I’ve 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 it’s 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, it’s 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 doesn’t work for some. Lastly we spend a lot of time on the computer, whether it’s 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 don’t even have to think about. So quality of life does matter to an audiophile it would seem.
Enter the tX-USBhub. It’s $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 it’s 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 asterisk… The first week was a complete failure though.
Here are the things implemented to make this thing do what they claim.
– Active Noise Canceller : Stabilizes the clock frequency vibration caused by the voltage variations and noise, so it produces the best sound quality.
– 2nd stage power regulator for highest sound quality.
– USB port power on/off switch for highest sound quality.
– USB port signal noise filter for highest sound quality.
– High performance capacitor for improved sound quality.
– 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 PC’s USB port to the component you connect it to, but it’s a major cleanup of that USB signal. (remember it doesn’t reclock)
So why the asterisk you ask? That’s 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 it’s mono.
Fortunately I have decent power supplies coming out of my ass so did a few things… I used a basic ifi power 9v wall wart and it improved. I used a 7v Chi-Fi LPS and it improved further. So what’s 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.
All’s 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 I’m 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.
That’s 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 it’s made my life easier.