Antoine's system

[SwissBear]

What am I missing here - I've seen this 'cascaded' or 'in-series' purifiers/re-clockers scenario mentioned across various forums and with various devices.

So are we now saying USB signals need to be galvanically isolated, re-clocked, and regenerated, but not only that - put through this sequence multiple times (surely with each powered with a linear PS) and then either connected using expensive cables between each, or hard adapters (with the boxes strung out in a line across your living room) to stand any chance of getting the USB data from source to destination intact, or rather 'pure'?

I wasn't sceptical until I tried a Regen, but then again I did feel I got a much better sound from an Aurender. But now I'm not sure what to make if it all. It seems each time someone comes up with a way to 'perfect' a digital signal, along comes someone else to say it's still not quite right!

And wouldn't it be better if these devices simply iterated through their own mechanism a few times internally before spitting it out the other end if they can only do a % of what needed in one pass? Or that the final receiver was instead just sent an error corrected data set that it then does all this to internally? I guess I'm probably missing something again.

I get more and more confused with digital audio. In the rest of the world in telecoms etc digital is simple and has revolutionised how we worked previously with analogue. It's 1's and 0's and if the devices are up to spec they work, and if not they often don't. Huge cloud computing centres don't have to agonise about how perfect their 1's and 0's are, not in the way us audio folk have to. I know the USB audio transport is a different beast, but somehow just transferring digital data's become a huge deal; from jitter, to clocking, to subatomic reflections, vibration, power supply noise, cable skin effects - it's carnage for the poor little bits to get any sound data delivered anywhere without going all wobbly. What's gone wrong?

I genuinely really want to get a decent digital source and make improvements to my setup, but I seem to just get more and more confused about what the issue is.  Is it just me?

I'm not sure you missed anything. There is no 'Graal' which would be the best solution. I guess that everyone is trying to refine its source in order to get a better experience.

As far as USB is concerned, the first 2 steps (galvanic isolation and signal regeneration) have to be performed once. There are various devices to do this, like the Intona for the galvanic isolation or the Regen you mentioned for the regeneration. Then you get a digital signal, which can be reclocked, for further improvement. And this stage of reclocking is not specific to USB, but could be operated on other digital sources (AES or S-P/DIF). And this stage of reclocking can be done multiple times (metaphor of the door) in order to improve the efficiency.

In order to do that, you can use a d1-reclocker from Totaldac, or a Mutec MC-3+USB ; please note that the Mutec also includes the galvanic isolation on its USB input. And you can stack 2 x MC-3+ USB in order to have 2 stages of reclocking.

You mention the possibility for one box to make it twice ; the AFIS of Acousence, which costs approximately the price of 2 Mutec MC-3+ USB, includes 2 PLLs in order to reclock twice inside one box.

You should also acknowledge that these improvements are quite new in the Audiophile field. If the necessity to use a high precision master clock has been largely accepted in the studio industry, the idea to use a more precise clock in order to improve the audio signal is quite recent and the industry is boiling with new techniques/solutions.

Let's see what innovation is bringing to us, and what we accept to have in our our homes and appreciate to listen to.
As far as I'm concerned, I have 2 Mutec-3+ USB stacked. I am very happy with that and I do not contemplate the necessity to have more. I am still waiting for Mutec to release a better clock later this year, in order to see if I can hear a difference. But I am very happy as I am.

Hope this helps.