7 ms·

I actually purchased one of these as this article has surfaced before. It’s well worth the hype, I used it to audit all my cables (both for home and work) and

• fwip 7mo ago
  Is there any audio you might play that doesn't fit in 400Mbps?
  • dijit 7mo ago
    The point isn’t really about audio bandwidth; it’s about the cable being strangely overbuilt for what it actually does. It’s rigid and thick, like a Thunderbolt 3 cable, yet only supports USB 2.0 speeds and fast charging for a device that doesn’t need fast charging. Compare that to Apple’s iPhone USB-C cable which is thin, flexible, and supports the same features. That matters because someone might grab that cable assuming it’s a “better cable”: it came with a £629 product, it’s thick and feels serious, so surely it’s capable. But it isn’t. And there’s nothing marked on it to tell you otherwise. The whole system ends up relying on presumption, which is exactly the problem the device in the article is solving.
    • windowsrookie 7mo ago
      The reason it is thick is because it supports 65W charging. Apple did the same with the USB-C cables that shipped with the pre-MagSafe MacBooks. It was a thicker cable that supported 100w charging but was only USB 2.0.
      • dijit 7mo ago
        Can you help me understand why that would be a reason to compromise the comfort of the cable that is supplied for a device which charges at 5w? Or, why Apple manages the same in half the footprint? Or, why someone would expect that a cable that came with a pair of headphones actually charges things at over 65w?
        • Retr0id 7mo ago
          Like most things in the audiophile world, it's more about aesthetics than anything else. A big cable looks like it means business.
          • dijit 7mo ago
            I think that's being a bit uncharitable to B&W specifically; they're one of the few headphone companies where the engineering does back up the price. The cable is the odd one out.
            • Retr0id 7mo ago
              I don't have an informed opinion of B&W either way, but are you sure it's not an instance of Gell-Mann amnesia?
              • deleted 7mo ago
                [deleted]
    • cjbgkagh 7mo ago
      It’s common to add weights to headphones to make them feel premium which is bizarre since actually premium headphones tend to try very hard to reduce weight as the weight makes them more uncomfortable. I don’t know how to fix the market especially when consumers keep rewarding these practices, and I think the effectiveness of TikTok style influencer marketing will make it worse.
      • dijit 7mo ago
        I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. B&W actually reduced the weight on the Px8 S2 compared to the original, and the headphones themselves are genuinely lightweight for what they are. The cable isn’t thick to “feel premium” (it feels kinda bad); it’s thick because it’s rated for 65W+ power delivery that the headphones don’t need. The problem is the opposite of what you’re describing, it’s not a cynical design choice, it’s a lazy one. They probably just purchased a cable for capabilities irrelevant to the product and the result is worse ergonomics and misleading physical cues about what the cable can actually do.
        • cjbgkagh 7mo ago
          “I don’t think..” Ok, you’ve made a number of assumptions and we don’t share the same priors so I’m unable to follow you to your conclusion. I think you are underestimating the importance of perceived premium combined with the pressures of cost accounting, but I do think that is pretty normal for ‘audiophiles’ which is their target market.
          • dijit 7mo ago
            Which assumptions? The weight reduction on the S2 is documented and the cable’s 65W rating is what the tester confirmed. If the argument is that B&W deliberately chose a thick cable to seem premium, it doesn’t square with them actively slimming down the headphones. B&W are primarily a speaker company, their USB-C product range is basically just a few headphones and earbuds. More likely they just sourced a generic cable that happened to support high wattage and didn’t think about the mismatch. Either way, we’re deep in the weeds on B&W’s cable procurement now. The root point is that USB-C is a mess. You can’t tell what a cable supports by looking at it, and even premium manufacturers are shipping cables that don’t do what you’d reasonably expect. That’s exactly the problem the Treedix from the article solves.
    • Aurornis 7mo ago
      > The point isn’t really about audio bandwidth; it’s about the cable being strangely overbuilt for what it actually does. The purpose of the heavy construction is to make it durable, not to carry 5 Gbps data streams to your headphones. Unlike most USB peripherals like your printer and keyboard that get plugged in and then don’t move around, headphone cables go to your head and move around constantly. They can get pinched in drawers or snagged on corners. Hence the more durable construction.
      • deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      • dijit 7mo ago
        Apple's woven USB-C cable gets dragged around with iPhones, iPads and laptops daily and manages durability at half the thickness. Durability doesn't require rigidity... in fact for a headphone cable, rigidity is the opposite of what you want. Stiff cables tug on the headphones and transmit mechanical noise.
        • Aurornis 7mo ago
          You don’t wear your iPhone or iPad on your head with the cable plugged in all day like you do with headphones. Apple’s USB iPhone cables wearing out prematurely is so common it’s a meme.
          • goodmythical 7mo ago
            Not sure why you're being downvoted. Maybe Apple's changed their cables recently, but the fragility is the reason I avoid Apple cables. Especially in headphones. The number of times those broke during a bike ride or run was way to high for me to keep wasting money on them knowing full well they weren't going to last more than a few months just like every other Apple headphone I've ever had.
            • dijit 7mo ago
              Because the woven cables are quite durable. https://www.techgearlab.com/topics/electronics/best-usb-c-cable https://www.techgearlab.com/topics/electronics/best-usb-c-ca...
    • ssl-3 7mo ago
      The headphones have equivalent performance whether a USB 2 cable is connected, or a USB 3 cable is connected. The headphones themselves are not USB 3 devices; the addition of USB 3 cabling instead of USB 2 cabling would change absolutely nothing about how they work. So, no: I wouldn't expect the cable for a pair of headphones (of any price) to support USB 3. That represents extra complexity (literally more wires inside) that is totally irrelevant for the product the cable was sold with. (The cables included with >$1k iPhones don't support USB 3, either.) Meanwhile: Fast charging. All correctly-made USB C cables support at least 3 amps worth of 20 volts, or 60 Watts. This isn't an added-cost feature; it's just what the bare minimum no-emarker-inside specification requires. A 25-cent USB C-to-C cable from Temu either supports 60W of USB PD, or it is broken and defiant of USB-IF's specifications. --- Now, of course: The cable could be thinner and more flexible and do these same things. That'd probably be preferred, even: Traditional analog headphones often used very deliberately thin cables with interesting construction (like using Litz wire to reduce the amount of internal plastic insulation) to improve the user's freedom of movement, and help prevent mechanical noise from the cables dragging across clothes and such from being telegraphed to the user's ears. Using practical cabling was something that headphone makers strived to be good at doing. I'm a little bit annoyed to learn that a once-prestigious company like B&W is shipping cables with headphones that are the antithesis of what practical headphone cables should be. --- But yeah, both USB C cables and the ports on devices could be better marked so we know WTF they do, to limit the amount of presumption required in the real world. So that a person can tell -- at a glance! -- what charging modes a device accepts or provides, or whether it supports video, or whether it is USB 2 or USB 3, or [...]. Prior to USB C, someone familiar with the tech could look at a device or a cable and generally succeed at visually discerning its function, but that's broadly gone with USB C. What we have instead is just an oblong hole that looks like all of the other oblong holes do. After complaining about this occasionally since the appearance of USB C a decade or so ago, I've come to realize that most people just don't care about this -- at all. Not even a little bit. Even though these things get used by common people every day, the details are completely out of the scope of their thought processes. It doesn't have to be this way, but it's not going to change: Unmarked ports are connected together with unmarked cables and thus unknown common capabilities are just how we roll.
      • 7mo ago
  • encom 7mo ago
    No. CD audio is 1,4 mbit. Even increasing the temporal and spatial resolution beyond that, which is audiophile nonsense, will never even approach USB 2 speeds.
• Aurornis 7mo ago
  > so shipping with a chunky cable that doesn’t even carry decent data feels like a bizarre oversight. USB 2.0 can support up to 480 Mbps. It’s more than fast enough for any audio stream you can send to a DAC. Your headphones don’t need USB 3.0 5 Gbps speeds. USB 3 requires extra wires with different properties that need to be controlled more tightly, which can impact cable flexibility. If your headphones used USB 3 when they didn’t need it that would be one more thing to break and more failure modes for the cable. A USB 2 cable with fewer conductors was the right choice for this product. The fact that you only got miffed about it when plugging the cable into a tester, not from actually using the product or cable, is good evidence that a USB 3 cable wasn’t needed.
  • dijit 7mo ago
    Nobody said the headphones needed USB 3. The point is that the cable is physically thick and rigid (like something you'd expect to carry serious data) but doesn't. Meanwhile Apple ships a thinner, more flexible cable that supports the same USB 2.0 speeds and equivalent power delivery. The cable B&W chose is worse ergonomically for no functional benefit. That's the kind of mismatch the Treedix exposes.
    • Aurornis 7mo ago
      USB 3 doesn’t just mean “higher quality wire”. It requires additional data pairs that take up space and add cost. Apple’s iPhone cables are not known for their durability. They serve a mostly stationary purpose, unlike headphones you wear on your head.
    • lozenge 7mo ago
      A thick cable tangles less easily.
    • goodmythical 7mo ago
      For headphones? I'll take the more robust cable any day. The thinner it is the sooner I'm going to have to replace it.
• joshvm 7mo ago
  I started buying Belkin TB5 cables which are around $50 a pop. They can easily power a laptop at full load and can stream video at any reasonable resolution/framerate I might need. I've yet to find a need for an NVMe faster than 20 GBps nevermind finding USB4 enclosures, or that the cable supports up to 80. They're also not nearly as chunky as the Dell cables, which are good, but seem to have very rigid shielding. I keep a few converters for older devices and servers that don't have (m)any C ports, but as far as a consumer "forever cable" goes, TB5 feels close. Certainly the cable's bandwidth is beyond what most people need, unless you're editing 8k video or continually shuffling hundreds of GBs between external disks.
  • dijit 7mo ago
    I do something largely similar. It alleviates the anxiety of knowing what cable does what. I use Apples Thunderbolt 4 or USB-C cables exclusively: if its white its for charging and low data, if its black its for high data. I’ve been doing this for a few years, but its really costly as those Apple Thunderbolt cables are crazy expensive.
    • Barbing 7mo ago
      I wish the USB spec had mandated labeling. There must be a lovely label printer they make for cables or something that shouldn’t be too expensive these days. Label a few cables a day, finish the whole house in a jiffy. LTT or another big YouTuber made a cable and made sure to get it labeled. Also complained how difficult it was to find a supplier willing to make a better cable than usual.
• vladvasiliu 7mo ago
  > Honourable mention to the USB-C cables that ship with Dell Ultrasharp monitors (both pre-USB4 and post). Those support basically everything except Thunderbolt 4 despite being unmarked. I have one of those. They are thick and unwieldy af. Since I've borked the usb connection on my monitor because of static discharge, I no longer use it and figured I'd repurpose it for my digital camera, for which I used to have a short cable that was sometimes annoying. This cable is so freaking think and hard that it'll move my (admittedly somewhat light) camera on the table.
• pseudohadamard 7mo ago
  There are a bunch of similar testers around that do more or less the same thing, e.g. a the ChargerLab Power-Z range or any number of dodgy third-party Amazon/Aliexpress clones. The one thing that definitely doesn't exist though outside of $1,000-and-up USB diagnostic devices is something to report on which of the 800 different ways the downstream device has screwed things up, including failing a basic cut-and-paste of pullup resistors from the spec coughRaspberryPicough. After the publicity a few years ago of bad USB-C cables they've been mostly fixed, but what hasn't been fixed is the infinite number of broken downstream USB-C implementations. So your charging problems aren't due to the cable, which is most likely fine by now, but because the downstream device is telling the upstream one that it can't take more than 5V 1A. One sure way to tell the vendor has screwed up is when your USB-C device comes with an A-to-C cable to charge it.
  • pseudohadamard 7mo ago
    Just to clarify the above, I'm talking about USB-C PD, not data throughput, on re-reading it the text is a bit unclear.