Atlas Mavros USB A- B grun 1

A digital interconnect featuring the Grun Coherent Ground System, precisely engineered to consistently extract the maximum performance available from file-based audio sources using a USB interface.

It’s become abundantly clear that RFI and system-generated ‘noise’ are frequently major issues that limit the potential of high quality via USB connections.

This ‘noise’ is typically not directly audible as hiss or interference but it does have an impact on a DAC’s clock accuracy and error correction circuitry — compromising tonal accuracy and dynamic range. While it’s not directly audible without a music signal present, it becomes easy to hear the difference when it’s removed or minimised.

Computers are notoriously problematic in this respect, and while dedicated music servers designed with an emphasis on better-sounding USB outputs (by minimising their electrical noise ‘leakage’) exist, the cable is still a critical element in the replay chain.

Hardware alone can’t fully address the issue. While in theory, a DAC can ‘correct’ some of these factors, in practice, it’s clear that the harder such circuitry has to work, the poorer the sound quality.

The Mavros USB cable utilises our Grun Coherent Earth Ground System as an integral part of maximising performance from USB sources, by draining this ‘noise’ away to an ‘independent’ ground.

There are of course other factors in designing a ‘reference class’ USB cable; Atlas set out to minimise losses in high-speed USB cables by precision-termination manufacturing, high-purity OCC copper conductors in a twin-balanced configuration, and sophisticated dual-layer screening, with particular attention paid to minimising the effect of impedance variations, dielectric losses, intra-pair skew and skin-effect issues.*

The result is a solidity, dynamic range and freedom from digital ‘glare’ rarely encountered in systems where USB is the selected interface, elevating it to bear comparison with S/PDIF and streaming connections.

* Many of these problems — and their solutions — also apply to Ethernet-type streaming audio cables. For more detailed information refer to the Streaming Cables white paper in our Technical Library.