Always good to hear about value upgrades.
My most recent good-value upgrade involved inviting my sound engineer mate round, plying him with wine and letting him move my speakers a bit. The sound went from 3D to holographic, filling in some gaps in presentation. Worth every drop of wine I shared with the fella!
Mike, Do you use the other H30 mix on the same smps cable as the fair rite 75 mix both together or use them on seperate smps cables? and if not, would this be possible and lead to any SQ benefits?
As i said earlier the ifi smps comes with one fixed on the cable near the dac power input and the cable is so much thicker than the standard chinese one which has a cable like string.
Hi Henryski, I don’t use any other ferrite mix on the SMPS DC cables except “75”, there is no point as SMPS switching range & any resultant noise is a low frequency & only 75 will cover this range
I do use H30 in other areas to suppress any other noise that might be present.
I should add that all my SMPS’s are on a power-strip that gets its power from an APC UPS, this has an internal C&D mode filter & a 700VAC isolation transformer. So this alone will suppress & isolate a lot of whatever noise is present - into & from - 230v power.
Dp you reccommend using the 75 or the H30 on any other PCords such as amp. freesat/blue-ray player, cdp, tv, or ps4 or even the pc which powers my olsen pdu which is a supra lo rad type cable, the pdu being connected to the wall socket grounding pin to its own earth ground so not sure if the pdu would need it.
Will there be any upgrade in SQ?
I have a few H30 on power leads only, not on IC’s. Re SQ improvements; the problem is I know what they do in application, but audibly they are not easily detectable.
The 75 mix is comparatively expensive, you can buy 10 x H30’s for the price of 1 x 75
I was messing about on web and came accross a home made diy super cable called the TTS The Twisted Snake. Its made up of individually double shielded cable which is twisted similar to RA cable but not exact. The pc is finished off with one ferrite at each end.
The builder was blown away by the huge increase in music from the cable.
Im thinking of making such a cable to keep costs down but am not sure what similar cable is required to do the job. The cable doesnt exist now as its an old diy web project.
Do you understand the very specific cable which is described and required in this tts project?
Do you know the best cable suppliers for such a similar project?
Thanks!
![[The TNT - TTS]](https://www.tnt-audio.com/gif/tts.jpg)
[Italian version] A finale?
I’ve make power cables that are the same/similar, OK all good fun & anticipation, all with promises of audio utopia, but in the cold light of dawn … maybe easier to stick with some regular/exotic stock cable & whatever plugs you want on the ends.
What are you connecting the dac from and to?
You say your upgrades are £100 but does the MF V90 cost £230?
Great,isn’it it?
I have got one replacing the poor Chinese designed SMPS which came with the Netgear switch, in its turn a very basic and questionable product for our intended use.
Much better not to use any at all , wherever possible (digital streaming)
Not the OP case,though
NO wonders, whether iFi or not, any well designed and respectable brand makes a difference when dealing with noise pollution.
I’ m pretty sure lots of people should take this matter way more seriously especially when installing a costly digital/streaming source.
Methink 30/40 % of potential lost in translation at best
I initially used V90 dac with its own smps wall wart and SQ is very, very, ood like tis. It cost me 200 pound.
It is connected to my ps4, x box scorpio and panny freesat player. SQ wit te ifi power supply is outstandin and a definite uprade over te standard wall wart smps. Like a small box uprade it really suprised me ow muc SQ improved.
IFI smps cost me 50.00, ence te title.
Sorry about missin letters jee and aitc.
It as 2 optical and one co ax input so cannot permamently connect cd player, i am oin to try tis tou
upraded ifi smps cost me 50.00 only.
ifi smps are now been used by manufacturers wo previously were sellin linear power supplies because of its effectiveness for teir dacs. It contains active noise cancellation more effective tan passive and for 50.00 really works wonders.
Tinkin about tryin te ifi ac ipurifier but tis costs 100 so cost a little bit more.
Im onna make my own as its muc ceaper and you are uaranteed te cable will be assembled perfectly so no qc issues.
Mike, Do you know what a plug wit 4 or 5 lines going into it is called, it is like a hydra but is just a bit wider than a standard plug. I want to star ground all my boxes through the phono sockets to the pdu without having to buy an expensive grounding box.
See my post on the mad mad crazy cable thread
I advise not to do this, earthing the RCA phono sockets is doing something the equipment is not designed to do. The phono RCA -ve connections on Naim equipment are not connected to earth, they might carry a ground resister, they might not, but whatever you’re adding something that is not Naim approved.
A caution about quality of the iFi iPower units.
I have had 3 out of the 4 fail within a year of buying them new to power Netgear ethernet switches etc., so had to revert to the original OEM power supplies. You may be luckier than I have been.
I bought them from a UK Hifi dealer who was very good about replacing them, then the replacements failed too…
They were good while they worked though.
Take care, BF
Same here! Mine failed out of warranty, did more or less forget about it since I did not notice a difference when I used a Asus charger instead.
That’s unfortunate. I have a few iPowers which I bought to power some non-UK kit that was supplied with European type plugs. I can’t say that they did anything for sound quality, but they still work fine after several years of use.
I recently purchased my 4th. ifi iPower supply. I now have 2 x 5v, 1 x 9v and 1 x 12v. No issues at all with reliability.
What impact they may or may not have on sound quality is another matter of course.
Dave
The iFi power supplies are thought to be very good in terms of noise injected back into the mains but to be lacking in terms of current leakage. If you use them, you might be able to obtain even better results via grounding, see “audiophilestyle dot com slash forums slash topic slash 37034-smps-and-grounding”.
Im in the process of grounding mysystem through earth star ground of a multiway plug like a hydra but have been advised against it for some reason. Cant think why it would be a bad idea as many forums and companies have products to actually do this. Thanks.