Schiit Wyrd USB Power Isolator Review

mauidan · August 13, 2015, 03:24 PM

Schiit Wyrd USB Power Isolator | AudioStream

**bzr** · August 13, 2015, 05:22 PM

Good read, interesting with the comparison coming up of the 3.....now we need wisnon & Paul to mutilate for another seventy twelve pages........

**Yash** · August 13, 2015, 07:32 PM

Originally Posted by bzr

Good read, interesting with the comparison coming up of the 3.....

I agree, excellent read, and I would extend that to the whole series that Michael is doing and that he should conclude with some comparisons of various combinations of these devices.

I really disliked Mr. Moffat's insinuations as 'Manufacturer's Comments' - showed a good lack of class IMO. Not saying their product isn't good by the way.

Originally Posted by bzr

now we need wisnon & Paul to mutilate for another seventy twelve pages........

Don't invoke the Devil

**bzr** · August 13, 2015, 08:12 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

I agree, ................Don't invoke the Devil

...sshhh, I am the advocate

**FlexibleAudio** · August 13, 2015, 09:20 PM

Regardless of what Mike Moffat says in the comments section, he needs to understand that "Uptone are the only experts in this very specialist emerging area." I know this because Norman told me this in Post #71 of the "Regen Wow" thread. Norman would never spew hyperbola. Apparently its also true that DHT's are in fact flat from 20hz to 20khz, that usb is superior to I2S, that a balanced dac topology is vastly superior to an unbalanced topology (merely because dac chips are naturally balanced), and pigs can fly.

Here are some of Mike Moffat's Comments from the article regarding the Regen:

"I would like to thank Mr. Lavorgna for taking the time to review the Schiit Wyrd, with the link in the review to the Uptone Audio REGEN, a product with which I was not familiar. I have a policy of not commenting on the designs of others – this time, however, I feel a need to make objective comments, due in fact to the link to the other product within the Wyrd's review.

It is flattering when another manufacturer builds a nearly part by part copy of one of Schiit's current products, in this case a USB hub based, crystal clock driven, repeater type design with a power supply to drive the USB+5.

It is really helpful to me when products I have introduced (or re-introduced) are rebuilt by others with their own modifications added. This is simply because those who matter most always know who built it first."

—Mike Moffat, Co-Founder Schiit Audio

Someone is fibbing, but pigs can still fly. When I tried to point out to Norman the extreme nature of his claim and mentioned that others including Playback Designs, MSB and Berkeley (to name a few) have also done much in this this area I got the same circular run around I always get. The concerning thing to me is I see many Sharks taking his comments as fact. I have tried to address the situation but frankly its a full time job and I am tired.

Before you start screaming, the following is a note to my critics (from my post #67 in the "Regen Wow" thread)--

I am not here for flames. I am here to learn. I also, however, care a lot about the integrity of this forum. If we are so "friendly" we can never have in intelligent discourse to clarify or correct a members posts then the average quality of information available will suffer. I do not think this is a good thing. If comments do not need to meet a minimum standard because they can not be challenged I think our membership will gradually migrate to places where the average value is higher than we provide. Evaluating the reasoning behind disagreements is our de facto Quality Control Department and with out it our quality will suffer. I am NOT a proponent of allowing the kind of personal confrontation that occurs on other forums but the pendulum swinging to far the other way can undermine what imo is our primary purpose here.

**Mike** · August 13, 2015, 09:20 PM

Originally Posted by bzr

Good read, interesting with the comparison coming up of the 3.....now we need wisnon & Paul to mutilate for another seventy twelve pages........

LMAO.

**bzr** · August 14, 2015, 04:57 AM

Paul trust me, the people of the shark tank are not easily led by someone with an attitude that smacks of elitism.

**wisnon** · August 14, 2015, 07:58 AM

Mhhh

Very classy response. I know who my money is on as the truther vs the fibber:

image: http://cdn.audiostream.com/images/us...1394495689.jpg

Let's put a rest to this please... Submitted by UpTone Audio on August 13, 2015 - 11:20am
[Gentlemen: I composed the below in a word processor in-between other tasks this morning. Now going to post it I see that others have chimed in with regards to Schiit’s comments concerning the REGEN. While it is worth setting the record straight, “crapping up” the Wyrd’s review with further comments about this would be distasteful. So although I appreciate the support from REGEN fans, I am going to post the below and ask that this be the last word on the matter.
Thanks.]

Mike Moffat and Jason Stoddard are audio pioneers and engineers whom I have long respected, and I admire the straight-shooting, value-oriented company they have built. (As a serial audio entrepreneur myself, I laughed and cried through Jason’s entire blog/book, “Schitt Happened…”, because I so identified with many of their travails.) I fact, I have been considering picking up the intriguing Schiit Yggdrasil for my own system.

Thus I was somewhat saddened to see that Mr. Moffat used his Manufacturer’s Comment to accuse us of blatantly copying the Wyrd in our design of the UpTone USB REGEN. Such a charge would be of serious concern if true, but both public and private records show this is not the case at all.
My engineering partner, John Swenson, had been studying and writing about (see the series of Q&A interviews right here on AudioStream dated August 2013) issues of USB signal integrity for some time, and the first prototypes of our REGEN pre-date Schiit’s March 2014 announcement of Wyrd (and what appears to be June 2014 first shipments) by several months. Believe me, I felt a big lump in my stomach when I read about the hub-chip-Wyrd as we were readying first production of the REGEN.

So while it is true that both the REGEN and Wyrd use the same model of USB2.0 hub chip, that’s an easy coincidence because of our common desire to pick an older device with less “crap” going on it, and for that there just are not very many. I think the similarities between our product designs and their goals pretty much end there. The REGEN focuses on optimized signal integrity and ideal impedance match—best when positioned right at the DAC’s input jack—while the Wyrd appears to concentrate most of its circuitry on providing very clean 5VBUS for DACs that need it. Their own marketing seems to indicate that inclusion of the hub chip is to help in instances where computer/DAC combos “make weird noises or have glitches.”

Again, with much respect to Mike Moffat and his team, I can promise that UpTone Audio products never have and never will copy other’s work (life is too short and I’m too old for unoriginality). The REGEN/Wyrd overlap is simply a case of great minds thinking alike.
Sincerely,
Alex Crespi
UpTone Audio LLC

Read more at Schiit Wyrd USB Power Isolator | AudioStream

**wisnon** · August 14, 2015, 08:09 AM

Wow, what interesting talk about i2s and Signal integrity. Let's see this dates back to...Aug, 2013!
that cant be right now, can it?
Q&A with John Swenson. Part 2: Are Bits Just Bits?

By Michael Lavorgna • Posted: Aug 28, 2013

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image: http://cdn.audiostream.com/images/st...?itok=ks7UQbMD

In Part 1 of our Q&A, John Swenson covered "What is Digital?". You should consider that required reading for Part 2 since he builds on that foundation here. Part 1 also includes John's bio if you'd like to know more about him. Now let's get on with Part 2:
Can you explain how things other than "the bits" could have an effect on the analog output of a DAC?
First I’m going to go into some more detail on what I talked about last time, specifically, ramp times. Remember that the jitter caused by the ramp time is a combination of the threshold uncertainty and the ramp time. So it seems at first glance that you can decrease the jitter by having a faster ramp time. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.
The same amount of charge needs to be transferred no matter what the ramp time is. So if it takes one half the time, twice as much current has to flow. This causes the ground plane noise to increase, which increases the threshold uncertainty. Thus decreasing the ramp time doesn’t help.
"The result is that faster ramp times actually increase jitter."
It’s actually worse. If you run the “edge” through a Fourier transform (which converts the time domain into a frequency domain) you will see a large amount of very high frequency components. If you decrease the ramp time, those high frequency components increase. When those high frequency currents flow through the inductance in the ground plane they create an even greater voltage drop than already mentioned. The result is that faster ramp times actually increase jitter.
I covered this in detail to show how what seems obvious at first glance may not actually be true when you start dealing with jitter and ground plane noise.
So what about an asynchronous USB interface, isn’t it supposed to completely isolate the DAC from everything? Let’s look in detail at each part of the system and see what affects it.
Let’s start with the local oscillator, the “clock”. It turns out that almost all ultra low jitter oscillators are quite sensitive to ground plane and power supply noise. As the noise increases the jitter increases, and the spectrum of that extra jitter is directly related to the spectrum of the noise. This phenomenon is well known by many digital designers, so many will use decent low noise regulators with the clocks, but many don’t bother with that step, guaranteeing that the low jitter spec of the oscillator is going to be drastically compromised. Not only do you have to deal with the self generated noise of the regulator, but also its ability to block noise coming in on its input supply. Most regulators are very poor at this for high frequencies. This means that noise generated by the other logic elements on the board is going to sail right on through the regulators used in many DACs, causing jitter in the clock whose spectrum is highly correlated to what the rest of the board is doing. It IS possible to do a good job of providing low noise clean power to the clock, but it’s not easy and the designer really has to work at it.
And we still haven’t even talked about the ground plane! The noise on the ground plane is just as important to the jitter of the clock, but it doesn’t have a regulator, it just is what it is. If the clock is going to do what it is supposed to do, the ground plane it is connected to HAS to somehow be isolated from the noise generated by other parts of the circuit. I’ll go into this in detail later on.
So right at the beginning the clock itself is susceptible to influences outside itself in almost all implementations.
After the clocks (it takes two in most implementations) you need a clock mux, which again creates its own jitter from the ground plane noise caused by the return current going back to the clock. In order to decrease this jitter you need to make the ramp time of the clock slow, but not too slow. The adage here is “just fast enough to work in all circumstances”. That means you usually have to slow down the clock edges. Fortunately this is easy to do by just putting a resistor in series with the output. But just this simple little tweak is not done very often. And what about the mux itself? It needs to have the same treatment. Fortunately the designer has a large choice of possible muxes to choose from, some very fast edges and some very slow. As strange as it may seem frequently the best ones to use are the old slow technologies from decades ago. They lumber along with slow edge rates and internal transistors, creating very small amounts of noise. Since the clocks we are talking about here are very slow by modern standards, these old muxes work very well. But again, not many designers take the time to optimize that.
"Most modern DAC chips have a lot of stuff inside creating a lot of noise on the internal power and ground traces, which pretty much nullifies that ultra low jitter clock we are sending it."
Then the clock goes to the DAC chip. Most modern DAC chips have a lot of stuff inside creating a lot of noise on the internal power and ground traces, which pretty much nullifies that ultra low jitter clock we are sending it. This is probably why a large number of people have a hard time hearing differences caused by changes to things such as jitter and noise. The effects caused by them are being swamped by the jitter generated inside the chip.
A number of companies are realizing this and are using DAC chips where a lot of this internal processing can be turned off. This significantly cuts down on internal jitter, BUT it also makes it possible for external influences to be more noticeable. So now the jitter on the main clock fed into the DAC chip starts to be quite important since it’s not masked so much. An analogy might be the noise level in your listening room. Let’s say you have a fan running and you realize that it’s interfering with your enjoyment of the music. So you turn the fan off, expecting perfect quiet. But now you can hear the traffic outside, the kids playing down the street, the dog barking next door etc. Turning the fan off didn’t make these other noise sources louder, but now they are not masked so much and are more annoying. The same thing happens with DACs, as you get rid of one major source of jitter and noise, others now become obvious and they might be harder to get rid of.
Next let’s look at the other inputs to the DAC chip, such as the I2S signals. Those signals might have quite a bit of jitter depending on where they come from. Even though the main clock is supposed to be the arbiter of timing, these other inputs can also affect the internal timing. Each one of those signals has a return current back to wherever it came from, creating ground plane noise to the DAC chip. They also create noise on the internal chip traces from the transistors receiving those signals. All of this creates noise the chip sees whose spectrum is related to the spectrum of the jitter on the I2S signals. So not only is jitter on the master clock important, but so is jitter on the I2S signals. This is important to realize, jitter on ALL input signals to the DAC chip can modify the timing internal to the chip.
So in order to fix this jitter on the I2S signals we “reclock” them with a flip flop clocked by the master clock. BUT the signals going into the flop also cause ground plane noise with a spectrum related to the jitter on the inputs, AND some of the transistors inside the flop are also switching based on the input signals, adding to the ground plane noise correlated to the “jittery” inputs. So why bother reclocking? It DOES decrease jitter, it just doesn’t eliminate it. If the I2S signals have quite a bit of jitter, the reclocking can cut it down by quite a bit, but there is STILL jitter on the output that is correlated to the input jitter AND there is noise on the ground plane related to the input signals that can influence the clock, clock mux, and DAC chip. So while reclocking can help, it is not a panacea.
So now the crux of the matter, how can what goes into the USB receiver affect any of this? In several ways: packet jitter, edge jitter, PLLs. I’ll go over each of these.
Packet jitter is the difference in the arrival time of packets to the receiver chip. USB packets are transmitted over the bus at either 1000 per second (full speed mode) or 8000 per second (high speed mode). Every time one of those packets hits the receiver a lot of activity happens inside the receiver chip. This creates lots of noise inside the chip and on the ground plane. This causes a lot of jitter on the outputs from the chip. The spectrum of this noise and jitter has a VERY strong component at either 1KHz or 8KHz, both of which are directly in the audio range. Any changes in the arrival time of the packets will change the spectrum of this packet noise. In the next installment I’ll cover what causes this packet jitter.
"As with everything else I have been talking about, jitter on the input can cause noise in the chip and on the ground plane that is related to the spectrum of the jitter. This is where things like different cables can have an effect on what is happening."
Next is edge jitter, this is traditional jitter of the individual edges on the bus. As with everything else I have been talking about, jitter on the input can cause noise in the chip and on the ground plane that is related to the spectrum of the jitter. This is where things like different cables can have an effect on what is happening.
Next is PLLs. Every USB receiver chip has at least one if not more PLLs. These PLLs are affected by both the previous types of jitter and since almost all the circuitry inside the chip is clocked by these PLLs, the jitter on output signals and ground plane noise is going to be significantly affected by the noise spectrum coming out of the PLLs. This is filtered by the PLL loop filter, but there are still major components related to the input jitter.
So how do we keep all this noise from the USB receiver from getting to our sensitive DAC circuits? It’s called ground plane isolation. You have separate ground planes for the USB receiver and the rest of the DAC circuitry. This DOES prevent ground plane noise from crossing over. BUT if you cut the ground plane there is no way for the return current from the signals crossing the boundary (the I2S signals and clock etc) to get between the “ground domains”. The solution is digital isolators. There are many different technologies to choose from, one most people are familiar with is opto-couplers. Some of these actually add huge amounts of jitter to the signals going through them so are bad choices for our purposes.
A signal from the receiver now has a return current coming from the isolator so it’s happy. On the other side of the boundary there is a return current to the DAC circuitry so it is happy. BUT any jitter on the signal coming out of the isolator is STILL creating ground plane noise with a spectrum related to the jitter it had on the other side of the isolator. In addition it is containing jitter related to the isolation scheme as well, and some of THAT jitter is ALSO related to noise on the ground plane on the receiver side.
So again the ground plane isolation and signal isolators can decrease the jitter and noise going from the USB receiver to the DAC circuits, BUT they cannot eliminate it. Some always gets through.
"So why even bother with asynchronous USB? Because it DOES help a lot."
So why even bother with asynchronous USB? Because it DOES help a lot. With adaptive USB the clock feeding the DAC chip comes out of the USB receiver with all the rather large amount of noise and jitter already discussed. With async the DAC chip clock does come from a local oscillator, so even though it is affected by the noise from the USB receiver through the mechanisms outlined above, it is still WAY better than what you get out of an adaptive receiver.
You are very much in the scenario I listed above—you have gotten rid of one very large amount of noise, but without it, the affects from other sources are now easily heard. This does not mean the first step was worthless, just not sufficient to completely get rid of it.
Now for some general observations on existing DACs out there “in the wild”. Everything I have discussed here is known. This is not anything new. BUT the number of designers that are familiar with all of this and know how to deal with it are very few. The result is that DACs that deal well with all of these issues are essentially non-existent. Various designers have implemented parts of this in varying degrees, thus there is going to be a wide variation in how different DACs respond to different influences. The upshot is that in the real world of actual DAC implementations there WILL be changes in sound with what is going on outside the DAC box, but it is going to be different for every box, making generalizations about how to make things sound the best, VERY difficult.

Read more at Q&A with John Swenson. Part 2: Are Bits Just Bits? | AudioStream

**Audioseduction** · August 14, 2015, 10:13 AM

I'm sure glad my DAC dose not depend on the USB power. No need for a device like this for me.

**audio.bill** · August 14, 2015, 10:39 AM

George - As far as the UpTone Audio REGEN, it has been found to provide a significant improvement in sound quality even with DACs that do NOT use USB power. This is due to regeneration of the USB data signal to improve its signal integrity, which lowers noise in the data recovery circuitry of the signal receiver portion of the DAC. It also improves the impedance matching between the data sender and receiver circuitry which further improves the integrity of the signal.

**Audioseduction** · August 14, 2015, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by audio.bill

George - As far as the UpTone Audio REGEN, it has been found to provide a significant improvement in sound quality even with DACs that do NOT use USB power. This is due to regeneration of the USB data signal to improve its signal integrity, which lowers noise in the data recovery circuitry of the signal receiver portion of the DAC. It also improves the impedance matching between the data sender and receiver circuitry which further improves the integrity of the signal.

My Bel Canto REFLink Asynchronous USB Converter dose a out standing job for me. I use a ST Optical Glass Fiber to feed the signal to my DAC so the impedance is irrelevant in my case since I'm just sending photons to my DAC. I know the way I pass the signal from my music server to my DAC is very unusual. Not too many people do it exactly the way I do it.

**wisnon** · August 14, 2015, 11:24 AM

it "may" benefit the converter to have a higher Signal integrity feeding its USB receiver port, as that "may" result in a cleaner conversion to Optical (or it may not). It would be interesting if you could get a loaner to try and let us know.

Certainly your transmission scheme seems very clever!

**MusicDirector** · August 14, 2015, 11:34 AM

For the love of....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so sick of politics in everything!!!
My disgust has finally gotten the better of me. The whole industry is sadly becoming a political campaign in some respects.
Here is what I know about this subject:
I don't know why or what the fight is about or really why Mr. Moffat posted what he did or why the whole thing is going on.
I do know via personal experience that Schiit is an upstanding company. I have spoken with reps and Mr. Stoddard several times. Nice folks. Their business model is all about honesty. I was looking for a solution to a PC audio problem and was thinking about getting the Bitfrost. In speaking with the folks at Schiit, they steered me instead to a solution at half the price and did not really discuss the Bitfrost with me much only to say that while it's a fabulous unit like everything else they offer, it would be unnecessary for me to spend that money to solve my problem.
How many companies do we know that willfully and insistantly steer customers towards less costly products, especially in audio? I can count them on one hand.
Every time I have visited their booth at some event not only are they friendly, but they don't push. They are just there to help when needed. If one reads the story of Schiit by Mr. Jason Stoddard (co-founder) one gets every nut and bolt of it. (Also no small feat from Mr. Stoddard either writing all that).

I'm sure the Uptone company also offers good products and everything.

I'm just sick of all the in-fighting and such. I don't know what starts these things, but it's only serving to ruin the industry. I believe lately the industry has a real chance to gain customers in honest fashion, by offering a variety of products to most folks in a wider price range which means bigger audience. An opportunity to purge some of the BS often associated with the industry and provide ways for folks to be satisfied and proud or grateful for their purchase of things that bring them closer to re-engaging with music.

It's because of this lack of engagement to music that we have all the violence and fighting and bad stuff happening all around if you ask me. I think some companies can sort of work together as pointed out subtly by the response from Uptone to bring even more products to market to help more folks get good sound quality which is a essential part of being able to re-engage with music. Why is it we choose to fight instead?
(I'm not even sure I'm keeping the names straight, all I see is red).

Yeah guys, I'm really pissed in a sad way, not a sheer rage or hateful way. I've just run across so much of this stuff lately it has me thinking about leaving all of audio behind in every respect.

~Eric

**Mechnutt** · August 14, 2015, 11:41 AM

The bottom line is that the Regen definitely improves the sound in most cases (in my system is was a big improvement)and is out selling the Schiit by a wide margin. I have a friend that has the Schiit and it did not improve the sound in his system but it helped with a mismatch between his computer and Schiit DAC.. The Regen and Schiit are 2 different animals.

**Yash** · August 14, 2015, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by bzr

...sshhh, I am the advocate

Look at what you did - bad bzr!

**Yash** · August 14, 2015, 01:47 PM

Originally Posted by FlexibleAudio

Regardless of what Mike Moffat says in the comments section, he needs to understand that "Uptone are the only experts in this very specialist emerging area."

It is flattering when another manufacturer builds a nearly part by part copy of one of Schiit's current products, in this case a USB hub based, crystal clock driven, repeater type design with a power supply to drive the USB+5.

Indeed Uptone and John are the only ones who did a rather thorough investigation, analysis, prototyping and marketing of a product which specifically deals with frequency optimisation of the PDN noise profile by focusing first and foremost on signal integrity.

The Wyrd doesn't do that at all.

The Regen does have some common parts, like the USB Hub chip, but that chip doesn't by itself resolve the frequency optimisation of the PDN in the USB receiver around the PHY.

The Regen is meant to be used near the DAC, but also has an internal noise profile (less than usual) at its PHY and PDN, so it is susceptible to the SI you feed it, and hence you could even consider feeding the Wyrd (upstream, near the computer) into the Regen to probable good effect.

Aspects of re-clocking and re-generation and clean power have been around a long time.

It is only John whom I've seen explicitly talk about the USB PHY PDN frequency optimisation, and that dates from quite a while as well over at computeraudiophile.com.

The Regen isn't claimed to solve everything (in particular, it isn't itself impervious to SI issues prior to it, it isn't claimed to do full galvanic isolation, it isn't claimed to resolve the remaining issues inherent to the USB Protocol).

But what is does is resolve something which John found to be rather large (in both formal measurements and perceived SQ) when SI is lacking and with the existing USB Receiver PHYs and PDNs. Frequency optimisation of PDNs is a known process: it's already used for high-speed network devices. However, no-one really thought of using the same in audiophile land for USB in consumer-level equipment.

In that sense, this is a very worthwhile innovation.

I2S and other stuff are not relevant to these devices.

**FlexibleAudio** · August 14, 2015, 01:47 PM

Originally Posted by bzr

Paul trust me, the people of the shark tank are not easily led by someone with an attitude that smacks of elitism.

Heck I don't care if you are the Queen of England just shoot straight.

**Yash** · August 14, 2015, 01:51 PM

Originally Posted by MusicDirector

I'm just sick of all the in-fighting and such. I don't know what starts these things, but it's only serving to ruin the industry.

Hard to say from afar what happened, but I think it was someone getting slightly too emotional and not calming down before taking to the keyboard. You can probably mingle with this business pressures too I guess. Unfortunately, things stick around on the net and I think it reflects badly on the Wyrd manufacturer...

mauidan · August 14, 2015, 02:03 PM

Originally Posted by Mechnutt

The bottom line is that the Regen definitely improves the sound in most cases (in my system is was a big improvement)and is out selling the Schiit by a wide margin. I have a friend that has the Schiit and it did not improve the sound in his system but it helped with a mismatch between his computer and Schiit DAC.. The Regen and Schiit are 2 different animals.

How do you know this?

**MusicDirector** · August 14, 2015, 02:42 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

Hard to say from afar what happened, but I think it was someone getting slightly too emotional and not calming down before taking to the keyboard. You can probably mingle with this business pressures too I guess. Unfortunately, things stick around on the net and I think it reflects badly on the Wyrd manufacturer...

Yeah, your probably at least partly correct for sure and I think part of the problem was bad form by the reviewer as well, in my opinion.

None of us know the inside of either company well enough to dig in on any one side and certainly not well enough to fan the flames of whatever is going on. It's best to let them work it out. I don't know why Mr. Moffat wrote what he did exactly, but the door was opened by the review so he chose to write in. On one hand one really can't blame the guy. On the other, perhaps it would have been better to not take it public.

**Yash** · August 14, 2015, 03:33 PM

Originally Posted by MusicDirector

Yeah, your probably at least partly correct for sure and I think part of the problem was bad form by the reviewer as well, in my opinion.

None of us know the inside of either company well enough to dig in on any one side and certainly not well enough to fan the flames of whatever is going on. It's best to let them work it out. I don't know why Mr. Moffat wrote what he did exactly, but the door was opened by the review so he chose to write in. On one hand one really can't blame the guy. On the other, perhaps it would have been better to not take it public.

I think your assessment is correct. But then again, in reviews, we usually like to hear about similar devices for similar purposes, and seeing that Michael is preparing the series of articles to culminate with the combinations thereof, I don't think he was wrong in making the mention - he sure will have to mention at least these two together again.

I think it might be the ugly side of business we're seeing, seen it a lot elsewhere and audio is no different.

Alex from Uptone responded quite well I thought. He's a cool guy.

**MusicDirector** · August 14, 2015, 04:01 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

I think your assessment is correct. But then again, in reviews, we usually like to hear about similar devices for similar purposes, and seeing that Michael is preparing the series of articles to culminate with the combinations thereof, I don't think he was wrong in making the mention - he sure will have to mention at least these two together again.

I think it might be the ugly side of business we're seeing, seen it a lot elsewhere and audio is no different.

Alex from Uptone responded quite well I thought. He's a cool guy.

I still think it's poor form, but I'm not a reviewer. I think it should be up to us the reader or consumer to note similar devices.

I don't know Alex and Uptone, but I agree that his response was well thought, cordial and polite and he even mentioned that he admires Schiit, what more could one want? There are many very nice manufactures in audio including Schiit (they are one that I have spoken with a few times). That's why I was 1) surprised somewhat at Mr. Moffat's response and 2) I still say the door was held open by the way the review was done.

None of this changes my opinion of Schiit because I can see beyond it, but the problem is that many folks can not (at least without great struggle) in this day and age and that is the by-product that hurts the industry.

**Yash** · August 14, 2015, 04:08 PM

Personally, it changed my perception of Moffat and his team to the negative. These are quite serious accusations.

I don't think I'll ever consider their products.

The Regen is however high on my wish list if I stick to USB (which is not a given).

**FlexibleAudio** · August 14, 2015, 04:32 PM

Norman,

You missed my intent. I was not weighing in on whether Uptone or Wyre is the fibber, I was pointing at you given the preposterous nature of another one of your claims.

So Norman says: "Uptone are the only experts in this very specialist emerging area."

I respond by calling BS.

Norman provides the following statement by Alex at Uptone in support of his claim.

Originally Posted by wisnon

The REGEN/Wyrd overlap is simply a case of great minds thinking alike.
Sincerely,
Alex Crespi
UpTone Audio LLC"

So Uptone "are the only experts" but when Uptone is commenting about why another product is so very similar to the Regen, Uptone themselves admit "great mids think a like." Hmmmm so that might imply the other great mind might also know a little bit about digital connections??? Do you think?? Before you start with the marketing babble about Uptone's unique focus on impedance and SI (as if other designers have no idea what that means and do not consider it in there architecture) why don't you try telling this to Larry Gullman, Andreas Koch, Michael Pflaumer, Gordon Rankin and Mike Moffat or any of the other myriad of designers that live and breath digital signal paths every day.

**Joe P** · August 14, 2015, 04:40 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

Personally, it changed my perception of Moffat and his team to the negative. These are quite serious accusations.

I don't think I'll ever consider their products.

The Regen is however high on my wish list if I stick to USB (which is not a given).

I don't think Mr.Moffat is going lose any sleep.

**Yash** · August 14, 2015, 04:48 PM

Originally Posted by jap

I don't think Mr.Moffat is going lose any sleep.

Maybe he already is.

**Yash** · August 14, 2015, 04:51 PM

Originally Posted by FlexibleAudio

Larry Gullman, Andreas Koch, Michael Pflaumer, Gordon Rankin and Mike Moffat or any of the other myriad of designers that live and breath digital signal paths every day.

Who of these have specifically frequency optimised the PDN around their USB Receiver PHY?

**MusicDirector** · August 14, 2015, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

Personally, it changed my perception of Moffat and his team to the negative. These are quite serious accusations.

I don't think I'll ever consider their products.

The Regen is however high on my wish list if I stick to USB (which is not a given).

This is exactly what I am talking about.
No, I'm not yelling at you or anything of course, but have you ever spoken to anyone at Schiit? Have you even so much as looked at the website? Do you know anything about their products? Or are you basing your opinion on this one confusing event?

Mr. Moffats "accusations" or not, are separate from the products and service and the rest of the team at Schiit. I don't think what has happened with this has any reflection on the products. Even Alex from Uptone is purchasing one of Schiit's pricier items for his own use as he stated in his response. This leads me to believe that perhaps the hatchet will soon be buried. I would not think that Mr. Moffat would refuse Alex's money, if he does than that only shows him to be a fool, but has no reflection on the products.

Naturally, it's your choice alone as to what to consider and I don't fault you as it is the same for all of us. I'm just pointing out what the decision is based on. If Schiit had crappy service or were pushy or had questionable product, I would not consider them either. However, none of that is the case.
Same for any company, even if I knew the money I paid for something only solely went to some evil twat or political organization or politician, I would not do business with that company. Again, not the case with this one nor with Uptone, I'm sure.
How would I know? Easy, it all rolls downhill, if you have some messed up person leading a company it will show in the service, employees and how they interact and probably the product as well.

**FlexibleAudio** · August 14, 2015, 05:20 PM

Originally Posted by wisnon

Wow, what interesting talk about i2s and Signal integrity. Let's see this dates back to...Aug, 2013!
that cant be right now, can it?
Q&A with John Swenson. Part 2: Are Bits Just Bits?
Next let’s look at the other inputs to the DAC chip, such as the I2S signals. Those signals might have quite a bit of jitter depending on where they come from. Even though the main clock is supposed to be the arbiter of timing, these other inputs can also affect the internal timing. Each one of those signals has a return current back to wherever it came from, creating ground plane noise to the DAC chip. They also create noise on the internal chip traces from the transistors receiving those signals. All of this creates noise the chip sees whose spectrum is related to the spectrum of the jitter on the I2S signals. So not only is jitter on the master clock important, but so is jitter on the I2S signals. This is important to realize, jitter on ALL input signals to the DAC chip can modify the timing internal to the chip.
So in order to fix this jitter on the I2S signals we “reclock” them with a flip flop clocked by the master clock. BUT the signals going into the flop also cause ground plane noise with a spectrum related to the jitter on the inputs, AND some of the transistors inside the flop are also switching based on the input signals, adding to the ground plane noise correlated to the “jittery” inputs. So why bother reclocking? It DOES decrease jitter, it just doesn’t eliminate it. If the I2S signals have quite a bit of jitter, the reclocking can cut it down by quite a bit, but there is STILL jitter on the output that is correlated to the input jitter AND there is noise on the ground plane related to the input signals that can influence the clock, clock mux, and DAC chip. So while reclocking can help, it is not a panacea.
So now the crux of the matter, how can what goes into the USB receiver affect any of this? In several ways: packet jitter, edge jitter, PLLs. I’ll go over each of these.
Packet jitter is the difference in the arrival time of packets to the receiver chip. USB packets are transmitted over the bus at either 1000 per second (full speed mode) or 8000 per second (high speed mode). Every time one of those packets hits the receiver a lot of activity happens inside the receiver chip.

Here we go again with the non-sequiturs. Norman, JS is talking about how usb packet jitter impacts the I2S used in the internal feed to the chip!! Our discussion was about asynchronous connections between a source and the dac input. Specifically the fact that I2S when used for these purposes is not riddled with all of the incumbent problems from packet noise like a usb connection. Why would you refer to the internal dac chip connection with regard to this discussion?? Just because the preferred approach for chip connection is i2s? Surely you see the irrelevance of this argument. And by the way, of course anything made of copper is going to be impacted by jitter when the it is fed with jitter. This is not an outgrowth of the I2s protocol like packet noise is with usb. I2S's excellent performance in its role in feeding chips is why it is the standard for internal chip feeds. Or are you now going to argue chips should be fed with something else?

**Yash** · August 14, 2015, 05:26 PM

Originally Posted by MusicDirector

Have you even so much as looked at the website? Do you know anything about their products? Or are you basing your opinion on this one confusing event?

I know quite a few things about their products and was even considering one of their products at one point in time, wrote to them asking whether they would support double DSD at the time they released a DSD64 only DAC.

Since I now own a DAC capable of Quad DSD native, I don't need their product. I went with iFi and I'm rather happy about the products and how the team at iFi treats me as a customer.

Originally Posted by MusicDirector

Even Alex from Uptone is purchasing one of Schiit's pricier items for his own use as he stated in his response.

He mentioned he was considering one.

Originally Posted by MusicDirector

This leads me to believe that perhaps the hatchet will soon be buried.

Let's hope so.

Originally Posted by MusicDirector

Same for any company, even if I knew the money I paid for something only solely went to some evil twat or political organization or politician, I would not do business with that company.

The allegations were serious enough for me, but that's my opinion as I already mentioned above.

**FlexibleAudio** · August 14, 2015, 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

Who of these have specifically frequency optimised the PDN around their USB Receiver PHY?

None. I did not claim they did; but I can tell you they generally do not spill the internal design parameters of their devices all over the computer audiophile site (for obvious reasons) and IMO many feel they make usb, usb to glass, usb to spidf and i2s connections with SQ that is reference level. That said, I would never, ever make the statement that they are the "only experts" in the digital connection category as a whole or as it relates to a subset of the category, in this case "impedance matching and phy clean-up." No one could possibly make such a statement with a straight face because no one could know such a thing. Now if you want to make the statement that Uptone is the only one using "optimized PDN around their USB Receiver PHY" in their marketing spin then I agree 100%.

**asindc** · August 14, 2015, 05:48 PM

Originally Posted by jap

I don't think Mr.Moffat is going lose any sleep.

Maybe he shouldn't lose sleep, but it might serve him well to take heed.

**MusicDirector** · August 14, 2015, 06:05 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

I know quite a few things about their products and was even considering one of their products at one point in time, wrote to them asking whether they would support double DSD at the time they released a DSD64 only DAC.

Since I now own a DAC capable of Quad DSD native, I don't need their product. I went with iFi and I'm rather happy about the products and how the team at iFi treats me as a customer.

Well, that's fair enough for me anyway.
Yes, but isn;t iFi iFi?

Just messing around, couldn't resist the pun. I actually know nothing about iFi or that is I think I don't. I may know of them and not realize it.

**Yash** · August 15, 2015, 11:19 AM

Originally Posted by FlexibleAudio

Now if you want to make the statement that Uptone is the only one using "optimized PDN around their USB Receiver PHY" in their marketing spin then I agree 100%.

That's what Wisnon was talking about except it isn't 'spin'.

**Yash** · August 15, 2015, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by MusicDirector

Well, that's fair enough for me anyway.
Yes, but isn;t iFi iFi?

Just messing around, couldn't resist the pun. I actually know nothing about iFi or that is I think I don't. I may know of them and not realize it.

iFi is a very interesting company and there's actually a very cool strategy behind it. Not sure you're acquainted with Thorsten Loesch, but if you have done some DIY research you may come across him at TNT audio. He also posts on audioasylum to this day. I consider him one of the most knowledgeable person in the audiophile field. He is one of the main persons behind the iFi designs.

Now, iFi is even more interesting because it is a budget arm of a thoroughly forward-thinking audiophile company, AMR (Abbingdon Music Research), who make some very fine DACs and other products way, way above iFi in terms of price.

What they did was launch a series of very affordable products but with careful design and even better, trickle-down technology from proven successful implementation from the AMR products.

To give you an example of how iFi operates: they launched, a couple of years ago I believe, the most affordable and DSD128 capable little DAC, the iFi iDSD Nano.

At that time, DSD128 capability in native DSD was very rare (it still is relatively), but what they did after that is even more interesting:

They released a firmware update, which brought native DSD256 capability to that little DAC...

...for free.

The DAC itself, which uses a spectacular Burr Brown chip, is only $190.

This is incredible vision. To me, they changed the industry completely (but I have to admit those of us who like DSD greater than 64 are a niche within a niche within a niche).

For a good overview of what they packaged in $190 that comes from the bigger AMR products, the official website page of the Nano gives a good overview. The reviews around provide a good outlook on what it does. The more recent products are certainly better.

I don't see iFi and Uptone lobbing worthless accusations against competitors.

**Yash** · August 15, 2015, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by asindc

Maybe he shouldn't lose sleep, but it might serve him well to take heed.

Much better expressed than how I managed.

**Yash** · August 15, 2015, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by FlexibleAudio

None. I did not claim they did

That settles it, at least for me, but you could always take the Regen, stick it in front of their DAC and see if there's an improvement with the USB input. Maybe there are people who already did that and who shared their listening impressions over at computeraudiophile.com.

**FlexibleAudio** · August 15, 2015, 12:38 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

Indeed Uptone and John are the only ones who did a rather thorough investigation, analysis, prototyping and marketing of a product which specifically deals with frequency optimisation of the PDN noise profile by focusing first and foremost on signal integrity.

The Wyrd doesn't do that at all.

The Regen does have some common parts, like the USB Hub chip, but that chip doesn't by itself resolve the frequency optimisation of the PDN in the USB receiver around the PHY.

The Regen is meant to be used near the DAC, but also has an internal noise profile (less than usual) at its PHY and PDN, so it is susceptible to the SI you feed it, and hence you could even consider feeding the Wyrd (upstream, near the computer) into the Regen to probable good effect.

Aspects of re-clocking and re-generation and clean power have been around a long time.

It is only John whom I've seen explicitly talk about the USB PHY PDN frequency optimisation, and that dates from quite a while as well over at computeraudiophile.com.

The Regen isn't claimed to solve everything (in particular, it isn't itself impervious to SI issues prior to it, it isn't claimed to do full galvanic isolation, it isn't claimed to resolve the remaining issues inherent to the USB Protocol).

But what is does is resolve something which John found to be rather large (in both formal measurements and perceived SQ) when SI is lacking and with the existing USB Receiver PHYs and PDNs. Frequency optimisation of PDNs is a known process: it's already used for high-speed network devices. However, no-one really thought of using the same in audiophile land for USB in consumer-level equipment.

In that sense, this is a very worthwhile innovation.

I2S and other stuff are not relevant to these devices.

Originally Posted by Yash

That's what Wisnon was talking about except it isn't 'spin'.

Oops, I am sorry what I said was was, in fact, confusing and maybe wrong. Please allow me to clarify. I said they ("Uptone") are the only ones referencing optimized PDN optimization in there "marketing spin." I will explain why I used the word spin later, but for now assume I meant their "marketing jargon" or "marketing terminology," etc. I did not mean to imply that proper grounding, clean power, re-clocking, impedance matching, and PDN isolation schemes at the dac interface aren't extremely effective. That would be nonsense. As I have said, I think John Swenson's work is exceptional for the price. I just can't fathom he is the only game in town. As such, my focus was on Norman's (and now your) comments that Uptone is the "only" digital designer doing such things.

My point is that just because Uptone has decided to "market" this element of their design all over the internet and no one else does (for obvious reasons) this type of "marketing" in no way, shape, or form is evidence that other designers of reference digital interfaces don't understand these simple issues and optimize their designs accordingly.

Ergo, stating that "Uptone are the only experts as it relates to this area" is IMO absurd. No one could know this to be true. If I had to bet, I would bet a lot , the designers of products like the MSB Quad Rate DSD USB2 Interface, Playback Designs USB-X, Berkeley Alpha USB etc. etc etc. understand old school high speed network architecture and more importantly the importance of impedance and cleaning up the SI by all means at the PC, along the way to the DAC, at the DAC interface, across the PDN, Phy etc.etc.

So to be clear, can you now confirm that you recognize Uptone is the only company publicly "marketing" this angle or can you categorically state you have evidence that no other digital designer has ever addressed this matter. These two concepts are very different things. If you have such evidence, may I ask how you got it from each and every digital designer?

Now regarding use of the term spin, I may have been wrong to do so. I used it because I consider a marketing plan that is not based on accuracy to fall into this category. I am not aware that Uptone has made the claim that they are the"only" ones addressing SI this way (only you and Norman have afaik) so I may have been out of line.

Finally, sorry to confuse things by referencing my prior discussion about I2S and usb from another thread. Of course this has nothing to do with the device inquestion

**wisnon** · August 15, 2015, 01:42 PM

Originally Posted by FlexibleAudio

Norman,

You missed my intent. I was not weighing in on whether Uptone or Wyre is the fibber, I was pointing at you given the preposterous nature of another one of your claims.

So Norman says: "Uptone are the only experts in this very specialist emerging area."

I respond by calling BS.

Norman provides the following statement by Alex at Uptone in support of his claim.

So Uptone "are the only experts" but when Uptone is commenting about why another product is so very similar to the Regen, Uptone themselves admit "great mids think a like." Hmmmm so that might imply the other great mind might also know a little bit about digital connections??? Do you think?? Before you start with the marketing babble about Uptone's unique focus on impedance and SI (as if other designers have no idea what that means and do not consider it in there architecture) why don't you try telling this to Larry Gullman, Andreas Koch, Michael Pflaumer, Gordon Rankin and Mike Moffat or any of the other myriad of designers that live and breath digital signal paths every day.

I dont bother responding to you anymore for several reasons. You never quite seem to understand and you tend to twist things. You show ZERO gratitutude and really have no desire to learn.

I tell you one thing and you argue…a day later someone else tells you the same thing and you thank them for it.

It is clear that we are better off giving each other a wide berth. Please enjoy you MSB which is perfect in your mind and stop trying to understand anything more. You cant improve on perfection.

**FlexibleAudio** · August 15, 2015, 02:17 PM

Originally Posted by wisnon

I dont bother responding to you anymore for several reasons. You never quite seem to understand and you tend to twist things. You show ZERO gratitutude and really have no desire to learn.

I tell you one thing and you argue…a day later someone else tells you the same thing and you thank them for it.

It is clear that we are better off giving each other a wide berth. Please enjoy you MSB which is perfect in your mind and stop trying to understand anything more. You cant improve on perfection.

As said before, your modus operandi when cornered on accuracy is either a series of non sequiturs, a personal assault, or a retreat due to "lack of time" or "tired fingers. Here we go again; its time for assault.

So the problem is I am an idiot ("never quite seem to understand"), I am a liar ("twist things"), I am ungracious, don't try to learn and should stop trying. The problem Norman is you make outrageous statements and refuse to back them up with anything of substance. You can cut and paste others work (often which is not relevant to your claims) or go straight to one or all of the tactics described above. Thats it.

You can give me as wide a berth as you prefer, but if you or anyone says something I don't understand or something I consider wrong, I am going to query them. When I do this virtually every other person on this forum politely answers with logic and detail. You do anything but these things. Most of the time your comments are ones I understand but consider wrong. I provide reasonable evidence to this effect and and you revert to you highly predictable modus operandi. I plan to continue to treat you as I do every other member of the forum. Believe it or not some here actually appreciate this approach.

**wisnon** · August 15, 2015, 02:24 PM

The evidence is there for all to see Paul.
I tell you one thing and you rephrase it as another…just as you did above, somehow contriving to make this into an accusation of being a liar. SIGH. I tell you 1=1=2 ans you reply asking why I say 1+1 =3? To me that is NOT a lie, its a clear misunderstanding of the concepts being explained. Other than that, you keep asking for explanations I have made repeatedly elsewhere, eg why a Balanced Lampi Dac (in a FULLY internally Bal system) may have a built in advantage over a SE one, given the fact that one SQ degrading step is avoided AND the use of the differential summator circuit for eliminating all digital noise. How many times must I repeat myself so that you are satisfied?

Cut and paste? Do you even read the words of these quotes? There is none so blind as he who will not see.

Nothing more to say FlexP!! Let it be, let it be.

**MusicDirector** · August 15, 2015, 03:47 PM

Originally Posted by Yash

iFi is a very interesting company and there's actually a very cool strategy behind it. Not sure you're acquainted with Thorsten Loesch, but if you have done some DIY research you may come across him at TNT audio. He also posts on audioasylum to this day. I consider him one of the most knowledgeable person in the audiophile field. He is one of the main persons behind the iFi designs.

Now, iFi is even more interesting because it is a budget arm of a thoroughly forward-thinking audiophile company, AMR (Abbingdon Music Research), who make some very fine DACs and other products way, way above iFi in terms of price.

What they did was launch a series of very affordable products but with careful design and even better, trickle-down technology from proven successful implementation from the AMR products.

To give you an example of how iFi operates: they launched, a couple of years ago I believe, the most affordable and DSD128 capable little DAC, the iFi iDSD Nano.

At that time, DSD128 capability in native DSD was very rare (it still is relatively), but what they did after that is even more interesting:

They released a firmware update, which brought native DSD256 capability to that little DAC...

...for free.

The DAC itself, which uses a spectacular Burr Brown chip, is only $190.

This is incredible vision. To me, they changed the industry completely (but I have to admit those of us who like DSD greater than 64 are a niche within a niche within a niche).

For a good overview of what they packaged in $190 that comes from the bigger AMR products, the official website page of the Nano gives a good overview. The reviews around provide a good outlook on what it does. The more recent products are certainly better.

I don't see iFi and Uptone lobbing worthless accusations against competitors.

Thanks for that info. Sounds worthy of looking into in my book indeed.

I love learning of this type of thing. I am seeing more and more companies in the high end audio area starting to do this. It's great and it's needed, especially if we are going to ween folks off of bad sound quality and get them to re-engage with music somehow.

As for the accusations and all that stuff, I am not judging because I don't know the whole story or the real motivations. I know the products and that's what I go on. I am not going to trash an entire audio company based on one ill-thought post from a co-founder. As far as I know in this case, Schiit is a good company on the whole that produces a quality product with 5 year warranties. I know many Schiit product owners and they are more than happy and they are legion. Until proven to be full tilt evil, I will continue to consider Schiit products for my own use at least.
This whole thing has crossed into the ludicrous and absurd seating section a long time ago in my opinion. The mud slinging, name calling, arguing over what I view as fiction, etc. There are even acronyms such as PHY and SI and whatever that don't even exist in Google. The only ones I can find in any lexicon are USB and DSD. So I don't get any of that.
I'm ignoring all of that stuff.
I will continue to consider Schiit, Uptone and iFi among good audio companies until proven otherwise. Everyone can purchase what they want from whom they want while we are still free to do so, period.

**FlexibleAudio** · August 15, 2015, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by wisnon

The evidence is there for all to see Paul.
I tell you one thing and you rephrase it as another…just as you did above, somehow contriving to make this into an accusation of being a liar. SIGH. I tell you 1=1=2 ans you reply asking why I say 1+1 =3? To me that is NOT a lie, its a clear misunderstanding of the concepts being explained. Other than that, you keep asking for explanations I have made repeatedly elsewhere, eg why a Balanced Lampi Dac (in a FULLY internally Bal system) may have a built in advantage over a SE one, given the fact that one SQ degrading step is avoided AND the use of the differential summator circuit for eliminating all digital noise. How many times must I repeat myself so that you are satisfied?

Cut and paste? Do you even read the words of these quotes? There is none so blind as he who will not see.

Nothing more to say FlexP!! Let it be, let it be.

Ok, so we are going to discuss the semantical difference between someone "twisting the truth" and "lying." Are you serious? If so, I am sorry for twisting things semantically. Also, are you going to now restate all the same things I have elsewhere refuted without adding any plausible counters to my statements.

I have said much of the following to you before. Of course, dac chips output differential. And of course, this eliminates the need for an initial phase splitter. So what? Many reference products go unbalanced because they do not believe the negative impact on SQ of a summator (even without a splitter) is a good trade for the common mode noise reduction. Cartridges output differential signals as well and many (most?) phono preamps are single ended for this reason and they have the same advantage of not needing the splitter but would face the disadvantage of needing the summator if they go unbalanced.

[All of this is in addition to the fact that many analog gain stages, be they phono or dac, often use OPA's that are "naturally" differential in and SE out which requires dual OPA's per channel for balanced but a single OPA used for unbalanced essentially negating the benefits of a differential signal origin because a splitter is still required. I don't know about Lampi so leave this point aside; I do not need it to make my point.]

So here is the problem. It is a fine line in making the decision to go balanced or unbalanced as a designer or consumer. All else constant, with short runs, the SQ difference is very, very small. Yet you are out talking in all the Lampi threads that the balanced dac increases the sound stage by 300% with significantly improved dynamics over the unbalanced simply because the chips are differential output. I am sorry Norman but once again I must question this kind of a statement. I have never heard anyone claim such a thing. Rather than bob-and-weave for pages and then just repeating your same illogical supposition (imo), can you show me any other support for your statement (besides Lucasz told me).

Putting two DHT devices in a chain can do what you describe, to a degree, as can putting two se or balanced units in a chain versus mixing se and unbalanced, but the differential output of a chip has nothing to do with this result.

**wisnon** · August 15, 2015, 05:09 PM

Where did I say that? Lukasz and Joe have both told me of the huge soundstage increase and I think one or 2 others have confirmed it at other forums. I have repeatedly said that no one, not even Lukasz knows exactly why the soundstage increases (yes, I asked because I wanted to know for myself). Chip output has to do with the saving of a step and resultant purity. Chip output is already balanced, so no additional step is needed. Two completely different things. Again you confuse and conflate (you dont like the word twist, then how about warp?). I give up.

Over and out!

**Mike** · August 15, 2015, 05:11 PM

Soundstage increases possibly because there are more tubes?

**FlexibleAudio** · August 15, 2015, 05:19 PM

Originally Posted by wisnon

Where did I say that? Lukasz and Joe have both told me of the huge soundstage increase and I think one or 2 others have confirmed it at other forums. I have repeatedly said that no one, not even Lukasz knows exactly why the soundstage increases (yes, I asked because I wanted to know for myself). Chip output has to do with the saving of a step and resultant purity. Chip output is already balanced, so no additional step is needed. Two completely different things. Again you confuse and conflate (you dont like the word twist, then how about warp?). I give up.

Over and out!

You didn't read (or understand) a word of my post. Same old, same old.

**the professor** · August 15, 2015, 05:31 PM

Neither of you two actually read the others posts, you only read enough so you can be pissy back to each other. The discourse between you two is so great that you BOTH just want to piss the other off. And even if you don't want to and its not what you mean to do - that is the reality of what you guys are doing.

Back to the show . . . . . .

Originally Posted by FlexibleAudio

You didn't read (or understand) a word of my post. Same old, same old.

**wisnon** · August 15, 2015, 05:31 PM

Originally Posted by Mike

Soundstage increases possibly because there are more tubes?

As good a theory as any I heard so far.

**wisnon** · August 15, 2015, 05:37 PM

Originally Posted by the professor

Neither of you two actually read the others posts, you only read enough so you can be pissy back to each other. The discourse between you two is so great that you BOTH just want to piss the other off. And even if you don't want to and its not what you mean to do - that is the reality of what you guys are doing.

Back to the show . . . . . .

I do read them Prof, I just disagree on many.

I have no desire to be pissy. Maybe 1 or 2 posts weeks ago, but lately, no. I am out anyway, as it seems we both have entrenched positions and I can live with that. The posts are out there, so the info if considered valauable, is there for future reference.

One clever comment I have read is that the Regen (and the Wyrd) are cheap enuff that if people doubt the claims, they can try them out with little financial risk for the Wyrd and almost none for the Regen (which is so backordered, you could sell it for full price with no problem).

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