USB Cables

USB vs Coax (SPDIF)

Before USB there was Coaxial (SPDIF) digital. This suffers from the technical problem that the clock is recovered from the data-stream, a technique that produces more jitter than is desirable. Then came asynchronous USB, where the DAC controls the data rate, so a high quality, low jitter clock can be used in the DAC. This should sound really good.

But it didn’t.

In fact it sounded worse than using a Coaxial cable connection. Some blamed noise on the 5V line. Others blamed noise on the ground line. Various techniques were used, in the form of add-on boxes and dongles; Galvanic Isolation, regeneration, noise filtering. These often gave some improvement but at a high cost; they also often left their own footprints on the music.

So in 2018 we designed the original Black Magic USB cable.

We found the real problem is not noise on the ground or 5V lines – it’s noise that piggy-backs on the data itself. Black Magic uses innovative techniques to reduce and absorb this noise, as well as special measures to prevent it’s radiation from the cable.

In 2022 we revised the whole cable, producing the USB ULTRA cable. This performs at a whole new level from the original.

In 2023 we pulled out all the stops and produced the USB GOLD version. This uses selected silver/gold wire and a different kind of mechanical damping

And in 2024 we have a new design : Prime – our best yet.

Mad Scientist USB Prime Cable

Our newest cable is USB Prime, named thus because it uses prime numbers in it’s to define the sizes and positions of various elements in it’s “bad antenna” design. The reason for this is that primes do not divide into each other, and this means they don’t resonate with each other.

Why a “bad antenna”? In general an antenna both transmits and received RF energy. So a bad antenna minimizes the amount of energy (i.e. noise) that is both transmitted and picked-up by the cable.

Also, Prime uses a special “Keg” at each end, to further reduce noise. These Kegs are different to the ones used on our speaker cables and power cords; we reformulated them for the Prime design. These ones use some exotic materials that we first used in our Magic Tubes!

Prime USB uses the same Silver/Gold wire that the Gold cables use, and builds on several of the lessons we learned during our 7 years of USB cable development.

The result is a cable that betters our highly recommended Ultra and Gold USB cables by a seriously significant margin. Swapping from a Gold to a Prime produces an improvement that is immediately audible; it’s not subtle.

The Prime‘s sound is richer tonally, is more resolving and most of all, much more musical.

How is Black Magic Different?

USB cables are normally used between a music source like a computer or streamer, and a DAC. The two devices are in two-way communication – this is the nature of USB. What’s more, each end takes turns to use the same connection channel, so the same wires are used in both directions.

Normal USB cables are symmetrical – the path from source to DAC is the same as the path from DAC to source. But we realized that for audio, the communication from the source to the DAC was far more important. So Black Magic uses an asymmetrical data path with the aim of providing the most noise-free data signal to the DAC.

Many “audiophile” USB cables use the exact same approach that was used for analog cables – high quality wire, maybe OCC or silver, perhaps even made in house.

We found we get the best results with cable that is designed for much higher data rates than used in USB Audio. This allows Black Magic to “burn” some of the design margin manipulating the data signal to reduce noise, giving your DAC a much easier time making music.

How is Black Magic ULTRA and GOLD Different?

The Ultra and Gold versions of the cable are hand-build from the wire up. They build on information learned from the original Black Magic USB cable, but add some innovative screening techniques we developed for the loudspeaker cables. Actually the stage 2 screening on these two cables is twice as effective as the speaker cable version, but that is needed as USB cables are real noise generators!

The Ultra version uses PCOCC copper wire – the Gold version uses silver/gold wire. Additionally the gold version has a more extreme (stage 2) mechanical damping system.