Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
The Curious Cable is unfortunately very sensitive - the thickness of the cable and the fact that it's handmade means that if you shove the cable during use, it will disconnect and reconnect the Mojo, interrupting the audio. Not wanting to spend more money on exotic cables, I purchased a $60 Audioquest Cinnamon cable. This too had a noticeably different sound signature from your standard USB cable, but it was not one I particularly enjoyed. So I gave that cable away to another friend I had introduced to the world of DACs, and she too immediately recognised the difference when she paired the Audioquest with the FiiO E18. I figured that what must be making the difference here is the amount of silver content in the cable - after all, Audioquest differentiates their cables by the percentage of silver in them, and silver is a better conductor than the usual copper (again, this is all empirical evidence, utterly anecdotal and your mileage may vary - although silver IS a better conductor). My final purchase was a Pangea AG cable that I picked up for about $30 on Amazon. Sturdy cable, short, and as luck would have it, an agreeable sound signature. I used it for 6 months daily, then decided to pull out the Curious Cable again to see if I was hallucinating the difference, and holy shit, I was not - it sounds absolutely incredible, like the sound stage is well outside of my headphones (B&W P7).
Today, I've switched back to the Curious Cable permanently - even the occasional disconnect is worth putting up with. The thing is, out of all the exotic cables out there, it's actually relatively affordable (given that you're buying a Mojo, this is not too much to take a chance on), and there's really no way I can justify dumping $500+ on cables for a portable device, at least. Nevertheless, I embarked on this journey after accidentally plugging in a humble Monoprice cable instead of the bundled one to the audio port. I do wish there was more scientific data to explain why such a difference can occur (and trust me, with the Curious Cable, the difference is inexplicably dramatic compared to the Monoprice, Pangea and Audioquest cables), but I wouldn't have the faintest idea on how I could even conduct a scientific test. All I can say is that just like the Chord Mojo sounds dramatically different from standard DACs (this too comes down to the fact that the FPGA processor has insanely more processing power, precision and speed than your average DAC chip), I now believe the cable too can play a role in altering the sound of your media.
What annoys me the most when using USB cables is the noisy current that gets transferred from your PC to your DAC through your cable, but it's easily solved by removing the power wire from the cable.
The jitter stuff is a little above my paygrade, but I'm highly skeptical anyone can hear the difference, and also, from reading about it this seems to be an issue with the hardware sending it and/or the hardware receiving it, not the cable in between.
But give me a long break, then put me on SPDIF first go, it will be hard to hear anything that's "off". Even when I switch to USB I might not hear much difference. But when I've been listening to USB for an extended period, then switch to SPDIF, it will sound rubbish.
These days I prefer to just leave it on USB, not that I can hear the difference, but because I know it's better. Psycho-acoustics is a powerful thing.
Ultimately, your mileage may vary. I don't expect everyone to hear the same way I do, or even enjoy the sound characteristics of certain cables that I do. I will say this - the Curious Cable startled me with how "holographic" the sound appeared to be, but I felt like the bass was lacking, having switched to it after using the Monoprice. Over time, I realised I'm actually hearing the bass in ways I've never observed before - the Monoprice sounded muddy in comparison. Moreover, I find myself not feeling fatigued after listening for hours, whereas I used to stop listening to music after an hour or so prior to the Curious Cable. (I use the Mojo almost 8 hours straight at work, connected to my rubbish low-end Dell work laptop.)
Perhaps another way to think of this is that the cable doesn't present the audio as it's meant to be heard, but adds its own signature to the sound - therefore, it would be up to the listener to determine whether the characteristics of a particular cable meets their tastes. As an example, after switching the bundled cable to a Monoprice cable I had lying around, I was in love with how clear and punchy that cable sounded. When I started using the Curious Cable, the Monoprice all of a sudden seemed to be a bit flabby, with muddy bass. I'm quite intrigued by how these cables can impact the sound to various degrees, but not enough to keep investing any further than the Curious Cable.
One might argue that we don't want to listen to audio that's been modified by the cable, that we want to hear the audio in its purest form possible. To that, I say that's probably never going to happen. Hell, if we were to follow the logic that the cable cannot impact the sound because it's just 1s and 0s being passed along, then by what logic do we keep investing in different DACs? If it's just 1s and 0s going into the DAC, then it should come out exactly the way it's supposed to, right? But that isn't the case, and the Mojo is the finest example of what a dramatic difference a DAC can make. Clearly, there's more to this than just the passing along of 1s and 0s - the DAC also plays a role in altering the sound in ways that appeals (or doesn't) to the listener, either by adding pleasing distortion, or eliminating or controlling it. All that is well beyond my scope of understanding, but I don't see anymore why the cable can't also play a role in the grand scheme of things.
And no, cables cannot change 1's and 0's in any way. But current carried through the usb cable can interfere with DAC circuitry and alter the sound. WASAPI let's you control the flow to your DAC, which is the endpoint, so it doesn't matter if they get there slower or faster because your USB to i2s converter would put them in the correct timings using the on-board clock. Or you can purchase a standalone clock that does this, hiface, audiophilleo and off ramp comes to mind.
Reclocking should of course be possible to some degree, but garbage in = garbage out. Combine this with the lack of error correction in isochronous transfer mode, and well... I can only speculate here, I'm no engineer. All I can confirm is that there is a very noticeable difference in the audio with different cables with the Mojo. If you have experimented as I have and concluded otherwise, then perhaps this is down to differences in how we perceive audio or our equipment setup, who knows. But I'm not resorting to armchair science - I thoroughly enjoy the sound I get with the Curious Cable, and encourage anyone to experiment (not just with the Curious Cable) and see how they fare. As a person who formerly dismissed that cables could make any meaningful difference, well, I know better now than to rely on shaky theory and just go with what I enjoy listening to. As always, your mileage may vary.
Where a USB *might* improve sound, is where the DAC does not support asynchronous mode transfer. In this case, you can output WASAPI all you want from your PC end, but the DAC will handle it isochronously.
You can never get rid of jitter completely. Even your DAC's clock, or external clock is doing its job, jitter can be introduced by the power supply of your DAC, and the circuitry that runs between the clock and DAC chip.
Anyway, this whole game is a slippery slope. I deal with people every single day at work who can't comprehend why I bring this setup, instead of just using my phone or laptop directly. If they listen to it, they can't stand it for too long because they deem it to be "too loud". Some people are startled by the clarity of the sound, but not enough to invest any further. By that logic, they also think that all these DACs and headphones are a slippery slope - if you can hear the music just fine, why bother anymore with all this nonsense? It's all just a slippery slope, right? You start experimenting with different DACs and headphones and file formats (why can't you just rip a YouTube MP3? What's a FLAC?) and in the end you hear the same exact song we do! I can't explain to them that while we may be hearing the same song, I'm actually listening to it, experiencing it in a different way with this stuff. And the thing is, they're not wrong - if it works for them, it just does, and vice versa.
... btw, just reading the curious cable website, the way they are designed, the power wire isolated from the data channels. This would be the contributor factor to the superior sound quality as you are hearing with the Curious USB. This is more or less the same suggestion I had a few posts back, that is to strip out the power wire altogether if your DAC allows. In my own listening, stripping out the power wire almost always leads to better sound coming from your headphones.
USB has moderate interference when signal is bad on phone, but my mojo had been modified with an RF shield inside, and upgraded capacitors, so YMMV. USB is fed via Onkyo Player with real time DSD conversion to "5.6MHZ High precision", and the roll off, dynamic range and Prat is greatly improved vs stock USB audio. The audio is bit-perfect and thus I consider it an "optimal situation" for feeding USB signal to Mojo. Also works with ASIO via Foobar, which is even better sounding IMHO.
Optical input has a slightly warmer and thicker sound. Roll off is slower and there is no interference.