Learn more about Magnolia Premium Installation Connect your computer peripheral devices to your computer with this USB A/B cable that features solid 1.25% silver plated long-grain copper conductors to minimize distortion.
This reviewer is a member of the Best Buy Tech Insider Network Program. This invitation-only program provides BestBuy.com reviewers with manufacturer-supplied products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased and usage-based reviews. Outside of receiving products to test and review, Best Buy Tech Insider Network Reviewers are not compensated in any other way.
Let's face it, the sound quality of PC sound cards falls way short of the quality a good stereo can produce. I found a neat little device that converts a USB digital music signal from a USB port on a PC to a standard bitstream that can be sent to a DAC. (You could connect it to a digital input on a modern A/V receiver.)
I used the basic USB cable that came with the neat little device. Streaming uncompressed music from the PC did not sound as good as playing the original CD through the same DAC. The only weak link was the basic cable, so I replaced it with an AudioQuest Cinnamon 2.5' cable.
The improvement was huge! There is now almost no difference between playing a CD and streaming from the PC. (The CD transport and DAC have anti-jitter circuitry that a PC cannot match.) Now I can listen to my entire music collection on shuffle play AND get the full sound quality of my stereo.