I have had the iFi SPDIF iPurifier for a few weeks now. I finally had the chance to sit down and do some comparisons. My chain is Roon >RPi2 with Hifi Digi+DAC> Silver Phantoms.
I compared Spark to Optical with and without the iFi for a few sessions with a few tracks I know well - mix of pop/rock/electronic/vocal/acoustic.
My conclusion is it does make a positive improvement particularly with well recorded music. It's not huge but worth it as a cheap improvement. I agree that Spark direct sounds the best but a PITA to use. The iFi brought my source closer to the clarity and definition of Spark. I think Spark is still slightly better but the gap is much less and with lesser quality music and Tidal streaming the difference is barely noticeable for me. My RPi has a linear power supply and my music sits on a NAS with Roon. Everything matters in the chain and I think Spark shows you how the source quality cannot be ignored. It also shows to me at least that the Phantoms optical input (I go direct not via Dialog) can reveal improvements in the source. Others will say it's all 1's and 0's and bits are bits but not in my experience.
Possibly if I had a more upmarket source with better optical output then may not see any improvement but most audio sources focus on USB these days.
The ifi is a bit clunky in design as there are a lot of adaptors etc to get it to work with optical in/out but once you set it up there is nothing to do. It comes with a low noise power supply.
I may experiment with optical cables next.
cloudkicker what software are you using on the mac mini?
I compared Spark to Optical with and without the iFi for a few sessions with a few tracks I know well - mix of pop/rock/electronic/vocal/acoustic.
My conclusion is it does make a positive improvement particularly with well recorded music. It's not huge but worth it as a cheap improvement. I agree that Spark direct sounds the best but a PITA to use. The iFi brought my source closer to the clarity and definition of Spark. I think Spark is still slightly better but the gap is much less and with lesser quality music and Tidal streaming the difference is barely noticeable for me. My RPi has a linear power supply and my music sits on a NAS with Roon. Everything matters in the chain and I think Spark shows you how the source quality cannot be ignored. It also shows to me at least that the Phantoms optical input (I go direct not via Dialog) can reveal improvements in the source. Others will say it's all 1's and 0's and bits are bits but not in my experience.
Possibly if I had a more upmarket source with better optical output then may not see any improvement but most audio sources focus on USB these days.
The ifi is a bit clunky in design as there are a lot of adaptors etc to get it to work with optical in/out but once you set it up there is nothing to do. It comes with a low noise power supply.
I may experiment with optical cables next.
cloudkicker what software are you using on the mac mini?
