Which run is more important to keep short: USB or XLR?

[ribonucleic]

(I’ve seen conflicting advice on this.)

Scenario: My listening spot is one one side of the room and I’m playing music files from a laptop through a USB-B cable into a DAC/preamp that feeds XLR output to a pair of active monitors on the other side of the room about 10 feet away.

I can either keep the DAC close to me at the expense of having a 30-40 foot XLR cable run around the edges of the room or I can keep the DAC close to the speakers at the expense of having to use a 5 meter maximum length USB cable and having to operate the DAC by remote.

Longer XLR cables being more expensive than a longer USB cable can be disregarded. The question is primarily about sound quality.

 

[sergeauckland]

There will be no difference in sound quality. It's entirely an issue of convenience. A 30-40ft run of balanced cable isn't long, balanced audio can quite happily run many hundreds of feet without issue, especially at line level.

USB cables can be more fussy, but I've run 10m of USB cable perfectly satisfactorily, so even that isn't too critical.

S.

 

[unpluggged]

As long as the cable is compliant to the specification, there is nothing to worry about. Besides, XLR is a type of connector, not of a cable.

 

[RayDunzl]

 

[RayDunzl]

For USB, I run from one side of the room to the other for PC to stereo system.

Low speed worked, but higher speed USB needed powered "repeater" cable to work, at about 25 feet.

Maybe a better plain cable would have worked, but the price for the powered cable wasn't out of line.

 

[FrankW]

The USB should only require one set of cable lifters vs 2 for XLRs

 

[DVDdoug]

Yeah... Balanced audio can go farther, especially line-level. With USB you might have trouble going between rooms or across the house. Balanced audio can go between buildings.

 

[Berwhale]

I used a 10m powered USB 2.0 extension cable/hub to take measurements with a UMIK-1 in my lounge using REW running on the PC in my study. It worked perfectly and was much cheaper than buying a laptop

 

[Hatto]

(I’ve seen conflicting advice on this.)

Scenario: My listening spot is one one side of the room and I’m playing music files from a laptop through a USB-B cable into a DAC/preamp that feeds XLR output to a pair of active monitors on the other side of the room about 10 feet away.

I can either keep the DAC close to me at the expense of having a 30-40 foot XLR cable run around the edges of the room or I can keep the DAC close to the speakers at the expense of having to use a 5 meter maximum length USB cable and having to operate the DAC by remote.

Longer XLR cables being more expensive than a longer USB cable can be disregarded. The question is primarily about sound quality.

USB carries digital signal. It either completely works without any degradation or totally fails. USB has a limit of length over which it would work but that length can be extended through use of active repeaters as people mentioned above. 5m is well within USB limits, it is of no concern.

XLR carries analog signal. It works over much longer lengths with limitations on signal quality. However 40-feet is not even an issue as far as XLR cable lengths go, it is of no concern either.

Although there is no difference in sounds quality in either case, if I REALLY had to choose purely based on signal quality (you'd have to put a gun to my head), I'd rather have the digital cables longer as long as there are no dropouts.

However, in reality, I would purely choose in terms of cost, convenience and cable management and disregard signal quality altogether.

 

[unpluggged]

XLR carries analog signal

AES3 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

DMX512 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Hatto]

AES3 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

DMX512 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thanks for the additional information, I meant it within context of the question:

DAC/preamp that feeds XLR output to a pair of active monitors

If you want to, you can also carry analog balanced audio signal with a USB cable too...

 

[Harkwood Services]

If the DAC/Preamp is USB powered, I would go for a shorter USB cable. USB connectors are quite lossy power-wise, so depending on the current draw of the DAC, the voltage drop can be horrible over long USB cables. Many cheap USB cables use CCA for the power, and they are really skinny too.

Balanced audio is designed to cope with distance, USB isn't.