USB Cables

SteveR750

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I bought a 0.5m Lindy cable, gold plated terminals, and a nice looking blue chunky cable some time ago, and no probems other than its slightly too short. I bought a £2.99 Belkin gold cable similar plated terminals, much thinner cable anc cheaper looking, but I really cannot hear any difference.

I did try to conduct it blind, and got a friend to swap them around, and nothing at all. Of course, it might be that the Lindy cable "isn't up to much"
 
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Anonymous

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Bring it on............
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Dan Turner

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A month or 2 ago one of the contributos in HiFi Choice wrote an article about the difference between a 'fancy' USB cable and a bog standard one. He reckoned that the fancy one was audibly better. In an attempt to prove whether there really was a difference between the 2 cables or not, he did an experiment by taking scans on his scanner using alternately the fancy USB and the boggo one to connect to his computer. He found that the file size of the scans taken using the fancy one (same picture - everything the same except the cable) were slightly larger than the file size of the scans taken using the boggo one.

Make of that what you will...

Never tried different USB cables myself, but I would apply the same logic that I apply to other forms of digital transmission - if there are checksums reconciling what gets received with what gets sent, and transmission does not happen in real time then there can't be any difference. If transmission is 'linear' and taking place in real time, then there could be a difference. Not sure how audio is transmited over USB.
 

AlmaataKZ

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Dan Turner said:
A month or 2 ago one of the contributos in HiFi Choice wrote an article about the difference between a 'fancy' USB cable and a bog standard one. He reckoned that the fancy one was audibly better. In an attempt to prove whether there really was a difference between the 2 cables or not, he did an experiment by taking scans on his scanner using alternately the fancy USB and the boggo one to connect to his computer. He found that the file size of the scans taken using the fancy one (same picture - everything the same except the cable) were slightly larger than the file size of the scans taken using the boggo one.

Make of that what you will...

Was it an April issue? as in April's fool.
 

steve_1979

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Dan Turner said:
A month or 2 ago one of the contributos in HiFi Choice wrote an article about the difference between a 'fancy' USB cable and a bog standard one. He reckoned that the fancy one was audibly better. In an attempt to prove whether there really was a difference between the 2 cables or not, he did an experiment by taking scans on his scanner using alternately the fancy USB and the boggo one to connect to his computer. He found that the file size of the scans taken using the fancy one (same picture - everything the same except the cable) were slightly larger than the file size of the scans taken using the boggo one.

It's not possible that there could be a different file sizes when using different USB cables. When you scan something and send it to a computer this is what happens:

The information is first copied from the scanners memory and sent to the computers memory. Then that information is recopied back to the scanner so that it can be checked to make sure that it's identical to the original file that was sent. If there are any errors or data loss the computer will be sent a message letting it know that there was an error.

There are two possibilities for the results by the guy at HiFi Choice.

1. He was lying.

2. There was some other unmentioned variable in the experiment.

Dan Turner said:
Make of that what you will...

He's talking complete and utter tosh I'm afraid!
 

professorhat

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steve_1979 said:
There are two possibilities for the results by the guy at HiFi Choice.

1. He was lying.

2. There was some other unmentioned variable in the experiment.

If he's just scanning in the same picture, more than likely something slightly changed with the picture in between scans (e.g. it slipped a little in the scanner, a bit of extra dust got on the image in between scans etc.) and this will account for the change in file size. I agree there's no way this had anything to do with the USB cable when using a computer scanner.
 

Dan Turner

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AlmaataKZ said:
Dan Turner said:
A month or 2 ago one of the contributos in HiFi Choice wrote an article about the difference between a 'fancy' USB cable and a bog standard one. He reckoned that the fancy one was audibly better. In an attempt to prove whether there really was a difference between the 2 cables or not, he did an experiment by taking scans on his scanner using alternately the fancy USB and the boggo one to connect to his computer. He found that the file size of the scans taken using the fancy one (same picture - everything the same except the cable) were slightly larger than the file size of the scans taken using the boggo one.

Make of that what you will...

Was it an April issue? as in April's fool.

I don't think it was the April issue
smiley-laughing.gif
. I struggle as much as anyone to get my head around how it could be possible - I think the guy genuinely believed that he had conducted a fair and controlled experiment.

I'm not about to rush out and start buying expensive USD cables - i just thought it was an interesting twist to throw in to a very tired and repetitive argument!
 

steve_1979

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professorhat said:
If he's just scanning in the same picture, more than likely something slightly changed with the picture in between scans (e.g. it slipped a little in the scanner, a bit of extra dust got on the image in between scans etc.) and this will account for the change in file size.

That's a very good point Professor. I hadn't thought of that possibility. :)

I suppose that would come under point 2. "some other unmentioned variable in the experiment"
 

steve_1979

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Dan Turner said:
A month or 2 ago one of the contributos in HiFi Choice wrote an article about the difference between a 'fancy' USB cable and a bog standard one. He reckoned that the fancy one was audibly better. In an attempt to prove whether there really was a difference between the 2 cables or not, he did an experiment by taking scans on his scanner using alternately the fancy USB and the boggo one to connect to his computer. He found that the file size of the scans taken using the fancy one (same picture - everything the same except the cable) were slightly larger than the file size of the scans taken using the boggo one.

Hi Dan :)

Did the guy in HiFi Choice describe the exact methodology used when conducting his USB cable experiment?

If he was re-scanning the picture each time he would be creating a new file each time which would make the experiment totally invalid because the different files would have been different sizes to start with. If he scanned the picture just once and then re-sent that same file multiple times using different USB cables that would have been a fair test.
 

professorhat

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Logical in a perfect world, but in fact flawed since there is always going to be some kind of change in between each scan (e.g. slight movement of the document, different amounts of dust and placement of that dust on the document, imperfections in the scanning process itself etc. etc.), which, no matter how miniscule, will affect the size of the resulting file.
 

hammill

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[UNPUBLISHED DOUBLE POST]

professorhat said:
Logical in a perfect world, but in fact flawed since there is always going to be some kind of change in between each scan (e.g. slight movement of the document, different amounts of dust and placement of that dust on the document, imperfections in the scanning process itself etc. etc.), which, no matter how miniscule, will affect the size of the resulting file.
Quite so. Designing a good experiment is a skilled task. It strikes me that a lot of people in HiFi don't have much of a scientific education and this would account for a lot of the somewhat surprising conclusions they come to. Mind you, I have not designed an experiment in over thirty years and I would probably do it wrong too.
 

hammill

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professorhat said:
Logical in a perfect world, but in fact flawed since there is always going to be some kind of change in between each scan (e.g. slight movement of the document, different amounts of dust and placement of that dust on the document, imperfections in the scanning process itself etc. etc.), which, no matter how miniscule, will affect the size of the resulting file.
Quite so. Designing a good experiment is a skilled task. It strikes me that a lot of people in HiFi don't have much of a scientific education and this would account for a lot of the somewhat surprising conclusions they come to. Mind you, I have not designed an experiment in over thirty years and I would probably do it wrong too.
 

steve_1979

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I think that designing a fair scientific experiment is simple (in concept at least). All you need to do is keep every eliment in the experiments exactly the same and only change one variable in between tests. This way if you get different results for the different tests you know that it must be caused the only variable that has changed.
 
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Anonymous

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[UNPUBLISHED JD - BORING LIBELLOUS NONSENSE]

Digital technology doesn't allow for the kind of differences that this guy was trying to prove, either he doesn't know that, and is thus not knowledgable enough to be conducting such tests, however pointless, or he does and the test was fixed.

I assume he has a vested interest so i'm betting it was the latter..
 

professorhat

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steve_1979 said:
I think that designing a fair scientific experiment is simple (in concept at least). All you need to do is keep every eliment in the experiments exactly the same and only change one variable in between tests. This way if you get different results for the different tests you know that it must be caused the only variable that has changed.
steve_1979 said:
I think that designing a fair scientific experiment is simple (in concept at least). All you need to do is keep every eliment in the experiments exactly the same and only change one variable in between tests. This way if you get different results for the different tests you know that it must be caused the only variable that has changed.

True, that's the basic principle. But then you also need to make a note of any elements you can't keep exactly the same, so you can attempt to account for them in your results and the likelihood that any differing results were as a result of these things or as a result of your one variable.

Not that I'm blaming the fella from Hi-fi Choice - I don't think he was actually attempting a proper scientific experiment ;)
 

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