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A nearly perfect USB cable tester

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Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#91

Post by ssl-3 »

dijit wrote: post #66
fwip wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any audio you might play that doesn't fit in 400Mbps?

The point isn’t really about audio bandwidth; it’s about the cable being strangely overbuilt for what it actually does. It’s rigid and thick, like a Thunderbolt 3 cable, yet only supports USB 2.0 speeds and fast charging for a device that doesn’t need fast charging. Compare that to Apple’s iPhone USB-C cable which is thin, flexible, and supports the same features. That matters because someone might grab that cable as…

The headphones have equivalent performance whether a USB 2 cable is connected, or a USB 3 cable is connected. The headphones themselves are not USB 3 devices; the addition of USB 3 cabling instead of USB 2 cabling would change absolutely nothing about how they work.

So, no: I wouldn't expect the cable for a pair of headphones (of any price) to support USB 3. That represents extra complexity (literally more wires inside) that is totally irrelevant for the product the cable was sold with. (The cables included with >$1k iPhones don't support USB 3, either.)

Meanwhile: Fast charging. All correctly-made USB C cables support at least 3 amps worth of 20 volts, or 60 Watts. This isn't an added-cost feature; it's just what the bare minimum no-emarker-inside specification requires. A 25-cent USB C-to-C cable from Temu either supports 60W of USB PD, or it is broken and defiant of USB-IF's specifications.

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Now, of course: The cable could be thinner and more flexible and do these same things. That'd probably be preferred, even: Traditional analog headphones often used very deliberately thin cables with interesting construction (like using Litz wire to reduce the amount of internal plastic insulation) to improve the user's freedom of movement, and help prevent mechanical noise from the cables dragging across clothes and such from being telegraphed to the user's ears.

Using practical cabling was something that headphone makers strived to be good at doing. I'm a little bit annoyed to learn that a once-prestigious company like B&W is shipping cables with headphones that are the antithesis of what practical headphone cables should be.

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But yeah, both USB C cables and the ports on devices could be better marked so we know WTF they do, to limit the amount of presumption required in the real world. So that a person can tell -- at a glance! -- what charging modes a device accepts or provides, or whether it supports video, or whether it is USB 2 or USB 3, or [...].

Prior to USB C, someone familiar with the tech could look at a device or a cable and generally succeed at visually discerning its function, but that's broadly gone with USB C. What we have instead is just an oblong hole that looks like all of the other oblong holes do.

After complaining about this occasionally since the appearance of USB C a decade or so ago, I've come to realize that most people just don't care about this -- at all. Not even a little bit. Even though these things get used by common people every day, the details are completely out of the scope of their thought processes.

It doesn't have to be this way, but it's not going to change: Unmarked ports are connected together with unmarked cables and thus unknown common capabilities are just how we roll.

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#92

Post by mrandish »

Vogtinator wrote: post #16
avian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In theory we could have a popup box that tells you that both your computer and other device support higher speeds/more power, but your cable is limiting it. I'm pretty sure my old Dell XPS laptop with Windows 10 had pop-ups just like this. "This device can run faster" or something.

AFAIK that's just when plugging in a USB 3 device into a USB 2 port or using a USB 2 cable.

> that's just when plugging in a USB 3 device into a USB 2 port

Dell XPS laptops (and some others) can also warn if the charger isn't providing the full wattage the laptop is rated for. This warning is an option that can be turned off in the BIOS settings.

I usually turn it off because I sometimes intentionally do day trips with a smaller/lighter portable charger which delivers 45w to my laptop which can need up to 65w due to having a discrete GPU. However, 45w is more than sufficient to charge the laptop during normal use on the Balanced power plan with iGPU. I only need more than 45w when gaming with the discrete GPU active.

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#93

Post by dijit »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #89
dijit wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve gone from “companies add weight to feel premium” to “they went with the cheaper option because they could get away with it.” Those are opposite explanations. But either way, the cable doesn’t do what its physical presence suggests, nothing on it tells you otherwise, and that’s the entire point of the device in the article.

My position is entirely consistent, it is cheaper to signal premium quality than actually deliver it. The point I am making is that there is immense comercial pressure to do this is a highly competitive market when selling to consumers who don’t know better. My example of weights is that the steel weighs are cheaper than the alternative of using heavier drivers, by adding weight they are signaling premium without del…

That's a more coherent version of your argument, but it's still speculative. You're attributing a deliberate strategy to what is more easily explained by indifference. B&W make about four products with USB-C cables. This isn't a company with a cable strategy, cynical or otherwise.

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#94

Post by dijit »

Retr0id wrote: post #82
dijit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you help me understand why that would be a reason to compromise the comfort of the cable that is supplied for a device which charges at 5w? Or, why Apple manages the same in half the footprint? Or, why someone would expect that a cable that came with a pair of headphones actually charges things at over 65w?

Like most things in the audiophile world, it's more about aesthetics than anything else. A big cable looks like it means business.

I think that's being a bit uncharitable to B&W specifically; they're one of the few headphone companies where the engineering does back up the price. The cable is the odd one out.

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#95

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #87
dijit wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn’t really about audio bandwidth; it’s about the cable being strangely overbuilt for what it actually does. It’s rigid and thick, like a Thunderbolt 3 cable, yet only supports USB 2.0 speeds and fast charging for a device that doesn’t need fast charging. Compare that to Apple’s iPhone USB-C cable which is thin, flexible, and supports the same features. That matters because someone might grab that cable as…

> The point isn’t really about audio bandwidth; it’s about the cable being strangely overbuilt for what it actually does. The purpose of the heavy construction is to make it durable, not to carry 5 Gbps data streams to your headphones. Unlike most USB peripherals like your printer and keyboard that get plugged in and then don’t move around, headphone cables go to your head and move around constantly. They can get pin…

[deleted]

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#96

Post by mrandish »

imglorp wrote: post #34
avian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In theory we could have a popup box that tells you that both your computer and other device support higher speeds/more power, but your cable is limiting it. I'm pretty sure my old Dell XPS laptop with Windows 10 had pop-ups just like this. "This device can run faster" or something.

I wonder if it's possible for a regular machine with two high speed ports to do a cable test by itself. Maybe it can't test all the attributes but could it at least verify speed claims in software?

Apparently the USB driver stack doesn't report the cable's eMarker chip data back to the OS. However benchmarking actual transfer throughput is the ultimate test for data connections (vs charging use cases). Unfortunately, TFA doesn't really go into this aspect of cable testing as the tester seems to only report eMarker data, which pins are connected and copper resistance.

Since a >$1,000 automated lab cable throughput tester is overkill, my thumbnail test for high-speed USB-C data cables is to run a disk speed benchmark to a very fast, well-characterized external NVMe enclosure with a known-fast NVMe drive. I know what the throughput should be based on prior tests with an $80 active 1M Thunderbolt cable made for high-end USB-C docks and confirmed by online benchmark reviews from credible sources.

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#97

Post by dijit »

Aurornis wrote: post #85
dijit wrote: post #59

I actually purchased one of these as this article has surfaced before. It’s well worth the hype, I used it to audit all my cables (both for home and work) and it’s amazing how many thick and unwieldy cables are actually terrible for data. For example I purchased a pair of B&W Px8 S2 noise cancelling headphones, which boast a DAC if you connect via USB-C directly, the cable it came with though was thick but only rated…

> so shipping with a chunky cable that doesn’t even carry decent data feels like a bizarre oversight. USB 2.0 can support up to 480 Mbps. It’s more than fast enough for any audio stream you can send to a DAC. Your headphones don’t need USB 3.0 5 Gbps speeds. USB 3 requires extra wires with different properties that need to be controlled more tightly, which can impact cable flexibility. If your headphones used USB 3 w…

Nobody said the headphones needed USB 3. The point is that the cable is physically thick and rigid (like something you'd expect to carry serious data) but doesn't. Meanwhile Apple ships a thinner, more flexible cable that supports the same USB 2.0 speeds and equivalent power delivery. The cable B&W chose is worse ergonomically for no functional benefit. That's the kind of mismatch the Treedix exposes.

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#98

Post by dijit »

Aurornis wrote: post #87
dijit wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn’t really about audio bandwidth; it’s about the cable being strangely overbuilt for what it actually does. It’s rigid and thick, like a Thunderbolt 3 cable, yet only supports USB 2.0 speeds and fast charging for a device that doesn’t need fast charging. Compare that to Apple’s iPhone USB-C cable which is thin, flexible, and supports the same features. That matters because someone might grab that cable as…

> The point isn’t really about audio bandwidth; it’s about the cable being strangely overbuilt for what it actually does. The purpose of the heavy construction is to make it durable, not to carry 5 Gbps data streams to your headphones. Unlike most USB peripherals like your printer and keyboard that get plugged in and then don’t move around, headphone cables go to your head and move around constantly. They can get pin…

Apple's woven USB-C cable gets dragged around with iPhones, iPads and laptops daily and manages durability at half the thickness. Durability doesn't require rigidity... in fact for a headphone cable, rigidity is the opposite of what you want. Stiff cables tug on the headphones and transmit mechanical noise.

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#99

Post by ssl-3 »

kotaKat wrote: post #64

Similarly: Is there a USB-C power delivery adapter to force directionality? I needed to siphon off power from small batteries into a larger pack (that could supply more power out than the small packs) in a power outage. I absolutely could not force my larger power station to accept a charge and it kept pushing power back the wrong direction despite which ends of the cable I plugged in first.

It's ugly, but yes: https://www.anker.com/products/a8895?variant=45839927509142

That cable has one power input (that is only an input), and two outputs (that are only outputs), and a brainbox in the middle to direct the circus.

If we label the connectors as A, B, and C, then it works like this: A charges B and/or C, and other charging directions are no-op.

The less-complex way is to use a USB A to C cable, if that's appropriate. With these, the A side is always the source and the C side is always the sink.

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And yeah, it's annoying. I got a cheap lithium car jump starter several years ago with some neat power bank features (like 60W USB PD in/out, on one port). So I plugged it into my phone with USB C at my desk, and discovered that they'd charge eachother seemingly randomly. While changing nothing, I'd look over and sometimes the jump starter would charge the phone, and sometimes the phone would be charging the jump starter. The conglomeration formed a heater, with more steps.

(Back and forth with the same poop, forever.)

Re: A nearly perfect USB cable tester

#100

Post by cjbgkagh »

dijit wrote: post #93
cjbgkagh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My position is entirely consistent, it is cheaper to signal premium quality than actually deliver it. The point I am making is that there is immense comercial pressure to do this is a highly competitive market when selling to consumers who don’t know better. My example of weights is that the steel weighs are cheaper than the alternative of using heavier drivers, by adding weight they are signaling premium without del…

That's a more coherent version of your argument, but it's still speculative. You're attributing a deliberate strategy to what is more easily explained by indifference. B&W make about four products with USB-C cables. This isn't a company with a cable strategy, cynical or otherwise.

4th times the charm. You’ve provided no evidence for indifference. My point remains, given industry standards indifference would be highly unusual and not at all a safe assumption.

The vast majority of high volume consumer manufacturers use cost accounting practices which would absolutely be tracking and attributing the usb cable costs and the whole point of that accounting practice is to constantly be thinking about minimizing costs of even the smallest inputs, all the way down to the individual screws used. Yes, they’re thinking about how to save 1/100ths of a cent from each screw.

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