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Innuos Phoenix USB cabling

I've been through a minor voyage of discovery with the before and after cabling of the Innuos Phoenix USB, and thought it worthwhile recording it in this post.  In particular the impact of the two cables when they're not the same.  It always felt intuitive to me that the cable AFTER the Phoenix would have the greatest impact, yet this Audio Bacon review claimed the opposite.

Like many on this digital thread, I've found that trying to get the balance between resolution and musicality the biggest challenge.  The former includes rhythm, dynamics, leading edges and transparency, while the latter encompasses darkness, warmth and timbre.  I think it's fair to say that most digital systems too easily fall into the former camp, and to too greater an extent.

Before I purchased the Phoenix I had auditioned a handful of USB cables.  Two stood out.  The Laboga Emerald is a wonderfully warm, musical yet slightly soft cable.  It's a cracker, if difficult to obtain.  The other being the FTA Sinope.  An incredibly resolving cable, with a rigid grip on a finely etched bass.  This is the cable I bought as my primary.

However, like everyone else here, I wanted more.  The Phoenix arrived and I marvelled at the move towards an analogue smoothness for female vocals, and an even better defined bass.  And all this with a hastily acquired Amazon Basics USB before it!

Having been impressed by the Supra Cat 8 Ethernet, I gave their newish Excalibur USB a punt in place of the Amazon, and saw an immediate improvement in resolution, but in time it became too much.  Too much harshness, sibilance.  Too fatiguing.

At this point I tried swapping the Sinope and Excalibur, but it was worse.  This experience, to my mind, already contradicted Audio Bacon's position. 

So, I decided to source the Emerald again, and put it before the Phoenix. This immediately bought a smoothing of the top end, without any loss of the resolution enabled by the Sinope.  An improvement for sure, but still a little way off my high resolving, dark, un-digital nirvana.

I then tried swapping the Emerald and the Sinope, and the character of the sound changed dramatically.  Now it was very warm, soft, analogue and musical.  Really, really lovely.  However, this was at the expense of rhythm, bass resolution and dynamics.  Clearly, the character of the cable after the Phoenix dominates.

I'm not saying the cable before the Phoenix has no impact, it does clearly affect the SQ and sound signature.  But, if I had to stick my finger in the air and put a number to it, I would estimate that the cable after the Phoenix is 80% of the overall cable impact. 

I think I'll revert to placing the Sinope after the Phoenix, and put the Laboga Ruby on my distant wish list.  Much as I'm enjoying the soft musicality of the post-Phoenix Emerald, I'm always conscious of what I'm missing out on.  And that final residue of brightness and sibilance I'm hoping can be addressed by the ethernet stage (etherRegen, optical etc), or perhaps a warmer speaker cable (eg Purist Poseidon)

 

Orbi satellite  =>  AQ Carbon  =>  Sotm ISOCAT7 => Innuos Zenith Mk3  =>  USB cable  =>   Innuos Phoenix USB  =>  USB cable  =>  Hegel H390  =>  TelluriumQ UltraBlack II  =>  ATC SCM40

 

128x128lollipopguild
nyev
1,031 posts
 

It could be system/cable dependent. I wouldn’t question the experience that AB reviewer had. Your experience was different. Here’s what I found with my Phoenix:

When I put two Audioquest Diamonds in the system I noticed I big drop in sound quality vs 1 Audioquest Diamond and the Phoenix’s included USB cable after the Phoenix. Eventually after experimenting I found that the issue was that one of the Audioquest cables, the .75m one, didn’t perform anywhere near the level of the 1.5m version of the same cable.

I found this out when I borrowed two Nordost Valhalla 2 demo usb cables and they sent one 1m and a second 2m V2 cord. When compared on their own I found the 1m cord sounded like crap compared to the 2m version of the Valhalla 2 cord. I exchanged the .75m Audioquest USB cord for a 1.5m version, and now the quality is superb with two Audioquest Diamond USB cords.

Just goes to show, common sense often doesn’t apply in our hobby.

Pro tip: I found the improved sound with the PhoenixUSB to be a bit too clean and HiFi, even if it was better. I added a PhoenixNET with two Audioquest Diamond Ethernet cords (1.5m each as I won’t use shorter for digital cables going forward). This smoothed over the sound while allowing the detail to shine through and made everything so natural sounding. To the PhoenixNET is a must if using a PhoenixUSB. They complement each other perfectly with a slightly different character, and the result is HiFi precision presented with natural warmth and musicality. Innuos should sell them both as a package bundle with a discount.

Last tip: Power cords matter a lot with the Phoenix boxes. As the AB reviewer said, not as much as with the streamer. But I couldn’t get by with stock or entry level cords with these devices. I found the benefits of the devices to be minimized with lower end cords.

 

 

lollipopguild's avatar
lollipopguild OP
133 posts
 

@nyev thanks. Yes, I’d love the other Phoenix also, but can’t afford it plus another cable. I do need to address the Ethernet stage though, hoping to find a used EtherRegen

Interesting observation regarding cable length. The IsoAcoustics guys start theirs at 1.5m purely for this reason. Though, intuitively, you would think that longer lengths are prone to more noise intrusion. 

 

nyev
1,031 posts
 

@lollipopguild yeah that’s what I meant by HiFi not being about common sense - I too would have expected the shorter USB cable to sound best. After doing some digging the most common explanation circulating is that two way digital signals have two-way “reflections” and that the timing of this is messed up if shorter than 1.5m.  I’m sure things degrade at some point but not sure where that point is.  The 2m Nordost Valhalla 2 USB sure sounded good though. Just not worth the money for the marginal but noticeable improvement, when I could put that money elsewhere for greater benefit.

In my experience, with my system, shorter than 1.5m USB cables take a lot of enjoyment out of my sound, regardless of how good the cable is.

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