Comment by dschuetz
4 years ago
So where exactly does USB-C fall into?
I have 2 different generations of USB-C hosts, and they behave quite differently when approaching max cap, especially with high-quality low-latency audio (USB-C was supposed to be de-facto replacement for FireWire).
USB-C is a connector type, like USB-A (usually known as the classic USB plug) and USB-B (usually the other side of said plug, a square kind of connector). USB-B had other offspring like miniUSB and microUSB (note that in these cases on the other side of the cable you usually have a USB-A plug).
USB-C is the first time cables have the same connector on both sides, so it obsoletes USB-A and USB-B. But what is sent over USB-C? Can be USB 3 with which it is often conflated because they came around the same time, but it can also be USB 2, so it is a bit hard to tell. But USB 3 can use old style USB-A as well (the blue plugs with the same shape as the classic USB plugs) and USB-C (the microUSB plugs with an extension off to the side).
Can be USB 3 [...] USB 2, so it is a bit hard to tell.
...or Thunderbolt, USB 4, DisplayPort (through Alt-mode or encapsulated in Thunderbolt), or HDMI (Alt-mode), or MHL (Alt-mode), USB Power Delivery...
Unfortunately, not every cable with USB-C connectors can carry all of these. E.g. there are USB-C cables that can only carry USB 2. Or cables that can carry USB 3, but not Thunderbolt. Also, not all cables can carry the same wattage for power delivery.
It's a mess.
Worse, there are no "best" cables longer than 0.5m: any longer than that, Thunderbolt 3 requires active cables which don't pass non-Thunderbolt data beyond, IIRC, 480 Mbps.
As someone who spent many years using a mix of 25/50/68/80-pin fast/ultra/… single-ended, LVD and HVD parallel SCSI devices, however, USB-C/Thunderbolt cabling still feels like a breath of fresh air.
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Of course USB-C makes this worse, but the problem already started earlier: a few years ago I connected my phone to my computer with a USB-A to micro USB cable and was scratching my head why it didn't work. Then I remembered that the cable had come with some Bluetooth headphones and was only a charging cable without data lines...
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There was a period of time where a google engineer was producting review on amazon about which usb-c cable would make your laptop burn. That was fun, and totally not the sign of an overbloated standard.
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>note that in these cases on the other side of the cable you usually have a USB-A plug
Usually a full-size USB-A, you mean, because what we commonly know as mini-USB and micro-USB are actually mini-B and micro-B, which have corresponding (but now rarely used) micro-A and micro-A ports. Before USB-OTG, USB used to be an explicitly directional protocol, with a master and a slave device.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/USB_2.0_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware
It's orthogonal.
Usb A is a host side connection Usb B (normal/mini/micro) is a client side connector Usb C is a 2 way connector.
Each of them can be implemented for each USB version, except USB C came later and makes no sense befor USB 3.
Then USB versions added features, signalling conventions and wires. But the USB A and B connector are backward compatible all the way to USB 1.0 1.5Mbit/s
On-the-Go allows mini and micro B to be host as well.
Good question. I bought a RaidSonic Icy Box IB-1121-C31 USB 3.1 (10Gbit) S-ATA dock recently (with a USB Type C connector) that came with a USB C cable and had a buy a special "USB-A - USB type C cable" to achieve 10Gbit/s with the 10GBit/s USB A connector of my mainboard.
The "USB A - USB type C cables" that i had already only worked up to 480MBit/s.