[Erukian]

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Bought the Gungnir w/ USB board the other day! Excited for it to get here. I'm guessing it doesn't come with a USB cable (I haven't read anything about including one). I'm not cable crazy or interested in super expensive cables at the moment. I'm just looking for a recommendation for a good shielded cable. "Audiophile grade" would be interesting to me, but one under or around $30 is preferable.
 
Thanks all!

 
I recommend you read this. 

 

[G1Snd]

Bought the Gungnir w/ USB board the other day! Excited for it to get here. I'm guessing it doesn't come with a USB cable (I haven't read anything about including one). I'm not cable crazy or interested in super expensive cables at the moment. I'm just looking for a recommendation for a good shielded cable. "Audiophile grade" would be interesting to me, but one under or around $30 is preferable.
 
Thanks all!

 
Nope, no USB, just a power cord included. The "cheaper" USB cable I have is 1 meter of Wireworld Starlight 7; but I think it was $100. You could perhaps try a Wireworld Ultraviolet 7, but 1 meter will still be about $50 (and yes, 1 meter can be a bit short for some needs). I hear the Belkin Gold USB gets good reviews and I think it's under $30. The Wireworld USB cables have an isolated power wire and I prefer the sound quality of my Starlight 7 rather than an old generic USB I tried for whatever that's worth.

 

[sceleratus]

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I recommend you read this. 

Very interesting.  Thanks for the link.
I don't want to join a cable unicorn hunt but a ferrite wrap anomaly makes some sense to me.
Wouldn't any ferrite wrap be in an external "bulge" near a connector?  That the only implementation I've ever seen.
 
With the recent addition of a Gungnir I was giving my heavy gray "Smelkin" cable the evil eye.
Like TK227, I wanted to get a recommendation for under .... max $50.   

 

[TK277]

Thank you Erukian and G1Snd for your posts! I've avoided cable discussions for awhile due to my inexperience. Part of me wants to go for the expensive cables so that I don't miss the full potential of my set-up. And of course, all of me wants the most economical quality solution. I need a cable here the same day as the DAC, so I read your material and went with an Amazon basics USB cable (shielded, no ferrites, gold-plated) for a negligible $7.00. My existing RCA cables are about the same grade (gold plated with good thickness, but nothing labeled with audiophile terms). I'll see if I have any problems when everything is set up. That starlight cable looks gorgeous. I'll keep reading more, too, of course... but for now I thank you all for the help!
 
I figure the cable debate will get more and more relevant as I move up in the audio world. The Gungnir will be the most sophisticated piece in my chain when it arrives. Right now I use bitperfect with iTunes (320 mp3s to ALAC CD rips, 16 bit / 44.1kHz) > Dragonfly DAC > Pico Slim > W4R / ATH-CK100PRO

 

[grokit]

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The difference that you are hearing may not be from the interface, but the transport. Have you tried the CD player with a coaxial connection to the Gungnir?

 
At first I thought you were calling the CD player a transport; but I guess you mean the cable as the transport of data. I have only briefly tried it just to check functionality. I don't have a coaxial cable that's as good as my optical; so if you believe in cable differences then my significantly better optical cable will give it an advantage anyway. My USB cable is "audiophile grade", but might not be as good as the optical cable either. All I know is that, with this equipment, my ears/brain prefer the CD played over optical instead of the ripped CD played over USB.

 
 
Sorry if I was unclear, you were right the first time. I was speaking of the differences between the actual transport mechanisms not the cables.

 

[judmarc]

AQ Forest is a nice USB cable which, depending on length, is around that $30 price range.

 

[ru4music]

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AQ Forest is a nice USB cable which, depending on length, is around that $30 price range.

Also look into the (Pangea Audio - USB cable - PCOCC & 4% silver), it's also around $30 for 1 meter length.  I use the pure silver version with my Matrix X-sabre DAC.

 

[sceleratus]

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Also look into the (Pangea Audio - USB cable - PCOCC & 4% silver), it's also around $30 for 1 meter length.  I use the pure silver version with my Matrix X-sabre DAC.

I could not find a USB cable on the Pangea site.

 

[paradoxper]

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I could not find a USB cable on the Pangea site.

They're everywhere else. Link

 

[sceleratus]

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They're everywhere else. Link

thanks

 

[sceleratus]

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They're everywhere else. Link

Ordered.

 

[TK277]

My DAC arrived right before I left for work! Killer having to wait, but I got home and unboxed it as soon as I could. So gorgeous in appearance and construction. I don't want to comment on the sound until I get more hours on it (it's got about 6 right now). Nope, I should definitely wait to share how it sounds as good as it looks and how I am already enjoying my music experience more... 

 
The $7.00 amazon USB cable is pretty nice. If I'm going to pick a side, I'm leaning toward the argument that digital cables don't affect the sound because it's transferring data, not sound. I did, however, place an order for some Blue Jeans Cable RCA to replace my run-of-the-mill RCA cables, because that's a different story...right? Forgive me if I'm wrong!
 
Cheers, guys.

 

[earwaxxer]

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AQ Forest is a nice USB cable which, depending on length, is around that $30 price range.

I bought a 5 meter Forest from The Cable Company. They didnt have it in stock so they sent me a Carbon for the same price! I'm a happy camper!

 

[sceleratus]

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I bought a 5 meter Forest from The Cable Company. They didnt have it in stock so they sent me a Carbon for the same price! I'm a happy camper!

i could only afford algea 

 

[Stealer]

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Here is something fun that I don't think anyone has posted about (I searched this thread only).
 
I read a review online that mentioned they used a native C-Media ASIO driver when using the Gungnir. This made me curious because it seemed this C-Media ASIO was not installed with the Windows driver package. The only way I knew of using ASIO was with ASIO4All (or ASIO2ks).
 
Here is how to use the C-Media ASIO. Note: Try this at your own risk, I doubt this driver is officially supported.
 
  1. If you didn't keep the Shiit Audio driver package ZIP then download it from their website.
 
  2. Unzip the package, open the folder and you'll find 4 folders corresponding to different Windows versions. Open the folder for your version of Windows. Inside that folder should be a folder named SoftwareDriver, open that folder to find a folder named DLL.
 
  3. The CMUACWOASIO.DLL and CMUACWOASIO64.DLL files inside the DLL folder are what you want. Copy those two files and paste them into your Windows folder (probably C:\Windows\).
 
  4. Open a Command Prompt (click Start button, click Run, type cmd.exe OR find it in All Programs - Accessories).
 
  5. At the Command Prompt type:   regsvr32 "C:\Windows\CMUACWOASIO.DLL"
      then press enter and type:  regsvr32 "C:\Windows\CMUACWOASIO64.DLL"
      and press enter again. If you pasted the two .DLL files somewhere else you'll have to change the C:\Windows path accordingly.
 
Now if you open foobar, xmplay, ulilith or whatever your using you should find another available output probably called ASIO for C-Media USB. If you don't see the output listed, restart your computer. The control panel only has two options: bit-depth and latency (4 ms works for me).
 
If the step-by-step instructions left you a little confused the basic process to use the C-Media ASIO driver is: Copy the CMUACWOASIO.DLL and CMUACWOASIO64.DLL files from the driver package to your system folder and register those two .DLL's from a command prompt.
 
If you want to uninstall the C-Media ASIO driver then enter these two commands from a command prompt: 
         regsvr32 /u "C:\Windows\CMUACWOASIO.DLL"
         regsvr32 /u "C:\Windows\CMUACWOASIO64.DLL"
     Then delete the two .DLL files.

can you direct me to the page on the website. I unable to find it the download page..