How legit is a USB reclocker?

[JaideepGiridhar]

I've been offered a deal on a used Innuos reclocker. The digital end of my system is pretty sorted, but I wanted to get a sense of the device's benefits, if any. Amir of Audio Science Review was pretty brutal in his review of the Innuos. Does anyone here have any experience with the device?

 

[matbhuvi]

I've been offered a deal on a used Innuos reclocker. The digital end of my system is pretty sorted, but I wanted to get a sense of the device's benefits, if any. Amir of Audio Science Review was pretty brutal in his review of the Innuos. Does anyone here have any experience with the device?

Lumin U1 must be reclocking with its internal clocks. And it must be having some good clocks as well. There could be improvement. But, very very marginal. Not worth it imo

 

[reignofchaos]

Have a SOTM reclocker and USB hub. It definitely sounds better though it than directly from the SOTM streamer. Another bonus for me is that it allows me to connect both my DACs to the same transport and listen to whatever I please.

 

[bornfi]

I've been offered a deal on a used Innuos reclocker. The digital end of my system is pretty sorted, but I wanted to get a sense of the device's benefits, if any. Amir of Audio Science Review was pretty brutal in his review of the Innuos. Does anyone here have any experience with the device?

I have this in my system and after you get this, you will regret why you didn’t get it sooner. It will elevate your experience substantially.

 

[drkrack]

I use a Gaia DDC, not just USB reclocker per se. Didn't get any chance to use innuous you've mentioned.
I have used iPurifier 2 and 3, USB Regen (for a brief period), that's when I upgraded to Gaia Ddc for first time, but soon changed to Lumin U2 mini, followed by Lan cleaning via Ethergen and Masterclock though helped a great deal but the veil was still felt.

I came back to same DDC after a year or so, and it did fix things in my setup, removed the unnecessary heft which I thought mimics analogous tonality at the expense of details. With Ddc the micro dynamics are much better, undulations in vocals more natural with high frequency extension. But its better to check with home audition before buying, its too system specific almost like final 1% of tweaking the digital chain. If your speakers Tweeters are quite detailed like the beryllium or diamond cones in otherwise treated room with good Soundstage and holographic presentation , you can feel the difference. But do Try before you Buy!

 

[sidvee]

I have used various usb thing-ma-jigs in my system - right from the dawn of streaming via computers to now where we are with purpose built streamers that cost an arm and a leg. In the earlier days, I felt these type of devices helped the usb signal to present an analog-like sound, however as the streamers became more sophisticated and lot of attention was paid to the usb connection, these advantages slowly disappeared to where now I feel adding any type of usb enhancing device to a latest generation streamer, that costs say $5000/$6000 (like the lumin u2 or Aurender n200) is at best no difference and at worst actually detrimental to the sound. Of-course if you can try it in your system, nothing like it, else better avoid. I have gotten rid of all my so called usb enhancers, and just focus on trying to get the best streamer I can afford without worrying about all these add on devices.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[captainsubtext]

Here’s something I read over on Headfi by goldensound on the innuos usb phoenix

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.

USB stuff and DDC can't be directly compared because they work in different ways.

With USB, your DAC is completely in charge of timing. There is no clock signal for audio on USB, and in fact it's a two way communication, the DAC itself asks the computer/source for more data when it needs it, and converts according to the timing dictated by its internal clock.
For this reason, with USB the only thing you need to worry about is noise, which an Intona completely addresses in that it both blocks all noise from the source, AND is incredibly low noise in and of itself.
USB 'reclockers' simply cannot provide any improvement in jitter/timing, it does not work that way and no one has ever demonstrated an improvement in jitter via the use of a USB reclocker.

DDCs that output I2S/AES/SPDIF are different because whilst they also seek to provide a very low noise source, they DO provide a clock signal to the DAC. This clock signal is what the DAC uses to determine when to convert samples and so the timing accuracy of the clock signal provided by the DDC measurably affects the performance of the DAC even though the data itself has not changed.

As to whether a DDC or using USB is better, it depends. A few years ago I would have said definitely a DDC, as many DACs simply didn't have very good USB implementations/internal clocking and so there were quite significant improvements to be had by using a high performance I2S DDC instead.

Nowadays though, many DACs even at lower pricepoints have exceptional jitter performance and it's a lot rarer that a DDC will actually improve things. In fact in many cases they may make it slightly worse. Though most good DDCs do also provide galvanic isolation so again blocking noise from the source is a benefit.

My default recommendation nowadays would be to get an intona, they make a cheaper USB 2.0 only variant as well, though the 7055-C is the lowest noise one if you want the best performance (also looks the best IMO).

 

[mbhangui]

Here’s something I read over on Headfi by goldensound on the innuos usb phoenix

Extremely valid and well said. The thing about buffer is what people forget. If you are using Linux with mpd one can choose the buffer size. Only when I keep the buffer very low does the dac gets affected (especially when I play DSD). Then there are practices that cause more problems than solving it. A good example is using expensive switches and expensive ethernet cables (e.g. audioquest). It is a grave mistake connecting a shieled ethernet cable to your audio chain when using a streamer. The shielded cables introduce noise from the noisy smps powering the ethernet switches into your audio chain. You use such an ethernet cable then the only solution is to get an expensive switch with LPS, etheregen and what not to eliminate the noise. Just like the buffer used when using USB, the ethernet switch is galvanically isolated using transformers. each port of the ethernet switch goes to a transformer shown below. It makes no sense screwing it up by using shielded ethernet cables. I use normal cat5 cables for connecting my streamers to the switch.




Same thing about I2S which you have mentioned. I2S is meant for chip to chip communication and not supposed to be carried over long cables. During the early days when USB was being designed there were two school of thoughts. One to carry I2S over the cable and other was to carry data and the I2S signalling happens from the USB receiver to the DAC which now has proven to be the better method as far as eliminating noise is concerned.

Years back I got USB regen. With blind tests involving switching (carried out by my son) to direct usb and through USB regen I found no improvement using the USB regen. It probably is the most useless device I own. The USB regen is now relegated as a reclocker to share a DAC using a ugreen USB switch to switch between my Mac Mini and a Raspberry PI streamer.

 

[sidvee]

Years back I got USB regen. With blind tests involving switching (carried out by my son) to direct usb and through USB regen I found no improvement using the USB regen. It probably is the most useless device I own. The USB regen is now relegated as a reclocker to share a DAC using a ugreen USB switch to switch between my Mac Mini and a Raspberry PI streamer.

I sold my uptone regen in 2 months after getting it. It made no difference that I could hear.
Cheers,
Sid