[iFi audio]

You'd expect a blacker background not better highs,
bass, etc.

Exactly. Efficient accessories regardless of their type make a background blacker indeed.

 

[JjB067]

My iFi LAN iSilencer arrived today. Plugged it into the back of my iFi Zen Stream, then connected via ethernet cable to a network switch (tpLink 8 port unmanaged) and thence to a router (BT Smart Hub). Assumed I would hear no difference, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear a distinct increase in overall clarity from the very first notes. Many hours later listening to a range of music, the effect is definitely there but a small but welcome uptick in signal quality overall. Just my subjective impression of course, but this small unassuming device will be staying in my system.

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

My iFi LAN iSilencer arrived today. Plugged it into the back of my iFi Zen Stream, then connected via ethernet cable to a network switch (tpLink 8 port unmanaged) and thence to a router (BT Smart Hub). Assumed I would hear no difference, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear a distinct increase in overall clarity from the very first notes. Many hours later listening to a range of music, the effect is definitely there but a small but welcome uptick in signal quality overall. Just my subjective impression of course, but this small unassuming device will be staying in my system.

That's awesome! Thank you for posting your thoughts!

It reminds me of my thoughts the first time I put a world clock into one of my systems, it is difficult to describe but there is a difference.

I think you did a good job in explaining what your hearing, going to get one soon!

Cheers!!

 

[iFi audio]

My iFi LAN iSilencer arrived today. Plugged it into the back of my iFi Zen Stream, then connected via ethernet cable to a network switch (tpLink 8 port unmanaged) and thence to a router (BT Smart Hub). Assumed I would hear no difference, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear a distinct increase in overall clarity from the very first notes. Many hours later listening to a range of music, the effect is definitely there but a small but welcome uptick in signal quality overall. Just my subjective impression of course, but this small unassuming device will be staying in my system.

Thank you very much for this feedback and we share your observations too. Enjoy!

 

[srkbear]

Exactly. Efficient accessories regardless of their type make a background blacker indeed.

OK iFi, you know how much I love your products and how insane the number of them is that I’ve accrued, but this thing is just pure nonsense scientifically and edging on snake oil! You know full well how TCP/IP error correcting protocols work, and that there is no electrical “noise” that interferes with a string of ones and zeros comprising a digital audio stream.

Digital audio is not sound, it isn’t affected by electrical interference, and it isn’t music. Every packet passed along an Ethernet connection is either sent successfully, or rejected and requeried to be resent until it passes intact. Then the input receiver on the streamer is going to buffer that stream of ones and zeros, extract some metadata along the way, and otherwise send it along unadulterated to the USB input on the DAC. At this point the DAC’s input receiver will buffer it again, and the DAC’s clock will assume master timing duties. Therefore multiple layers of redundancy to ensure accuracy. And until it is converted by that DAC to analog audio, “noise”—particularly electrical noise—is not a thing.

Buyers, please protect your wallets and be mindful of one essential overriding principle when spending your hard-earned dollars on your beloved gear—do not apply analog terms and concepts to digital audio signals. Until that digital sample is converted to an analog waveform, it’s just a data file—it isn’t noisy, it isn’t musical or warm, it doesn’t have soundstage or tonality or bass slam. Those terms apply to your amplifier and headphones/speakers and nothing more.

And if there were “errors” introduced into a digital reading frame, they would not manifest as a “veil”. They would manifest as gibberish—a pop, a stutter, a dropout. A streamer or DAC is nothing more than a computer—garbage in, garbage out.

Please think about this anytime someone tries to sell you products to “clean up” your digital signal. Think about how much better served that money would be spent on a headphone upgrade, which really would make a difference!

iFi, since this gizmo isn’t terribly costly, I’ll forgive you this time, and I’ll look forward to your next non-accessory release—where you have proven that you know your stuff. I wonder what is next after we have “cleaned up” Ethernet—something we spray in the air to lower the noise floor of our WiFi Signal? Peace!

 

[applesnowleo]

Received my order today, and played with it a little.

As I suspected, it gives some and takes some, on expensive cables and gear is not something to use, on lesser gear could result.

It is an interesting device but not for me, but now I have 3 of them to play around on other devices from my network. Is a good product.

On very expensive cables like audioquest diamond and audioquest vodka it takes some virtues of the cables with less wider images, it gives a s sensation of better clarity but in my case that clarity is out of place on my main system feeling artificial, but on my computer with the pro iDSD and a pair of amplified focal solo 6be it was not bad, but also it was not something amazing.

Most of my gear are on audioquest Niagara’s 1200 and 3000, maybe without the Niagara the effect could be more positive. As this is system dependent I can say the product works, but the result will be different from system to system, and user to user.

I my case is money lost unfortunately, as I destroyed the boxes and now I will have to keep them.

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

OK iFi, you know how much I love your products and how insane the number of them is that I’ve accrued, but this thing is just pure nonsense scientifically and edging on snake oil! You know full well how TCP/IP error correcting protocols work, and that there is no electrical “noise” that interferes with a string of ones and zeros comprising a digital audio stream.

Digital audio is not sound, it isn’t affected by electrical interference, and it isn’t music. Every packet passed along an Ethernet connection is either sent successfully, or rejected and requeried to be resent until it passes intact. Then the input receiver on the streamer is going to buffer that stream of ones and zeros, extract some metadata along the way, and otherwise send it along unadulterated to the USB input on the DAC. At this point the DAC’s input receiver will buffer it again, and the DAC’s clock will assume master timing duties. Therefore multiple layers of redundancy to ensure accuracy. And until it is converted by that DAC to analog audio, “noise”—particularly electrical noise—is not a thing.

Buyers, please protect your wallets and be mindful of one essential overriding principle when spending your hard-earned dollars on your beloved gear—do not apply analog terms and concepts to digital audio signals. Until that digital sample is converted to an analog waveform, it’s just a data file—it isn’t noisy, it isn’t musical or warm, it doesn’t have soundstage or tonality or bass slam. Those terms apply to your amplifier and headphones/speakers and nothing more.

And if there were “errors” introduced into a digital reading frame, they would not manifest as a “veil”. They would manifest as gibberish—a pop, a stutter, a dropout. A streamer or DAC is nothing more than a computer—garbage in, garbage out.

Please think about this anytime someone tries to sell you products to “clean up” your digital signal. Think about how much better served that money would be spent on a headphone upgrade, which really would make a difference!

iFi, since this gizmo isn’t terribly costly, I’ll forgive you this time, and I’ll look forward to your next non-accessory release—where you have proven that you know your stuff. I wonder what is next after we have “cleaned up” Ethernet—something we spray in the air to lower the noise floor of our WiFi Signal? Peace!

Duly Noted!

While I don't agree with everything that was said here, this is why we are part of this community, to hear others' opinions and agree/Disagree or Try and not Try! lol

I think products like this provoke strong reactions, and I also believe for some they might make a discernable difference and for others, they may hear no difference whatsoever!

All part of our lovable hobby, and pursuit of audio perfection!

Cheers!!

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

Received my order today, and played with it a little.



As I suspected, it gives some and takes some, on expensive cables and gear is not something to use, on lesser gear could result.

It is an interesting device but not for me, but now I have 3 of them to play around on other devices from my network. Is a good product.

On very expensive cables like audioquest diamond and audioquest vodka it takes some virtues of the cables with less wider images, it gives a s sensation of better clarity but in my case that clarity is out of place on my main system feeling artificial, but on my computer with the pro iDSD and a pair of amplified focal solo 6be it was not bad, but also it was not something amazing.

Most of my gear are on audioquest Niagara’s 1200 and 3000, maybe without the Niagara the effect could be more positive. As this is system dependent I can say the product works, but the result will be different from system to system, and user to user.

I my case is money lost unfortunately, as I destroyed the boxes and now I will have to keep them.

Thanks so much for sharing your observations here!

While I have cables nowhere near the quality of what you are using, I will certainly keep in mind these thoughts when I check mine out, especially the sense of clarity vs. width!

What streamer were you using it with? Or was this in use with Computer, Thanks!

Cheers!!

 

[AussieMick]

OK iFi, you know how much I love your products and how insane the number of them is that I’ve accrued, but this thing is just pure nonsense scientifically and edging on snake oil! You know full well how TCP/IP error correcting protocols work, and that there is no electrical “noise” that interferes with a string of ones and zeros comprising a digital audio stream.

Digital audio is not sound, it isn’t affected by electrical interference, and it isn’t music. Every packet passed along an Ethernet connection is either sent successfully, or rejected and requeried to be resent until it passes intact. Then the input receiver on the streamer is going to buffer that stream of ones and zeros, extract some metadata along the way, and otherwise send it along unadulterated to the USB input on the DAC. At this point the DAC’s input receiver will buffer it again, and the DAC’s clock will assume master timing duties. Therefore multiple layers of redundancy to ensure accuracy. And until it is converted by that DAC to analog audio, “noise”—particularly electrical noise—is not a thing.

Buyers, please protect your wallets and be mindful of one essential overriding principle when spending your hard-earned dollars on your beloved gear—do not apply analog terms and concepts to digital audio signals. Until that digital sample is converted to an analog waveform, it’s just a data file—it isn’t noisy, it isn’t musical or warm, it doesn’t have soundstage or tonality or bass slam. Those terms apply to your amplifier and headphones/speakers and nothing more.

And if there were “errors” introduced into a digital reading frame, they would not manifest as a “veil”. They would manifest as gibberish—a pop, a stutter, a dropout. A streamer or DAC is nothing more than a computer—garbage in, garbage out.

Please think about this anytime someone tries to sell you products to “clean up” your digital signal. Think about how much better served that money would be spent on a headphone upgrade, which really would make a difference!

iFi, since this gizmo isn’t terribly costly, I’ll forgive you this time, and I’ll look forward to your next non-accessory release—where you have proven that you know your stuff. I wonder what is next after we have “cleaned up” Ethernet—something we spray in the air to lower the noise floor of our WiFi Signal? Peace!

As has been said many times already, nobody, not one single person, is saying it has anything to do with data. It doesn’t. The data is unaffected. This device does not affect data accuracy.
Digital signals are transferred via analogue means. Those electrical representations of one’s and zeros are anslogue and as such are not immune to having noise ride on the line. Electrical noise and RF and EM. That noise does NOT corrupt data - as you correctly point out the protocols are extremely effective at ensuring data integrity.
However, they don’t filter out all of the noise accrued along the way and that noise makes it’s way into the anslogue circuitry further down the line, be it the DAC, preamp, power amp or associated cabling.
This noise is very audible as glare, greyness, haze, lack of transient definition, compromised low level definition/resolution, or a combination of these.
I don’t personally know if this product works because I haven’t personally tried it, and until you try it you don’t either. Accusing a company of fraud is a serious thing, especially when you’ve not tried it. You also criticise it for not being able to do something it’s not even designed to do.
However, there is more than enough evidence around and reading available to suggest that this product belongs within the group of Products designed to tackle noise in hifi systems. On the basis of that it’s worth a try if you don’t already have your system sorted out in this area (power conditioners/regenerators, power cables, equipment isolation, RF and EM isolation).

Please stop dismissing products like this on the basis of data corruption.

It’s not about data corruption.
It’s not about data corruption.
It’s not about data corruption.

 

[applesnowleo]

I used two streamers a Naim NDX 2 and a SoTM SMS 200 ultra, also have a bluesound and an ifi Zen stream but they are not connected at the moment.

the speakers on the computer are not connected to the computer, on the desk I stream to the SoTM SMS200 ultra to the pro iDSD, the ifi iSilencer does give a little sense of musicality and a little more depth, but also takes something of my sound.

I found that having It at the end of a normal cable can be a positive, but this is an affordable tweak I did not expect a miracle, in some systems it could be a very good add on, two of my systems I did not find that gave me more. I will try next week on the Naim Uniti Atom HE with my headphones, with the utopia it can be a great pairing because the uniti is connected with a cinnamon network cable.

if I have the time to make experiments I will try them on the bluesound node and zen stream when I connect them.

 

[AussieMick]

I used two streamers a Naim NDX 2 and a SoTM SMS 200 ultra, also have a bluesound and an ifi Zen stream but they are not connected at the moment.

the speakers on the computer are not connected to the computer, on the desk I stream to the SoTM SMS200 ultra to the pro iDSD, the ifi iSilencer does give a little sense of musicality and a little more depth, but also takes something of my sound.

I found that having It at the end of a normal cable can be a positive, but this is an affordable tweak I did not expect a miracle, in some systems it could be a very good add on, two of my systems I did not find that gave me more. I will try next week on the Naim Uniti Atom HE with my headphones, with the utopia it can be a great pairing because the uniti is connected with a cinnamon network cable.

if I have the time to make experiments I will try them on the bluesound node and zen stream when I connect them.

Can you describe what was taken away? I’m a believer that whenever you get increased stage depth you’ve cleaned up the treble and upper midrange, exposing lower level detail that leads to nicer production of hall ambience snd the like.
I ask because when I first started playing around with cleaning up noise (jitterbugs, power cables and the like) every time I got more low level detail I felt that I’d lost treble “sparkle”. I’ve turned around a little into thinking that the “sparkle” was actually the product of noise.
Furthermore, every one of those steps in this direction has brought my digital rig (Innuos-MScaler-TT2) closer to one particular thing my analogue rig (RP8 - Apheta 2 - Accession MC) is so good at, that being zero glare at any volume level.

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

I used two streamers a Naim NDX 2 and a SoTM SMS 200 ultra, also have a bluesound and an ifi Zen stream but they are not connected at the moment.

the speakers on the computer are not connected to the computer, on the desk I stream to the SoTM SMS200 ultra to the pro iDSD, the ifi iSilencer does give a little sense of musicality and a little more depth, but also takes something of my sound.

I found that having It at the end of a normal cable can be a positive, but this is an affordable tweak I did not expect a miracle, in some systems it could be a very good add on, two of my systems I did not find that gave me more. I will try next week on the Naim Uniti Atom HE with my headphones, with the utopia it can be a great pairing because the uniti is connected with a cinnamon network cable.

if I have the time to make experiments I will try them on the bluesound node and zen stream when I connect them.

Thanks for the clarification on what you were using, I asked simply because I like to "bookmark" thoughts and impressions like this for future questions about particular gear.

I really appreciate it! I look forward to your thoughts on the other streamers you mentioned.

Cheers!!

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

Can you describe what was taken away? I’m a believer that whenever you get increased stage depth you’ve cleaned up the treble and upper midrange, exposing lower level detail that leads to nicer production of hall ambience snd the like.
I ask because when I first started playing around with cleaning up noise (jitterbugs, power cables and the like) every time I got more low level detail I felt that I’d lost treble “sparkle”. I’ve turned around a little into thinking that the “sparkle” was actually the product of noise.
Furthermore, every one of those steps in this direction has brought my digital rig (Innuos-MScaler-TT2) closer to one particular thing my analogue rig (RP8 - Apheta 2 - Accession MC) is so good at, that being zero glare at any volume level.

That is a fascinating "take" on glare and treble extension or "sparkle".

If I may ask could you point to a particular "recording" available to stream that would produce "glare" on a system that lacked "low-level detail" but on a better-balanced system would sound less "Glaring"? Hope I have worded what I am looking for correctly there, lol.

These types of discussion and examples of tracks fascinate me, although I want to stay on topic I just thought it was a good time to ask

Cheers!!

 

[AussieMick]

That is a fascinating "take" on glare and treble extension or "sparkle".

If I may ask could you point to a particular "recording" available to stream that would produce "glare" on a system that lacked "low-level detail" but on a better-balanced system would sound less "Glaring"? Hope I have worded what I am looking for correctly there, lol.

These types of discussion and examples of tracks fascinate me, although I want to stay on topic I just thought it was a good time to ask

Cheers!!

Sure! I find it easiest to hear on simple tracks. Nanci Griffith’s “Once In A Very Blue Moon” live is a good example.

https://open.qobuz.com/track/53753371

It’s got a decent dynamic range and when she sings louder it can be very “present” and pop too far forward in the stage, like instead of just getting louder she got CLOSER. That for me means the stage depth fell apart.
If I take out all of my noise and vibration control it becomes so obvious as to necessitate turning down volume.
Having said that, any music that changes volume a lot, so often not most of the pop or jazz I listen to which is often mastered to have a smaller dynamic range. This is also a good example with an excellent dynamic range.

https://open.qobuz.com/track/532096

Anyone who owns an MScaler, it’s affect on reducing “digital” problems like glare and shallow stages and the like is VERY much like the effects of noise reduction. Less noise, more ease, more detail.

 

[Mr BubbaHyde]

Sure! I find it easiest to hear on simple tracks. Nanci Griffith’s “Once In A Very Blue Moon” live is a good example.

https://open.qobuz.com/track/53753371

It’s got a decent dynamic range and when she sings louder it can be very “present” and pop too far forward in the stage, like instead of just getting louder she got CLOSER. That for me means the stage depth fell apart.
If I take out all of my noise and vibration control it becomes so obvious as to necessitate turning down volume.
Having said that, any music that changes volume a lot, so often not most of the pop or jazz I listen to which is often mastered to have a smaller dynamic range. This is also a good example with an excellent dynamic range.

https://open.qobuz.com/track/532096

Anyone who owns an MScaler, it’s affect on reducing “digital” problems like glare and shallow stages and the like is VERY much like the effects of noise reduction. Less noise, more ease, more detail.

Thank you very much!

Appreciated!

Cheers!!