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iFi spdif purifier?

iridium

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iridium

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Had not heard of it. I went ahead and ordered it.

As a result, instead of hotdogs for lunch tomorrow, I am down to bread and water......

"bread and water" - one of my favorite meals; must be done just right!

iridium.
 

iridium

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Melted snow run through an activated carbon filter.

iridium.
 

watchnerd

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I have a Wyred4Sound Remedy Reclocker, which can be used to switch from Coax to S/PDIF. It also reclocks the stream.

Does it lower jitter? Yep, measurably so.

Is it audible?

I doubt I could pass a double-blind test, although when sighted I kinda-sorta-maybe feel like it lets me relax into the music more. Sometimes.

Of course, so do several other listening augments, so take it FWIW.
 

Soniclife

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Isnt this only doing what all competent DACs should be doing on their inputs? And as such the chance of it doing anything positive is minimal, but the chance of it doing harm is possible.

I can see the value in using it as an extender for a long run between source and DAC though.
 

FrantzM

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One more product which uses the fact that many (most?) audiophiles (humans?) hear what we are suggested to. The fact that it is said to "purify" the stream of data (whether it accomplishes it in any relevant fashion which is likely the subject of this thread :D) will have some extolling the "dark background" the " cosmically expanded soundstage " and the more "organic" sound. We are at this juncture.
Manufacturers are in business to make money, they tack on our buzzwords and sell us wares... At the end no harm's done: Those who pay for those things have the discretionary income allowing them to do so ... Some mean spirited objectivists, would say , they deserve to pay for their ...gullibility :D.
 
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Thomas savage

Thomas savage

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Had not heard of it. I went ahead and ordered it.

As a result, instead of hotdogs for lunch tomorrow, I am down to bread and water......
LoL , your a champ :)

I can send you some Spam if your hard up? It's great stuff, you will love it.
 

Jakob1863

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One more product which uses the fact that many (most?) audiophiles (humans?) hear what we are suggested to. The fact that it is said to "purify" the stream of data (whether it accomplishes it in any relevant fashion which is likely the subject of this thread :D) will have some extolling the "dark background" the " cosmically expanded soundstage " and the more "organic" sound. We are at this juncture.
Manufacturers are in business to make money, they tack on our buzzwords and sell us wares... At the end no harm's done: Those who pay for those things have the discretionary income allowing them to do so ... Some mean spirited objectivists, would say , they deserve to pay for their ...gullibility :D.

Might be so, but other manufactureres don´t care or just don´t publish the relevant technical specification, at least in case of the mentioned chromecast audio "thing" i couldn´t find it.
Otoh it is well known that Toslink outputs (or more precisely toslink outputs/cable/inputs alltogether) suffer often from higher jitter levels (taken just a number as indication) and archimago measured it too.

As usually, the audibility of these problems is questionable, but what else if not controlled listening tests could help?

@Soniclife,
Isnt this only doing what all competent DACs should be doing on their inputs? And as such the chance of it doing anything positive is minimal, but the chance of it doing harm is possible.
<snip>

It would be nice, if it were no longer a problem, but which way should one know?
Looking at specifications for all DACs and for example DAC equipped speakers i rarely see specified jitter transfer functions.

Taken the "objectionists world view" from the past, there should have never been an audible problem with S/PDIF or Toslink, but unfortunately there were some.....
 

Darwin

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I have one between the optical output of my Samsung JS9000 Tv and Kef LS50W speakers and am getting a little more detail and cleaner sound. It is noticeable for me and others when A/Bing.
Some Samsung TVs are known to have issues with Sonos Playbars and audio dropouts via optical and people using this in between are reporting those to be solved with this.
It seems some Samsung TV’s have high jitter in the optical output. There is a very long thread about his in the Sonos forums. I don’t have a Play at myself nor would I buy one but I do have two stere paired Sonos Ones in the bedroom mostly for Pandora and controlling devices with Alexa.
A third case where this improved things is connecting an airport express to the optical port of Vanatoo One speakers. The latest AirPort Extreme is measured to have high jitter and it caused dropouts with these speakers. So I used a 3rd gen Apple TV with optical port instead. This is for AirPlay by the way. Putting the ifi between the AirPort Extreme and speakers stopped those dropouts too.
 
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drumsbanger

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Amir,

I have a Chromecast Audio outputting from Toslink into a Schiit Modi Multibit DAC. From everything I have been reading, the Chromecast puts out a horrendous amount of jitter through its optical output. Thus, the iFi is recommended. Have you taken a look at the results from the output of the ifi being fed by a Chromecast? I just ordered the ifi, and I am wondering if I should cancel it?

Thank you so much for all your work. This is very informative.
 

RayDunzl

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From everything I have been reading, the Chromecast puts out a horrendous amount of jitter through its optical output.

Amir can comment on jitter from video sources, when he feels better.

Meanwhile:

https://archimago.blogspot.com/2016/02/measurements-google-chromecast-audio_27.html

"As you can see, there are some jitter sidebands in the 16-bit J-Test but it's the 24-bit J-Test that suggests this device is quite jittery compared to what I have seen in the past. In fact the strongest sidebands with the 24-bit J-Test had an amplitude about 95dB below the primary signal at 12kHz. This is one of the most "jittery" results I have seen. Nonetheless, realize that 95dB is still a very big number and this is not going to pose an issue despite claims by the most golden-eared audiophile! "
 

Darwin

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I don't think much of archimago and one of the reasons is he makes up his mind first then comes up with "data" later. He also likes to take a contrary position to everyone else. He should not be taken seriously.
He is the only one I have seen say this about Chromecast. Everyone else says the jitter is very high. That's easy to find.
You get what you pay for and with Chromecast you don't get much but Google gets your data to sell to advertisers. Creepy.
 

RayDunzl

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