[rq1111]

There's a huge give and take when doing these tweaks. I think in your case the iPurifier cleaned up the sound to a point where the muffled and veiled sound is now more obvious if it is indeed a muffled and veiled issue vs mental burn in. If your ears doesn't get tired after 90 mins on your current setup without the iPurifier then you may be right. The lack of ear fatigue is my go-to assessment of gear I haven't heard but converse merely online.

Well, I agree about the fatigue issue. I want my system to be fatigue-free and sounds natural and real. I cannot said much for my system now as there is still burn-in period.

But what i hear is unnatural of cymbal sounds. The high frequency seems chop off and the soundstage seems smaller too when using ipurifier 3. When high frequency is chop off, it could seems like more analogue sound. When you hear sound like cymbal which does not sounds real, you know it is not analogue but something is wrong in the high frequency.

 

[801evan]

Well, I agree about the fatigue issue. I want my system to be fatigue-free and sounds natural and real. I cannot said much for my system now as there is still burn-in period.

But what i hear is unnatural of cymbal sounds. The high frequency seems chop off and the soundstage seems smaller too when using ipurifier 3. When high frequency is chop off, it could seems like more analogue sound. When you hear sound like cymbal which does not sounds real, you know it is not analogue but something is wrong in the high frequency.

Sadly, you've reached a point where you've opened yourself up to another upgrade. Where going for solid silver cabling opens up the highs and extends the top and bottom end and takes out the veiling. Copper variants gives this quality where the highs hit a certain peak and flattens. Silver extends that resolution. The iPurifier v3 fixed the 'compression/congestion' of the micro detail that you can comprehend the details of the highs now and pick off that it is actually flat (not giving micro detail). On the less veiled sound, the sound was too high (and shreiky) for the brain to comprehend and just understands it as 'bright' but bright beyond comprehension and thus, ear fatigue.

 

[801evan]

Well, I agree about the fatigue issue. I want my system to be fatigue-free and sounds natural and real. I cannot said much for my system now as there is still burn-in period.

But what i hear is unnatural of cymbal sounds. The high frequency seems chop off and the soundstage seems smaller too when using ipurifier 3. When high frequency is chop off, it could seems like more analogue sound. When you hear sound like cymbal which does not sounds real, you know it is not analogue but something is wrong in the high frequency.

The Qutest may appear simple on how it is to be powered but it needs extra care on the power quality side. There's 3 YouTube videos by "pursuit perfect system" where he compares 3 different power upgrades from stock to battery to LPS (I think it's LPS) and the sound demo can be obvious at it solves what appears to be a grey ceiling on the highs.

 

[iFi audio]

I am wondering if I use ifi micro iusb3 will have better result compare to ipurifier 3? What is the difference between ipurifier 3 and iusb 3? How do i also power up my qutest with the iusb 3? Please advice.

It will, iPurifier3.0 is the 'baby' version of our iUSB3.0. The same things they do but the former is the latter's scaled down version.

Folks here mentioned iGalvanic3.0 and that's another upgrade worth to at least try. It will work with iPurifier3.0 and iUSB3.0.

iGalvanic3.0 + iUSB3.0 as a team is our end game, we have nothing better in our offer.

 

[Chopin75]

Sadly, you've reached a point where you've opened yourself up to another upgrade. Where going for solid silver cabling opens up the highs and extends the top and bottom end and takes out the veiling. Copper variants gives this quality where the highs hit a certain peak and flattens. Silver extends that resolution. The iPurifier v3 fixed the 'compression/congestion' of the micro detail that you can comprehend the details of the highs now and pick off that it is actually flat (not giving micro detail). On the less veiled sound, the sound was too high (and shreiky) for the brain to comprehend and just understands it as 'bright' but bright beyond comprehension and thus, ear fatigue.

It can be a bit tricky to determine what is veiled sound or not. I do find the IFI devices can at times put a sound signature or rather make it sound a certain way. It is like when you attempt to get rid of jitter you add layer of color to it. When you take away the devices, the sound can open up but so do the nasty digital sound coming back giving the "sharpness". Ideally, no jitter is best and then you won't need any of these devices but that is hard to achieve.

 

[Chopin75]

I've had a huge love and hate affair with isilencers and iDefenders. I've sold the idefender twice but bought it 4x. I've sold 5 isilencers and had up to 15x at a time. I've had the isilencers in the market in and out probably 6x coz at one point it helped and in another point, it hurt the sound. At this point my learning is, if adding the isilencer hurts the sound, it is actually amplifying another component in the chain that is hurting the sound. My instances of this is noisy external power powering the Hugo 2 , headphone amp and laptop . Another case was unideal USB hubs and USB cables.

Yah, yesterday I was playing around with my IFI devices. In the end I found the isilencer made the most difference! Its cleans up the sound, makes it less bright/harsh, and more analogue but not putting a sound signature or veil or distorting the sound stage, something that the idefender, and igalvanic tend to do. So I now only use the Isilencer. Now this may make sense, since I have a USB bridges with clocks on both the DAC and PC side and so I suppose the igalvanic reclocking tends to screw up the sound, even with some benefit of galvanic isolation. But if only either the DAC or PC side has the USB clocking, I would find the igalvanic isolation quite beneficial.
I may get more isilencer to put on the PC USB slot. At this time, upgrading my DAC's clock is the logical step and then also the clock of the PC USB bridge as I don't think these gadgets will do much good in the long run..... but I am quite pleased this $50 iSilencer still makes such a difference !
If you put multiple isilences along the USB chain, you find that helpful ?

 

[rq1111]

Yah, yesterday I was playing around with my IFI devices. In the end I found the isilencer made the most difference! Its cleans up the sound, makes it less bright/harsh, and more analogue but not putting a sound signature or veil or distorting the sound stage, something that the idefender, and igalvanic tend to do. So I now only use the Isilencer. Now this may make sense, since I have a USB bridges with clocks on both the DAC and PC side and so I suppose the igalvanic reclocking tends to screw up the sound, even with some benefit of galvanic isolation. But if only either the DAC or PC side has the USB clocking, I would find the igalvanic isolation quite beneficial.
I may get more isilencer to put on the PC USB slot. At this time, upgrading my DAC's clock is the logical step and then also the clock of the PC USB bridge as I don't think these gadgets will do much good in the long run..... but I am quite pleased this $50 iSilencer still makes such a difference !
If you put multiple isilences along the USB chain, you find that helpful ?

I might try it too then. I believe the ifi iterms that has reclock feature might not be good synergy for my system. I just bought a wireworld starlight 7 usb cable after returning the 2 ifi iterms instead of using generic cable.

 

[801evan]

Yah, yesterday I was playing around with my IFI devices. In the end I found the isilencer made the most difference! Its cleans up the sound, makes it less bright/harsh, and more analogue but not putting a sound signature or veil or distorting the sound stage, something that the idefender, and igalvanic tend to do. So I now only use the Isilencer. Now this may make sense, since I have a USB bridges with clocks on both the DAC and PC side and so I suppose the igalvanic reclocking tends to screw up the sound, even with some benefit of galvanic isolation. But if only either the DAC or PC side has the USB clocking, I would find the igalvanic isolation quite beneficial.
I may get more isilencer to put on the PC USB slot. At this time, upgrading my DAC's clock is the logical step and then also the clock of the PC USB bridge as I don't think these gadgets will do much good in the long run..... but I am quite pleased this $50 iSilencer still makes such a difference !
If you put multiple isilences along the USB chain, you find that helpful ?

Yea it was a year of experimentation for me. It can get long winded. But the final version is simply what I stated above, the idefender ->corning- optical USB -> idefender. Just before that iteration was 5 isilencers in the chain with 3x USB 3 hubs until Windows can't recognize anymore devices in the chain. The way I can describe my method is reductionist (taking away the muck than adding/augmenting it) and that of purely noise management on the power and data lines.

Before the USB 3 hub, I was using 10 port USB 2 hubs thinking it's lower technology will inherently reject the USB 3 bandwidth of the laptop port. But to my surprise the USB 3 hubs paired well with the isilencers since it's tech is USB 3 noise cancelling. One isilencer on the USB 3 has the efficiency of 4 isilencers on a USB 2 hub. The typicalsound improvements is the cleaning of noise in the low to upper mids. It takes less brain power to hear the nuance in the track.

My whole USB 3 hub isilencer chain then got outseated when the Corning optical came in. The SQ is disarmingly dark and clean from how every other setup sounds. There's not enough reviews about it and the SQ jump is so big that reviewers couldn't comprehend it as a big upgrade but rather, just merely sounding different with a dark characteristic. But it's not! It's truly a cleaner signal and it had to take 14x isilencers and hearing where it was taking the sound one by one to understand that the Corning took me 'there' where 30 isilencers would have taken me. And the Corning fit my philosophy in noise management where it's copper wire has only enough power to power the USB hub chip on the other end to transcode the optical data back to electrical. There's little voltage to contaminate the DAC.

Now that the data line is clean. I doubled up cleaning the power line on the front and back end for good measure with the idefender + 6 stage power filtering. I was then wondering what the heck am I going to do with 11x isilencers but wow it still cleaned up the sound when it was placed on a free USB port.

To add, all tracks I listen to has been upconverted to dsd 8x from flac. I used dbpoweramp from flac to 384/32 then from that to dsd8x with xisrc. This combo is the one that sounds best. I can't seem to shortcut right to dsd8x. Then, I do music playback of a flash drive with at least 100MBps. The sound is closer and clearer yet maintains it's wide sounstage and deep depth. During the USB 2 hub and USB 3 hub phase, it was clear letting the flash drive live on the same chain and just before the dac is the best sound but after the Corning, for some reason the flash drive has to live on the other free USB port. I bought another Corning to plug the USB flash drive to it and be in a USB 3 hub but it apparently requires idefenders on the front and back end to operate. Hubs only give 100ma on their port which is insufficient for the Corning. But thankfully and oddly, the flash drive sounds worse when using the Corning on it. A very compressed and forward sound that gives ear fatigue in 2 minutes.

 

[801evan]

Here's photos of my various iterations. Couldn't find my ipurifier v3 photos but it sounded better before a USB 2 hub with isilencers. It's like the isilencers still cleaned up a bit after the iPurifier v3 duties.

 

[iFi audio]

Here's photos of my various iterations. Couldn't find my ipurifier v3 photos but it sounded better before a USB 2 hub with isilencers. It's like the isilencers still cleaned up a bit after the iPurifier v3 duties.

That's a lot of iSilencers

 

[Bansaku]

Here's photos of my various iterations. Couldn't find my ipurifier v3 photos but it sounded better before a USB 2 hub with isilencers. It's like the isilencers still cleaned up a bit after the iPurifier v3 duties.

That's pure madness!!
(I like!)

 

[801evan]

My amazement with iSilencer is the same. It doesn't add anything to the sound but always cleans it. If the isilencer adds something then it's a 'canary' telling you something else in the chain is off. It was only after the Corning that adding the isilencer lifted the noise floor a bit.

I think the iPurifier has it's purpose in cheaper DACS and sources. Sadly it doesn't scale like the isilencer and idefender.

While I'm here, I got some new USB 3 couplers and it seems to affirm my theory on noise management where adding more couplers make the sound better. More space and more coherence and ease of listening. No added layer of veil and it is to be mentioned I've had my battles on veil being introduced when something is added to the chain. Idefender/isilencers/hubs can introduce veil in some ways or another for example. Ohh, with that said, a simple way to test if your isilencer is in an unideal place in the chain is if it cuts off the highs a bit. You know it works in the chain if it maintains the energy in the highs and cleans out the mids.

With that said. I dunno why adding USB couplers up to 3 improves the sound. My only theory is it's another method of noise reduction by letting less current contaminate the data lines to the DAC.

Interestingly, when I did USB 3 coupler to USB 2 coupler (what I had previously in the chain) it hurts the sound where the release in the highs were cramped and flat.

 

[Chopin75]

My amazement with iSilencer is the same. It doesn't add anything to the sound but always cleans it. If the isilencer adds something then it's a 'canary' telling you something else in the chain is off. It was only after the Corning that adding the isilencer lifted the noise floor a bit.

I think the iPurifier has it's purpose in cheaper DACS and sources. Sadly it doesn't scale like the isilencer and idefender.

While I'm here, I got some new USB 3 couplers and it seems to affirm my theory on noise management where adding more couplers make the sound better. More space and more coherence and ease of listening. No added layer of veil and it is to be mentioned I've had my battles on veil being introduced when something is added to the chain. Idefender/isilencers/hubs can introduce veil in some ways or another for example. Ohh, with that said, a simple way to test if your isilencer is in an unideal place in the chain is if it cuts off the highs a bit. You know it works in the chain if it maintains the energy in the highs and cleans out the mids.

With that said. I dunno why adding USB couplers up to 3 improves the sound. My only theory is it's another method of noise reduction by letting less current contaminate the data lines to the DAC.

Interestingly, when I did USB 3 coupler to USB 2 coupler (what I had previously in the chain) it hurts the sound where the release in the highs were cramped and flat.

Interesting, not sure how USB couplers would make the sound better. What brand did you use ?
Yes, the reclocking devices seem to hurt if there are already adequate clocking at the DAC and source (PC/streamer) end. So hence my igalvanic is not helping or may even worsen it. The isilencer does not hurt and really has made such huge difference now. (it probably did but when I was using together with isilencer/Igalvanic the effects were masked). The Isilencer simply cleans out any additional noise (from PC or Powerline etc...) and not really altering the sound, nice! I may add some more to the chain or to the PC unused USB. From such experiments, it is quite clear that I should continue to upgrade the clocking of the DAC and PC while keeping the entire chain as simple as possible.

 

[801evan]

I got all the foliogadgets ones on Amazon so it's now out of stock. I think any random USB 3 level coupler work and I'm just making use of my Uptone USPCBs and wonder if a chain of couplers can be just as effective. Oddly any USB cable performs worse despite shielding. The best cable aside from the Corning I got was the IFI Mercury and I thought I couldn't get any better than that for a good while but the Mercury can introduce high frequency noise back into the sound. Perhaps the couplers work due to a thicker solid contact to each other and my theory to the effectiveness of the multiple connections is the voltage loss or current loss going on which helps separate it from the signal.

My suspect on the igalvanic is that it does it's job but still recycles the same dirty power. Imma tell you right now cleaning up that power to the tune of 800usd investment is very crucial in leveling up. The ISO Regen uses the same silicon chip as the igalvanic but it reintroduces clean power that's why the performance difference is clear. As you can see with my chain, you can still keep the igalvanic and re-introduce cleaner power via an idefender. Perhaps the most budget one is getting an IFI 9v to power a dxpwr (6x lt3045) from ldovr .Or get a China R-core LPS and use a Schafnner power cable with that double closed ferrite tech. My dxpwr setting is Vin 7v and Vout 5v. I think it's better than an LPS 1.2 and less than half the cost. Though I have to be honest that the ripple noise measurements on the IFI ipower and the iusb 3 @ .1mv is exaggerated.

 

[801evan]

The interesting messed up trick is to put the isilencers after the igalvanic via a USB 3 hub. If anyone has an iusb, put the isilencers after the iusb. Isilencers scales linearly too which boggles my mind. So does this coupler centipede. I'm a happy camper on ridiculous gadgets though coz it opens a path to unlimited scaling. ($$$$)