[OctavianH]

Anyone compared Sbooster with the LPS made by MCRU?

 

[DecentLevi]

LPS made by MCRU

Hi Octavian, I know you. Do you also have the Qutest? I got mine used last week and am astounded how well it does every genre and every headphone! I looked on the MCRU site but they have so many mains products. Which one were you referring to?

 

[474194]

Loving the power supply talk, although I have zero knowledge about the Qutest.

I'm an off the grid, portable and transportable listener but once the Hugo2 or Mojo's battery R.I.P.s in a few years I'm going to try out some Ciunas Power Supply's for desktop use (the DAC battery will be completely removed from chain). I'm also glass optical only and have zero USB data involvement of any kind in my chain for SQ purity. Pure i2S. So with battery power being so robust these days, I would not even consider mains. But these are just personal requirements. YMMV as I'm not into desktop setups, esp main power supplies or even mains music streamers.

This is where Ciunas Power Supply's come into play. The ISO-PS Supercapacitor can be powered by a PowerAdd Pilot Pro 2. So you can have one PP2 on standby (possibly charging) and another PP2 in use so you can have a nice rotation without losing a step.

https://www.ciunas.biz/product-page/copy-of-supercapacitor-power-supply-dual-voltage-outputs

There are a few comments from another Forum of the Qutest here (maybe best to read whole thread if it draws your interest):

1

2

3

I plan on dual voltage. One 5V going into my portable music streamer and one 7V going into Mojo or Hugo2 (Haven't verified if it accepts 7V directly yet). Plan on something like the below (SUPER-PS + SUPER-PS [fed from battery]), but Music Streamer + DAC, not Music Streamer + RPi since once you feed the Music Streamer 5V direct it will also power the RPi:

Supercapacitor Power Supply tour

To top off some Ghent Audio DC Gotham cables (5 layers of shielding) would be pretty sweet. I have the Gotham USB micro for USB power only (No USB Data soldered) for now.

http://ghentaudio.com/part/dc-gac4.html

 

[daredevil_kk]

Hi Octavian, I know you. Do you also have the Qutest? I got mine used last week and am astounded how well it does every genre and every headphone! I looked on the MCRU site but they have so many mains products. Which one were you referring to?

I second the MCRU, I am using it as well. They have one specially made for the Qutest. Use the search function.

 

[gasmonkey]

Quite helpful info. thanks. When you said you plugged the Qutest into a power isolator, do you mean you plugged the wall-wart into something like a power regenerator or power conditioner? For me, my wall-wart has been plugged into my Furman IT REF 15I Power Conditioner all along. I assumed this may not make a difference with the Qutest, being that the power to it is still switched from AC to DC within the wall-wart. When I get home I will try connecting my Qutest into a mobile power bank, but hopefully that won't cause too much of a surge or anything? It's definitely 5 volts, but it may / may not be one or two AH higher than what it needs.

Also, do you mind to post the link for which thread that was, which you said they were talking about the merits to creating clean DC power?

Also @jbarrentine you said you didn't hear a difference with the iFi iPower into the DAC. I was curious what is your chain? Which hadphones, amp, and do you listen to well mastered lossless audio files? Not saying the power purifier must make an audible difference, just that perhaps your gear was affecting the ability to notice it.

Here is the Thread.

I have one single Power Isolator that connects to the wall, and everything is run off that. Keeps a physical disconnect from the mains, and then has two separate outlets of 2 plugins. I run my Amplifier off one set, and Chord Qutest from the other. Laptop runs on battery exclusively. I then traded the stock Qutest power supply with the Sbooster and it gets plugged into the Power Isolator.

I have had great success keepign my chain small, and not allowing anything to have a physical connection to the Mains. It's all cut off in the Power isolator. If I plug the laptop into the wall, I instantly get a degradation of SQ.

One of the UK HiFi said that changing PSU improved the Qutest.

I have been tempted to try the iFi Power purifiers.

However ages I bought an iFi USB mini something gadget, with a clean 5V power source on it. After a quick test I heard zero difference.

I would be very surprised if they made much of a difference. Then again, I was surprised with my purchase. The way I look at it is this: Most everything is priced about cost x3. When Rob says the stock wall wart is sufficient, I'm sure he means its about as good as can be for whatever the budget is, $15x3, $25x3, $50x3. And that's good for most people. You have already paid this price when purchasing the Chord Qutest. To think that another engineer can take $33 in parts and make a $100 product that improves enough to make a large difference on what Rob has done does seem quite far fetched, otherwise Chord would have spent the extra money and just tacked another $50 onto the MSRP.

In Battle of the cost effective Engineers, I'm going to guess Rob wins.

But when money is no object, its pretty unfair to compare the budget constrained Qutest stock wall wart to a product that has an engineering budget of 10x what Rob had to work with. (all figures are my personal guesses).

 

[OctavianH]

Hi Octavian, I know you. Do you also have the Qutest? I got mine used last week and am astounded how well it does every genre and every headphone! I looked on the MCRU site but they have so many mains products. Which one were you referring to?

Yes, I use at the moment Qutest (already almost 3 years) and I had in the past the 2Qute. I used on both power supplies made by MCRU which were much better than the stock one. Now I have this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/MCRU-FULLY-REGULATED-LINEAR-POWER-SUPPLY-FOR-CHORD-QUTEST-DAC-/352301203081

 

[DecentLevi]

Loving the power supply talk, although I have zero knowledge about the Qutest.

I'm an off the grid, portable and transportable listener but once the Hugo2 or Mojo's battery R.I.P.s in a few years I'm going to try out some Ciunas Power Supply's for desktop use (the DAC battery will be completely removed from chain). I'm also glass optical only and have zero USB data involvement of any kind in my chain for SQ purity. Pure i2S. So with battery power being so robust these days, I would not even consider mains. But these are just personal requirements. YMMV as I'm not into desktop setups, esp main power supplies or even mains music streamers.

This is where Ciunas Power Supply's come into play. The ISO-PS Supercapacitor can be powered by a PowerAdd Pilot Pro 2. So you can have one PP2 on standby (possibly charging) and another PP2 in use so you can have a nice rotation without losing a step.

https://www.ciunas.biz/product-page/copy-of-supercapacitor-power-supply-dual-voltage-outputs

There are a few comments from another Forum of the Qutest here (maybe best to read whole thread if it draws your interest):

1

2

3

I plan on dual voltage. One 5V going into my portable music streamer and one 7V going into Mojo or Hugo2 (Haven't verified if it accepts 7V directly yet). Plan on something like the below (SUPER-PS + SUPER-PS [fed from battery]), but Music Streamer + DAC, not Music Streamer + RPi since once you feed the Music Streamer 5V direct it will also power the RPi:



Supercapacitor Power Supply tour

To top off some Ghent Audio DC Gotham cables (5 layers of shielding) would be pretty sweet. I have the Gotham USB micro for USB power only (No USB Data soldered) for now.

http://ghentaudio.com/part/dc-gac4.html

Wow that looks like a quality and affordable choice. It took me a while do catch on to your lingo / acronyms... and a good thing about this option is the flexibility to pair it with different devices with a generic output. But do you know anyone who has received good results on this with it (Supercapacitor ISO-PS) on the Qutest?

 

[DecentLevi]

Yes, I use at the moment Qutest (already almost 3 years) and I had in the past the 2Qute. I used on both power supplies made by MCRU which were much better than the stock one. Now I have this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/MCRU-FULLY-REGULATED-LINEAR-POWER-SUPPLY-FOR-CHORD-QUTEST-DAC-/352301203081

This looks like a solid option! I love the fact that it's British made and award winning and has 2 separate regulators (one for AC and one for DC if I understand correctly)

From looking at the MCRU website they have these two options:
MCRU Linear Power Supply for Chord Qutest DAC for £195.83
MCRU Ultimate Linear Power Supply for Chord Qutest DAC for £541.67

And Wow! The one you linked to on eBay looks like it's the more expensive Ultimate Linear PS and says it's for only £235! But it says a Fully Regulated Linear PS so I'm not really sure which of the two above it is, or if it's another I didn't see on their website?
And if you tried both of the above options, would you have any words on if one sounds better than the other?

 

[OctavianH]

I have the cheaper one, the "Ultimate" has some cable/connector/fuse upgrades only. I never tried it. From Ebay the difference is:

THIS MODEL COMES WITH THE FOLLOWING UP-GRADES AS STANDARD......
Pure silver cable from small case to micro usb connector
Furutech gold plated IEC inlet
Synergistic research SR20 internal fuse
IsoTek EVO3 Initium power cable

Normal:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MCRU-FUL...OWER-SUPPLY-FOR-CHORD-QUTEST-DAC/352301203081
Ultimate:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MCRU-ULT...OWER-SUPPLY-FOR-CHORD-QUTEST-DAC/153003927244

 

[gasmonkey]

Recently I decided that I should look potentially replacing my laptop with an audiophile grade solution. This is when I started smashing my head against the wall. My main issue that complicated everything is that the Router is upstairs with the neighbors, and I dont have a hardwired connection. Truth is, I don't need one. But most products seem to think I do because they dont want to deal with customer support when the wifi drops signal. I rarely stream from Qobuz, and mostly have ripped CD's, so I only need wifi to retrieve coverart and control Roon from my phone.

I stream FLAC from ROON, not quite bitperfect as I use the volume control.

Here is my list of pluses/minuses for my current setup:

Plus: modern laptop (more efficient = smaller power usage = smaller noise?), battery powered, keeps physical disconnect from mains, SSD.
Cons: Full windows software, probably made worse by Dell. Can't play sample rates of 48k, 96k, 192k. Only 44.1k, 88.2k, and not certain about 176.4 yet, though certainly some failures. This is a Dell firmware issue relating to audio and the BIOS. It's a nightmare, but if I stick to Redbook, I get perfect results. No Optical. Powerful, but has fan. Hardware for display is unnecessary.

Here are some solutions I have considered:

Roon Nucleus:
Pro's: case is heatsink, no fan. Minimalist optimized OS. Physical components optimized.
Con's: ABSOLUTELY requires a hardwired network cable to the router. Would need to pay to run this wire, and then the router is not audiophile grade, and reconnects my entire system to the Mains of the house, letting in noise from the router and every other piece of electronics on the block.

Small Green Computer Sonic Transporter I5:
Pro's: Hardware and minimalist OS built for SQ. Linear Power supply can plug into power isolator, keeping entire system disconnected from dirty power from mains (if wifi dongle can work)
Con's: No optical. Hardware for display is compromise. No wifi, may need to connect to router.

Which brings me to the relevant comments I have found in this thread:

Yes optical data is transmitted through light only, so no electrical connection at all. It's the perfect galvanic isolation, as the coupling capacitance is almost zero.



Yes, all electrical connections from a digital source will have RF noise on the ground. Even if it is galvanically isolated, there is still a coupling capacitance, which degrades the isolation at higher frequencies (particularly in the GHz range).

if the optical source is bit perfect then the source makes no difference. this was confirmed by the designer of qutest Rob. No audible difference at all. external mutec type clocking will harm chord dac operation. its also best to go direct from source to chord dac and avoid ddc's etc. i use my imac optical into mscaler. the key point is that the source must be bit perfect this is essential. also digital phase lock loop make chord dacs immune to jitter. it saves us a lot of money very good.

I like toslink for its simplicity and galvanic isolation. Its possible to get USB isolated but it requires an ethernet transport and fiber-ethernet, and then the ethernet transport has to be well made so it don't produce any electronic noise. All in all, it tends to get expensive (for example, upcoming $1300 opticalRendu). If toslink gives same sound quality, I would prefer that since I have computer one meter away.

I don't listen to anything above 192 kHz anyway, so I won't miss the higher bandwidths.

It’s not the jitter on the USB for 2 reasons. One, the USB timing is asynchronous, meaning the timing comes from the DAC so there should be zero jitter. Two, Rob’s designs are jitter immune on all inputs due to the Pulse Array design. Likely you are hearing the difference from RF noise being injected in to the analogue components with USB making it sound brighter. As you rightly mentioned the optical is electrically isolated so does not transmit the RF noise so this is the most likely reason why it sounds darker, as Rob has explained many times.

Ethernet cables transport electronic noise as well, which will affect the sound. So that "theory" they keep talking about is not very accurate. Unlike USBAudio or SPDIF, there is no audio-jitter in ethernet though (the information transported is not tied to a clock), which means that the quality of ethernet cables is not as important as for USB.

Ok. Here is what I take away:
For USB/Qutest, timing is not an issue, and there is galvanic isolation, BUT, the galvonic isolation isn't perfect. Noise from laptop could be making it into Qutest and degrading SQ.
For Optical: Timing is not an issue, and neither is noise.

Is it really this simple? If the theory truly fits real life, then all anyone needs is any laptop and some device that takes a USB signal and converts it to optical. No amount of money can get better audio out of Qutest?

Is there something inexpensive that will do this?

What am I missing?

It seems just a touch too simple to be true when all the other solutions I look at are many thousands of dollars (like this: https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/...transporter-i9-optical?variant=31098467156037)

 

[DecentLevi]

Super helpful for your insights folks! I may be 'pulling the trigger' soon on one of those filtered power options for the Qutest. For me the choices seem like this. Either the

MCRU Linear Power Supply


or Ciunas Audio Supercapacitor ISO-PS


However in my case I already have the Furman IT Reference 15i discrete symmetrical power filer


Being that my above unit already filters the AC power, I'm wondering if that would negate the need for the two separate regulators of the MCRU power supply, making the Ciunas Audio solution more practical in my case - or if it's somehow better than the MCRU? Maybe So @AC-12 or @OctavianH or anyone has any thoughts. Thanks!

 

[Meanstreak242]

Recently I decided that I should look potentially replacing my laptop with an audiophile grade solution. This is when I started smashing my head against the wall. My main issue that complicated everything is that the Router is upstairs with the neighbors, and I dont have a hardwired connection. Truth is, I don't need one. But most products seem to think I do because they dont want to deal with customer support when the wifi drops signal. I rarely stream from Qobuz, and mostly have ripped CD's, so I only need wifi to retrieve coverart and control Roon from my phone.

I stream FLAC from ROON, not quite bitperfect as I use the volume control.

Here is my list of pluses/minuses for my current setup:

Plus: modern laptop (more efficient = smaller power usage = smaller noise?), battery powered, keeps physical disconnect from mains, SSD.
Cons: Full windows software, probably made worse by Dell. Can't play sample rates of 48k, 96k, 192k. Only 44.1k, 88.2k, and not certain about 176.4 yet, though certainly some failures. This is a Dell firmware issue relating to audio and the BIOS. It's a nightmare, but if I stick to Redbook, I get perfect results. No Optical. Powerful, but has fan. Hardware for display is unnecessary.

Have you considered a wireless ethernet bridge? Then you can just connect that to the wifi, and ethernet cable from the unit to whatever it is you want to connect to.

 

[gasmonkey]

It's a not so perfect, inelegant solution. Could be done though. That would put a Roon Nucleus into play (Which should be a perfect device short of ditching USB and going optical), but with this AND a wifi device I'm now out of Power slots, and one of my devices has to share a 2 set of power slots with the crappy wifi adaptor, which could send back noise through the power isolator and into Amp/qutest/Nucleus.

It still leaves the question if a Roon Nucleus will provide better SQ than a laptop. Theoretically it should, but that route is expensive and then Im adding in a cheap non-audiohpile component. Would be a last resort as its 4 compromises: USB solution for top dollar/cheap adaptor/extra power slot used/power slot used by non-audiophile device.

 

[474194]

Super helpful for your insights folks! I may be 'pulling the trigger' soon on one of those filtered power options for the Qutest.

I'll try paging @aspro . @aspro : can you comment on the below? Did you end up making a purchase? Did it make a difference with your Music Streamer?

The only power-related comments for aspro:

https://www.head-fi.org/search/759330/?q=power&c[users]=aspro&o=relevance

I recommend contacting the owner of Ciunas. He seems super helpful on the threads, so might provide some insight. Of course bias, but seems like an expert in the field:

skype:john.f.kenny@ciunas.biz?call

john.f.kenny@ciunas.biz

For me, I'm just planning on obsolesce in a few years so can't comment on desktop solutions as that's a whole new world of power options. After reading RW teachings, I try for the path of least resistance. For example, my digital source is PCM -> CPU -> i2s -> WM8804 Optical decoder -> glass optical -> Chord DAC. That and battery power is all that's needed for a simple elegant solution. I'm running the exact same software as the $10,000 music streamers w/ an audiophile OS that runs entirely in RAM. RW preaches simple battery power and noise-free sources. His preference I believe is a Motorola phone, but that's not practical. I'm not sure what he preaches on the power side. Summit-Fi users like USB -> Optical -> USB -> 128 core CPU -> Coaxial -> USB -> Ethernet -> Optical -> USB -> Chord DAC. Sprinkled in with some ferrites. Complexity is what I avoid not run to...

With the Supercapacitor, I believe there is no voltage regulator in the way. It's just super clean if fed from a battery. I'm considering now powering with the Ciunas LiFePO4 power supply with standby LiFePO4 batteries in rotation. LiFePO4 PS -> ISO-PS -> Chord DAC vs PP2 -> ISO-PS -> Chord DAC. Both the LiFePO4 and ISO-PS provide on-demand dynamic power.

The important feature in all these PS designs is that there is NO voltage regulator between the supercapacitors & the output - the current is delivered directly from the supercapacitors which makes a large difference to the sound when powering devices in the audio chain. It's a growing realisation that voltage regultaors (even the best ones) react to dynamic current draws (becaus eof their feedback method of voltag eregulation). The largest improvement in audibility is found when supercapacitors directly power audio devices themselves such as DACs, etc but it also seems to have a audible benefit powering any device in the audio chain.

Since the TT2 has a Supercapcitor power supply, I thought it would go well with Chord DACs. But as RW pointed out, Supercapacitor is only good for speakers:

I did not pursue if connecting power directly to the DAC and not the USB port is limited/restricted, but there's hope as there is this comment:

Large dynamics swings are what the Supercapacitor and LiFePO4 are all about. Super clean power with dynamism. That's why TT2 has one.

I do want to try to experiment with a Supercapacitor power supply in a few years, but for now it's not needed as I'm portable CIEM only. Although have thoughts of Supercapacitor + Qutest for car audio speakers in the future. I'm just not a stationary listener yet.

IMO, with Chord DACs you have to think simple, battery-power, glass optical, path of least resistance and maybe add NO voltage regulator to the list. Adding complexity to compensate with traditional DACs doesn't apply to Chord DACs. Chord DACs don't need to compensate. Just need simplicity.

 

[DecentLevi]

@AC-12 Awesome thanks for your advice. I'll try & contact the owner of Ciunas about the Supercapacitor ISO-PS. But I think I'm sold on it. The supercapacitor concept may benefit speakers, but has certainly said to be beneficial by some for the Qutest (thanks for your links), as well as in other source components I've read about having one like the Singxer SU-6 DDC / audio bridge. If no voltage regulator, no problem, and I don't think I necessarily need to mess with running it from batteries if since I use a power conditioner. I could be wrong that's just my current understanding.

And I take it you have yet to try the ISO-PS, right?