Hopefully can have impressions tomorrow night.

I should be getting a Wyrd today.


I can try it with the Geek Out 450, Hugo, and microStreamer.

One may still have to worry about jitter present in the data lines due to perhaps a schiity clock (among other things), or noise due to a schiity and crammed up interface. The Wyrd Schiit may have a fairly robust USB receiver and re-generate the data using a clean clock and w a minimum of noise coupled into the lines at the transmission end. Crap stops at the Schiit so that such crap doesn't skirt all over down the chain, if things down the chain are too up tight to tolerate USB fuchis.

Why does this help with DAC's that are not USB powered. If the DAC is powered from the wall directly, isn't it already isolated from the USB power?

With the way USB is designed (as a conduit for both data and power), it opens it up for noise from your laptop or computer to make it into your DAC even if your DAC doesn't draw any power from the 5V. My current DAC doesn't use the 5V USB for any power, but I get a hell of a lot of noise when I try to listen through my Crack (which tends to be the most sensitive of all my gears). I still get noise even when I cut off the 5V leads on my USB cable. The noise from my laptop seems to be making it through the cable to my DAC, and to everything downstream even through the "Data" lines of the USB cable. My Crack is dead silent when I disconnect the USB from my laptop and use my CD transport through my DAC, so it is definitely the USB that is carrying the noise through to the rest of my chain.

Maybe if our upstream components (laptop, desktop) were designed better this wouldn't be an issue.