New USB Cord?

[yvanleterrible]

Sony makes high end audio where purity of signal is at a premium.

It is a good habit to put the best of materials up front for customer satisfaction.

I just love opening a device's package and examining everything; wrapping, cabling, finish. In that way you can truly see the seriousness of a manufacturer.

Sony's got it!

[RWood]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Sony's got it!

Agreed. They are among the best in that area.

[BobVA]

Originally Posted by Azayzel

Lol, two observations here from my experience:

...Anyway... the Sony portable actually came with about 6 ferrite dohickies to snap onto the USB cable to "reduce interferrence."

So that being said, I think Sony is a firm believer that it's products are highly succeptible to some type of interferrance so it provides some type of magic bean to mitigate this issue. Perhaps an EE person with some experience in this phenomenon can enlighten us to the theory/reality of this head-scratcher? Thanks for listening!

I salute your skepticism, but this is real engineering...honest!

Although it's not intuitive, passing a cable through a ferrite core (or looping it though the larger types) can eliminate audible interference (e.g. whines, clicks, pops) generated by a computer gizmo connected to an audio device, or near a radio receiver. It does this by removing the root cause of the problem, undesired radio frequency energy conducted down the cable.

Note that ferrites are generally installed to prevent the the cable from emitting or conducting interference to nearby or connected devices, not from receiveing it. They are frequently molded into connecting cables for computer gadgets, to meet government interference emission regulations (e.g. US FCC Part 15 requirements). Meeting these requirements reduces interference to radios, cordless telephones, etc.

They can also reduce or eliminate other weird effects of interference. For example, I had a relatively high power transmitter (60 watt amateur VHF radio) in my last car that would trigger the "tail-light out" warning lamp when it was keyed, despite careful tuning of the antenna. Snapping a ferrite core around the antenna cable at the antenna completely eliminated the problem.

Cheers,
Bob

[Azayzel]

Sweet! Bob, Thanks for taking the time to explain this, along with a real-world example. Good lesson for the day and a new neural pathway created to boot (let's see how long it sticks!).