thanks for the explanation. But then, products like innuos phoenix USB or from SotM USB ultra are rip-offs basically? More importantly and on topic, have you tried the intona with DAC200 specifically, and if so could your hear/measure any differences?
Im streaming from sotm or rendu to dac200 or holo spring 3 kte and wonder if the intona would improve things, if both these have vey good USB already.
I have the innuos Net and almost pulled the trigger on the innuos USB a couple times already, people usually tend to like it. Way back when my system was more simple, without any streamer, I used the entry level uptone usb regen from laptop to dac and heard zero difference at all, i understand th intona 3 is a different animal of course
It's not that they're rip offs, just that only part of what they're doing has any real basis in terms of theory or evidence for it.
Noise from a USB source can absolutely have a negative impact on the connected device, that's 100% true, and presumably the Sotm and innuos devices are very low noise sources.
BUT, USB 'reclocking' actually just means a USB repeater basically. That can help if you want to use a longer run, but isn't going to improve jitter performance or performance of your DAC. And as mentioned previously no one has ever shown any evidence that their reclocker product produced an improvement here, because quite frankly it just isn't how it works because of the buffered, asynchronous nature of USB.
Here's a bit of a physical analogy:
You are picking up balls from a bucket next to you and throwing them at a target. You throw one every 10 seconds exactly, going by your own watch.
If the bucket starts getting low, you ask the ball guy to bring some more balls and put them in your bucket. It doesn't actually matter whether he brings them one by one exactly as you throw them, whether he brings them in batches of 5 at regular intervals, or whether he dumps 20 in, goes and checks his phone for as long as he feels like and then comes back to dump some more in before you run out again.
As long as the next ball is always in the bucket by the time you reach for it, the timing consistency of when that bucket is filled is entirely irrelevant and you'll be able to throw a ball EXACTLY once every 10 seconds according to your own watch.
This is pretty much how USB audio works. Everything is buffered and the DAC converts according to its own clock. The timing precision with which stuff is put into the buffer simply doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is whether the buffer has the next sample in it by the time the DAC needs it.
You CAN encounter situations called buffer underruns, where the buffer actually runs empty, it's not been filled in time. And this will be super obvious cause it just manifests as audible clicks/pops as the signal stops momentarily. But besides that, your DAC is 100% in control of timing.
As to the DAC200, the galvanic isolation seems to be working properly, I wasn't able to observe any differences beyond run to run variation when isolated vs connected directly to my PC. So I wouldn't worry too much about USB treatment products.
Additionally, in some instances, you can actually end up with instability or problems if you use a galvanic isolator on a product that is already galvanically isolated. It'd be a bad thing to use an intona with the holo may for instance as it then leaves the USB connection ungrounded at both ends and more susceptible to dropouts.
