USB Nervosa Thread Decrapifiers, pro interfaces, and bears oh my

anyone here looking for an intona usb isolator?

I got an industrial version with the latest firmware Ill let go for $250 (save $100+shipping and import fees)

 

Yes. I had a friend come over and try it too- he has an Aurender streamer that can play locally via buffering the streamed music. He said that it sounded the same as when he removed the internet in and just played locally- lower noise floor, less harsh presentation all around.

 

What's the consensus of Intona USB Isolater?

 

it's really great with shit dacs, provides them with galvanic isolation, reclocking and clean power. Big upgrade over the schiit usb implementation imo. step up from the intona would be something like the mutec

I have an industrial one I am looking to sell if interested

 

So it would be useful if one were to buy a Gungnir Multibit and use USB?

 

Can anyone recommend a US based vendor that sells the mutec 3+ usb that may sell below mrsp? thanks

 

yeah saw that, I'd get it, but don't have room for that LPS and not really interested in the regen.

 

Yep, I have one under MSRP for sale. PM me. This was part of the group buy over here, and i decided to go another direction.

 

In the meantime, they kicked Amir out of WBAF, lol.

 

Is the other direction the microRendu?

Looks interesting, but rather expensive for what it is, and am unsure how it could be better specifically for Schiit DACs whose USB input performance is noticeably inferior to SPDIF.

 

LOL, no. I have to get that yet. I have so many changes in my system lately I have to wait for things to settle before I can decide. i do know Mutec 3+USB cascaded don't make much of a difference, in my setup(s).

 

I recevied an LH Labs Revive today.. noticeably better than my schiit wyrd which billp modded with different caps. I'm using it with a Jay's Audio 5V LPS instead of the internal battery

 

I'm not sure if this one has been posted already...
http://www.diyinhk.com/shop/audio-k...noise-1uv-regulator-wmanual-power-switch.html
Looks like this is a half step up from the F1 that people are yammering about? I can't keep track of all this stuff.

 

It uses the newer XMOS XU216 over the F1's XU208, along with a DC jack for external power supply. FWIW I have been really happy with F1 bus-powered out of my laptop. It isolates USB noise and seems to address some of Mojo's digital weirdness.

By the time you buy/mod an enclosure for F1 they will pretty much cost the same though, so this DXIO PRO3Z thingo may be the better option...

 

This is ramping up really quickly, its getting ridiculous. I wonder if people actually listen anymore, everyone seems to be in it for the hardware. Tell us if you find credible reviews anywhere, not just 'ooh, it sounds so good, much better than my previous crappio...' . Though maybe things are moving forward in inches.

 

I'm glad you guys are discussing some of the better ones but truly, there is a new $500+ solution every week. This is a category where I hope clear leaders can emerge in the next year or two and things will settle down.

 

I think the clear leaders are already here, but agree there may be more room for slight improvements as XMOS keeps increasing the horsepower of their processors. We seem to be going in waves. First wave was the pioneering group of Halide, Audiophileo and hiface. Then we got lots of newer XMOS based ones from the Orient as well as established hifi guys like Bel Canto and Musical Fidelity. Prices came down but SQ unfortunately did not evolve that much.

Move forward 5-6 years and we have lots of latest tech from XMOS in bare boards with iffy drivers, relatively low cost cased versions and of course updated versions from the usual suspects. And new entries from some pro guys. I think we might be hitting the wall soon as far as this tech will take us. Yes, you can add some goodies like reclocking to perhaps further enhance things, but I thing we are relatively mature.

When you think about it, we have packetized data being clocked with one protocol (USB), coming in the the device only to get converted and packetized differently with another protocol with an embedded clock. Then the new packets and embedded clock have to be recovered by another receiver in the dac (spdif) and then sent on to the dac chips. I agree we may see some refinement as folks get better at isolating traveling noise and maybe a bit better clocks but I do hope the dac designers will get the nudge and start to implement some of the gains we have been enjoying here directly in their dacs.

Maybe they should spend a bit more than $10-$100 on the usb section, buy the licensing rights to the latest well designed Windows drivers, implement well thought out power schemes as well as galvanic isolation for the USB board. One might think they could use much better data clocks after the USB packets have been decoded and of course they would be skipping the whole re-encode to spdif and go straight i2s to the dac. Yea, I know it would add probably a hundred or more to the cost, but I would pay to eliminate the whole "you need to get this cool new box for your dac" syndrome.

I know many manufacturers might say, hey we have to hit a price point and most folks say it sounds just fine the way we do it. And yes, they are right, it is just fine for those folks. But there are a few of us who might want a luxury version of the dac where the upgraded USB board incorporates all those fun enhancements. Kinda like the base model car vs the luxo edition. If dac guys don't offer it, maybe the guys making the bridges will start to incorporate dac sections?

 

The solutions are better implementations of what came before, but at some point, because of the lack of references, they just sound different. USB is such a bad interface, sonically, still. It may never be as good, though it can jump through hoops (high rate DSD, etc).

 

USB is such a bad interface sonically? Lot of folks bemoan USB and I disagree.

I think we have made tremendous progress since I dumped my rather good CD transport using coaxial Spdif for a Macbook using optical then USB. It is not perfect but If it were so bad, one might agree that the pro guys would still all be using firewire.

Let's step back a moment. How many audio geeks are still using spdif powered cd players to fuel their dacs? Some, perhaps, but I think the vast majority are using computers to manage and listen to their music. And aside from some pcs and Apple machines that have toslink and the purpose built desktop type pcs with great sounding spdfi cards, how are these folks getting the data to their dacs?

USB.

I think it can be made to sound rather good and in many cases the same as good spdif. I think some of the problem is, as you state, "better implementations of what came before", yet not all of the better things make it into all designs. We can only hope they start using all the tricks.

Now maybe this whole ethernet craze may prove to be more beneficial to a sole audiophile but for now it appears to be just another flavor (equal according to some) of a good usb implmentation.

Unless I am missing something, our choices are limited. We either have to dump our computers and buy music servers with spdif out (not a bad idea if they can work out some of the usability kinks, gapless on some for example) as they come down in price and sound better.

Or we all have to get desktops with hot rod audiophile cards or we just keep using USB whether with better dac input stages or via bridges or some other USB fronted device.