Atlas Hyper sc USB (Type A to B connector)

A digital interconnect specifically developed to meet the requirements of USB as a high-performance audio interface.

The traditional view of USB requires nothing more than the transfer of data from one device to another. While that’s essentially true for a printer or hard drive, it’s an overly simplistic view when considering USB connection for high quality audio, where RFI and EMI ‘noise’ is frequently a pervasive problem.

General purpose USB cables use a basic twisted pair construction for data transmission, theoretically this necessitates matched twist ratios for the data pair (to minimise the intra-pair skew). In practice, increased capacitance between the data pair and the power and ground conductors can increase crosstalk dramatically. Atlas use matched pairs of cables whose lengths have been critically controlled to maintain uniformity, while utilising a triple shielding technique that isolates the differential data, power/ground from each other as well as providing an integral shield around the entire cable to help reject jitter and external noise.

Signal degradation as a result of frequency dispersion and skin effect losses are detrimental to the delivery of error-free transmission. These losses are compounded by the quality of the cable construction and are worsened by; the use of poor quality conductors, mismatched conductor lengths, imprecise twist ratios between conductor pairs as well as the dielectric and shielding strategies employed.

Our research consistently shows solid-core OCC data conductors minimise the attenuation, energy dissipation and low-conductivity path issues to deliver consistent performance across all cable lengths.

Musically these issues often manifest themselves in ‘smearing’ distortion of harmonics and pitch which degrades the perceived timing and harmonic integrity of the signal, resulting in a less involving musical experience.