Ditch your USB cable for Toslink? Might surprise you!

@lordmelton Thanks for the link, I think I'd stumbled on their converters during my research of this. While my Chord dac doesn't support I2s directly, here is a quote from Rob Watts himself. As ALWAYS, the devil is in the details, and the manufacturer's implementation trumps all. 

"Yes traditional SPDIF receivers are not good at recovering the SPDIF and creating a clock, as they rely on an analogue PLL - and the data itself modulates the clock, so you get signal correlated jitter which is extremely audible. But my SPDIF receiver is all digital, and relies upon the low jitter local clock, and does not create signal correlated jitter. The SPDIF receiver creates I2S data, with zero signal correlated jitter; plus a word clock, exactly as if it was transmitted via a real I2S connection.
But, the word clock - whether from a direct I2S or SPDIF, still will have source jitter. And this must be eliminated - and that is the job of my DPLL, which completely eliminates any source jitter. So there is absolutely no benefit in using I2S".

So who the heck knows? I'd imagine every decent dac has a similar SP/DIF implementation as Chord. What did steer me in my direction was simplicity. One cable, no extra boxes with more power supplies (perhaps even benefitting from LPS). It can get crazy pretty quick, this set up from Audiowise really started to point me to fiber: Audiowise SRC-DX

I have to say that I am skeptical about converting usb to anything else.  The USB is still in the system so if it is adding issues, putting another cable and adapter downstream doesn't get rid of hem.  You'll get a different sound I guess, but you haven't eliminated the evil that the USB is adding.

Now I'll disclose my opinion about USB.  USB is not evil.  It suffers from attacks by people selling competing technology or cables for competing technology.  

Jerry

USB isolators are relatively inexpensive, but sometimes DAC's don't really like them.

Real shame that we still have issues with ground loops in USB or coaxial connections.

Well I wouldn't say it's evil, just that there may be advantages to other connections in some systems, and a necessity in others. The Bermuda Triangle weirdness I mentioned earlier was a MacBook Pro running wireless and on battery that made a horrendous noise connected to an Arcam irDac via usb, music didn't even have to be playing. Sounded like a ground loop on steroids. How is that even possible? But an optical cable made the problem go away. 

@carlsbad In my case the only streamer output is usb, so I had no choice but to try a converter if I was going to use a different input on the dac. Ideally it would have been toslink out > fiber > toslink in. I do however think there is potential with some of these decrapifiers, reclockers or converters. In theory a flawed signal goes in and a newly minted "perfect" signal goes out. You could very well be right though.

My only point is, I like many audiophiles, tend to snub our noses at toslink. What I'm hearing now has really changed my opinion of that. Honestly I didn't think it was capable of this high a level of performance. Most streamers and dacs already have the connections, if yours does I'd give it a try. Digital audio is like a box of chocolates so maybe you'll like it in your system, maybe you won't. Mine is staying.

@treynolds155 USB is ubiquitous in modern HIFI and unfortunately we're stuck with it until more mainstream manufacturers like PS Audio adopt I2s.

Since we can only play native DSD over USB and I2s, these are our options, unless DSD is not important to the user.

For the doubters out there I2s HDMI sounds differently from I2s RJ45, I have had best results with RJ45.

Like yourself I experimented with many options to reduce USB jitter but nothing has worked as well as converting it to I2s.

So, good luck with your research, bits are not bits.