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USB Add-On Devices Measurements, including Regen

Fitzcaraldo215

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Ok, so over at CA Forum, there is a thread allegedly "testing" various add ons to cure the well known, undeniable ills of USB2.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f...fier2-intona-w4s-recovery-any-more-%85-31332/


Check out the unbelievable 60dB!! noise level improvement by the Regen - post 5. As you will recall, measurements of that device proved baffling and beyond his capabilities to John Swenson, its developer, and he never did any to this day, AFAIK.

For me, there are just too many questions about the testing protocol to even begin to place any credibility here.
 

amirm

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He is measuring the spectrum of *USB Power* line. Let me repeat, he is measuring the power provided by the USB bus and plotting its spectrum.

USB even when feeding a USB DAC, goes through another stage of regulation and filtering. What goes into it, is NOT what comes out of it to power the internal DAC.

And of course no high-end DAC uses USB power for anything.

What matters to all of us is the sound coming out of the DAC. I have made his measurements except I measured the output of the DAC and none of these devices resulted in any noise reduction. This proves the fallacy of attempting to measure USB power as if your speakers are hooked up to it.
 

Blumlein 88

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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.
 
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RayDunzl

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I don't use my USB because I can't run it though my DRC.
 

watchnerd

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I don't use my USB because I can't run it though my DRC.

I don't use USB because the distance from my home office with my Roon server and NAS is a hundred feet or so.

I have to use that other "not meant for audio" digital interface: Ethernet

(actually wifi + ethernet)
 

watchnerd

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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 them 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. A triple fail.

Here's the part that really blows my mind:

If they think USB is so crappy for audio and prone to electrical noise, why not use Toslink?

It's a) meant for audio and b) doesn't have electrical issues.
 

watchnerd

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So funny.

Even funnier:

AQ Jitterbug: $49
Uptone Regen: $175
ifi iUSB 3.0: $399
ifi iPurifier: $79
ifi iPurifier 2: $110
Intona: $348
W4S Recovery: $199

Total: $1359

That's a fair bit of coin for a group of devices that don't do anything.
 
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Blumlein 88

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There is this picture from the CA thread. No way any of that picks up noise from nearby devices or interacts in unexpected ways. Me, I just plug in a Belden and it works.

32615d1484857770-group-test-universal-serial-bus-industry-standard-cables-connectors-and-communications-protocols-between-computers-and-electronic-devices-gadgets-aq-jitterbug-uptone-regen-ifi-iusb3-0-ipurifier-ipurifier2-intona-w4s-recovery-any-more-%85-1484857770861.jpg
 

watchnerd

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March Audio

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I have just added to this thread (ncore1). The measurements posted by DM have problems.

My measurements mirror Intonas own measurements - a very quiet 5volts.
 
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watchnerd

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I have just added to this thread (ncore1). The measurements posted by DM have problems.

My measurements mirror Intonas own measurements - a very quiet 5volts.

The whole thread, including his numeric grades, seems to be full of measurement errors, data mining, sample selection bias.
 
OP
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Fitzcaraldo215

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The whole thread, including his numeric grades, seems to be full of measurement errors, data mining, sample selection bias.
Agreed. It is Internet "fake news", which has come to the forefront recently, but with which audiophiles have a long history of familiarity. So, agenda-driven subjectivists now use vague, poorly defined measurements with sexy looking graphs to prop up the credibility of their sighted subjective assessments.
 

Thomas savage

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There is this picture from the CA thread. No way any of that picks up noise from nearby devices or interacts in unexpected ways. Me, I just plug in a Belden and it works.

32615d1484857770-group-test-universal-serial-bus-industry-standard-cables-connectors-and-communications-protocols-between-computers-and-electronic-devices-gadgets-aq-jitterbug-uptone-regen-ifi-iusb3-0-ipurifier-ipurifier2-intona-w4s-recovery-any-more-%85-1484857770861.jpg
I did actually buy 2 jitterbollocks and daisy chained them on my mums Mac.. Well two did as much as one, nothing much..
 

watchnerd

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that daisy chain picture says it all about this hobby. Geez...

We're clearly all wrong in how we approach things.

The real action is in buying random things, taking pictures, and giving your friends your listening impressions.

Ride the FOTM product hype, dump and sell it in time to ride the next wave.

The ultimate democratization of the "subjective reviewer" phenomenon.

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