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What do folks here think of products like the Matrix Element H

Mr. Haelscheir

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I had lately on the dreaded Head-fi come across the mention of the Matrix Element H which makes vague claims of improved USB audio quality. I don't think I have seen discussions about such "audiophile USB ports/interfaces" here yet, i.e. of more upstream tweaks than fancy USB cables or filters for PC audio. I am of course quite skeptical and would assume that a competent DAC's USB receiver would be able to mitigate issues with a consumer PC motherboard's USB interface. What I can say is that when taking headphone measurements with a certain pair of in-ear mics and my MOTU M2, the REW RTA does show an albeit inaudible 60 Hz mains tone and its harmonics which gets attenuated when I rest a hand on a grounded chassis like the MOTU M2 or the FiiO K9 Pro ESS I hooked up the former's line out into; I have yet to test whether this mains noise is originating from the PC USB connection or from my FiiO K9 Pro ESS, though the 60 Hz tone is still present when not playing anything through the FiiO.
 
i was about to ask the exact same thing.
have seen "Passion for sound" youtube review of the element H and an alternative from Jcat.
i cant see what these can offer over all the various products from the likes of Ifi.
i am currently selling an Ifi nano iusb3 on ebay , because it seems to do very little.
in fact i can hear a very high pitched tone from its cheap psu, so not really impressive.

i am also in the process of a dac shoot out (via usb) , Qutest vs the Topping E30.
the qutest is supposed to be galvanically isolated but it is just as noisy as the Topping.
admittedly this is at high listening levels with no music playing, i can hear pc noice from both.
luckily i do have an isolating transformer for the rca outs which removes all the nasties.
the Qutest will be on ebay very soon ;)
 
I had lately on the dreaded Head-fi come across the mention of the Matrix Element H which makes vague claims of improved USB audio quality. I don't think I have seen discussions about such "audiophile USB ports/interfaces" here yet, i.e. of more upstream tweaks than fancy USB cables or filters for PC audio. I am of course quite skeptical and would assume that a competent DAC's USB receiver would be able to mitigate issues with a consumer PC motherboard's USB interface. What I can say is that when taking headphone measurements with a certain pair of in-ear mics and my MOTU M2, the REW RTA does show an albeit inaudible 60 Hz mains tone and its harmonics which gets attenuated when I rest a hand on a grounded chassis like the MOTU M2 or the FiiO K9 Pro ESS I hooked up the former's line out into; I have yet to test whether this mains noise is originating from the PC USB connection or from my FiiO K9 Pro ESS, though the 60 Hz tone is still present when not playing anything through the FiiO.
I have one, been using it for almost 2 years in my NAA. I don't know if I even dare to comment my experience at this particular site, you are welcome sending a mail if you wish to have my opinion about it, and how I connect and power it. I can say, it is a keeper for me and the other guy who bought it because of me.
 
I had actually recently troubleshot the origin of the spurious 60 Hz mains noise to little more than the unshielded part of my in-ear mics, whereby even if completely driven off of my laptop, the tone would still show up on the RTA FFT, being expectedly highest near my desktop, diminishing further away within the house (though sometimes touching any part of my laptop or MOTU M2 may instead accentuate instead of attenuate the tone as though my body were behaving as an antenna), and being for the most part undetectable outside of the house though there are some power lines or other hanging around.

Otherwise, I would prefer for someone more technically experienced to chime on any theoretical merits of this device else properly debunk it.

For curiosity; 192 kHz sample rate used throughout:

2024-09-04 - Meze Elite hybrid left - rough SPL cal - Klippel 2 tone sim - 4M 2.jpg

Figure 1: A measurement I took with my in-ear mic from https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...phone-measurements.18451/page-61#post-1956895 (post #1,210; I used the surviving right capsule in the left ear mount since the left capsule's wire snapped from wear) and a rough SPL calibration to acoustically confirm that my chain and Meze Elite were not introducing distortion sidebands hampering my ability to get past -36 dB on https://www.klippel.de/listeningtes...+800Hz&outputDevice=Headphones&experience=Yes. Here, the irrelevant 60 Hz mains noise tone and its second harmonic are visible.

2024-09-04 - Meze Elite hybrid left - rough SPL cal - Klippel 2 tone - 1M - -36 dB.jpg

Figure 2: The result from letting the Klippel Listening Test introduce "-36 dB" distortion.

20240922_125007.jpg

Figure 3: MOTU M2 outputting through a dual 6.35 mm TRS to 4.4 mm TRRRS adapter on the back input to my FiiO K9 Pro ESS's balanced line input, then outputting through a front 4-pin XLR to dual 3-pin XLR adapter and 6" 3-pin XLR extensions into a 1-to-3 3-pin XLR switchbox outputting to a dual 3-pin XLR to 4.4 mm TRRRS adapter hooked up to my 1.2 m Lavricables Grand (owned for bling and the opportunity to demonstrate acoustically immeasurable FR differences) that I use with my HE1000se, finally using what is technically a 3.5 mm to 6.35 mm TRS adapter to connect the left TS lead of the cable to the left mic input, its appearing to work just fine. Other than the initial input from the MOTU M2, this demonstrates the length of wire present in my usual listening.

2024-09-22 - MOTU M2 to FiiO K9 Pro ESS through HE1000se cable path to MOTU M2 - 1 kHz -12 dBFS.jpg

Figure 4: Mic preamp gain set so that with that given volume knob setting, REW outputting a -12 dBFS 1 kHz tone is measured at a -12 dBFS level. As can be seen, there is no appreciable mains noise being picked up (though I don't know why 50 Hz is somewhat accentuated), just low-level spuriae and a 2 kHz harmonic possibly originating from the MOTU M2. I don't know where the 8 kHz and 16 kHz tones white are also present with no input are coming from. I don't know how the higher-impedance load of the mic preamp may be affecting the noise susceptibility compared to an actual 32 Ohm headphone load.

2024-09-22 - 1_10 decade multi-tone through HE1000se cable path -6 dBFS.jpg

Figure 5: For additional curiosity, the result of playing a -6 dBFS (-5.1 dBFS was the minimum to not cause digital clipping, but -6 dBFS happened to be needed for the mic preamp to not clip) 1/10 decade multi-tone. I'd vie that these IMD spuriae originate from the MOTU M2 when loaded like this. Unless the behaviour has to do with the load, this may present an actual bottleneck for my multi-tone distortion measurements in https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...phone-measurements.18451/page-61#post-1956895 (post #1,210).

2024-09-22 - Meze Elite right unshielded mic left ear - rough 94 dBA cal - without touching MO...jpg

Figure 6: Meze Elite mains noise measurement with my original unshielded in-ear mics.

2024-09-22 - Meze Elite right unshielded mic left ear - rough 94 dBA cal.jpg

Figure 7: Meze Elite mains noise measurement with my original unshielded in-ear mics while resting a hand on my MOTU M2.

2024-09-22 - Meze Elite right shielded mic left ear - rough 94 dBA cal - without touching MOTU...jpg

Figure 8: Meze Elite mains noise measurement with my shielded in-ear mics and the same mic preamp gain. Again, per my multi-tone distortion measurement post, the problem was that these capsules had high second-order distortion at least when using the same VXLR+ adapter to power them. At least this is a decent proof of concept for the reduction of mains noise via appropriate microphone cable shielding.

2024-09-22 - Meze Elite right shielded mic left ear - rough 94 dBA cal.jpg

Figure 9: The final result while resting a hand on the MOTU M2.
 
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Amendment regarding Figure 5 in the previous: I realize that I had had already done loopback multi-tone measurements on the MOTU M2 revealing excellent multi-tone distortion performance exceeding what is needed for transducer measurement, whereby though it was perhaps fair to measure AC noise or the lack thereof through my headphone cable chain, the impedance must have been much too low compared to what a mic preamp expects. E.g. The KEEG mic capsules I use have an output impedance of 2.2 kiloohms at 1 kHz, 1 Pa (94 dB SPL). So it is just a matter of sourcing new and larger capsules and ensuring the cables are properly shielded.
 
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