More Thoughts On The IFI SP/DIF Purifier

[Dauntless]

I was listening last night and it struck me that I have had my sp/dif purifier in my system for over a year and have made several changes to my system in that time. My system that I was listening to last night comprised of a Cambridge CXC transport ( CD ) no fancy streaming here, Schiit Gungnir multibit dac, sp/dif purifier, Schiit Freya balanced pre with tung sol valves ( the ones that Schiit supply well they're a little Shittey ) a SDS 470C class d amp and Cambridge Aeromax 6 speakers. Not what you might find in a typical AOS system but then I'm isolated up here and plough my own furrow The transport, Pre and speakers are all new and I'd also put in some new digital coax cable, namely Belden 1694A.
I was listening to Hugh Laurie's 'Didn't it rain' CD which I hadn't listened to in quite a while and I thought it sounded a little bass heavy so I thought I would take out the sp/dif purifier to see if there was a difference. To my surprise
the bass was better integrated but the dynamics of the CD maybe a little less. I decided to listen to Stanley Clarke's 'Find Out' CD ( BGO Records BGOCD1022 ). The results were again similar, less blow on the bass but less dynamics also. Then I popped 'David Johansen and the Harry Smiths' blues into the CXC's tray and found similar results,slight loss of dynamics but a nice clarity to the songs so well sung by David Johansen. I will leave things as they are for a while and see how it goes. I don't know why there is a difference with the sound but I was using an Emotiva ERC3 CDP as transport which has a mech that will play stuff other than CD's but the Cambridge will only play CD's. The Emotiva sounded better through the Schiit dac than as a full stand alone CDP and also benefited with the sp/dif purifier in the system.The Cambridge transport has a specialized cd mech. Maybe CD's are better played on a specialized cd transport rather than DVD drive or computer rom. Any views out there?

[JimC]

The 'quality' of those ones and noughts really do make a difference.
All these signals will sound different......

th.jpgth1.jpgth2.jpgth3.jpg

So whatever the 'Purifier' does to the signal will make a difference and it's whether you like it or not. I find SPDIF with traces like the first, often European based (Philips mainly), sound a little overly bright and fatiguing to listen to for any length of time.
I prefer a squarer waveform.

Jim.