They're not carrying analog signals, its digital data. It either works or it doesn't. The cables wont transmit noise down a data path to the decoded then amplified analog side of the audio system. However I agree, the less connections the better. Less chance of something coming loose.

Its like the $100+ HDMI cables you can buy. Folks love em but they're a huge waste of money. A digital signal is a digital signal no matter how expensive the cable is that carries it. The signal either gets there or it doesn't. There is no noise or degradation as with the analog technology we all got so used to over the years.

 

You could easily find what you need by stopping by GameStop and picking up a PS3 controller cable, then radio shack for whatever else you may need. The PS3 cable is $9.99 and if I recall correctly is 8'. I can't recall who it was who first went looking for that 2nd USB port, but that is extremely handy as it keeps everything hidden and clean. Thank you to whoever that was, and to Barritia for all the pics and being the 1st to tear up his truck and do it so the rest of us could learn how to do it without fear of breaking something!

 

How much cable would you need to go from the location of the 2nd USB port to routing it all the way down the center console, past the shift lever, and into the bottom of the cavernous center console storage cubby?

 

IIRC, the Western Digital Passport External uses power from the USB connection, and does not require an additional power connection. It comes with a short USB cable for this reason...power loss over long cables. It's cool that you got it to work.

 

Not at all true. It doesn't matter to the copper what is traveling through it...analog or digital, makes no difference...it's just electrons zipping about. What does make a difference is the shielding and the quality of the shielding and adherence to specs the cable was manufactured under. Electromagnetic interfrence can and does wreak complete havoc on "digital only cable." Only God knows how many gigabit terminations I've fixed that were sputtering along because lazy installers didn't adhere to specs.


True and not true. An electromagnetic signal over wire has the same limitations no matter the delivery method (analog vs digital). EM interference is a big one here, and as I have stated, adherence to specs is also very important. Further, the less connections the better is because connections are a good spot to pick up stray interference...not because they may become loose.

Beyond that, what you have said about expensive cables is 100% correct. There is no difference between a $100 cable and a $9.99 cable if they are shielded and manufactured to spec.

Good reason why CompUsa went out of business? They tried to sell me a $99 HDMI cable that I got from the Egg for $10. SAME cable. Morans.

 

Yeah i arge that when runing at gigabytes a second a good cable and good connections make a lot of difference. But when your talking bandwidths even as much as blu-ray and dts hd master audio then you shouldnt have any problems at all. the 1's or 0's either get there or they dont. If they dont then the signal stops as i dont think these systems will have any type of packet recovery.

Also about the USB cable problem i had. I have no idea why only certain cables would work. I tried them one at a time to confirm the cables worked in the head unit just to be sure. Well i had 2 short ones the same as the western digital one and neither worked. Then i thought the second slot didnt work and then tried another 5ft usb cable and didnt work. I def thought the second USB was useless by then. So i grabbed my last cable that type for my ps3 controller chrager. Then thing then started to work!! I cant explain why some worked and some didnt. They all worked fine on my laptop?

I have two 5 foot cables and a short cable so in total about 11ft but that was about 4-5ft to much but they were the only cables i had left to do the job.

 

Not even remotely true. The signal gets there or it doesn't get there or it kinda does get there. Don't matter how the signal is coming down the pike. Em interference is Em interference and it will will screw with any type of data coming off the end of a line. I've seen bit being flipped on slow lines and I've seen bits being flipped on fast lines. The signal itself means nothing against the quality of that signal.

 

I always read otherwise. Check out the AVforums as there's a lot of talk about digital cables on there. You may be right but how i have had it explained to me before was it's just like digital TV. When the analogue signal used to be bad and there was interference. you would see this in the picture and sound and it ranged from ok to very bad and you couldn't see the picture and at times understand what they were saying. But digital works differently as if there's any signal loss you will lose complete picture or sound depending on what part of the signal went bad. They said the same goes for digital radio. You either get 100% of audio or 0% of audio. Not like analogue where if there's a signal drop it will just get worse quality.

 

Hey everybody, just to share a bit of information (hopefully it's OK) I found a great place to source all the cables and adapters you need for this mod. Unfortunately, I found it after I'd already paid twice as much on ebay...

http://www.monoprice.com

Dirt cheap cables and adapters. I thought I'd share so everyone could get everything they need to do this mod for about $5 total

 

Totally didnt think of monoprice for USB. I use them for my hdmi cables and they are very cheap. Good shout Spydyrwyr

 

Although I appreciate your informative post, my response was simply in regard to introducing noise into the audio system such as hissing, whine, and popping.

Interference could cause packet loss but it wont show up as the inducted or radiated noise we commonly think of when using improperly installed analog signal wires.

 

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V_Tach is correct, EM noise will not introduce "noise" (hissing or fuzz) into a digital signal. I am an engineer for a test and measurement company, this is what I do for a living. Either the info will get there or not, a poor digital cable could possibly make it more difficult for the receiving unit to distinguish between 1s and 0s, quickly enough, due to distortions that it introduces into the rising edge and falling edge of the digital signal. This could lead to lost packets, but the distortion would have to be really large. But it is likely that the Sony DSP is good enough to read signals with pretty bad rising and falling edges, and probably some bad jitter. If not, you could hear the audible result of pixelation (like on digital cable TV when the signal gets weak). This is why a digital cable signal can be transmitted on the same cable as an analog cable signal. Nerd talk, I know, sorry.

Now it's time to install a USB cable into my console before someone jacks my ipod!

Here's my question:

How did you guys pop open the tray that holds the center channel speaker? Is there anything that might break?

 

The tray in my truck has a rubber matt that can be removed and the under that there's 2 screws that can be removed and the cover will slide backwards and out. I have no idea if the other trucks have the same setup as my platinum but im almost certain you should have some kind of access there.

 

My XLT only has the tray, no center speaker. Its the same though. Lift the rubber mat and expose two screws.