Time to back-up! Yes, to the thread on ground loops. I promised you all I’d buy an Audio Quest JITTER BUG FMJ (full metal jacket) digital isolation USB filter. I have it installed between the AMD 5600G music server computer and the SD3100 HV DAC with the USB cord. PC’s are natorious for noise. I built the AMD system to be low power all the way through. No massive GPU or high frequency and over volted CPU.
My system is on ONE 20A circuit and everything through the P20 conditioner. I already have a pretty decent ground. Never have had hum…so far.
I use dual bi-wire series I (woofers) and series II (mid on up) SPTPC speaker cables with UP OCC series II RCA (phone) and series II XLR everywhere else. My system certainly has the ability to dig out nuances in sources.
I set the PC server (JRiver Media Center software) to “random” and listened for several hours to all sorts of sources. I will say that the CWT 1000 carbon speakers are really, really good in the mids and up. Superb. I did notice that about everything, even crappy stuff was unusually detailed sounding tonight. But, it is hard to A-B the differences across a ton of stuff, but the sound was in no way suggesting the jitter bug FMV was causing a problem, or in my case improving things for absolute certainty. But, as good as it sounds, and knowing there can’t ever be a ground loop in the noisiest part of my system say it stays in there. It absolutely does galvanically separate the two devices grounds. That’s always good. I doubt my PC is a holy grail of ground symmetry (no ground loops or dispersed ground paths). The PC industry simply don’t care about designing that out.
The Jitter Bug FMJ is more expensive than typical isolation devices but if you read the two part IGOR’S LAB anlysis of ground noise, it does the job really, really well. Compared to other things, and needing one device in my case, I’m OK with the added cost for a best of the best USB filter.
I would hope that high-end music server products have a best of the best galvanic isolator built in to all the USB by design. To me that’s part of the price, yes? My home built PC certainly does not! The JITTER BUG FMJ is exactly for applications like mine. If you are in the same situation, feeding USB to your DAC from a PC, try one out. A 100% isolated ground can’t hurt, only help.
Please do read the articles linked above to see that the Jitter Bug FMV is the real deal for separting the grounds, and the noise we don’t need between devices, especially from a PC. This is a really important article to read and understand with all our digital audio, but it seems to be boiled spinich based on the lack of interest / likes. It is from a PC tech site but 100% applicable to DIGTAL. The solution was to use “our” devices to fix a PC noise problem!
Tell Audio Quest Galen sent you and maybe nab a slight discount. May as well ask! If they go on sale, grab one. Also ask Paul if he can get some sort of IGOR’s LAB discount going for you all. I don’t get anything out of this except getting ground noise out of your system so your stuff sounds better. After all, that’s what ICONOCLAST does too, make your stuff sound better!
Best,
Galen