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horseman612
31
Aug 16, 2018
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USB bus power definitely doesn't seem ideal for a device of this resolution.. that said, does anyone have experience with the Schiit Wyrd or anything similar?
bunkbail
185
Aug 16, 2018
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horseman612 AK4452 has really low power requirements. USB bus power will be perfectly fine. I don't own any SDAC before but I own a few USB powered DACs (SMSL iDEA. Douk Audio DSD, UD125 etc) and also a few USB decrappifiers (Wyrd, iPurifier, Jitterbug), they don't affect sound quality even a bit, at least to my ears.
horseman612
31
Aug 17, 2018
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bunkbailThe issue isn't the amount of power but rather how clean it is - bus power on most computers has a LOT of noise in high-end audio terms. Whether this makes a difference to you depends on your ears, your DAC, and everything in the signal chain between them but it definitely can be an audible issue. Clock correction/data decrapping for USB (which afaik is most of what the iPurifier and Jitterbug do, they're really too small to be doing adequate power conditioning even at USB's 5V/1A) should not make any difference as this is asynchronous transfer like every modern USB DAC, but the Wyrd replaces the whole power supply & seems to focus mostly on providing clean power.
The_Jniac
322
Aug 18, 2018
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horseman612Any competent engineer will have filters on the USB power that will make all but the very worst USB work fine. A $30 powered hub will take care of the rest. Power conditioning is BS and any piece of gear that actually benefits was not well-designed in the first place.
horseman612
31
Aug 18, 2018
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The_JniacMany "competent" engineers have made this claim or one like it, yet A/B testing in high res systems (including some with my own ears) continues to show a benefit to addressing this issue more often than not - I assume you're NOT claiming that the filters that would fit in a device like this would eliminate all detectable noise & ripple (which would be laughable), but rather that what remains "shouldn't" cause any audible difference in output (which is much less so, but doesn't match what has frequently been observed in devices of this nature.) Certainly there is a point, as with most things audiophile, where it becomes overkill/downright silly, and things like $5k power conditioners and $500/m power cables fall well outside of it. That said, I (& many others) will continue to care about providing reasonably clean power to my devices (especially high sensitivity ones like DACs and phono stages), you are of course free not to. =]
The_Jniac
322
Aug 18, 2018
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horseman612High res systems? As in, systems designed for playback of high resolution audio, which is itself nonsense perpetuated by marketing? Or just systems with very low distortion?
A/B testing is not meaningful. It demonstrates merely that a difference was perceived, which nobody who knows anything about perception or psychology would dispute. ABX testing is required to actually demonstrate that any differences perceived were not the result of psychological effects. One must also have extremely tight volume matching, about 0.1dB, or about a ratio of 1.023:1 , for the test to avoid being confounded.
It is surprising to see someone advocate power conditioning while also saying spending $5000 on it is silly. I guess we can rule you out for the new editor in chief of Stereophile. It is a moot point for me though since I am running a DX7s, which has external power.
horseman612
31
Aug 18, 2018
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The_JniacAs in the latter, agreed on the absurdity of 3rd-order & higher sample rates for home listening, & I actually do mean a variant of ABX testing - a series of real and fake switches were performed, and we were required to determine both whether the power supply had actually been switched & which was superior, which I was able to do fairly easily, but as I said YEMV. Only the DAC power supply was being switched, so there shouldn't have been any variation in volume whatsoever. DACs used were a middle-aged MSB and a new SMSL M9, in both cases the difference between a well-filtered LPS and a wall wart was readily apparent.
oohlou
0
Nov 5, 2019
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horseman612I agree with horseman612. I am getting a 8kHz tone at around 42dB even with a iFi power isolator with any sample rate higher than 48k. Some Internet searches show me this is a pretty common problem given the frame interval of USB (125uS). I'm not using the iFi power supply; sounds like I need a better power supply for it.
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