Just dropping in to announce my Summer Project is complete and final. I likely won't be back until Hugo3. I don't have energy for this hobby, only if I allocate energy for Summer Projects. I was really worried that this project would not work as it deals with passive power supplies in which there is no precedence. If you search this thread for "Ground Loop", you will understand more the leak in which I'm trying to plug. At the same time, my USB optical cable has a similar issue. It's optical so it isolates USB DATA, but for USB PWR the only way to power was via Mains USB port. WTH. So I was able to isolate USB PWR at the same time off Mains. This is important because both the USB optical and the Toslink optical are both plugged into the Hugo2 at the same time. USB DATA can leak (Ground Loop) from the Gaming PC via Mains, but not with optical. USB PWR can leak (Ground Loop) from the charging via Mains, but not with charging via Super Capacitors. Any USB leak can impact the Toslink side internally within the Hugo2 like a Trojan Horse even though the Toslink is isolated. So it's a bit of a surprise this project is an success as so many things could go wrong.
I'm running 3000 Farads of Super Capacitor power which should last 20 years @24/7 since they are Industrial Strength. These are the same Super Capacitors used at Heathrow International Airport to keep the Computers running, not recent Computer Technical Software issues, and keep the lights on so very Industrial. My final test was to see if the Hugo2 hiccups at all over 3 weeks. Fortunately, it always remained in Intelligent Desktop Mode. Yay.
So I built a custom Solid Core USB Cable to plug into the Hugo2. Solid Core is not vulnerable to EMI/EFI because it's Solid. So I'm making sure no leaks anywhere.
The other outlets I can use for USB optical, etc.
I built a few. Besides 5V, other one is for Clocking.
I'll post a diagram of my chain, but I need to give a summary to get a better understanding of the chain.
There's no precendence for my chain as it's a variation of dCS and Chord philosophy chain. dCS combines precision clocks for accuracy to pair with their FPGA DAC. I do the same but use State Of The Art (SOTA) clocks for accuracy to pair with Chord FPGA DAC because I like to stay within the CIEM realm only. It's too easy to go crazy as those dCS users spend 6 digits on their chain. Speaker users are even worse. I'm fortunate to stay within a 'Goldilocks Zone' with performance on par with the best headphone and speaker chains but at a decent value due to experience in this hobby. I don't like the variance of headphones and speakers so those would never interest so I'm quite ecstatic with my chain.
^^ As you can see dCS DACs have master clocks already, but still can be improved upon with the source.
^^^ I easilly get the lifelike and 3D sound, it's euphoric. External clocking.
Here's some recent post from dCS Bartok. I get the following qualities too as dCS clock + dac users. I never thought about my chain more electro-stat-like, but that describes it pretty well:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/dcs-bartok.901647/post-17593731
Clocks can get quite expensive. "External clocking makes a big difference in music presentation on dCS gear" or in my case Chord gear. No dCS DAC user can run a DAC alone, 95% buy a dCS clock along with their dCS DAC.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/dcs-bartok.901647/post-17593731
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/dcs-bartok.901647/post-17451855
Just wanted to give some background on clock+dac before presenting my chain to give a better understanding of what is going on:
I'm running arguably the world's best Toslink chain independent of DAC / Transducers / Etc. I am running the World's Best Passive Power Supply for Audio. No Mains.
So it is as close to a dCS chain as possible in 2023 that you can get with CIEMs without spending six digits. It certainly sounds like six digits because I'm going crazy procuring the expensive CD media and moving on from fiddling with Audio gear.