Audiopill: "Not in my house. Over my dead body."
Audiophil. "I got it on eBay for 70% off. I'll buy you a ring with the savings."


Use your imagination to continue this conversation. It's easy to see how Audiopill and Audiophil don't really see eye to eye. The same might be said about PC/Mac and DAC whenever USB connects the twain. They do shake hands and even talk to each other; just not necessarily nice.


Audiophilleo to the rescue. This dapper chap jumps into the breach as mediator; to get Audiopill into the game and Audiophil out of the dog house. If need be (cough), this acquisition could remain discretely hidden behind the existing gear altogether. Invisible. Woof.


Despite galvanic isolation; despite supposedly jitter-immune resampling schemes; despite mil-spec femto clocks... many a DAC sounds better when USB first runs through an intermediate black box. This type device is said to act as a noise stripper, re- or pre-clocker. There does not seem to be unanimous consensus about exactly how these audible improvements come about. What we can say without grasping is that nobody expects Apple or Hewlett Packard to install audiophile-approved USB cards with linear power supplies in consumer-grade computers. Meanwhile buyers of fancy DACs expect—and have a right to—that their decks operate with immunity regardless of what USB throws at them by way of computer-generated switch-mode power supply and other noise traveling down the USB ground; and irregularities in USB package deliveries.


Here it becomes a bitter pill when a mysterious black box calls bluff on said immunity. Rather than pretend at a full understanding of the involved 'why' and 'how', let's just point at plenty of anecdotal evidence that the best of these black boxes really do make a difference. Of course how much depends on the quality of your DAC (how immune is it already) and the resolving power of your overall system (how much will it magnify potentially small front-end improvements).