The signal rides on current, its an electrical interface just like every other cable in your system. If you don't believe it try some out and find out for your self. The quality of usb will affect sound quality.... If you try and you can't hear difference then by all means use that 2 dollar cable.
Dear Werd,
Please find attached, some suggestions so that you can get the best out of your new USB cable.
Try this again, so it can be seen this time:
Werd’s Guide to Digital bliss with the Bryston BDP-1.
If the external USB cable makes such a big difference to your ears and in your system, then here are a few tips to ensure that you’re getting the best out of that expensive USB cable:
As the rear connectors are soldered directly to the system board, they will sound better than the front connectors which use “$2 cable”, so you will need to upgrade these internal cables too.
The main-board is a computer standard board (with some customisation by Bryston, eliminating non relevant components), but the connectors are not “audiophile standard”, replace with gold plated pin versions and ensure that high silver content solder is used.
The circuit board tracks from the USB connectors are computer standard as well, so recommend bypassing these completely using solid silver, or silver stranded oxygen-free, double screened cable from the connector to the memory and memory controller.
The crystals that determine the reference clocks are only computer standard as well, these should be replaced with a version that have better than 10ppm error rate to ensure that the music data is accurately read from the USB port.
This would be a good replacement for the master clock:
The memory is not soldered to the motherboard using high silver content solder, so it is advised that each chip is de-soldered then re-soldered using appropriate material. Toshiba memory is generally regarded as giving deeper, bass reproduction… but Samsung memory gives a more airy and spacious sound, so consider replacing the memory with audiophile quality versions.
The same is true with the processor, this does not use audiophile quality solder and should be de-soldered then re-soldered using appropriate material.
At this time you may also wish to consider an Intel processor because some audiophiles believe that they produce a more natural sound.
Now, once you have done all of this, and if it makes any difference at all to the sound quality… then perhaps it can do the same for your poor grasp of the English language and also work miracles with your grammar, capitalisation and punctuation.
