Innuos Phoenix USB Reclocker Review

[AdrianusG]

Don’t forget the MASSIVE profit margin.

So, lets say $1500 for all hardware (including nice case )+ software (which would have been acceptable if the software would be very good!) and then just $19200 as profit margin, not bad, not bad at all.

 

[Thighsofsteel]

So, lets say $1500 for all hardware (including nice case )+ software (which would have been acceptable if the software would be very good!) and then just $19200 as profit margin, not bad, not bad at all.

The Innuos Sense lib mgmt software is the same across every product n the range. I quite like it as I have a pre loved Zen mini mk3 to stream and play ripped FLAC files. I doubt it is $1500, maybe at retail pc component prices, but I would suggest 25-30% less than that.

 

[Billy Budapest]

So, lets say $1500 for all hardware (including nice case )+ software (which would have been acceptable if the software would be very good!) and then just $19200 as profit margin, not bad, not bad at all.

They have priced it as a Veblen good, with the theory being that they will sell more units as the price increases due to the biases of the market segment they are targeting.

Because they are a small company and probably would have problems scaling up their production, this strategy to sell a smaller amount of units at a higher price makes sense. However, the price should have some sort of relationship to the BOM, and this doesn’t seem to. It’s as if they pulled the price out of a hat.

 

[DavidM1]

They have priced it as a Veblen good, with the theory being that they will sell more units as the price increases due to the biases of the market segment they are targeting.

Exactly. Pricing strategy and cost of production are two different things. For mass market sales, costs become critical. For this stuff, not so much.

Think of it as a piece of art… just less likely to appreciate.

 

[Billy Budapest]

Exactly. Pricing strategy and cost of production are two different things. For mass market sales, costs become critical. For this stuff, not so much.

Think of it as a piece of art… just less likely to appreciate.

I’m not sure that it warrants consideration as art, though. Art has intrinsic value due to its uniqueness, history, and skill of the artist. It does not first and foremost derive its value from its pricing.

For most Veblen goods, their value is derived solely from their high pricing. It’s tautological thinking, really. They are desired because they are status symbols—not very many people can afford them, and the higher they are priced, the more exclusive they seem—and thus, the demand for them for those who can afford the price climbs higher. The actual quality of the good is irrelevant—it is the perceived quality that determines the price. The price is what creates the value and really nothing else.

I guess the common mistake among the masses is to confuse a high price with high performance. In this case, you don’t get that—you get zero performance as the gear does nothing audible.

 

[KSTR]

In this case we even have sloppy and cheap design and construction paired with horrible pricing.
Folded sheet metal chassis, very generic back-panel printing like from any far-east low cost product, self-adhesive cable-tie footers, stuff like that. Absolutely zero "upper class" product design and engineering that could be admired.

And for the function... a simple USB hub chip with a maybe a bit better than standard clock oscillator, but no galvanic isolation (which would be much more important)? They must be kidding.

 

[Sokel]

Among other things, you pay for an overkill 300 VA toroidal transformer in a digital device that is rated to consume 12 W idle and 15 W peak (per specs). Also, SMPSs with GaNs (called "switching regulators" according to the article), while the specs misleadingly state "triple-linear PS." And so on.

???
Are you talking about 100 euro tops with all the bells and whistles even if they choose some "audio grade" one?

TTSA0300 - Transformer AUDIO TSA300VA - voltage to 50V

Audio grade transformer is dedicated for use in power amplifiers and other high-end

sklep.toroidy.pl

That's on par with an ESS PRO chip, hardly a burden for such a BOM.

 

[lc6]

???
Are you talking about 100 euro tops with all the bells and whistles even if they choose some "audio grade" one?

TTSA0300 - Transformer AUDIO TSA300VA - voltage to 50V

Audio grade transformer is dedicated for use in power amplifiers and other high-end

sklep.toroidy.pl

That's on par with an ESS PRO chip, hardly a burden for such a BOM.

That's exactly my point. A device with a MSRP of ~$21k with a BOM ~5% of that is being "justified" by an overkill design with a bunch of high-end-sounding acronyms and technical nonsense audiophools can brag about to their buddies and the reviewers can spin stories around. Given a ~40% dealer margin typical with low-vol products, the manufacturer's gross margin is likely 90+%.

 

[srkbear]

Indeed I may have inadvertently latched on to jitter as being the metric to focus on here, whereas yes sideband noise is perhaps the correct metric I should have been harping on about - that may have confused a few no doubt and I can only apologies, but not being an engineer I was always trying to approach this from a logic standpoint, whereby that is to control a variable/remove an assumption.

The saliant point remains however, that the Modi test is able to detect and differentiate its output based on the incoming USB quality (which the D70s is notably immune to), and thus why I think the test would have been useful to show the Innuos even does the basics of what it says it can do at an implementation level. The suspicious mind such as I have, wouldn't be surprised if it did sweet FA to the signal! If amirm still had the Modi 2 and it wasn't much time to run the test, would have been nice to see that result. - But yes I think you're right we would indeed be looking at noise and not jitter as the resulting distinction (my bad).

I’m not sure you realize the level of expertise you’re quibbling with here. Nor does it seem like you’re listening thoughtfully. This product is being marketed as a “reclocking” device meant to improve the audio quality of USB connections between sources and DACs—when asynchronous DAC connections are blind to any such signal alterations, sing signal timing occurs within the DAC itself. Arguably there is no point in subjecting this device to bench testing in the first place, because it’s a redundant component in the signal chain. But Amir proved that it contributed nothing in the way of improvement—or any change at all (predictably)—in the final result.

You seem to be asking Amir to prove that this useless chunk of cash does something that it isn’t even promoted to do—and the most knowledgeable and experienced contributors to this site keep reasonably explaining to you why this pursuit isn’t necessary or even logistically feasible to be done with the equipment Amir has available. Other than arguing for its own sake, what are you attempting to accomplish or prove here? Do you believe this device possesses some purpose that Amir’s testing hasn’t done justice to?

 

[MingChops]

I’m not sure you realize the level of expertise you’re quibbling with here. Nor does it seem like you’re listening thoughtfully. This product is being marketed as a “reclocking” device meant to improve the audio quality of USB connections between sources and DACs—when asynchronous DAC connections are blind to any such signal alterations, sing signal timing occurs within the DAC itself. Arguably there is no point in subjecting this device to bench testing in the first place, because it’s a redundant component in the signal chain. But Amir proved that it contributed nothing in the way of improvement—or any change at all (predictably)—in the final result.

You seem to be asking Amir to prove that this useless chunk of cash does something that it isn’t even promoted to do—and the most knowledgeable and experienced contributors to this site keep reasonably explaining to you why this pursuit isn’t necessary or even logistically feasible to be done with the equipment Amir has available. Other than arguing for its own sake, what are you attempting to accomplish or prove here? Do you believe this device possesses some purpose that Amir’s testing hasn’t done justice to?

I can't believe this is still being brought up. Very simply - I believe using the Modi 2 would have been interesting, and my rationale behind that was because the Modi 2 has shown before, even over USB, to have been suspectable to the source: References, Amir testing other USB devices:

1)

(https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...audioquest-jitterbug-usb-filter-review.10205/)

2)

(https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s-of-intona-usb-isolator-for-audio-dacs.2616/)

Now for the Innous Phoneix USB device, which is designed to, and I quote "The PhoenixUSB Reclocker takes the USB signal from any source and completely regenerates it to an extremely high-precision signal to feed into your DAC, allowing it to perform at its best." - the Modi 2 was not used to test with. It was only subjected to a test with the D70S, a device with a quality USB implementation that doesn't give a hoot about the source.

So yeah it just struck me as odd to test only with a device that wouldn't show up differences, and not run a test with the 'gold standard of crap' that can potentially show differences.
Now, I've freely admitted I was probably arguing for the wrong technical reasons, and that caused no doubt the technically minded as I'm sure you are, to scratch your heads. I apologised for that. But the logic behind my reasoning was simply to a see a test with a device (the Modi 2) that would show up if the Innous was actually regenerating/decrapifying the USB in anyway, I think makes sense still frankly.

I've always maintained it's essentially a moot point, because who the hell want's to use a DAC with a crap USB implementation..., but that's beside the point, the tests are there to see if the Innous does anything, right?

 

[Salt]

.., but that's beside the point, the tests are there to see if the Innous does anything, right?

Right.

 

[pkane]

I can't believe this is still being brought up. Very simply - I believe using the Modi 2 would have been interesting, and my rationale behind that was because the Modi 2 has shown before, even over USB, to have been suspectable to the source: References, Amir testing other USB devices:

1)
View attachment 448744
(https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...audioquest-jitterbug-usb-filter-review.10205/)

2)
View attachment 448742
(https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s-of-intona-usb-isolator-for-audio-dacs.2616/)

Now for the Innous Phoneix USB device, which is designed to, and I quote "The PhoenixUSB Reclocker takes the USB signal from any source and completely regenerates it to an extremely high-precision signal to feed into your DAC, allowing it to perform at its best." - the Modi 2 was not used to test with. It was only subjected to a test with the D70S, a device with a quality USB implementation that doesn't give a hoot about the source.

So yeah it just struck me as odd to test only with a device that wouldn't show up differences, and not run a test with the 'gold standard of crap' that can potentially show differences.
Now, I've freely admitted I was probably arguing for the wrong technical reasons, and that caused no doubt the technically minded as I'm sure you are, to scratch your heads. I apologised for that. But the logic behind my reasoning was simply to a see a test with a device (the Modi 2) that would show up if the Innous was actually regenerating/decrapifying the USB in anyway, I think makes sense still frankly.

I've always maintained it's essentially a moot point, because who the hell want's to use a DAC with a crap USB implementation..., but that's beside the point, the tests are there to see if the Innous does anything, right?

I know it's been said, but bears repeating that using a $4k+ USB reclocker to try to fix an issue with a USB receiver in a $150 DAC is idiotic to the extreme. Especially since most (99%?) of all DACs reviewed here don't have a problem with their receivers. Maybe you're interested in such a test, but I certainly would find nothing of value in it.

If you need galvanic isolation, use a $30 USB isolator, and if you need USB reclocked for some unknown reason, use a simple USB hub for $10. There's zero reason to believe any of this will improve anything, except if you have a ground loop, in which case use that cheap isolator. It works perfectly well. The rest is just marketing and snake oil.

Right.

Wrong

 

[Salt]

I know it's been said, but bears repeating that using a $4k+ USB reclocker to try to fix an issue with a USB receiver in a $150 DAC is idiotic to the extreme. Especially since most (99%?) of all DACs reviewed here don't have a problem with their receivers. Maybe you're interested in such a test, but I certainly would find nothing of value in it.

If you need galvanic isolation, use a $30 USB isolator, and if you need USB reclocked for some unknown reason, use a simple USB hub for $10. There's zero reason to believe any of this will improve anything, except if you have a ground loop, in which case use that cheap isolator. It works perfectly well. The rest is just marketing and snake oil.


Wrong

Reference was the last sentence, so not right ?

 

[pkane]

Reference was the last sentence, so not right ?

Reference was the whole post, so no, not right.

 

[amirm]

I've always maintained it's essentially a moot point, because who the hell want's to use a DAC with a crap USB implementation..., but that's beside the point, the tests are there to see if the Innous does anything, right?

Not "anything." This is the company claim:

There is no qualification that the DAC must suffer as badly as Modi 2 for it to do anything. The Modi 2 is specifically sensitive to 5 volt power. You could have countless cheap solutions to remedy that. Having this device only do that much is of no merit. The larger claim is that it makes any DAC better and that is what I tested.

 

[Salt]

Reference was the whole post, so no, not right.

Text simplified... so right now?

 

[MingChops]

There is no qualification that the DAC must suffer as badly as Modi 2 for it to do anything. The Modi 2 is specifically sensitive to 5 volt power. You could have countless cheap solutions to remedy that. Having this device only do that much is of no merit. The larger claim is that it makes any DAC better and that is what I tested.

Sure, but running that test would’ve at least provided a control to confirm the device was doing something. I think you mentioned earlier that you assumed it would pass such a test - but my point all along has been that it’s better not to assume when dealing with measurements and data.

Would it really have taken long to rerun the Modi test and grab a screenshot?

Honestly, I thought this had been put to bed. I don’t understand why I’m still getting berated by others for raising what I thought was a fair procedural point. Yes, I got some of the technical details wrong earlier - I’ve owned that - but I still think the logic of running a known test first makes sense. Dismissing it as having no merit, especially when it’s been useful in prior USB-related evaluations, just seems like a missing step in what could have been a more robust testing process.