For discussion of the various SOtM audio products.
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Iāve been fooling around now for about a week with the SOtM tX-USBhub. The external hub variant as there are a number of flavors. The external is basically the USB portion of the very popular tX-USBultra but without the re-clocking USB signal functionality of the USBultra. So in its simplest form itās a way to take the USB out of your PC and provide a much cleaner USB that resides externally and is isolated from the noisy PC environment.
The mantra is, your PC is noisy, so get out of using your PC as a source. However true that mantra is in the hobby, itās not always easy to cut your PC out of the picture. For many their PC is their music ecosystem. Their music player software and music library resides in that one box. Cost, space, simplicity are all valid reasons why the mantra just doesnāt work for some. Lastly we spend a lot of time on the computer, whether itās playing video games or watching YouTube videos, switching cables or switching default audio out setting in your OS can be a PITA. Solutions like this make it something you donāt even have to think about. So quality of life does matter to an audiophile it would seem.
Enter the tX-USBhub. Itās $350, so not a cheap option. Hell, you can buy a decent USB reclocker for that much in the used market. So why even consider something like this?
According to SOtM itās designed to do one thing and that is take noise out of your USB port. It does that in an overlay of methods and after living with it for about two weeks, I have to say it works*. Notice the asteriskā¦ The first week was a complete failure though.
Here are the things implemented to make this thing do what they claim.
ā Active Noise Canceller : Stabilizes the clock frequency vibration caused by the voltage variations and noise, so it produces the best sound quality.
ā 2nd stage power regulator for highest sound quality.
ā USB port power on/off switch for highest sound quality.
ā USB port signal noise filter for highest sound quality.
ā High performance capacitor for improved sound quality.
ā USB port power over current & thermal protection for safe operation.
The principle here is that it piggy backs off an existing USB port in your PC and is a transparent (driverless) pass through whereas it looks just like your PCās USB port to the component you connect it to, but itās a major cleanup of that USB signal. (remember it doesnāt reclock)
So why the asterisk you ask? Thatās because this thing NEEDS a good power supply. The wall wart included is garbage. The may as well take $10 bucks off the price and not include it in the package. With this power supply it sounded woolly and compressed with no stage and an earnest attempt to make everything sound as if itās mono.
Fortunately I have decent power supplies coming out of my ass so did a few thingsā¦ I used a basic ifi power 9v wall wart and it improved. I used a 7v Chi-Fi LPS and it improved further. So whatās a guy to do other than run out and buy a Mojo Illuminati PS. Yea a little crazy but I found a guy selling an original V1 illuminati for $700, it had been sitting for over four months unsold because it was listed in a funky section of USAudio Mart. So I low balled an offer and the guy took me up on it.
Allās well that ends well right? This power supply completely transforms the hub. It really sounds on par as a good $1K~2K mid-fi streamer as far as noise floor and the additional clarity it brought to the chain as Iām feeding the USB out from the hub directly into a DDC.
I will also add that it makes detecting sonic differences in USB cables a lot more obvious.
Thatās it, I thought I was going to send it back as I was fiddling around with the power supply options, but connected to a good power supply, the little thing is a keeper and itās made my life easier.
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@dB_Cooper Out of curiosity, have you tried any other similar USB things, such as Uptoneās ISO/USB Regen or iFiās micro iUSB?
Iāve only tried the iFi iGalvanic and I was pretty unimpressed, but it also draws power from the USB input itself and not from a separate power supply.
Singxer UIP-1 ā USB isolation processor, high speed USB 2.0 purifier | Kitsune HiFi - HoloAudio USA but I didnāt go whole hog with the power supply on it so I wouldnāt know how it scales.
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Hello,
nice report with great experience. 
It looks a bit like the Matrix Audio Element H card in principleā¦
Wouldnāt that have been better because of the Pcie Express connection on the PC or is it a matter of targeted separation?
The Sotm has a Sata connection where the power can be connected similar to the MAtrix or the Matrix can also be connected there to get power from the power supply.
Can the Sotm also be connected externally to the power supply technically?
There is no advantage to the PCie connection, Iād personally rather have something outside a PC case, there is a lot of RF in there,.
Fundamentally itās about isolation.
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Thanks. Mine is the full external one. Itās a similar principle to the Element H card but from the research Iāve done, this is a step further removed from the PC since PCI is bound to use the PCI bus for power whereas this is a much clearer separation.
The solution is not for everyone but in my case it works and itās working with good synergy with the hub doing the USB thing and the reclocker doing itās thing and theyāre clearly working better in tandem than anything Iāve heard standalone.
My only goal here was to be able to use the PC for gaming, YouTube & music without having to change anything no default audio out, no cable disconnect and reconnect or hitting a switch on a DAC to switch between inputs and for that it works well.
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@polygonhell
From what Iāve read this is supposed to be the better way for audio if you were to use it.
Because the signal path should be a shorter one instead of going through the whole board.
At least that used to be the theory about it.
Correct me if Iām wrong ;-).
@dB_Cooper
Did I understand correctly that you still need to connect the sotm to the pc for the audio data it needs but feed it externally with a power supply?
Itās not necessarily a stupid idea.
You donāt have anything coming from the mainboard direct which is/can be looped by the pc with possible noise. (Critically considered)
From that point of view it should be a bit better than the Matrix or Pink Faun card I think.
Itās a nice box otherwise the sotm.glad you got good results.
I would find it even more ingenious if you could connect it to a Raspberry Pi with a good stable power supply.
Youād have a really good chance of making a great streamer out of it.
Audio path is irrelevant until there is actual timing involved that can degrade. Assuming you can clean up whatever noise is at the source (which is a big IF).
Yes a dedicated USB board will be a win, but cleaning up a USB signal from the standard port isnāt any āharderā.
My guess here, havenāt A/Bād the devices in question, is given too equivalently good isolation devices, one outside the case will outperform one inside the case, just being further away from the source of RF will be a win.
TBH Iād just pick one and not worry about it.
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The only connection for the External Hub is a USB cable. So it looks like a standard PC USB port to whatever device you connect to it, but itās completely separate. The power from the PC is never used and It must have external power or else it wonāt work.
This is more often than not my same perspective. I think though that living stateside here we grow accustomed to being able to come across and buy most things we want in the used market. Then if they donāt work out, being able to easily be able to flip them and move on to another device. Iām starting to think that itās a privilege to be an audiophile in the US of A. No VAT, no crazy import tariffs, no insane shipping costs and local and stateside dealers for most of the EU gear weād want.
All of your testing and positive results were in a Windows 10 environment, Iām assuming? Have you tested the hub on other OS, with any different results? I wonder if there is a significantly limited SQ scaling problem/cap/limit with pre-Win10 OS audio.
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Is Windows 10 / USB Audio Class 2.0 doing more work than the hub? Would the results with Win 7 / USB Audio Class 1 be much poorer, perhapsā¦?
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How does your PC environment system compare to your best sounding non-PC source system? Does this hub pretty much equalize everything? Or only to an extent?
Windows 10 predates me getting back into audio so ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
I canāt even bring myself to compare as one chain is give or take $25k retail cost and my PC based system is hobbled together with a budget of less than $4k used. Comparing would come to nothing meaningful IMO.
I simply try and adjust with each new component I try going towards a certain sound I prefer. If I like it, I build on it and focus on getting as much synergy with other components in the chain. If I donāt like it then I sell it and try again.
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your really over thinking this, the point of any of these devices at any price point is to isolate you from sources of noise.
At one point one of my DACās (not all of them) connected to the PC directly for gaming would whine audibly whenever the mouse was moved in a game, that was noise from the GPU in the PC making it through most likely USB ground into the DAC.
Itās an extreme example, PCās are just noisy devices, gross simplification here but, they have lots of high powered components that radiate EMF inside the case, that EMF is picked up by tracks on the mother board (which act as antennas) and ends up pumped out of the PC on the USB voltage and signal lines.
The DAC then tries to remove that noise (itās what galvanic isolation is for) before it makes it to the bit that actually makes sound. Some DACās are better at that than others, but all of them do better if you start with a cleaner signal.
Something that starts with less Noise is obviously a win, devices like tx-USBhub, are providing an additional attempt to reduce the noise from the PC before it gets to the DAC.
If your asking how much difference will it make, itās hard to say, I thought going from a PC to a Pi2AES was an obviously positive audible change, things sounded cleaner and clearer, but it didnāt really change the overall sound, adding the $300 PSU was another step in the same direction.
Going to the NS1 as a source on the Chord Dave was like buying a new DAC levels of improvement, it changed the character of the system.
Having said that the NS1 on the Lampizator Pacific was about the same as the Network connection which is bridged to USB, but it likely has better clocks in it.
If you use the DAC for gaming on the PC, you have to use an isolation device like the one above, any other solution will add too much additional latency.
If you want to experiment with how much improvement you can get getting off a PC, you can just buy a raspberry Pi, install volumio, and try that. There is certainly up from there in quality, but itās a starting point, and will for the most part give you an idea of what your looking at.
Physical transports introduce a whole other set of variables, but they can be extremely good sources, but cheap transports can be terrible as well.
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Iām not thinking enough, because I didnāt even think about this yet:
I think this is a great, affordable place to start branching out with system testing, yeah :
@dB_Cooper Do you still have this hub? Thinking about getting one to use for my streamer.
Doesnāt this need a 12v psu though?
And do you know what barrel size this takes in, for the psu?
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I actually do and Iām not using it so be happy to pass it to you if youāre interested. After I pared down my desktop system it no longer made sense for me to keep it in line.
It takes a std. 5.5 by 2.1 mm barrel connector, the voltage is odd though, 6.5 or 7 volts it will work with higher voltages up to 9v but SoTM recommends 7 volts as the sweet spot. From what I recall it scaled VERY well with a better PSU so make sure youāve got something of quality if youāre going to use it.
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Yes sir, I would be interested!
I donāt so Iāll probably buy one for it.