Just before a concert at the symphony, flawed music flows from the orchestra pit. This chaos of phrases, isolated from sheet music, and cacophony of instruments being tuned, soon turns into colourful and atmospheric form, harmony and order.

The main objective of an audio system is to play music as near to the artist’s intentions as possible; preserving the natural timbre, dynamics, sustain, stage depth and width, as well as loudness. When listening to music saved to files on a storage medium, it is necessary to connect the computer to a Digital-Analogue Converter (DAC) using a USB cable.

This “link in the chain” is often overlooked and neglected. After all, the transmission is digital, so there is no way of improving or losing anything – all you need is a CD converted properly into FLAC format (a lossless, bit-stream format), right? But have you heard of the EmDrive engine designed by NASA, which works even though it breaks the laws of physics? Moreover, have you heard of a quantum tunneling effect?

All it takes is the presence of a conductor who skilfully takes control to guide the musicians. Skilfully – because a weak conductor is a weak orchestra. In simplest terms, a USB cable acts like an orchestra conductor.

A mediocre cable transmits a mediocre signal. This does not mean losing the main musical message of an audio recording, and there is no risk of losing the vocals or the string section. But you will lose out on all those “extras” that go with it. During playback, the details that condition depth, width and clarity of sound will fade out.

Sometimes, conductors, attempting to obtain the composition’s proper interpretation, tell the musicians not to strike the notes, but play them in a given manner. “Harp, cover the orchestra with this arpeggio, as if you were wrapping it in a coat; not a hailstorm.” “Trombones, your forte is too penetrating!”1 It is impossible to hear such subtleties when the USB cable is ignored. It plays an unquestioned role and deserves as much attention as any other element of a given audio system.

This has been proved in playback tests on various audio system configurations. We have demonstrated that the USB cable can change the sound character of the entire system and take it to the next level, with no need to replace the amplifier or speakers.