£60 for an 'audiophile' USB2 cable

magick

magick

magick

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What Hi Fi said:
http://www.wireworldcable.com/images/199.jpg

No hotlinking

Wireworld Ultraviolet 5/2 £60 USB Cable

As Mrs Merton used to say, let's have a heated debate. The transference of digital information from point A to point B is proving mightily controversial on the whathifi.com forums. Take a look at a thread headlined 'cables' or something similar, and you'll soon see what we're talking about.

There are those who state categorically that a sequence of zeros and ones, digitally transferred, cannot possibly be influenced by the connection it's passing down.

And they periodically have right ding-dongs with those who, nevertheless, can hear differences between connections.

We're not ashamed to admit that we're in the second camp, and this splendid Wireworld Ultraviolet 5/2 illustrates why. This is a two-metre USB cable – ideal for joining your laptop, say, to an external DAC, say, in an effort to get a workable sound out of a PC.

Cambridge Audio thoughtfully provides a free USB connection with every DACmagic – and by comparison with a giveaway lead, the sound the Wireworld makes is leagues ahead.

The gains in low-end body and punch, midrange spaciousness and detail, and high-end smoothness alone are significant.

And, when you take into account the additional scale, superior timing and altogether more vivid presentation, the Ultraviolet 5/2 becomes a compulsory audition, if not an automatic purchase.

For
Moves digital music from your computer to a DAC in fine style

Against
£60 isn't a trifling sum

http://www.whathifi.com/Review/Wireworld-Ultraviolet-52/
http://www.wireworldcable.com/products/57.html
Click to expand...

OMG. I knew with a lot of people switching from traditional Hi Fi components to HTPC with USB dacs it was only a matter of time before the Hi-Fi mags started pushing expensive USB cables that can magicaly improve 'clairty' and 'focus'.

A few months ago in What Hi Fi they were reviewing a USB dac but recommended using the optical connection with a good (i.e. expensive) optical cable because the USB input, which only requires a £1 cable, was less focused. What a carry on.
 
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Profiting from people's ignorance by outright lying. How noble of them. :rolleyes:

And plenty of people will fall for this scam because they honestly don't know any better.
 
Whatever floats your boat really. A £10,000 Rolex watch doesn't tell the time any better than a £4 Casio one but people still buy it. However in this case..
 
magick said:
OMG. I knew with a lot of people switching from traditional Hi Fi components to HTPC with USB dacs it was only a matter of time before the Hi-Fi mags started pushing expensive USB cables that can magicaly improve 'clairty' and 'focus'.

A few months ago in What Hi Fi they were reviewing a USB dac but recommended using the optical connection with a good (i.e. expensive) optical cable because the USB input, which only requires a £1 cable, was less focused. What a carry on.
Click to expand...

LMAO why doesn't some one just MD5 hash the source and est and show them how retarded they are being?

What will they argue next, if you dont use a £60 cable Lady Gaga will grow another penis?
 
Greenlizard0 said:
Whatever floats your boat really. A £10,000 Rolex watch doesn't tell the time any better than a £4 Casio one but people still buy it. However in this case..
Click to expand...

Yeah, but would you rather show off a £10,000 watch to your friends, or a £10,000 USB cable? :p
 
Here is some more quality snake oil intended to extract money from the foolish

denon-ak-dl1.gif


http://www.hifigear.co.uk/site/scripts/product_browse.php?product_id=3349

Significant improved sound quality compared with DL standard cable.
1.5m length.
Gigabit DenonLink3 delivers the best possible audio quality digital audio via matching Denon components. It is acknowledged to sound better than SPDIF, Firewire and HDMI. The lack of jitter, huge 1.4GBPS bandwidth and ultra low noise are what makes the difference.
Click to expand...

£420 for a 1.5m patch lead. Bet its not even cat6.
 
Greenlizard0 said:
Whatever floats your boat really. A £10,000 Rolex watch doesn't tell the time any better than a £4 Casio one but people still buy it. However in this case..
Click to expand...

Rolex have never claimed that their watches tell the time better than a cheap watch. The selling point is the blinginess and the general "look at me, I have a shiny expensive watch, I'm better than you" thing. But these people are actually claiming that a £60 cable will give you higher sound quality than a £5 cable. That is demonstrably false.
 
Things like this make me laugh, but the sad thing is some sucker out there is gonna be buying it!

I say we buy a £2 USB cable, braid it and add some chunkier bits of rubber round the end and send it them, say it costs £70 and see what sort of review it gets haha
 
Greenlizard0 said:
Whatever floats your boat really. A £10,000 Rolex watch doesn't tell the time any better than a £4 Casio one but people still buy it. However in this case..
Click to expand...

As stated a Rolex carries some status in the real world, is nice to look at and can even get you laid. A USB or Cat5 cable won't.
 
I would buy one but my music is only stored in AAC lossless which just doesn't sound the same as .WAV. A cable like that will be wasted with apple lossless. I'll purchase a £50 USB cable instead.

:rolleyes: .

Why would someone would pay so much for a USB cable? It's daylight robbery.
 
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This debate is always flawed, as the vast majority of people are neither educated enough to comment or they dont know what they are looking for.

There are actually 4 sides to the arguement:

1. Sensible people arguing that there is no price/performance benifit over a limit of ££ (e.g anything over £40 for a 1.5m HDMI and it really isn't worth it), but if you know what you are looking for then you will notice the difference compared to the £3 cable on Ebay, or £20/m audio cable etc

2. The vast majority - uneducated in the field, with little or no understanding of data transmission and interferance, and ultimately not qualified to make a judgement (this may seem harsh but it is true - see the technical bit!). Generally they will say any cable will do, its just 0's and 1's there cant be any difference blah blah blah... WRONG!

3. Those that are taken in - can 'see/hear' every £ spent, but are again not able to make a true assesment. There will be some improvement, but they should really listen to group 1.

4. The electrical engineers (and i mean those who can write BEng/MEng/ChEng after their name, not technicians who fix washing machines!) and physics buffs who actually design the cable geometry, shrouds and interfaces, and understand the relatively complex mathematics of EM fields, the material properties and effects that occur in the propagation and attenuation of the transmission through other fields, and the way we percieve audio beyond our hearing range.

There is a simple explination behind why there is a difference in cable quality -DIGITAL IS NOT 1'S AND 0'S. zeros and ones are an engineering simplification that the masses do not understand and hence can't comment on the actual benifits of a cable's design.

Digital signals consist of 'high' and 'low' voltages (relative to a reference voltage) rather than 0/1s. These arbitrary voltages are ANALOGUE values, and hence in reality the transmission of a 'digital' signal is the essentially the same as transmitting an analogue one. So is still prone to the same interferance that everything else is.

The engineers will ultimately fall into group 1 when purchasing, but they stand out as they can mathematically prove that, although there are deminishing returns with price, there is a difference with a better cable.

Cables cannot make a setup better, but they can make it much much worse. Cheap bad kit = bad picture/sound data transmission whatever cables are attached.

The USB cable itself is probably a class leader if operating in an environment where there are many interacting EM filds, but for most uses a normal one would suffice.
 
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I'm in group 4 and spending any more than is required to get a digital cable that works OK for the environment/distance you're in is stupid. I think that's what you're getting at. A £1 USB/Cat5/HDMI cable will do just as well as a £20 one for 9.9999% of people who'll ever buy one.

Why you'd have audio equipment in high EM environments is beyond me - maybe this is designed for the scientists at CERN? :D

Can't believe Whathifi are printing this crap :(
 
vertica said:
This debate is always flawed, as the vast majority of people are neither educated enough to comment or they dont know what they are looking for.

There are actually 4 sides to the arguement:

1. Sensible people arguing that there is no price/performance benifit over a limit of ££ (e.g anything over £40 for a 1.5m HDMI and it really isn't worth it), but if you know what you are looking for then you will notice the difference compared to the £3 cable on Ebay, or £20/m audio cable etc

2. The vast majority - uneducated in the field, with little or no understanding of data transmission and interferance, and ultimately not qualified to make a judgement (this may seem harsh but it is true - see the technical bit!). Generally they will say any cable will do, its just 0's and 1's there cant be any difference blah blah blah... WRONG!

3. Those that are taken in - can 'see/hear' every £ spent, but are again not able to make a true assesment. There will be some improvement, but they should really listen to group 1.

4. The electrical engineers (and i mean those who can write BEng/MEng/ChEng after their name, not technicians who fix washing machines!) and physics buffs who actually design the cable geometry, shrouds and interfaces, and understand the relatively complex mathematics of EM fields, the material properties and effects that occur in the propagation and attenuation of the transmission through other fields, and the way we percieve audio beyond our hearing range.

There is a simple explination behind why there is a difference in cable quality -DIGITAL IS NOT 1'S AND 0'S. zeros and ones are an engineering simplification that the masses do not understand and hence can't comment on the actual benifits of a cable's design.

Digital signals consist of 'high' and 'low' voltages (relative to a reference voltage) rather than 0/1s. These arbitrary voltages are ANALOGUE values, and hence in reality the transmission of a 'digital' signal is the essentially the same as transmitting an analogue one. So is still prone to the same interferance that everything else is.

The engineers will ultimately fall into group 1 when purchasing, but they stand out as they can mathematically prove that, although there are deminishing returns with price, there is a difference with a better cable.

Cables cannot make a setup better, but they can make it much much worse. Cheap bad kit = bad picture/sound data transmission whatever cables are attached.

The USB cable itself is probably a class leader if operating in an environment where there are many interacting EM filds, but for most uses a normal one would suffice.
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the signal at the "out" end of the cable get converted back from analogue to digital? As long as the ambient EM interference doesn't exceed the difference between high and low voltages in your signal, the end signal will still be cleanly converted back to digital. There's no way to lose any of the bits in the signal, so there's no way to lose quality.
 
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