With a clever name like Remedy, it's clear that you—or rather, your digital—must first be ailing to benefit. The usual sick apps for which the Remedy is intended are devices like the Sonos Connect, Apple TV and Airport Express, Squeezebox, iPod docks, even aging DVD players. "It's receiving significant praises from customers gauging from email feedback, forum posts etc. It's also recently received a KO award from your friend John Darko on DAR.net. It has proven itself in high-dollar systems as well. So its benefits extend further than we originally marketed for. It's portable and reasonably priced too." So said Tony Holt, Wyred's marketing man by way of asking whether I'd take it for a spin.


Because I use three different iPod docks from Pure, Cambridge Audio and Pro-Ject, "spin me" was what Tony got. I knew for a fact that the iD100 has such atrocious jitter, certain Sabre-powered DACs from Burson and AURALiC won't play nice with it to suffer drop-outs regular as clock work. If the Remedy's so-called femto clock were truly effective, I might have easy practical proof. The Remedy attaches to a Toslink or coax output of your digital transport, does its femto clock cleaning and jitter stripping, then outputs the remedied signal again via Toslink and coax or BNC to your final D/A deck of choice. You can convert Toslink to BNC or coax enroute if you wish. Though inputs can be up to 24/192kHz, this $399 black box outputs everything at 96kHz. That means 44.1kHz signal undergoes asynchronous upsampling whilst 176.4/192kHz will be downsampled. Video's 48kHz is upsampled x 2. This acts as reminder on the class of remedial devices the Wyred is intended for. "The Remedy was designed to be as versatile as possible. Thus it takes signal up to 24/192 but outputs at 96 to play nice with as many DACs as possible." It slurps juice from a small 9VDC wall wart.

Some basic mental housekeeping immediately budgets for a second digital cable; and worries that a $399+ tag added to say a €85 Pure i-20 dock looks a bit loaded considering. Why not get a better source instead? That question seems sensible only until you ask where you can really go from a 160GB iPod. If you've already invested in a receiving DAC which this discussion presupposes, spending $699 or more on an Astell&Kern portable gets you perhaps a bit more storage but still a lesser GUI than iTunes. And now we've eclipsed the Remedy budget. You could get a laptop but it'd not address your jitters. And it's not so portable to really replace an iPod. And you've outgrown legacy CD players a long time ago. Face it, you're one of us pod people.

An advert for the Remedy references our mate from Down Under.