I picked one up local for cheep ($100). I’ve been using it with the Allo Revolution DAC for a day now (raspberry pi → Intona → DAC). Can’t beat the simplicity, plug and play. And I’m noticing a pretty consistent improvement in detail/clarity. Nothing life changing, but an obvious improvement. The impact is probably very use case dependent, depending on how noisy the system is to start with. Just curious what others experiences have been with these devices.
That looks very decent and the price is you paid seems like a bargain. That said, be best way to get rid of USB noise it to get off USB in the first place. One of the benefits of a hat on a Pi like the Pi2AES is that it allows you get use the BNC or AES and thus doesn’t have to go through a USB to I2S conversion at the DAC. Of course your DAC has to have AES or BNC input but I found I liked those outputs the best.
And you’re right about the use case dependency. They have the biggest impact when you’re connecting to a PC. The Pi with a good PS isn’t anywhere near as noisy.
I tried the Intona with the revolution DAC since it’s USB only. But I agree, anything with a non USB input will benefit from the Pi2AES (or other good steamer) to give it noise isolation.
I have the JCAT version which from what I know is just the same thing with a different logo, and it is nice. I did find that it could become detrimental on some chains and beneficial on others, seemed to work better if you didn’t already have a really quality usb source or if you weren’t running higher end USB cables. Personally stopped using mine because I found that the benefit from a very nice higher end usb cable was higher than 2 good cables + isolator but ymmv
Hello,
It’s definitely a bit cheaper than the Matrix Element H, which is unfortunately only available as a PCie express card.
But also quite good.
I had also looked at the Itona last year but still decided on the Matrix audio because it can be installed more discreetly and I wanted to keep the signal path short and offer something more, although I didn’t have a ground loop in the system.
I think the new price is a bit high just because it says Made in Germany but is still made in Asia.
I was a bit lucky with the Matrix before they raised the prices and gave me another 20%, but I bought a Psu power supply.
I also read about the Jcat before I decided, you can get rid of your money there too.
But it looked damn good.
I don’t know where else to put this, but I got the Altor HISO TI version isolator, and I wasn’t really expecting much with my current setup, but after throwing it in without any special usb cables, it’s a noticeable improvement over not having it. I think the biggest standouts so far are more texture and more immediacy, better depth and placement in stage, and a bit more weight to things than before, maybe an improvement in microdynamics and microdetail but haven’t been listening too seriously lately, it just kinda hit me after a few tracks lol.
Powering it with an ifi xpower for now and that seems to work fine so I’ll stick with that, I have yet to see how it impacts things on the recording side. From extremely rough memory, it has similar impact to the Intona to the point where I wouldn’t see a reason to get that over this one + a good psu
I need to throw on some of the problematic mics and see (what I’ve been messing with recently doesn’t show the issue), I’ve just been enjoying listening to it for now lol
Edit: It did not sadly, but sort of expected. Still worthwhile pickup even though it didn’t
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