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?
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.
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.
All of this is correct. I just didn’t care enough to get technical. Listen to this guy.
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.
Are you just talking about using a usb cable that came with a mouse to plug in a USB speaker?
Headphones
If they’re usb yeah basically every USB cable is the same. Just plug whatever cable in and see if there’s any issue
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
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.
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
For headphones
3.5mm jack?
Yes
USB headphones?
Oh yeah you’re fine then. If you notice a difference in audio quality maybe try becoming a composer because you definitely have the ear for it.
Just make sure it’s the correct USB version (like 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 etc idk how far they go)
Well at the end of the day it’s just all wire, a knife and a soldering iron you can change them out however you like. But I’m assuming that’s not what you meant.
There are adapters, startech makes a bunch of different kinds. So you could use a USB adapter over the USB extension cable.
Historically people would use stereo wire for stuff like that.
You could but it would be an utter pain in the ass and might not work 100% as it was before it broke because the thickness of the wires are different and USB isn’t just 1. It’s 3 and they’re so thin, you’d need to braid them together.
If the plug broke, you couldn’t replace the audio’s connector with a USB connector.
Unless the audio device is also USB. Then it shouldn’t be much issue; though they may not be color coded with the insulation on the inside.
USB cables have four conductors and shielding.
Is it 4? 🤔 It’s been forever since I’ve opened one up and could have sworn it was 3 because I remember the Xbox controller had 4, but one of them wasn’t needed to slap a USB connector on it and use it with the PC. Maybe it had 5…
