XXHighEnd

Greetings Phasure NOS1 owners,

As a brand new NOS1 owner myself, I would like to share my listening impressions regarding some of the USB related tweaks that worked in my previous audio setup that included an Empirical Audio Offramp Turbo5 and a NAD C390DD dac/digital amplifier.

I did a lot of digital cable testing, both usb and s/pdif in that old setup that contributed greatly to the sound of the NAD.  The USB cable that I settled on had a little tour to a number of other audiophiles homes and get-togethers and generated several sales for the manufacturer as a result.  In all the systems that the cable went into it produced the preferred sound and could therefore be considered as a very consistent performer. 

Now that I have over 100hrs on my new NOS1 toy, I thought that I would try out the super-usb cable as well as a Shortblock common-mode filter to see if improvements could be made to the sound.  I have built a brand new XX computer according to Peters recipe but run my existing PPAstudio USB3 card in preference to the mobo USB3 ports.  This card is based on a NEC chip and uses Rhenesas drivers but has been modded so that it does not take power from the PCIe bus and uses a high grade silver transformer for isolation as well as upgraded TCXO.  The card must be powered separately but I am powering it from its own line from the BeQuiet psu.  At a later date I will try a high grade linear supply on this card to see if it makes as much a difference to the NOS1 as it did to my old setup.

Now the listening.  It took a while, but I did hear a tiny difference between the cheapo cable supplied with the NOS1 and the super-usb cable.  It came across as a slight softening, or muffling of the higher frequencies and was difficult to detect, but it was there.  This difference is nowhere near what I and others have experienced with this cable in other systems which included dacs and reclockers like Offramps, Audiophilleo, PDX, Playback Designs, Chord QuteHD, Mark Levinson 360, AMR DP-777.  Which cable is more accurate?  I don't know.  I do know that the cheapo cable is staying and the AU$660 cable will be sold.

I got a similar result with the Shortblock common-mode filter.  In my previous setup I had tested the SOtM PCIe card (don't like it), the Adnaco S3B (even with a linear psu I didn't like it) and the PPAstudio usb card (I like it - all positives - no negatives - got better with a linear psu) and the Shortblock worked well with the Adnaco and the PPAstudio card, but did not work at all well with the SOtM card.  At the time I theorised that it was because the SOtM is the only one of the three that filters its incoming power and that a second stage of filtering with the Shortblock was detrimental on a product I was already not so keen on.  The result of the Shortblock with the Phasure NOS1 was similar to the result of the Shortblock with the SOtM card:  a smearing of the image, a slight hit to the dynamics.  In short, the Shortblock has no place with the NOS1.

The result of all this is that I feel zero compulsion to further test USB cables and filters because I think Peter has got the USB isolation of the NOS1 better than anything else that I have heard.  Kudos to you Peter...that is a rare and fantastic result!!

Cheers,

Anthony

Great post Anthony. Hopefully that urge to just try a better usb cable has been finally put to rest.  :)

It has...and they used to make such a difference...some were great...some were horrid...now they are pretty much all the same. :)

Hi Anthony, now I only wonder which was the slight softening one ...

Regards,
Peter

The slightly softer presentation was the expensive cable.

Ok, thank you Anthony.

Here's another take by NOS 1 users: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2701.0

Hmm, I am not so sure that "other take" is very representative for cables as such.
I know, you said "another", but I read it as "other" or otherwise I am not sure where this suddenly springs from.

Anyway, Anthony's ideas/testing about this seems apples to apples to me. That other topic is far from that (in my view of course).

Peter