AudioQuest JitterBug USB Filter Review

[Figuy1017]

We really do live in an era of the death of expertise.
Who would have thought education would be so easily ignored and complete rubbish accepted.

When you through out objectively you open a pandoras box of idiocracy

 

[modes]

amirm, you may have run your limited battery of tests but what about the improved clarity, insight, dynamics, the weightier, more solid and !precise! sound?

Reportedly after introducing a Jitterbug®, this happens:

Fed a CD rip of Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ Don’t Forget Me, there’s more meat on the bones of the opening guitar riff, there’s more solidity to each note and you can hear the subtle differences as different levels of force are applied to the strings.
Drum thwacks hit with even more conviction, punctuating the track in all the right places without disrupting its rhythm. There’s also more detail and insight to the echo and reverb that halos around Anthony Kiedis’s vocal.
Each piece of the sonic jigsaw is there and you’re presented with a rich, detailed picture, even if you swap to a 320kbps Spotify stream of the same track.
Take JitterBug out of the chain and you’re back to square one. The song sounds vague in comparison. Those punctuation marks and leading edges are all less pronounced. The clarity is replaced by a murky fog and as a result, rhythms are harder to follow. It’s like the difference between having a hangover and a clear head...

Now we just need W*F's team to evaluate 3 of those in series...with any luck the further improvements will prove exponential!

 

[q3cpma]

amirm, you may have run your limited battery of tests but what about the improved clarity, insight, dynamics, the weightier, more solid and !precise! sound?

Reportedly after introducing a Jitterbug®, this happens:

Fed a CD rip of Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ Don’t Forget Me, there’s more meat on the bones of the opening guitar riff, there’s more solidity to each note and you can hear the subtle differences as different levels of force are applied to the strings.
Drum thwacks hit with even more conviction, punctuating the track in all the right places without disrupting its rhythm. There’s also more detail and insight to the echo and reverb that halos around Anthony Kiedis’s vocal.
Each piece of the sonic jigsaw is there and you’re presented with a rich, detailed picture, even if you swap to a 320kbps Spotify stream of the same track.
Take JitterBug out of the chain and you’re back to square one. The song sounds vague in comparison. Those punctuation marks and leading edges are all less pronounced. The clarity is replaced by a murky fog and as a result, rhythms are harder to follow. It’s like the difference between having a hangover and a clear head...

Now we just need W*F's team to evaluate 3 of those in series...with any luck the further improvements will prove exponential!

2/10, can do better.

 

[Killingbeans]

If it's a joke, it does have a bit too much ambiguity going on. It could use a ''.

 

[amirm]

Reportedly after introducing a Jitterbug®, this happens:

Fed a CD rip of Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ Don’t Forget Me, there’s more meat on the bones of the opening guitar riff, there’s more solidity to each note and you can hear the subtle differences as different levels of force are applied to the strings.
Drum thwacks hit with even more conviction, punctuating the track in all the right places without disrupting its rhythm. There’s also more detail and insight to the echo and reverb that halos around Anthony Kiedis’s vocal.
Each piece of the sonic jigsaw is there and you’re presented with a rich, detailed picture, even if you swap to a 320kbps Spotify stream of the same track.
Take JitterBug out of the chain and you’re back to square one. The song sounds vague in comparison. Those punctuation marks and leading edges are all less pronounced. The clarity is replaced by a murky fog and as a result, rhythms are harder to follow. It’s like the difference between having a hangover and a clear head...

I tried that and everything you said came true. Problem is, no veil was removed. Microdynamics did not change. Harmonic structure was not there either. Bass was still slow as well. And we all know slow bass is bad.

Worst part was that despite all those improvements, my wife did not say a thing about the sound being better! And she followed the routine, not caring what I was doing. I thought, "any minute now she is going to wonder what I have changed." But she walked right by! Even the dogs ignored me which means the ultrasonics had not improved either.

Next, I fired up my analyzer to measure PRAT. It too showed no improvement.

So my original review stands. Avoid at all costs!!!

 

[Sal1950]

amirm, you may have run your limited battery of tests but what about the improved clarity, insight, dynamics, the weightier, more solid and !precise! sound?

PLEASE, I know it's the Christmas holidays, but save those types of fairy tales for the little bitty kids.
I gives them that warm, hugged, and choked with a Nordorst $10K power cable feeling.

 

[Human Bass]

Here's a new for me product from Nordost.
View attachment 41382
"The QPOINT Resonance Synchronizer emits a subtle field which manipulates all electromechanical resonances within its immediate proximity so that they resonate in unison with each other. By syncing these resonances, the QPOINT eliminates internal electrical noise, enhancing the coherency and timing that is typically lacking in even the most high-end audio systems."
https://www.nordost.com/qrt/qpoint-resonance-synchronizer.php

I don't understand what the above bit of BS is saying but as I get it, you just place this thing in the proximity of your gear and it lifts veils, etc..
All for only $750.00 US! I'm wondering how many I'll need for the 5.2.4 rig to get best results?
High Fidelity PLN has given it a 2019 Product of the Year award.

"I am sometimes ashamed of how little we know about audio, how little we understand about it. We fly to the Moon, we are getting ready to fly to Mars, we have quite good knowledge of how the universe is changing and what its structure is, we have found thousands of planets that are similar to the Earth and we have finally “seen” a black hole, but we still cannot comprehend what (often) negative or (sometimes) positive impact a little wire, a piece of wood or aluminum foil, etc., have on the sound of recordings."
http://highfidelity.pl/@main-941&lang=en

ROTFLMAO, Sal
View attachment 41381

Nordost is really pushing the limits of snake oil. "Well, if they believe that is worthy paying 10k dollars on our cables, im sure this will be welcome".

This product alone should make all the customers and industry consider Nordost as a fraudulent company.

 

[Sal1950]

This product alone should make all the customers and industry consider Nordost as a fraudulent company.

Nope, in many cases it will just raise their image.
The subjectives will take a position that the good folks there must really know their business to design a product that requires understanding such elusive properties.
You have to believe in the magic.

 

[Veri]

You realise how ridiculous that sounds? Jitterbug on a flash drive, having audible effects? :|

Try a blind test rather than relying on "the difference is obvious!". You'd be surprised.

 

[BDWoody]

wired with oyaide continental 5S V2 usb cable

How did you find those impacted things?

 

[AudioSceptic]

RichardView attachment 55422View attachment 55423[/QUOTE]

Hi,

Had the jitterbug lying around for last 1.5 yr as it did not on improve on sound quality of my android headunit to my helix dsp pro mk2 dsp in my car system and was removed .. the ideon 3R did so and it stayed.

Have the allo usb bridge and struggled with the portable usb powered 5TB hdd failing intermittent while the 2TB hdd works fine due to presumably higher power required beyond the 3 dedicated usb bridge's usb port when other processes are running .. connected this 5TB to a nas setup and all is good with need stability except sound quality deteriorated. Perhaps not surprising with 2 more ethernet cables from my router and 10 yrs old dlink dsg 1005A rev 1 switch albeit by a spare ifi usbpower from yester years.

Switched to a 32 bit thumb drive and sound quality improved presumably due to flash memory compared to moving platters of hdd as well as associated lower power aka current.

Now comes to the main story .. plugged the 32gb thumb drive into the jitterbug and into the usb port of the usb bridge and nice surprise. This happened subtlely but obviously:

"the improved clarity, insight, dynamics, the weightier, more solid and !precise! sound?"

Guess depends on application and my system of Denafrips Terminator, Audible Illusion L3A (blackgate version), Sanders Magtech amp, Revel Salon 2 speakers (Amir's also) wired with oyaide continental 5S V2 usb cable, nordost quattrol fil interconnects, cardas clear sc etc. is quite transparent.

YMMV but thought a different positive outcome with the jitterbug may benefit some owners when used with some noisy source like a hdd but certainly even with a thumbdrive.

Cheers.

RichardView attachment 55422View attachment 55423

From a review of your Nordost interconnects <https://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_6_1/nordostquattrofilcable.html>

From a survey we took some time ago, it appears that most of our readers feel that high performance cables make a difference in the sound. Sometimes I wish I could not hear any difference with such cables, but I can, and Quattro Fil made the biggest difference I have yet heard. At first, I thought, well maybe I just want to hear all this detail because the cable is so highly engineered. Then, my wife came into the room and remarked, "Wow, listen to all that detail." Well, I thought, maybe she just wants to hear the improved detail too because she knows how expensive this stuff is. Then, my mother in law arrived for the Christmas holidays, and when we put on some CDs while decorating the tree, she said (unsolicited), "I have that CD at home, and I never knew that drum was in there." Now, she had no idea that I had put in this cable, and had no concept of what the cable might do anyway. To top it all off, she is 80 years old, and in spite of hearing loss that occurs in all of us with aging, she could still tell how great the sound was. This is encouraging, because as I grow older, I can begin to afford nice things like these cables.

It doesn't get any more clichéd than that!

To add: if the Jitterbug really does make a difference, it shows that something else is badly engineered!

 

[Labjr]

Time to unwatch this thread.

 

[mansr]

It doesn't get any more clichéd than that!

Let's put that to the test:

It was a dark and stormy night. My wife was cooking in the kitchen while I was trying out a pair of new speaker cables.

"Are those really that good?" I asked her.

"Oh yes, it's just like taking a bit of music from a record player and then playing it through them."

I sat down at the computer to play some Dark Side Of The Moon. I opened the file from the CD player, and thought, Wow, this is cool.

I was able to see and hear more than I ever could from the speakers I had been using. I began to love music like I had never loved music before.

With a little help from https://talktotransformer.com/.

 

[scott wurcer]

A new spin on the story, my 80 yr. old mother in law heard drums that were not there before.

 

[AudioSceptic]

A new spin on the story, my 80 yr. old mother in law heard drums that were not there before.

Yeah, and seriously (I think) presented as part of a cable review.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Let's put that to the test:


With a little help from https://talktotransformer.com/.

Not bad, but you "cheated". I quoted an actual review. ;-)

 

[mansr]

Not bad, but you "cheated". I quoted an actual review. ;-)

Is there really a difference?

 

[AudioSceptic]

Is there really a difference?

Only that I think that one is supposed to be serious and might (or would?) have persuaded some to waste their money. ;-)

 

[richard_crl032]

Are you attempting something like trolling?

Hi Frans,

Responding is trolling ?

And yours ? Lol !

Cheers.

Richard

 

[Sal1950]

Tried already blind test already and 10 out of 10 times I get it right ... perhaps something wrong with my setup and something right that the jitterbug does in my use case .. dunno and no capability to measure it out.

Would you please detail the steps you used to ensure that the levels were match to within .2 db and how you were able to switch the DUT in and out of the signal chain?