprove sound quality a little. So i decided to see what happens. I am a sucker for nice cables for some dumb reason. Ill usually spend 40-80 bucks on a set of cables and they make me happy for some reason

Sent from tapatalk. spelling will probably be worse than usual

i have a brand new Cambridge integrated amp with a built in DAC and a brand new set of definitive speakers. and i want to see if a better USB cable will make any difference, got lots of loss less wav files of music on the computer so i just upgraded and i am trying to see if i can sweeten up the sound of the computer audio a little further.

as to your comment about waxing a car i am trying to wax that brand new car. right now i am using a USB cable i had laying around the house which that might not be up to the task, i hear you want a fast usb cable and i am sure the one i found is probably a old usb 1.0..

science forum ?, if i am not mistaken this is a audio forum lol

Ok Guys

a fast usb cable would be one that is able to transfer data from the computer to the DAC quickly, and i will be honest, i know nothing about USB cables because i have never had a good DAC before, and after finding out this built in DAC only does 16 Bit audio, which should be fine but allot of them offer 24 bit audio so i guess its not that good after all but it seems to be doing the trick for now, eventually i may try a better DAC, i am one of those people where if i don't try something i will always be wondering about it, just like i will always be wondering if that USB cable Would make a difference or not if i had not bough one, i think i am a bit OCD about some thighs and unfortunately stereo cables are one of those things.

i was reading that a fast USB cable will make a huge improvement and is very important when connecting the dac to the computer with USB, than there is my USB Cable, My USB Cable is from my printer, its probably 10 foot long and solid black with no writing on it so i just assume its probably a really crappy cable and maybe i am not getting as good as performance as i could if i am using a crappy cable, if i can get better performance by adding a 50 dollar cable i think its worth a shot

as for things being broken, to my ear the stereo sounds amazing so that is not the case, if this new cable i ordered does any thing at all as far as improving sound quality even if its a 2% difference than why not, if it does not make any difference i guess i wasted 50 bucks. i look at it this way, would you buy a Porsche and put lousy tires on it, i say the same thing with cables, you spend all the money on the stereo equipment why not run good quality cables and see if you can squeeze out that last little bit of sound that your lousy cables could be restricting. i have always noticed a difference going from your average cable to a nice thick gauge of cable. to me there worth buying and they do make my listening experience just a little better, maybe its all in my head but i always think they sound better with better cables so its worth it to me.

the only thing broken is the way some of these bands record their albums, i have about 10k songs and i would say probably 60% of them are lousy to descent recordings and about 40% of the songs are high quality and sound like a dream on this stereo. i am very happy and i do not feel any thing is broken, i just like to experiment with things and i like to have high performance tires on a high performance vehicle because it drives better that way, just like putting quality cables on a stereo makes it sound better.

my post was because when it comes to USB cables i know nothing about they yet, and i was trying to figure out what the letter m was for in the title of the cables i was looking at, and since i was reading about how important a good fast USB cable is i figured if that m did mean any thing besides the length of the cable i had better find out what it was before i got a cable.

but here in a few days i will find out for my self if the cable does any thing or not. hopefully it will, if not than ill know never to buy a expensive USB cable again..

thanks Mark and JD , the 16/24 bit thing was good to read and its also making me think i probably dont need to spend a bunch of money on a external DAC. also the info on how the usb cables work is great to. much appreciated information..

my point with the tires was handling not quarter mile time but i guess shaving off next to no time in the quarter mile time is more along the lines of what we are talking about there with the cable.

but i already bought it, and as long as it does not sound worse than the cable i have now ill just use it lol.

now let me ask this, what computer player do you guys use. so far i have tried Foobar2000, winamp, a creative player, LVC and windows media player. my CD's are ripped to WAV files and los less. i notice i need to turn the EQ way down on everything or the music sounds over driven i guess you would call it like its playing to loud, my DAC will not allow the ASIO or the WASAPI to be selected with foobar

as of so far i still like windows media player best. the sound is not as dry as some of the other players and it organizes all my music in a nice neat and ordinarily manner and makes it very easy to find the songs or album i want to play, the rest of the players to not seem to do that well.
Edited by dannylightning - 2/5/13 at 6:11pm

That looks like its for apple computers only.. i have a Gaming PC Laptop. but thanks for the suggestion.

i got the cable today and it actually made a pretty big difference, the sound is smoother and i guess you say more full and also slightly louder, after what you all said i was not expecting a difference, i listened to a song and than i plugged in the new cable and listened to the same song, my though was well here goes nothing lets see if i wasted 50 bucks as soon as the song came on

so either this cable is actually better or my printer usb cable was on the lousy side..


as far as being a better recording engineer that every one else, i would say i am much better than allot of people , i am a musician, i started writing and recording my own acoustic music, i used a inexpensive digital recorder and the songs i have recorded sound better than some of the CD's that i own. 2 of my friends own recording studios where i have helped out, and i have also ran sound for rock and roll bands many times and i get compliments on how good the band sounded that night. you can find allot of my recordings on myspace music if you search for Danny Lighting. they are not the best but they do sound way better than some of the recordings on quite a few of the CD's that i own..

well not louder all the way around, i guess i should say the vocals and mids seem to be brought out more. as far as bass and treble i dont notice anything, i do think there may have been a slight increase in detail to the sound. the difference i am hearing is not a huge difference but i do hear one..

i found this J river audio player program where you can get bit perfect music, it sounds just like windows media player, but there is a crap load of stuff you can do with it. allot of it is junk IMO like adding surround sound and stuff like that, but you can change how many bits the player plays the music at, you can change to different outputs to get bit perfect audio..

like i said the sound is almost identical but when i put it in WASAPI output at 16 bits, i am having a really hard time noticing any difference, if anything the Jriver program in WASAPI might be the slightest bit cleaner ( i think, still not sure)

it has some awesome library organization and what not and 3D album view and what not. its verry cool but its a 50.00 program, it seems like it would be worth it great sound, bit perfect audio and cool features plus some junk features as well, but i am not sure i want to spend the money on that for the slightest little bit of cleaner sound i think i hear and cool looking ways to view your media, than again who knows, maybe ill buy it., i got the free trial you get all the features for a month or two or what ever it is.. so far i really like it but not sure its actually worth the money.

the only thing i have a issue with on my stereo now is some harshness in cymbals, some albums are bad, other albums they sound very smooth.. its got me wondering if its a lousy DAC or if its just the album, most albums have a bit of harshness to the big cymbal crashes especially, but besides that i am liking this new stereo more and more every day and i am very happy, i lived with that Denon DRA-397 and the energy C-200 book shelf speakers for 5 or 6 years and i was never quite happy but i was on a low budget when i got that stuff after it replaced some really nice stuff that went or was going bad. the new stereo is so much better it's not even funny, i am so glad i broke down and spent the money. getting the speakers on close out for 200.00 bucks each brand new in the box really sweetened the deal, i still have a hard time believing i got them that cheap

i actually have a sub, these bipolar definitive speakers actually sound like they have small subs in them but they do not. with these speakers i have mu sub turned off, the speakers have so much bass i need to turn the volume on the sub way up or i cant hear the sub. with the old speakers i used my sub. its just a polk psw 250 that some one gave me, it sounded way better for music than the klipsch 12 inch reference sub that i had so i sold the klipsch and i have been extremely happy with the little 8 inch polk sub ever since. the klipsch sub was super amazing for movies but very muddy for music, i rarely watch movies

i do have a EQ on windows media player, it only needs to be adjusted slightly, i have been playing with it non stop for a few days and i keep going back to the setting that is lightly EQ'd where i boosted the low lows, and turned 1k down 1db. than boosted the 2 sliders on the high end of treble up 2db and left the rest flat. i cant get a more well rounded or smoother sound out of the many types of music i listen to. set like this it sounds good for every thing, other ways it seems to sound good for rock but bad for bluegrass and country, and so on..

i did try foobar but i find it to be a pain and not manage my media well also it sounded kind of dry and boring, maybe there is something i can do to change that but as of so far i am not a fan of foobar, ill play with it some more though..

maybe the cable did not do any thing but it seemed like it did so i am not complaining even if it is just my imagination, at least i think its better so i don't feel like i thew money away..

I just dropped all the EQ sliders down by 3 points fom where it was so most of the sliders are at -3 and that really did help get rid of the harsh crash cymbals. next i dropped them down to -5 and it sounded like crap. so i moved them back up. and its sounding great

thanks for that suggestion. it actually helped