SilentPower Presents OMNI USB

[theveterans]

Does it have switching function, that is switching between input(s) and outputs?

1 input only. I think all USB outputs are active by default but can be turned off individually so you can actually manually switch

 

[Jake2]

From the pictures provided they appear to be standard form SFPs (small form pluggable) and SFP sockets. So on the face of it one could SFP-roll if one was so inclined, even experiment with copper DACs (direct attached cables) if you really want to live on the edge as some of us with USB isolators with SFP connectors have done.

Nice one ifi, quite a Swiss Army knife of a USB conditioner you’ve come up with here. I feel some thorough market research had been done, maybe even reading a forum thread or two.

 

[Johnsmith55]

Can a dac be connected to one of the usb ports, and which port?

 

[theveterans]

Can a dac be connected to one of the usb ports, and which port?

You can connect 3 USB DACs simultaneously (not 6 since the other 3 are just power only). Any USB port with data+power label on them that's where you connect your DAC

 

[Johnsmith55]

You can connect 3 USB DACs simultaneously (not 6 since the other 3 are just power only). Any USB port with data+power label on them that's where you connect your DAC

And all usb ports are limited to 24bit 192KHZ?

 

[theveterans]

And all usb ports are limited to 24bit 192KHZ?

Should not be. You can do DSD1024 if your DAC can support it. Fiber Optic network is NOT Toslink. Only common thing they have is the use of light

 

[Johnsmith55]

Should not be. You can do DSD1024 if your DAC can support it. Fiber Optic network is NOT Toslink. Only common thing they have is the use of light

Thanks

 

[TheManko]

I read the documentation available on the Silentpower website, and I have questions. One is about the two Coax ports. In the manual it says one is Enhanced. In the spec sheet it instead calls the Coax port High Voltage instead of Enhanced. What is the difference? High voltage for very long cables?

Also the two optical ports remains a mystery. As others have noted it's just normal SFP so you could roll your own wires and extend them possibly up to 10km. It depends on the transmission type. The 10G port should be enough for USB 3.1 Gen 2. Is the 1.5G port there for USB 2.0 mode? Or is it there as a dedicated communication line between the two boxes? The screen has status and signal quality monitoring features, and also a firmware update function. Maybe the 1.5G port is only used for these functions. As it's not releasing for a few months you have plenty of time to answer!

And all usb ports are limited to 24bit 192KHZ?

I think the 192kHz spec only refers to the USB to SPDIF conversion feature. The USB to USB ports should easily support the highest data rate the dac supports. I went through the manual again and saw no limitations stated anywhere, aside for on the SPDIF ports.

 

[LoryWiv]

Will this add meaningful noise reduction if one's DAC has galvanic isolation on the USB input?

 

[theveterans]

Will this add meaningful noise reduction if one's DAC has galvanic isolation on the USB input?

Galvanic isolation doesn't affect the original clock of the USB though. BTW, even if the USB is asynchronous, like Ethernet is buffered, the sonic effects of a reclocked USB signal is still quite audible

 

[TheManko]

Will this add meaningful noise reduction if one's DAC has galvanic isolation on the USB input?

Focusing only on the isolation aspect, it's possible it could make a difference because galvanic isolation is done with chips that have a maximum spec for how much noise they can dissipate. In your signature you list the Holo Cyan 2, so I looked up the parts number for the Galvanic Isolation chips used on that dac. It uses two Chipanalog CA-IS3741LW with a max "Isolation Voltage(Vrms) 5000". A Singxer UIP-1 Pro claims an isolation voltage of 15.000. How much isolation does one actually need? I have no idea! But doing optical isolation like the Omni USB would guarantee that the galvanic isolation chips won't be oversaturated by noise.

And of course as @theveterans mentioned iFi use a collection of other techniques to improve the signal while they're at it, like their active noise cancellation, reclocking, and more. Weirdly the marketing material on the Omni USB is a bit short on information on what they do to improve the signal, aside from using optical isolation and pure power. Look at the product page for the iPurifier3 for example. There they mention reclocking, dc offset correction, and more. I would assume the Omni USB does all of these things as well. But as mentioned on the previous page of this thread, this product is apparently also aimed at business customers, so maybe listing every technique is something you only do for audiophile consumers. Maybe the marketing material is simply incomplete at the moment. For example, it has a clock input. But what clock is used internally on the Omni USB? That could be useful to know if you want to improve on what you already get.

 

[duranxv]

Looks interesting. I'm wondering though, would it make a difference to use USB out to the DAC vs. Optical out to the DAC from the Omni?

From what I understand, the included OptiLink is converting the USB data to light before it is transmitted to the OmniUSB, but then you're carrying that over via the Pureport via a USB cable to the DAC. Meanwhile if you did optical out from the Omni USB, it would be 100% light all the way through until it reaches the DAC. Maybe I'm getting this completely wrong, but the descriptions are a tad confusing.

 

[TheManko]

would it make a difference to use USB out to the DAC vs. Optical out to the DAC from the Omni?

When the signal is transmitted between the OptiLink and Omni USB it uses SFP, which is optical signal made for networking. That gives you full USB 3.1 Gen 2 bandwidth between the boxes. But dacs only support optical over SPDIF, so when you transmit optical out of the Omni USB it's done over Toslink, and so the signal maxes out at 24bit 192kHz because that's all SPDIF supports. With USB you can use higher sampling rates, which is useful for those who use HQPlayer for resampling, or maybe you're one of two people who has a big library of DSD512 music. Therefore it's more of a tradeoff between what you need than one being better than the other. But yes it wouldn't surprise me if the Toslink sounds just as good or better than the USB output using stock cables. I think it'll depend on how well the ports are implemented on the dac you're using. On some dacs a lot of effort is put into Coax, so maybe that will sound best. So unfortunately the answer is "it's possible, but you'll have to test".