[ianjturner]

check your feet

That’s exactly what I was trying to figure out - brilliant.

 

[iFi audio]

check your feet

I always do

And THANKS for your feedback. Seriously, thank you

 

[Dr Riddim]

Thank you for sharing your

Cheers (appreciate the kind words).
Yes I have a rule of never reviewing ANYTHING prior to break in. (the Ultrasone Edition 5s on my head are ‘well over’ a thousand hours; with my research pointing at the 1200 hour mark being their ‘start’)(and its true given their sound quality between 900 hours to where I am at now is <i>substantially</i> different).

That is why I put words up ‘straight out of the box’; I knew that any head-fi pundits that know how much a sound can change as ’things settle’ would know that it ain’t going to be any harsher than when I first fired it up.
True it was a valve setup,. but it was the opposite of harsh.
Ten hours on it now and I have moved up to some hi res files and I have no issue listening to an album on repeat (heck Brand New Day now being played by Van Morrison and not Sting, as my early rotations landed on..)
IT is all so addictive as rarely do I find a hifi bit that changes up the formula this much. (I chose my Questyle DAP due to having no radios inside- their engineers knew what happens to sound when they are added),.. The ideals exemplified in the Diablo; I am so glad you made it your premium part- truly deserved your best bits and best tuning.
(does make me laugh when people are hesitant due to it seeming cut down or overpriced) I suppose in a couple of weeks some great reviews will be popping up everywhere.
Kudos to the team.. I have come to love so much of the iFi tech- I learned years ago that spec sheets ‘tuning’ can make great benchmark passes but not deliver one iota of musicality.
As a sixteen year old I downgraded my flagship receiver (100Watts+ of sound, surround, equaliser built in, heaps of inputs, video switching; it had EVERY FEATURE) to an entry level Yamaha 2 channel amplifier giving 35watts of power. five-six years later I ‘downgraded‘ again to a Musical Fidelity XA-1 (their entry level product) being 30Watts and even less features.
By the ’spec sheet’ it was lame to mainstream and market sheet products.. (but oh so musical)..
I have since had the joy of owning so many great amps (like a Quad 303) and all sorts of audio tech. A TEAC P700 taught me to never knock a part based on brand name.

Having owned some real flagship parts, and built some great synergies, I love assembling rigs that deliver natural music.
It is frustrating some of the ‘science’ being quoted, when people who just haven’t experienced some of this stuff first hand, and just don’t know, like to quote others misunderstandings. I love how the crew at AudioScienceReview like to try to figure out which numbers equal musicality. (hey ‘guidelines ARE helpful’)

The rule I give to many, especially many new to the hobby, is ‘check your feet’ (if they are ‘toe tapping’ there might be something musical about what you are listening to)..
Makes me laugh how the ‘classic’ NAD3020 was special only for being so cheap ‘back in the day’ (and hence lot of them being around)- and its crazy how much they seriously flog much modern ‘hifi’.
I have learned to run older kit whereever I can, with the biggest exception typically falling onto my DAC.
The Diablo is certainly the product I have been waiting for.

Thank you for sharing your first impressions, whitedragem!
Very deep and detailed stuff. My impressions are very positive as well. After a few days of burning in, I am confident enough to take Diablo, my MacBook Pro and Denon D9200 with me for a trip, while I have to check and approve the mastering for a new album release. Let's see how it works out!

 

[Gilles De Rais]

It’s Sussan(double s) Deyhim and that is a killer album, probably one of Bill Laswell’s best remixes. The original non-mixed Madman of God is good, but the remix is a top 100 album...Glad to hear the Diablo likes it too! Will check it out as a combo shortly

 

[whitedragem]

It’s Sussan(double s) Deyhim and that is a killer album, probably one of Bill Laswell’s best remixes. The original non-mixed Madman of God is good, but the remix is a top 100 album...Glad to hear the Diablo likes it too! Will check it out as a combo shortly

Thankyou for correcting; I have listened to the album ‘way too much’ (actually don’t mind running it for periods whilst breaking in headphones too).
I had atrocious errors all through my type-ups.. Enigma is MCMXC (no -doesn’t seem right.. arrgh Roman numerals for 1990 escape me), Webber / Weber ? (ones a BBQ!) and probably a few parenthesis /brackets not closed down. I am confident that I made a few spelling errors, but of course one affecting someone from looking up an excellent recording would suck.
Sussan deserves better. I haven’t listened to Madman of God yet, but I feel closer to it for having seen it recently...

Thankyou for some feedback; I live in a bubble... I always thought this album deserved more praise than the $2 ‘clearance price’ was worth. I generally buy 10% of my albums based on art or package design, and in hindsight I would have bought up the four other copies in the clearance bin and handed ’em to ‘alternative types’ I met during a Naturopathy degree decades ago..

Glad praise was thrown to Bill Laswell (did they work on Sheryl Crows Tuesday Night Music Club?, or maybe I am thinking of Max Sharams’ “a Million Year Girl”..) - I kinda recall passing up ‘Madman of God‘; not knowing it wasn’t the same ‘source material’, but just because I knew half the reason I liked it was the trance inducing nature that this album blissfully brings, and that what I had experienced was the effort of two ‘artists’.

so, erm,.. top 100, an official chart or ‘your ultimate desert island disc‘ catalogue?

 

[whitedragem]

They do work for me, after using a similar product from Audioquest I notice thatmy notebook has horrible USB connections. But I can understand if someone already have a clean path trough USB say that the device doesn't work. The problemis when this comment comes from nowhere or without chdcking the signal path.

Well, Im looking forward to hearing iPurifier 3 impressions from those who buy in the first run.

Actually, glad this was brought up; I am a fan of a few of the iFi technolgies, and their trickery at this level is apart of why their products have such great potential (I would further that their design team must be an assembly of people who have been doing this for a long while and know what they are on about). Seeing hat the Diablo was going a step further (towards purity) and removing additional circuits from the crucial sound chain (such as Xbass and 3D) made me even happier.

So, regarding the iFi iPurifier? I placed up a mini review on the addicted to audio (australia) webpage for the version 3 product, which has proven a ‘night and day difference’ vs the version 2 product for some internet reviewers.

My case use shouldn’t have performed as admirably as it did, I suggest, based on having several expensive (filtered) powerboards, and having seperated most of my two pin parts from my three pin parts (with earth), and running my line level cables away from power cables, where they may ‘briefly cross’ (at 90 degrees), in a house with little wifi /bluetooth / wireless -we moved from apartment living to get away from all that; are presently in a nice big block ‘leafy suburb’ where wifi scans usually only show two or three ‘distant’ networks. (a best case scenario by modern ’first world’ living), with no fluorescents and dimmer switches etc..
I wanted to feed from a gaming console into a Cambridge Audio DAC magic (I use as a converter to turn USB into spdif audio my surround preamp can take), and even with a nice $400 (second hand) USB cable the difference was huge.
Due to feeding a surround encoded two channel feed into a dolby processor (ie further digital processing), no doubt having clearer black and white (rather than ‘grey‘) digital reads had a cumulative effect that quite noticably helped the processor.. Using Dolby with DSX, the imaging across the eleven sound points was much more precise, or weighty. Most discernible that a change had happened (steering and sound stage width could easily be resultant to ‘more critical listening’) was the sound of some manta ray enemies in Demon Souls, that throw glassy tail bolts with a ‘not so nice’ shatter sound when they hit hard surfaces.. the glassy sound was clearer, and noticably less harsh. That one feature showed the difference repeatedly, and reinforced what could be felt during every moment of gameplay. Heck from the minute the iPurifier3 lit up when the Playstation turned on, the ‘system start sound’ sounded noticeably cleaner/clearer.

When I went hunting for differences.. I loaded up Zen Pinballs Empire Strikes Back table, of course most of us are familiar with John Williams iconic score, but Zen tables often come with compressed soundtrack (certainly in the case of Star Wars), and hearing the sound feel musically transparent was odd. Hearing extra instruments clearly separated during complex moments, given nice layering and having ‘air space’,.. showed what typically happens when jitter rates (that can not be heard, but that ARE contributing to poor sound) are fixed.
No doubt the resultant digital pass being tighter,.. more consistant reads ‘in a row’ were making it through the chain ‘without everything having to guess what the last packet was, based on the next one’; dynamics felt noticably better (to the point where I left the preamp volume down by 5dB for ‘near equal sound /music swings’) and clarity was pronounced. Dialogue was ‘less grainy’ as well as a range of other instruments.
In fact my Addicted to Audio web page write up on the part furthered that Dirt 5, which previously sounded nice but ‘average‘ as CD music went, started to sound like actual CD music as would be played into a 2 channel setup (seldom do surround amps sound equal to nice two channel unless they are flagship parts), to say that the console sound was vastly improved is fair.

It allowed improvements to all ‘downstream’ DAC parts, equivalent to raising a tier or ‘buying a better product’ in the cheap /consumer-fi parts we mostly all buy.
Again, this was a pretty tight system with no observed noise.. but knowing how tricky USB audio is to ‘get right’ and the electrical noise in a massmarket console, I took a punt to see what would happen.

Was how I happened to find the Diablo (I had gone back to buy another iPurifier for a ‘PC gaming’ friend).

I knew I wanted the Diablo, but thought they hadn’t released yet (the Addicted to Audio webpage still listed them as preorder at the time).
I can certainly vouch for the iPurifer. they might not bench well on an analyser.. but then most stuff that hardware can measure doesn’t line up with human phenamological experiences. A master musician might spend decades to nail a tricky breath movement or hand flick that doesn’t change the resultant audio feed by .1dB, and most ‘Audio Science’ sites would call the number inconsequential.
jitter that is inaudiable still destroying ‘musicality‘ is a thing. Most people want to argue that zero and ones are binary and that USB cables are all equal (even if they believe that other cables MIGHT effect sound).. but as my write up on the iPurifier went to detail to explain, and Hans Van Beekhuyzen project covers better; jitter is huge, and grey reads are ‘very detrimental‘ to hifi playback.
As someone who has owned Denon DCDS10 (with 18 blackgates mods and DAC section disconnected) and other high end ‘transports’,.. the passing of clear/clean zeros and ones is paramount to DACs doing a ‘decent job’.
When I upgraded my DAP to a higher tier unit, its digital output was so much more accurate I had to tune the subs down by 5dB.
These are my experiences. I know what I am doing and have been doing this for decades, have been a pro installer, consider my self a scientist, and have retailed ‘a lot of consumer electronics’.
I understand spec sheets, and the need for empirical data..
I also have ears/eyes, and am willing to have an open mind.
It is amazing how often the world isn’t ‘scientific’. (generally that our tools are not looking in the right places) People are seldom 100% consistent, so naturally we have a lot of stuff that evades us.
Digital zeros and ones down a USB cable hahahahahahh (maniacle laugh out loud) mwhahahah
Audio deserves better. The iPurifier is a ‘no brainer’ product, and it can help people at all levels of audio kit. low quality stuff probably needs it bigtime, but for esoteric high end kit, the resultant improvements from cleaner ‘true’ zero and ones is often so substantial that the paultry asking price nets much bigger rewards (often unobtainable or price unrealisitc to attempt via other means, eg like in my case, would require replacing a flagship preamp that might net me a better sound, like I got inside of 30 seconds with a ‘night out on the town’ pricepoint and a little dongle hidden away behind my present setup).

tl:dr iPurifier works well. verion 3 works better again. your mileage may vary.

 

[Gilles De Rais]

Thankyou for correcting; I have listened to the album ‘way too much’ (actually don’t mind running it for periods whilst breaking in headphones too).
I had atrocious errors all through my type-ups.. Enigma is MCMXC (no -doesn’t seem right.. arrgh Roman numerals for 1990 escape me), Webber / Weber ? (ones a BBQ!) and probably a few parenthesis /brackets not closed down. I am confident that I made a few spelling errors, but of course one affecting someone from looking up an excellent recording would suck.
Sussan deserves better. I haven’t listened to Madman of God yet, but I feel closer to it for having seen it recently...

Thankyou for some feedback; I live in a bubble... I always thought this album deserved more praise than the $2 ‘clearance price’ was worth. I generally buy 10% of my albums based on art or package design, and in hindsight I would have bought up the four other copies in the clearance bin and handed ’em to ‘alternative types’ I met during a Naturopathy degree decades ago..

Glad praise was thrown to Bill Laswell (did they work on Sheryl Crows Tuesday Night Music Club?, or maybe I am thinking of Max Sharams’ “a Million Year Girl”..) - I kinda recall passing up ‘Madman of God‘; not knowing it wasn’t the same ‘source material’, but just because I knew half the reason I liked it was the trance inducing nature that this album blissfully brings, and that what I had experienced was the effort of two ‘artists’.

so, erm,.. top 100, an official chart or ‘your ultimate desert island disc‘ catalogue?

I’m unsurprised at $2 clearance, you are in Perth after all...(sorry couldn’t resist, I’m a Sydneysider). Desert island catalogue, currently runs at about 500 for 12 places....

 

[whitedragem]

I’m unsurprised at $2 clearance, you are in Perth after all...(sorry couldn’t resist, I’m a Sydneysider). Desert island catalogue, currently runs at about 500 for 12 places....

Nice.

Actually I bought it in Canberra.<edit> damn it was in Perth, after all</edit> around 2002. JB Hifi had come to town, and I am one of those ‘ethical sorts’ that won’t mail order (always support local bricks and mortar businesses), and at the time I did all my media purchases from dedicated CD stores. (before they had to double up and sell movies as well)..
Walking around one of these ‘warehouse’ stores that were evidently going to kill the little retailers(that on principle I hadn’t entered), due to a friend dragging me along had me find this album, and the asking price was ‘beyond good’ (cheap CDs at the time being $19 Aus dollars)

They also had a Natalie Imbruglia album release that had a contest to win a signed block mount for the new album. Loved her first album, wanted to be in the draw for the block mount, so I bought a CD single of hers. Asked for my draw ticket. Salesperson looked at me like I was mad. It was evident no one cared about this.
They asked the manager and said “if you buy the album you can have the signed block mount”. I didn’t have enough money on me sadly, so I had to return the single to buy the album.
Still have that block mount.

 

[justanut]

My hot red combo haha

 

[maricius]

Not sure if this already has been discussed but what is the solution for line out to RCA/unbalanced?

 

[whitedragem]

Not sure if this already has been discussed but what is the solution for line out to RCA/unbalanced?

couple of asks, but no answer ponied up.....

take your pick.
(apols if graphic is needlessly large)
thought it would be cute to put some in the included case.

I bought these balanced to RCA female plugs years ago, certainly is ’telling’ that they have never been used... ie should we HAVE to resort to such sillyness? <edit> not Gospel,.. lets hear from iFi to confirm</edit>
I’d have included a shot WITH the balanced 4.4mm Y cable, but it is in use..

 

[NickL33]

Would ifi ever consider making DAP?

 

[justanut]

I hope not. Unnecessary distraction. Smartphones, Tablets and Laptops are already things we carry with us daily. DAPs just adds another device on top of that with less power, but bundled with “features” to make u buy a device running a dated OS. I really rather just carry the Diablo as my do it all portable audio setup, with my most up to date devices.

Would ifi ever consider making DAP?

 

[maricius]

couple of asks, but no answer ponied up.....

take your pick.
(apols if graphic is needlessly large)
thought it would be cute to put some in the included case.

I bought these balanced to RCA female plugs years ago, certainly is ’telling’ that they have never been used... ie should we HAVE to resort to such sillyness?
I’d have included a shot WITH the balanced 4.4mm Y cable, but it is in use..

so balanced 4.4mm -> balanced XLR -> XLR to RCA, is that correct? Do you think having a 4.4mm to RCA made would work the same way?

 

[whitedragem]

so balanced 4.4mm -> balanced XLR -> XLR to RCA, is that correct? Do you think having a 4.4mm to RCA made would work the same way?

I do, but it’d have to be made right...

<edit>Dr Marius post on the next page covers a legitimate use case that suggests we really need feedback from iFi on this point.
My understanding is conversion CAN be done, but awareness as to what load is being placed on the electronics (Dr Marius Riddim -=post#542=- highlighted that this might lead to a change to what the Diablo ‘sees’, or worse, doesn’t see, and continues to drive headon....)
should be factored.

There are many use cases that adaptor plugs like my photo shows are usable.. and from what I have read on the topic, it essentially just loses the benefit of ‘balanced’ (ie no induced noise on long cable runs).. in the receiving equipment. (and I don’t think going from unbalanced can be received by balanced, but not our use case, so erm.. is just me waffling to sound smart)

</edit>
the solution I put forward is inelegant, but in case people weren’t sure such adapters exist, figured it might help.

in fairness the front single ended output to 2xphono plugs is probably a good short term solution too..