iFi ZEN Stream

[hardcore]

I still wonder if adding some DDC between the Zen and the Devialet can bring an improvement. On goldensound.audio you can find some jitter and noise measurements for the Zen and lots of DDC#s (Mutec, Audio GD, Singxer, ...). The measurents of the Zen look much better that the Mutec MC3+ USB while the Audio GD DI20 HE looks much better than the Zen. So I wonder if the Mutec is really an improvement over the Zen directly into the Devialet or if an Audio GD is a worthwhile improvement...

@confused: can you describe the difference between the Zen direct and with the Mutec ? I really wonder how a device with more jitter can be an improvement. Or maybe the measurements on this goldensound site are incorrect ? Or there is more than noise and jitter...

Based on the measurements of the Mutec, it may be inferior to the ZS alone, but newer better measured DDCs like the Singxer SU-6 should be better.

One thing that hugely affects the sound is the USB cable, and the best cable I've used is the Fibbr Alpha optical USB cable which provides complete optical isolation.

The next best tweak is to use a USB power injector like the ifi iDefender to isolate USB ground and insert clean 5V into the DDC or DAC USB input. I was previously using this combination with an Audioquest Diamond USB cable, but the Fibbr Alpha USB is far better (and much cheaper).

You need to be careful of the ZS's USB Audio driver support for the DDC.

I have a friend using the ZS with the Singxer SU-6 and it works well. The Singxer works with generic USB Audio drivers in Linux/Windows/MacOS. The Audio-GD uses a different USB chipset which may not work with the ZS. I'm actually surprised the Devialet USB works with the ZS since it also needs proprietary drivers for Windows at least.