USB Card XE - JCAT

My brief impressions on the jcat USB XE pcie card.

First of all, I feel the jcat usb xe is a little overpriced for what it does. Personally, I feel $600usd would be a more reasonable msrp. Sound quality improvement was noticeable right away with zero burn-in. Allo shanti LPS was used to power the usb XE. The improvement varied from dac to dac and imo, you attain roughly 3% to 8% improvement in SQ. If your high end DAC has a really good USB implementation (Rockna), you'll still notice SQ improvement but to a lesser degree - I would say about 3-4% increase . I was pretty impressed with the improvement when the JCAT usb xe with Intona USB isolator were feeding the schiit EITR to a mid-fi level audio-gd dac19DSP via coax. That was an 8% increase in sound quality but then again you have the card costing twice as much as the DAC itself. This usb xe card is more suitable for individuals that want the last 2%-5% in SQ improvement in their high-end system. I felt that it had a multiplier effect when the Intona usb isolator was paired with the usb xe - the combination was greater than the sum of its parts. I would say the sound quality improvement would be like a jump from upgrading an audiphilleo 2 with pure power to a singxer su-1. The jump wouldn't be higher than the jump from a singxer SU-1 to a Pi2AES ddc. I would take 0.5 to 1 star off for being overpriced. I really hope more companies would look into developing something similar to the jcat XE cards as dedicated PCIE usb/net cards like the JCAT cards really do improve a system's overall sound quality.

** UPDATE 03/2023: borrowed OPTIMO NANO & OPTIMO 3 DUO briefly:


So this is OPTIMO NANO :

Runs 4x LT3045, which happens to be the market-leading voltage regulator with lowest output noise, that go through 2x big caps that are most likely here to further help drop ripple and provide big buffers of voltage ready to fuel anything connected up to 2A.

Fact is that the bigger the caps, the lower their load & noise and the stronger the buffering, not to mention that as much as XE USB already runs the same LT3045 chip there is no way such tall caps could be used on an internal PC card and dual-stage noise filtering never goes unnoticed results-wise anyhow.

Its output stage is based on JCAT's long experience in price-no-object OPTIMO 3 DUO LPS, so this is basically a baby JCAT LPS that sneakily hides inside your desktop PC case.

Good sides are that signal path is short and DC cables are silver-plated in order to circumvent skin effect and improve high-frequencies transit.


And this is OPTIMO 3 DUO, their TOTL LPS:


It's big, it's bad, it's mean, 6 Kg, 60x40x40 cm and even though it's all dressed in black it isn't quite as stealth as OPTIMO NANO.

Product page comes with internal pic :

So that's a big heavy 100VA transformer feeding 2x 3A DC outputs(ranging from 5V to 15V on order) with independent galvanically isolated outputs.

Comes with rhodium-plated Furutech IEC inlet and speakON Neutrik connectors that are widely used in the pro-audio world because they are knowingly sturdy and a very far cry from the cheap "aviation" 2 pins connectors many LPS use in order to save costs.

Still the same love for NICHICON "Fine Gold" MUSE capacitors as in OPTIMO NANO, except that they are now much bigger and also 6x per output instead of 2x on OPTIMO NANO.

Also, DC cables are dual-shielded OCC because you're only as strong as your weakest link.

So basically OPTIMO 3 DUO is their no-compromise LPS that doesn't cut any corner.


Comparing them on XE USB:

OPTIMO NANO makes a major improvement over my good ATX PSU(single figure VRMS ripple "EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3") and also the few 100-200 bucks "low-noise" PSU's I've lengthily compared(ifi-audio iPowerX 5V, etc). It does remove the nasty metallic color to the sound("digitis") and also drastically improves soundstage and resolution.

I certainly enjoy the fact that it sits nicely inside the PC case, WAF is at stakes

But OPTIMO 3 DUO is another galaxy basically, bona fide no-cost-object 5V end-game LPS is the name of the game

That coloration you always thought to be due to your headphone or headamp, well, be ready to have second thoughts to say the least as soundstage brutally becomes far more 3D, no more harshness or agressive upper-mids, resolution goes beyond what you would have ever expected and every object in the soundstage gets to live a 3D life of its own. Shocking, oh yes.

Tiny hardly-audible details on string instruments you never noticed become readily apparent and vocals simply sound stunningly real.

I do use a fully rehoused HE500 headphone with solid silver internal wiring that's willing to take you to the moon if fuelled properly, with pitless sub-bass & world-class creamtastic mids, I get sound behind my ears, right before me, cra-zy

As this review says:

Optimo 3 Duo is like a high resolution boost for your system

Click to expand...

That's basically it, I guess JCAT got it all nailed down and it's easy to hear that all that gear was engineered to sing along together.

To sum it up, OPTIMO NANO is the entry ticket for JCAT LPS design that's been specifically designed to fuel XE USB providing perfect synergy, it also won't come with any extra desktop clutter.

But if you're in the market for the best possible no-cost-object audio rendering, then OPTIMO 3 DUO is clearly much higher up the food chain, to the point that once you'll get used to it, nothing else with allow you to forget that super HD resolution you would have never expected your rig to provide


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Hi guys,

Was already thoroughly impressed by JCAT femto USB board but recently had the opportunity to try their newer XE USB board and I figured a review would be in good order so here goes



Using ASM3142 USB chipset that supports 10Gbit/s USB 3.1 Gen 2 and promises "high bandwidth performance with low latency". One would certainly expect such high speed to come with both low jitter and low latency

Voltage regulator taking care of both powering the entire board itself and the external USB devices is the market-leading LT3045 that provides as low as 0.8 uV noise, lower than anything else on the market(including discrete solutions). Game-ending territory in 3 words.

So we both have clean power and low latency USB but icing on the cake is an emerald OCXO (oven controlled oscillator) from SiTime.



The inside of a PC case is a very harsh environment due to EMI/RFI bouncing all over the place and this link calls this clock no less than "game changing".

It's basically a very high precision clock in a tiny faraday cage that will provide 0.005 ppm (part per million) stability and age as low as ±0.25 ppb daily (=92 ppb/year when your average quartz crystal clock ages around 5 ppm the first year and then 3/year thereafter as discussed in this link).

I guess the big heatsink is here to cool down LT3045.



This time things get simpler, two jumpers to choose whether you want to power each USB port individually and providing external power is mandatory as board doesn't use PCIe noisy mobo power at all, proof is that board won't be recognized if no external power is provided.

I haven't tested the internal Molex connector because even the best ATX PSU comes with single figure VRMS noise so I decided to fuel the board from the outside power jack alone with my good ole 1uV-rated 5V ifi-audio iPower.

Windows driver installing was a breeze eventually and I tried it both on DENAFRIPS ARES II DAC and Soekris DAC1101.

Sonic improvement over femto JCAT USB is quite striking, it's like mobo USB would be flying coach, femto JCAT would be business class with champagne and all but XE USB would then be flying on the Concorde lol(NYC/London in less than 3H yay). There is no going back, not in a million years. The nasty part of audiophile hobby is that you never know what you've been missing till you get to hear it and the last % never come cheap.

Going from femto USB board to XE USB board provides so much more resolution that it left me jaded, one can easily blame the rest of his rig when the weak link is actually way upstream in the USB connection huh, t's'all a bunch of 0's and 1's yeah right, as if

I guess it's even more true with DAC's running a FPGA such as the two R2R's I have here because these don't run an on-board clock of their own and basically the tighter the input signal the tighter the processing and the cleaner the sound

I realize that async USB is supposed to fix this sort of issues but very high precision clocking + very clean power can only improve sound rendering, hasta la vista

For the record, exact part# of the clock was disclosed on audiophilestyle.com forum and on its own it already costs $110.

Add up the price of R&D, prototypes, manufacturing, markup to make up for RMA costs, VAT and what-not, then final price starts to make a lot of sense.

BTW, I was also able to try their USB enhancer dongle:



It happens to be OEM from a Japanese company called SPEC.

And this local review echoes exactly what I'm hearing.

Short story is that once you plug this dongle into the unused secondary port of XE USB board, you'll never want to take it off as to my ears with HE-500 snare drums sound a lot more natural and globally sound becomes a whole lot more enjoyable. Removing it is not an option once you've heard what it does really, it doesn't color the sound one bit(unlike that nasty-sounding AQ Jitterbug) but it removes digitis glare basically, because even with the best clock and best power it's still a PC at heart and this magical dongle gives it a natural tone that's quite amazing to listen to.

I'm starting to comprehend why some people pay fortunes for caps such as BlackGate's because ruby mica caps certainly appear to do the magic


All in all, JCAT did it again, those who still believe in 2021 that S/PDIF will always be superior to USB(link against this theory) might wanna hear what JCAT has to offer, network Dante is not a prerequisite anymore and same goes for femto reclockers, TCXO transports, out-of-specs I²S over cables, yada yada.

This OCXO-driven USB transport with a very short USB cable & low-noise external PSU is most definitely the real deal to my ears and renders pretty much all weaker offerings plain obsolete, farewell to all those now useless paperweight-worthy black boxes I'd say.

I already wonder what next step is lol, prolly running an atomic clock of my own but that doesn't sound too convenient

PS: exactly my point, as I found out after writing this review: https://audiophilestyle.com/polestar/computers-networking/jcat-usb-card-xe-reviews-r293/

This confirms that it is essential to take care of its source, as far upstream as possible, because what does not come out at this level can never be recreated downstream, whatever the quality of your DAC.

Click to expand...

PPS: IME femto version requires a reboot when unplugging external 5V PSU but not the XE so that's way more convenient when switching things around in order to properly A/B, great improvement.