I have several usb cables. One cable is from a computer mouse and the other is from a usb extension cord.
Can these cables be an acceptable replacement for audio cable?

What inexpensive cable options would you recommend for a replacement?

  • Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world
    14·
    10 months ago

    Professional audio engineer. What matters is the capacitance and ohmage of the cable. USB cable tends to be really bad on that front but if it’s a short run, the worst that you’ll have is some diminished highs and some hiss.

    • Shurimal@kbin.social
      11·
      10 months ago

      Another audio professional here. For line level analog audio (it’s different for guitar pickups and turntable cartridges) it doesn’t matter much at all unless we’re talking long cable runs (several tens of meters and more) or some badly designed equipment that can’t handle high capacitance cables (eg I’ve had crappy amps going into oscillations with certain speaker cables). What matters is shielding (in noisy EM environments) and reliable connectors.

      Digital audio is a different kettle of fish, but it’s amazing what you can get away with when runs are a few meters or less. Consumer-grade equipment almost never has 75 ohm connectors for coax S/PDIF and no consumer S/PDIF cable is really 75 ohms. RCA connectors cannot be 75 ohms due to their geometry and BNC is a rare beast (I really had to go out of my way to set up proper 75 ohm cabling for digital audio in my home, and still am not sure the BNC connectors I use are actually 75 ohms).

      I should also mention to all non-audio pros that you can’t measure a cable’s or a connector’s characteristic impedance with a simple multimeter. 50, 75 and 110 ohm cables/connectors will all show milliohms on a multimeter and are all fine for audio frequencies. Characteristic impedance only plays role at high frequencies—MHz, not kHz range and when we need to impedance match the whole transmission line to avoid signal reflections.

      I would be more worried about channel crosstalk when using a multi-core cable where conductors are not individually shielded as is the case with USB cables, but even 30 dB separation is probably fine for casual music listening.

        • tal@lemmy.today
          5·
          10 months ago

          I think that both of you guys may have over-analyzed the question. Looking at his other comments, I am a bit suspicious that the situation here is that OP has USB headphones and is concerned about using the USB cable that came with his mouse versus the USB cable that came with his headphones (for which the cables are almost certainly totally interchangeable).

          This is in no way to detract from your answers, which are an interesting take on throwing audio connectors on USB cables and running analog audio signals over them. Just that I think that what he’s asking is much simpler than the question that you’re answering.

  • Eheran@lemmy.world
    41·
    10 months ago

    I have, unlike the other comment, no idea what you want/can do or what “audio cable” you mean. But the answer is yes, both as in using the wire with and without the original USB connections. You can use essentially any wir for audio, or is essentially DC, so unlike wires that carry information (USB, HDMI, …) there is no need for shielding etc

  • Fogle@lemmy.ca
    3·
    10 months ago

    Are you just talking about using a usb cable that came with a mouse to plug in a USB speaker?

      • Fogle@lemmy.ca
        3·
        10 months ago

        If they’re usb yeah basically every USB cable is the same. Just plug whatever cable in and see if there’s any issue

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    2·
    10 months ago

    I’m not an expert, but there’s a huge difference between USB cables. Requirements for a mouse are pretty low, so it could be a cheap cable poorly shielded and thin wires.
    A good USB cable however should be fine, as it’s shielded from full speed and above.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_communications

    I’m guessing that everything above low speed is OK. But I would avoid low speed, and that could include your mouse cable, but you can see when you cut it, whether it’s shielded or not.

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’m confused, what type of audio cable are you trying to to replace? Afaik there is little difference between USB cables other than their version number