Caelin sent me a Venom USB cable to try and he asked that I share some thoughts on the sound. For this test, I had the Light Harmonic Lightspeed, Audioquest Diamond, and the Venom USB on hand. Previously I have tried the Wireworld Starlight and Platinum Starlight and the Chord and a Belkin Gold cable. But in each case I found the Audioquest Diamond and Lightspeed were better. In each comparison I did, I waited until I had at least 250 hours on burn-in on them. I gently treated each connector with Caig ProGold which I find works really well.
For my listening I have been running two music servers, each running Amarra 2.6: a mac mini and a recent macbook pro. Audio files were done by a common "playlist" which consisted of classical, jazz, and rock hirez and 16 bit files, in FLAC, WAV and AIFF data formats.
DACs included the Benchmark DAC1, the Benchmark DAC1 Pre, and the Benchmark DAC2 HGC which I had on loan. In the case of the first two I used a Musical Fidelity V-Link 192 to convert to SPDIF for better sound quality and the SPDIF cable was Chris Sommovigo's excellent Ultra XV cable. For the DAC2, we went straight into the asynchronous USB input. All devices were plugged into a Venom PS8 with a Shunyata HC cord to the wall.
USB cable differences are real yet hard to explain definitively but my hope is that my sharing of honest impressions doesn't get derailed by such a religious debate. Gordon Rankin has noticed less processor intensity on the better cables but I don't believe anyone has fully figured things out on the cause of sound differences.
In each comparison I did I keep "all else equal" and only substituted the three cables. Here are my impressions based on listening to my surprisingly revealing Maggies:
**Audioquest Diamond - a long term reference of mine for USB cables, this has a generous helping of musical detail but is quite smooth on the top end which is something the lesser cables don't always do well. It also has lots of extension on top and is not rolled off compared to others. The opening to Alison Krauss' title track on Paper Airplane (24/96), the string instruments have all the right "body" to them and it just sounds very, very natural for digital. Lots of good low end weight as well.
**Shunyata Venom USB - very close in signature to the Diamond. Tons of clarity which I like, very smooth on top. Lots of good low end as well compared to the Diamond. I'm not sure I could pass a blind A/B test between these two cables. I really liked this cable and frankly was surprised it came so close to the Diamond. Another winner from Shunyata. There may be a slight bit more detail on some tracks with the Diamond but if so only on the order of a few percent.
**Lightspeed by Light Harmonic - this has a very distinct signature. It's more of a Row P perspective than the Row H of the Venom or Diamond. It has a smoothness to it which I think some may like as it is sounds very analog. However, it doesn't have the detail I like on the Venom or Diamond cables. On Alison's vocals, I don't hear enough of the detail so the illusion of her being here is not as great. I like a generous helping of detail provided it is musical and not etched. For me, this cable gave up a bit too much in detail for smoothness but I can see why so many like it.
If I had to rank these, the Diamond would be #1, the Venom a very close #2, and the Lightspeed #3. However, each of these cables is excellent.
The deal of course is the Venom which I assume will be priced very reasonably while the other two are pricey. The Diamond is $700 and the Lightspeed in this length is $1,400 although LH is introducing more affordable cables as noted in the Geek Pulse crowd funding.
I hope these impressions are valuable to you.
P.S. The Atlanta Audio Club will be having a DSD and PCM digital meeting on Sunday the 19th so any locals are encouraged to attend and I will likely have the Venom USB on hand for the playback. We may also the MSB Analog DAC and a Berkeley Alpha DAC (latest version) on hand.
For my listening I have been running two music servers, each running Amarra 2.6: a mac mini and a recent macbook pro. Audio files were done by a common "playlist" which consisted of classical, jazz, and rock hirez and 16 bit files, in FLAC, WAV and AIFF data formats.
DACs included the Benchmark DAC1, the Benchmark DAC1 Pre, and the Benchmark DAC2 HGC which I had on loan. In the case of the first two I used a Musical Fidelity V-Link 192 to convert to SPDIF for better sound quality and the SPDIF cable was Chris Sommovigo's excellent Ultra XV cable. For the DAC2, we went straight into the asynchronous USB input. All devices were plugged into a Venom PS8 with a Shunyata HC cord to the wall.
USB cable differences are real yet hard to explain definitively but my hope is that my sharing of honest impressions doesn't get derailed by such a religious debate. Gordon Rankin has noticed less processor intensity on the better cables but I don't believe anyone has fully figured things out on the cause of sound differences.
In each comparison I did I keep "all else equal" and only substituted the three cables. Here are my impressions based on listening to my surprisingly revealing Maggies:
**Audioquest Diamond - a long term reference of mine for USB cables, this has a generous helping of musical detail but is quite smooth on the top end which is something the lesser cables don't always do well. It also has lots of extension on top and is not rolled off compared to others. The opening to Alison Krauss' title track on Paper Airplane (24/96), the string instruments have all the right "body" to them and it just sounds very, very natural for digital. Lots of good low end weight as well.
**Shunyata Venom USB - very close in signature to the Diamond. Tons of clarity which I like, very smooth on top. Lots of good low end as well compared to the Diamond. I'm not sure I could pass a blind A/B test between these two cables. I really liked this cable and frankly was surprised it came so close to the Diamond. Another winner from Shunyata. There may be a slight bit more detail on some tracks with the Diamond but if so only on the order of a few percent.
**Lightspeed by Light Harmonic - this has a very distinct signature. It's more of a Row P perspective than the Row H of the Venom or Diamond. It has a smoothness to it which I think some may like as it is sounds very analog. However, it doesn't have the detail I like on the Venom or Diamond cables. On Alison's vocals, I don't hear enough of the detail so the illusion of her being here is not as great. I like a generous helping of detail provided it is musical and not etched. For me, this cable gave up a bit too much in detail for smoothness but I can see why so many like it.
If I had to rank these, the Diamond would be #1, the Venom a very close #2, and the Lightspeed #3. However, each of these cables is excellent.
The deal of course is the Venom which I assume will be priced very reasonably while the other two are pricey. The Diamond is $700 and the Lightspeed in this length is $1,400 although LH is introducing more affordable cables as noted in the Geek Pulse crowd funding.
I hope these impressions are valuable to you.
P.S. The Atlanta Audio Club will be having a DSD and PCM digital meeting on Sunday the 19th so any locals are encouraged to attend and I will likely have the Venom USB on hand for the playback. We may also the MSB Analog DAC and a Berkeley Alpha DAC (latest version) on hand.
