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

This is my thought for the day. Actually, it's my thought for life. It's probably crap, but hey...

Decent engineering is for the real world. A power supply handles, or should do, the vagaries that arrive at it. And if some very expensive piece of kit is not able to handle the stuff that arrives at its various orifices, without the sticker of things therein having to worry and spend and worry and spend and worry and spend, then it could well be over-priced bad engineering.

Mind you, I love balanced cabling. I love it because it is engineered, whereas phono stuff was a historical accident. If I currently had balanced gear, I'd use it. Hats off to its developers. But I don't pretend that I need it for a ten inch interconnect, or a six-foot cable. There are extreme situations, but I don't live next door to a broadcasting station, power generating, or a medical lab running high-power magnetic and x-ray stuff. Some people do. (they probably need a Faraday Cage more than nervosa hifi equipment! Or lead-lined walls.)

Then, yes, I know this is SBAF, not Hydrogenaudio, but... What consenting adults and hifi equipment stick in each other's orifices in private is entirely up to them. I won't say I don't judge: I have my own opinions, prejudices, tastes, preferences, and jesus-that's-disgusting levels, but, still, it's their right to do that stuff. But if they start to tell me that it makes music sound better, then my disbelief soars unless they provide at least some level of objective testing.

I don't ask Hydrogenaud.io approved double blind. Just some sort of blind testing, even half-arsed.

Yes, it's just me, and I know... better I just stayed away from threads like this and kept my ellipses to myself...




(By the way, how did bears ever get into the thread title?)

 

It's a play on words, referencing this...

 

After using an ifi isilencer + on all four USB ports I regularly use, between 2 PC's and 2 different setups, for a few weeks without removing them, and then actually A/B'ing them on both setups, I've concluded that the change the "ReBalance" feature makes to the signal line is just bad -- it removes low-end and decay detail, but there's fake topping A90 type clarity added, and my TH900 chain I had those positive first impressions on didn't suffer for this as much as other setups I tried later.

The first unit I bought was also a return without being advertised that way, and had a lot of burn-in, because the other 3 all sounded worse when first installed.

I think the 5v power filtration they do is still legitimate, if you have some USB ports on a surge protector or outlet you want to add some filtration to, or if you have an adapter to inject power into a USB cable w/o using the mobo's, you could use a second port and the ifi isilencer+ that way to avoid using another outlet. These are poor value propositions, but might make sense if you got an isilencer + very cheap used or included with other used gear you're getting, idk.

I wound up sticking 2 onto USB ports on the surge protector for my bedside rig, to power the active USB cables to each PC, and I plugged the other 2 into the outputs of my ipower x -> ipower USB combo to create "ifi's Basilisk" powering the cables in my deskside rig. I really doubt I'll hear any improvement with this over the previous setup, especially as all the Basilisk powers are tiny USB signal repeater chips, but it doesn't sound worse for the addition, and I just subjectively like having more capacitors in the chain.