Kubala-Sosna Sensation Digital USB Cables

A digital cable is a transmission line. Done poorly, it forces the DAC to spend its energy correcting for jitter and timing errors that should never have arrived. Done well, it lets the DAC do what it was designed to do — recover the music. Kubala-Sosna offers digital cables in five formats across the line: AES/EBU (DAE) for studio-style balanced digital, S/PDIF coaxial (DCX) for the most common single-ended digital link, USB for direct computer-to-DAC and streamer-to-DAC connections, Ethernet (LAN) for networked playback chains, and a dedicated 50Ω coaxial cable available only at the Realization tier for the most demanding clock and digital links. Each is offered at the tiers where K-S has engineered the cable to a level the digital chain at that price point can actually use.

Sensation is the OptimiZ3 entry point. It is the architecture the audiophile press treats as the K-S statement architecture — Positive Feedback gave the Sensation speaker cable a Brutus Award in 2015 — at the more accessible of the two OptimiZ3 price points. The complement is built around analog interconnects, speaker cable, power cord, and USB — focused. The right customer is the listener stepping out of Emotion or Celebration who wants the OptimiZ3 generation in their system without going all the way to Elation! pricing.

Sensation as the USB cable is the OptimiZ3 architecture in the digital link most modern reference systems are built around — and one of the configurations where stepping from OptimiZ2 to OptimiZ3 is most immediately reported as audible. USB is a format that rewards every level of engineering improvement disproportionately, because the same cable carries both signal and power and the noise behavior of both matters. This is the USB cable for a system at reference level — a serious streamer or server feeding a reference-class USB DAC — where the listener wants OptimiZ3 in the digital path before committing to Elation! pricing. The step to Realization USB is the OptimiZ4 generation change.

Series: OptimiZ3™

Architecture: RevolutionZ™

Configuration options: USB 2.0 audio

Termination options: USB-A to USB-B (standard audio USB termination)

Length range: 1.0m to 3.0m in 0.5m increments

Pricing formula: First-meter price plus per-additional-meter rate

Made in USA — Kubala-Sosna Research, East Hanover, NJ

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