This should be illegal… PC Audio Product Scam

[HC_writes]

Your PC is finally done: the cable management is perfect, you found the ideal peripherals, and… you’re still using the onboard sound from your motherboard? That seems like another opportunity to upgrade! But watch out: there’s trickery afoot in the audiophile world - and we can prove it.

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

Easy solution:

Have terrible taste in music, you'll never be able to tell the difference...

[da na]

These just get goofier by the year. Example, a fucking 40CM sata cable for $658.

 

[Radium_Angel]

Just now, da na said:

sata cable

But but but it's Teflon coated, the data electrons will just slide right through at max speed! 

[da na]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

But but but it's Teflon coated, the data electrons will just slide right through at max speed! 

Oh right. Everyone knows how much worse music sounds when the data bits get stuck in the SATA cable, leading to loss of dynamic range.

 

Somewhat related, I've got an IDE CD drive that bleeds terrible digital noise into the soundcard when the CD audio port is plugged in. If anything, a board with some capacitors that goes over the CD audio port would be actually useful. That would be something I'd spend maybe $15 on.

[TomChaai]

That RAM stick with NEC caps on it may actually be useful, we can use it to source capacitor parts to rescue broken PS3s if these caps are hard to get otherwise.

[WhitetailAni]

7 minutes ago, da na said:

These just get goofier by the year. Example, a fucking 40CM sata cable for $658.

 

I think that's enough parts for an audiophile PC build?

We have:

1. The sMB-Q370, paired with an Intel i9-9900K of course.

2. The Revelation Audio SSD

3. Any form of ECC RAM

4. The audiophile-grade LAN cable

5. The Ethernet Switch UEF (to better isolate your connection when streaming)

6. The audiophile-grade SATA cable (if you opt to get a regular SATA drive for your OS)

 

Off the top of my head

 

 

[Quasido]

Putting myself on the line to defend a different product that works for me. The iFi iDefender. I had terrible GPU noise in my headphones plugged into my DAC when my active studio monitors were plugged into the mains which disappeared when I unplugged them. However I had bought an individually switched extension lead so I don't have to keep swapping plugs so I don't want to leave them unplugged. There are probably much better products/companies than what I bought but it allows the USB data to get to my DAC from my PC with power from my phone charger, thus breaking the earth loop that was going through the USB power.

 

There are other USB isolators on amazon but those only seemed to support a part of the USB 2 spec and only 100 mA power.

[Nystemy]

These products partly base themselves on "realistic" stuff. But largely speaking, these won't do much at all. The fan ones are honestly the most likely to actually do something. But still...

 

That it sounded worse isn't actually surprising.

Noise filtering isn't really "helped" by inductors in a lot of cases. Inductors and capacitors tends to oscillate together, so just throwing a random assortment of them onto a board will often not be all that useful, especially when faced with random noise. _{(One can make low/high pass filters with LC circuits, but anything inside of the filtered range will remain, and for audio stuff, low pass filtering away everything above a few kHz won't really help removing the stuff in the audible range.)}

 

Hunting down noise is often rather inept.

If the audio sections of the motherboard is poorly designed, then no amount of capacitors or other filters will help elsewhere in the system.

A far more "intelligent" solution would be to cut out a slot in the motherboard and carefully apply a grounded metal case around the whole audio section. Use some ferrite pass-throughs for power and for the digital signals. Then provide a hefty amount of bypass capacitance followed by a suitably low noise voltage regulator to drive the DAC's analog side.

Or one can just buy a suitably good sound card or external DAC, that is way easier. So burning money on these filters is frankly laughable.

[Gokul_P]

The funny thing is these are expensive than addin pcie cards or usb dacs. Both of those do work if you could notice the differance. 

[Nystemy]

2 minutes ago, Quasido said:

Putting myself on the line to defend a different product that works for me. The iFi iDefender. I had terrible GPU noise in my headphones plugged into my DAC when my active studio monitors were plugged into the mains which disappeared when I unplugged them. However I had bought an individually switched extension lead so I don't have to keep swapping plugs. There are probably much better products/companies than what I bought but it allows the USB data to get to my DAC from my PC with power from my phone charger, thus breaking the earth loop that was going through the USB power.

I would strongly suggest not doing that.

The data lines for USB aren't balanced nor ground isolated. The data lines are ground referenced signals on both the sending and receiving side of USB communication, so if the two devices don't have a proper grounded connection to each other, then significant current can flow over the data lines and fry the controllers on either side. This is often a question of "when" not "if".

Get a USB galvanic isolator. They aren't expensive.

[Thaldor]

15 minutes ago, da na said:

40CM sata cable for $658

I double down.

 

Grounded USB A->B cable 0.5m

That's ~$649

 

And that Atlas website is perfect to find out $tupid $hit. Like Mavros Streaming Grun ethernet cable where they don't even tell you what cable it is. Cat6? Cat7? No idea but it has external grounding so "very high-bandwidth"! Oh, and that ethernet cable, 699€ /1m or $750 /1m.

And of course you gotta have the OCC copper conductor speaker cables that only lighten your wallet by the very modest price of 1699€ /2m or $1824,49 /2m. Like you could get RTX 4080 and have a bit leftover or you could buy a speaker cable for one of your speakers, seems sane.

[Quasido]

1 minute ago, Nystemy said:

I would strongly suggest not doing that.

The data lines for USB aren't balanced nor ground isolated. The data lines are ground referenced signals on both the sending and receiving side of USB communication, so if the two devices don't have a proper grounded connection to each other, then significant current can flow over the data lines and fry the controllers on either side. This is often a question of "when" not "if".

Get a USB galvanic isolator. They aren't expensive.

It is probably bad but, it does make a noticeable difference (some kind of filtering) when you don't have it externally powered and then switches power modes when it gets external power so I'm assuming it still makes the PC think it's using the USB power rails but IDK. It's smarter than just a wire with the power lines spliced but I don't know enough about these things to say much more.

[Nystemy]

1 minute ago, Quasido said:

It is probably bad but, it does make a noticeable difference (some kind of filtering) when you don't have it externally powered and then switches power modes when it gets external power so I'm assuming it still makes the PC think it's using the USB power rails but IDK. It's smarter than just a wire with the power lines spliced but I don't know enough about these things to say much more.

Effectively speaking.
The data lines do still provide ground between the devices. It is just that this "grounding" between the devices isn't particularly ideal. Especially from the survivability of the USB controllers.

That the signal makes it over isn't too surprising. The data is encoded differentially. But the drivers for the data lines only have their respective grounds and power rails to work with. Effectively speaking, one of the data lines is "grounded" at a time, but the drivers aren't built to provide more than a mA or two of current at most. So even a few volts of difference between the devices will lead to significantly more current and fried USB controllers.

 

Main things leading to the death of these systems is:

1. Plugging the devices into different power outlets using different phases. _{(Power phases will through common mode noise become a problem, unless both sides are properly grounded to earth, something most audio equipment isn't. Since ground loops in audio is a pain, so better leave everything floating and on the same phase.)}
2. Adding/removing power to one of the devices. _{(often the mains power that is, since this often leads to a noticeable amount of common mode noise.)}
3. Electrostatic discharge from the user. _{(used to be a far bigger issue back when CRT screens were more common. These screens are wonderful at charging people up to a few thousand volts. Perfect for zapping the life out of electronics... Wool sweaters are also great at this, same for a whole bunch of carpets, etc.)}
4. Or the audio equipment accidentally driving earth. _{(As in, one end of the speaker cable being connected to earth, the whole audio setup will then be driven at audio frequencies around earth, not a problem for the audio gear as long as one only have 1 such point, but have two and even the audio equipment will complain. The reason this is a problem for the "non grounded" USB contraption is because the computer is most likely earthed and providing that second path to ground.)}

In the end.
My advice is to get a USB galvanic isolator.

Same story also applies for HDMI and Display port cables as well. _{(however, compared to USB 2, these protocols are way faster and often won't work without proper grounding. USB 2 is just slow enough to not really notice.)}

 

But it would have been wonderful if USB were a balanced RTZ encoded signal, since then one could just couple it over a pulse transformer similar to Ethernet. Simple dirt cheap galvanic isolation, but nope USB IF didn't think of that... _{(and this is why Ethernet and optical audio transmission is getting increasingly more popular in the event/concert industry.)}

[AbydosOne]

Something I think would be interesting to try is to see if the DIMM filter helps or hinders high RAM clock speed stability. I actually wanted to try these for myself, but don't really have the same expertise as a high-OC person, let alone LTTLabs.

 

(Yes, I know it (probably) doesn't touch the signal lines, but maybe power stability?)

[DonGirses]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

But but but it's Teflon coated, the data electrons will just slide right through at max speed! 

Don't forget, coton from Madagascar!

[Nystemy]

6 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

Something I think would be interesting to try is to see if the DIMM filter helps or hinders high RAM clock speed stability. I actually wanted to try these for myself, but don't really have the same expertise as a high-OC person, let along LTTLabs.

 

(Yes, I know it (probably) doesn't touch the signal lines, but maybe power stability?)

If the filter were to actually do anything to the signal lines. Then it really wouldn't be an improvement to data integrity in the slightest.

 

In regards to power stability. Perhaps. But the capacitors are far too far away to really be of much meaningful help.

 

To be fair. It is likely more helpful to mod your memory modules and solder on a few more caps there. _{("likely" as in, this would actually help. Though, still the silicon lottery with the chips.)}

 

In regards to removing noise on the signal lines. Here it is beneficial to get a motherboard with 1 slot per memory channel, instead of the common 2 slots per channel.

If one is a bit silly. One can however add a piece of aluminium/copper tape over the traces on the motherboard. _{(the board is coated in non conductive solder resist, and the adhesive on these tapes are often also not conductive.)} This added metal tape would help shield the data lines from picking up electrical noise along their way. However this tape won't do anything about cross talk amongst the signals themselves.

In the end. Motherboard design quality matters more than most other things. Other than the CPU and memory module itself that is.

[HenrySalayne]

19 minutes ago, Nystemy said:

_{(and this is why Ethernet and optical audio transmission is getting increasingly more popular in the event/concert industry.)}

I don't want to kill your vibe, but nobody was using USB.

It's pretty much analogue and some form of ethernet (copper and fibre) nowadays.

 

1 hour ago, HC_writes said:

and we can prove it

Linus said the measurements were done on an "empty line-in", but I'm not sure if the 3.5mm jacks on motherboards are automatically shorted if nothing is plugged in (and this characteristic of audio jacks is prone to failure). Open circuits are not good for noise measurements. For future reference, the input should either be shorted or there should be a realistic source impedance present.

[Nystemy]

9 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

I don't want to kill your vibe, but nobody was using USB.

It's pretty much analogue and some form of ethernet (copper and fibre) nowadays.

Yes, no one were using USB for long distance stuff. It isn't built for it. _{(3 meters is a stretch for it...)}

But I have seen racks worth of external sound cards at times. And those are moving over to non USB solutions. Even analogue is starting to disappear. In both cases mostly for longer distances and the ability to place stuff where it is needed, instead of where the computer or mixing desk is. _{(and in the case of moving away from analogue, digital also removes the hassle of ground loops and cross talk, real pains in a stadium.)}

[papajo]

RAM noise filtering actually would make sense for OC e.g a particular 5950x I had could not do 3800Mhz 1:1 with a particular mobo.. yet most can and the same cpu with the same ram but other mobo could do 3800 1:1

it probably has something to do with noise, like the communication between ram and the CPU's ram phy would look somewhat like this 

and probably on that mobo (where I couldnt get 3800 1:1)  looked a little off like in the left side  but if it would be possible to "iron out" the anomalies by adding some sort of a filtering stick in a slot or somewhere else in the mobo maybe that indeed could help. 

[Quasido]

52 minutes ago, Nystemy said:

Effectively speaking.
The data lines do still provide ground between the devices. It is just that this "grounding" between the devices isn't particularly ideal. Especially from the survivability of the USB controllers.

That the signal makes it over isn't too surprising. The data is encoded differentially. But the drivers for the data lines only have their respective grounds and power rails to work with. Effectively speaking, one of the data lines is "grounded" at a time, but the drivers aren't built to provide more than a mA or two of current at most. So even a few volts of difference between the devices will lead to significantly more current and fried USB controllers.

 

Main things leading to the death of these systems is:

1. Plugging the devices into different power outlets using different phases. _{(Power phases will through common mode noise become a problem, unless both sides are properly grounded to earth, something most audio equipment isn't. Since ground loops in audio is a pain, so better leave everything floating and on the same phase.)}
2. Adding/removing power to one of the devices. _{(often the mains power that is, since this often leads to a noticeable amount of common mode noise.)}
3. Electrostatic discharge from the user. _{(used to be a far bigger issue back when CRT screens were more common. These screens are wonderful at charging people up to a few thousand volts. Perfect for zapping the life out of electronics... Wool sweaters are also great at this, same for a whole bunch of carpets, etc.)}
4. Or the audio equipment accidentally driving earth. _{(As in, one end of the speaker cable being connected to earth, the whole audio setup will then be driven at audio frequencies around earth, not a problem for the audio gear as long as one only have 1 such point, but have two and even the audio equipment will complain. The reason this is a problem for the "non grounded" USB contraption is because the computer is most likely earthed and providing that second path to ground.)}

In the end.
My advice is to get a USB galvanic isolator.

Same story also applies for HDMI and Display port cables as well. _{(however, compared to USB 2, these protocols are way faster and often won't work without proper grounding. USB 2 is just slow enough to not really notice.)}

 

But it would have been wonderful if USB were a balanced RTZ encoded signal, since then one could just couple it over a pulse transformer similar to Ethernet. Simple dirt cheap galvanic isolation, but nope USB IF didn't think of that... _{(and this is why Ethernet and optical audio transmission is getting increasingly more popular in the event/concert industry.)}

I believe you and it makes sense and is worrying (also a few reviews saying it fried peoples stuff). However I need an isolator that can supply 900mA for a Scarlet 2i2 and I don't even know what data speeds that needs.

[Nystemy]

8 minutes ago, Quasido said:

I believe you and it makes sense and is worrying (also a few reviews saying it fried peoples stuff). However I need an isolator that can supply 900mA for a Scarlet 2i2 and I don't even know what data speeds that needs.

Generally speaking, an isolator will just isolate the two sides.

After it, it is generally recommended to get an appropriate USB hub for whatever power needs one desires.

Another solution is to make a hack job of a cable oneself, where the isolator provides the isolation. Then one "ignores" its 5 Volt power, and supply one's own using an external power brick, but leave the ground wire still attached to the isolator, so that one won't fry things again.

However. A lot of USB isolators will be able to supply enough current. I have seen ones going beyond the normal 400 mA standard of typical USB A ports. _{(Wouldn't be surprised if there is ones that can deliver up to 2 amps. However, such power hungry devices should generally not rely on USB for power. And a quality DAC is likewise a device I would have expected to use an external power supply and internal USB isolation from the get go regardless.)}

[darknessblade]

Soon Linus is still gonna go deep down the Audiophile rabbithole. even though he said he won't. Cus its Linus

[Quasido]

3 minutes ago, Nystemy said:

Generally speaking, an isolator will just isolate the two sides.

After it, it is generally recommended to get an appropriate USB hub for whatever power needs one desires.

Another solution is to make a hack job of a cable oneself, where the isolator provides the isolation. Then one "ignores" its 5 Volt power, and supply one's own using an external power brick, but leave the ground wire still attached to the isolator, so that one won't fry things again.

Electrically what's the difference between a powered USB hub and what I bought?

[Nystemy]

1 minute ago, Quasido said:

Electrically what's the difference between a powered USB hub and what I bought?

A powered USB hub doesn't disconnect ground from whatever host port it is expanding. _{(so any ground loop related issues for audio will still be there. And why an isolator can be needed. but likewise, there most likely is isolated powered USB hubs as well, I haven't looked around much, since I don't directly need one...)}