Yes USB Galvanic isolation works

Disclaimer: Wine and beer were consumed at the duration of this thread.

but I’ve had this for a few days now. Lol
digital incremental improvements in sound can be small but actually have a large impact.
If that makes sense.

I got an Ifi IGalvanic to try. And yeah shoot it works.
Goldensound actually measured it and it does work.
Whether you can hear it is debatable.

what it does is isolate all the noise from your source and regenerates the signal.

what I hear?

no smear
More separation
Tighter sound. Especially in the low region. Not thin at all. Quite the contrary

yeah I know what you are all thinking.

but I can clearly hear it and I love it.

maybe it doesn’t really help all DACs but it does mine.

sounds great.

 

WOW, did the sound get tighter with better separation as more and more wine hit the liver? Did it sound more organic?

What had higher impact? Wine or the Ifi?

 

Shh! You'll wake up the Audio Police

 

It did!

lol

 

Good think I do my digital streaming via an old iPad as none of the issues this device claims to cure are present in the first place. iPad is plugged into the USB port of my Marantz CD6004 and then out through the system. Before I used the Lightning to USB cable, I plugged it in from the headphone out to RCA Tuner inputs. No difference in sound, just that the USB port also keeps the iPad charged. I find it interesting that those using a computer to stream would have issues where the iPad (or my iPhone) doesn't.

 

Your marantz’s USB port plays a part in this too @csgreene- the better the isolation on that input the less the quality of your usb output matters.

 

im pretty sure that input is synchronous tho.

 

I don't know what that means!?

 

It means that the clock of your iPad and the CS players DAc are being used. Which can cause more jitter.


But I’m not sure if that usb input is synchronous.

 

Well, I still don't understand what that means but if people heard what I hear, I think most would say it sounds superlative. But to the original concept, I believe the CD's DAC acts as a bypass to the onboard DAC in the iPad so all the processing is going through the CD player. I could be completely wrong.

 

yeah I’m not sure either.
I’m sure it’s fine.
That player has the same DAc chip as my Marantz HD DAC1 so it must sound good

 

Until recently, I was using an old Musical Fidelity VDAC v1 which, obviously, has an old, obsolete USB implementation. But it was free, so who cares.

I got a good deal on the iFi USB power rig with the fancy USB cables and all that, figured I'd try it, why not.

It made a huge difference with USB streaming to the old VDAC and went up a couple notches, no question. I bet the more modern USB implementations are better to begin with, and wouldn't see as much of a benefit, but my experience with the iFI stuff was really positive.

 

I have hummed and harred about devices like this.

My DAC has galvanic isolation (as most do), an async receiver (as most do) and relatively uniquely, it doesnt need an external 5VDC feed over USB (it takes it from a clean internal feed) so I use a "data only" USB cable.

I would imagine if your DAC didnt have GA, async or needed external USB power then potentially devices like these would work.

We know from places like ASR that with well designed DAC's they have no measurable affect but some specific Schiit Dac has a crap USB implementation and a variety of these types of devices had a positive affect (and tended to have a neutral affect with well designed DAC's)

For the heck of it I will try a Holo Audio Titanis as it is mentioned as having a positive affect by your "average Joe/Joey" and also doesnt need a second USB cable.

Will report back when I test it.

Peter

 

Hardly any DACs have galvanic isolation.
Yeah next

 

If you have issues with ground loops and stray current related ground noise, galvanic isolation can help. But wonder if its it's the galvanic isolation that's causing any change in sound other than removing and buzz or hum if you had it. Looking at the iFi website, it seems that device also does more than just provide galvanic isolation, it's also a reclocker I think (I presume that's what the unimaginative brand names with no clear explanation on the iFi site mean -- "REclock2, REgenerate2, REbalance2® " ). If anything is causing the sorts of changes in sound you're talking about here, it may be that and not so much the isolation, though certainly lowering noise can result increased perception of low level detail and microdynamics. If you have a good USB receiver and good clock in an asynchronous USB DAC implementation, I don't know what you'd need to reclock the UBS signal only to have it reclocked again when it hits the DAC though. Do you have a link to these measurements you're talking about?

 

There has been a fair bit of discussion on numerous forms over the past year or so about reclocking and noise reduction with some of these add on devices via USB. Not so much here.

Like anything in this hobby my feeling is that improvements or changes imparted from these kinds of devices may well be system/equipment dependent as well as, to some extent, listener dependent.

FWIW, I have found improvements (worthwhile to $ spent) in my setup-my equipment is listed here in my profile-streaming Amazon Music HD from a Windows 10 computer into a Topping E30 dac-with both the Holo Audio Titanis and the Ifi Silencer +.

Of the two, my feeling is that the Titanis is the better value/bang for buck as it is both a very basic reclocking device (it may well be beyond basic as some version of it is used in the fairly pricey Holo Audio dacs and from the limited reading I have done it would appear that they are more immune to improvements with reclocking than many dacs currently on the market) and noise reduction device. That being said, I do find that the Ifi Silencer + is also worthwhile and I use it coming from the USB output on my computer in series (before) with the Titanis. The E30, it should be noted, is not powered off the USB port from the computer and in my case I power it with a battery (which is also a definite improvement over powering it off the mains using a phone type charger or even using a fairly inexpensive linear power supply).

The Ifi IGalvanic seems to be addressing the issue of reducing power induced noise, reclocking and also providing isolation so it would appear to be doing slightly more (and is priced accordingly and a bit too rich for me lol!) in terms of adding the isolation, than my combined Silencer +/Titanis combo.

The whole reclocking thing is seemingly starting to gain a bit more traction, with what appears to be perhaps more sophisticated reclocking being integrated directly into and included with some of the more upscale dacs on the market.

If you look at the promotional literature for the new Topping E50, it also appears to be trickling down into some budget dac territory as well. Topping makes note in their description of the new E50 of newer technology and how it is specifically obviating the "need" for reclocking or, as I said above, integrating the function directly into the manufactured dac, something which I had never noticed before in their literature, even on their pricier models.

As to whether it is addressing a problem that doesn't need to be addressed I'll leave that up to others to try and find out. As I said above, the improvements that I got with the Titanis in particular, and also the Silencer +, were definitely worth the financial outlay to me, in my system, with my ears.

DAC technology seems to be one area of the audio market which is really rapidly evolving though, so it may well be possible that all of these "add on" devices simply get added into the manufactured/finished products, rendering the aftermarket devices moot. Who knows?

I'd really like to try an E50 to see if it is, in fact, immune to the effects of the Silencer +/Titanis combo I currently have in use. I just don't want to pay for it!

 

here is a vid where he has done some measurements. And explanation of how it works.
it does reclock. But the jitter might improve from noise the laptop is producing.
It’s asynchronous so the DAC is doing the clocking anyway. If I had a proper reclocker that would be connected via SPDIF where the sources clock is used and not the DAc
My DAc is a bit old so it probably isn’t the best at noise. It’s not galvanically isolated as few DACs are.

 

I dont understand how USB reclocking in some upstream device can be touted as a benefit when most modern DACs (say after 2010?) use async which means the DAC is the master (yeah not a woke word in todays cancel culture) such that it pulls the data from the USB connection meaning the clock in the PC has no affect.

Peter

 

Well, technically speaking, it's more correct to say that the DAC tells the PC to either speed up or slow down the data rate based on number of bytes in each packet it is processing for the selected sample rate, whether async or not it is still a normal isochronous transfer, async just allows that end point communication from the DAC to the PC. The USB is only a data line, the USB clock rates are fixed on each end, so intermediate reclocking and isolation techniques are mainly an attempt to keep the PC clock domain away from the DAC clock domain, or in other words, to avoid noise contamination and the resulting jitter on the DAC clock that is used for the actual D/A conversion.

It's difficult to build a DAC that completely separates the input receiver section from the audio section, be it USB or S/PDIF, since they need to be connected in some way. So there will always be some residual contamination of the "clean" audio section from the "dirty" input section. Minimizing that residual can get complicated and expensive.

 

Our Guide to USB Audio - Why Should I Use it? | Cambridge Audio US

 

Just curious. What caused you to get the iFi Galvanic? Could you hear any of what you mentioned; "separation" and/or "smear" issues?

 

Good question.

No just curiosity

I only heard the change after.

 

I’m happy to hear that someone found success going this route. I could never get iPhone/iPad to work worth a damn in this context—whether going direct (“headphone out to RCA Tuner inputs”) or bypassing the iDevice’s internal DAC (“using the Lightning to USB cable”). I also tried Cambridge Audio’s iD100 digital dock—which was an improvement over the other methods but still not optimal. Maybe not even passable.

In the end, these iDevice experiments paled in comparison to what a dedicated streaming solution had to offer. And when I introduced galvanic isolation (via the cheap, cheerful, and tragically-no-longer-available Schiit Eitr), I thought it was one of the best system upgrades I had ever made—sonic quantum leap.

No offense meant. Again, I’m thrilled to hear the iDevice solution is working for someone. I always thought it should. Lack of implementation skill? Who knows

 

Well technically galvanic isolation works better than a dedicated streamer. Unless the streamer has less noise. Which is super difficult. Unless again it uses galvanic isolation

 

Agree, I use the Intona between Mac Mini and Bel Canto DAC. Same improvements as listed by the OP