1. USB audio device is one of the primary music sources now; and
2. USB connection is horrible for transmission audio,
So funny. USB connection is HORRIBLE for transmission audio. So horrible it almost never misses a single bit. In testing I have sent more than 20 billion bits across the simplest USB connection, and it was 100% perfect. I have done this several times. We all likely have listened to many, many trillions of bits without ever having gotten one wrong.
Yes USB, so something HAS to be DONE!
Okay up next:
When directly connected to the computer, all the DACs had the hallmark of the “digital sound”, dry, edgy, flat, boring and basically horrible.
Of course I seem to remember this being the complaint of CD transports that didn't cost the same as a new luxury car. How now, finally, with asynch USB, we had a better, cleaner, better timed, lower jitter interface that let the clock right beside the DAC smooth it all up. Well that was until audiophile inventors had time to invent problems they could solve. Problems that made USB connection fraught with danger and evil difficulty. The digital CD was devil enough. But the master monster of all digital would have to be venomous noise spewing computers moving all those bits around. Somehow as the power, the currents and the voltages that CPUs and related stuff runs at goes down in the name of efficiency in the audiophile bizzarro world noise over USB has become a phantom menace of huge proportion.
So then I love how he measures the jitterbug and the iPurifier basically confirming they do nothing for the noisy USB. Yet they rate 50 out of 100. They sound okay even though they do nothing.
Then when he gets to those that do reduce noise on the USB lines they of course score better as they sound better.
Yet you can't see an improvement in the DAC analog output. Yet it sounds better.
Now this is all before you consider if it even makes sense to measure noise levels of the USB rails over audio frequencies. It does if the output of the DAC shows a connection. Which we already know it doesn't.
Of course the Intona is then measured and found to benefit the measurements being made not at all. Yet it is judged to be a big help for sound quality. Well that sounds as if that invalidates the usefulness of the measurements that had no connection with sound quality objectively or subjectively or in comparison to nothing at all. A triple fail.