There's a problem here. There's a fundamental difference between processing data for music and communicating with something like a hard drive.
(...)
BTW, I moved the USB cable to the laptop from the hub and the music does sound better.
Houckster... Iīm sorry but the "paper" you kindly linked... I stopped reading as soon as Iīve read the comment from a happy customer: "My wife came running from the kitchen...". I loathe sentences like this, itīs exactly why companies like this need to be ridiculed. Audiophiles like that are always hetero, married and the wife came running from the kitchen, exclaiming in surprise how new the stereo system sounds. And they are always conservative, judging by their statement that the wife came running from the kitchen (where she obviously in the minds of these people belongs). Thereīs so much bulls*** and wrong technical information (if any at all) in this paper that itīs mind boggling. Hereīs the thing: everyone in the high end business thinks that the reading process of CDs ruins their sound. Reasons are jitter, vibrations, error correction and what not. Jitter is a serious problem, no doubt about that. But the error correction... CDs have a relatively strong error correction that can reliably correct errors up to 2 millimeters (doesnīt matter if itīs a scratch or missing information), this correction is able to correct errors perfectly. And I mean "perfect" literally. With the help of surrounding data the error correction can restore
everything to 100% integrity thatīs on it. When the missing part of the CD exceeds roughly 2 mm
only then the "guessing mechanism" kicks in. The first error correction step is called C1, the second C2 - thatīs at least what many ripping programs are able to read. Additionally, many tests of audio magazines found out that error correction rarely kicks in at all with normal audio players. 90% of all discs in this world can be read without the need of error correction - and they are. The argument that error correction destroys the music simply isnīt true. Itīs a lie to exploit customers who donīt understand the technical side. The more important question would be instead if the error correction is
good enough or overlooks some kind of error - but even then it would be used in only roughly 10%.
Furthermore, PS Audio writes this:
... It is, in fact, a minor miracle that a CD mechanism works at all. The mechanical devices that control the laser reading mechanism, the varying rotational speed of the disc, the wobbling of the CD and the errors that must be corrected for even the best CD's all need separate feedback based systems to correct for their errors.
Until the advent of the PerfectWave Transport, every CD player ever built relied on the same mechanical technologies and suffers from the same problems as every other. PS Audio designed an entirely new system that accepts any quality digital audio data and outputs perfect data in its place, unaffected by disc, data, or mechanical/optical performance issues.
Unlike a traditional CD transport, you are never listening directly to the data from the optical disc. Instead the data is pulled off the disc and sent to the internal Digital Lens where it is rebuilt and stored for up to three minutes and then output by the asynchronous (unrelated) clock.
Itīs not a miracle, it just works. What they are describing is how the CD is constructed, itīs supposed to work that way. They say that every player until the PerfectWave Transport suffers from the same problems - but what are these problems? The first paragraph of the quoted article doesnīt make that clear. And even then they outright lie: their player has to use the same basic principle to obtain the data from the disc: variying rotational speed, wobbled CDs and error correction. What they do is simple: they play the disc with higher speed and buffer the result. My cheap multi player Pioneer DV-610 does the same with CDs and SACDs (not for three minutes though). Most likeley they use a drive for computer audio because special drives for high end use simply doesnīt exist (with two exceptions by Denon/Marantz and Yamaha) or are way too expensive.
But Iīd like to come to my point: you canīt compare USB audio to CD based audio, they work differently. USB delivers data in serial blocks, in case of asynchronous soundcards only when the soundcard needs it - complete with error correction (because itīs part of the USB standard). If one of these blocks is transmitted faulty it will just be transmitted again and again - this happens so fast that you wonīt notice it because - believe it or not - the USB soundcard has a small buffer too. CD instead is transmitted as one continous data stream and not one audio equipment manufacturer can change this, itīs impossible because otherwise the data could not be read. So, USB is not one continous data stream but millions of data blocks that gets transmitted whenever needed. Thatīs also one of the reasons why USB cables shouldnīt sound different. I assume that the reason for their different sound cannot be found in the data transmission but in their power supply. Even self powered soundcards usually donīt power their USB interface themselves, it gets supplied with electrical energy through the computer.