Continuing our theme of “making things that people keep asking us for” that we’ve taken on this year, the DJTT product team has launched USB-C-to-C Chroma Cables. Here’s a little bit about these cables and why we’re making them now.
Not interested in the backstory and just want better USB-C cables?
About these new Chroma Cables
We’re releasing them in six colors, and they’re rated (and lab-tested to industry standards) at USB-C 3.2 Gen 2. This provides a 10Gbps data rate and 100W power delivery. For the last month, I’ve had one of our final samples hooked up in my home setup running a 32″ monitor as my main display, which is also charging my laptop and connecting all peripherals through the monitor’s own USB-C hub. It’s solid as a rock.
We’ve been testing them with all types of devices over the last few months -both for charging and data transfer. USB-C is finally becoming pretty universal (except for on DJ gear, but we’re betting that’ll change in the next few years if the DJM-S5 is any indication, as well as the Reloop Mixon 8).
These Chroma Cables come with a color-matched Chroma Tie velcro-style strap, just like all of our cables. But if you want more of those (let us help clean up your DJ booth’s cable management) we now have them available in 20 packs as well:
USB-C Cable challenges, historically
USB-C to C cables historically have been a pretty big challenge for cable manufacturers – and that’s a part of why we’re releasing these now and not five years ago. The big historical issues early generations of these cables had a lot of variables related to power delivery. Since USB-C can deliver 100 watts of power as well as data (video, audio, file transfers, etc), there’s always a concern about making sure the devices connected on each end don’t ask for or send too much power for one another. Some might remember Google engineer Benson Leung writing up scathing reviews of USB-C cables that were out of spec back in 2015 – those were the wild-west days of USB-C cable manufacturing.
These days, including a “e-marker” chip on USB-C cables that acts like a talkback communicator (sending info to both devices about the cable itself) is much easier, and most cable companies include it. There are still the occasional really-crappy cables out there that don’t, but it’s rare. Our cable has that chip, and it essentially means that devices on both ends know exactly what the cable is capable of. And yes, before any engineers comment – I know that this explanation is a substantial simplification of what’s happening here.
Another interesting element with USB-C is length versus power delivery – any longer than a 1 meter / 3.2ft cable means that power transfer is harder with a passive cable. Data speed also starts to become limited after a meter. That’s why ours are 1 meter exactly!
We’ve already heard about some of you who might be interested in super-short versions of these cables (like for hard drives, etc), so we’ll be looking into that possibility! If you have any other suggestions, let the team know in the comments below.
Bonus top-secret thing: New Chroma RCA Cables are also coming soon
One more tidbit for those of you reading this far: we’re working on a new release of RCA cables as well. We’ve used a lot of feedback since our last RCA cable design to make these new cables, and I think you’ll all be very excited by some of the changes we’ve made. If you’d like to be the first to know when these new RCA cables are in stock, I’ll send you an email when we announce them. Just put your email here, no spam, promise.
