earlier Musical Fideltiy V-LInk to new V-Linkll

Thanks. I am not sure I believe that theories about noise on the grounds, but it cannot hurt to try breaking the loop. I know my HiFace is not ground isolated. On the $5,000 Classe CP 800 preamp/DAC with USB input, they tried to galvanically isolate everything put could not because of electrical codes in the US. As a simple converter from Asia, this may not be as much a problem. Some people open up the USB cable and cut the ground to be sure the ground is isolated. Tom

Hi Tom, I opened the box, metered the USB connection to the board, went to the ground on the spdif coax... Nothin... Just to make sure I used pin 4, I went to the opposite side pin on the usb, hit the ground on the spdif... nothin. Put my trusty Fluke on the coax ground trace to the board, and the outside ground... its squeals. Sure seems to be Galvanic isolation to me.

Thanks Tim. Good to know. Musical Fidelity is claiming isolation, but only because of Toslink. My HiFace is clearly not isolated. Maybe I will one of these a try. Or maybe I will just cut up a USB cable. But I do like the idea of external power. Thanks.

Sorry I didn't answer your question Tom about the HiFace, sorry, I haven't tried it. If your ever in St. Louis, let me know, I'll give you my info, you'd be welcome to stop by and check it out. It clearly betters my USB in on the DAC. By the way, took about 40 hours of burn in. I was actually surpised that I would tell much on a converter, but there was definately an improvement...
Hope some of you others on the thread get something from all of this, I had no intent to steal the thread. Sorry
Tim

HiFace 2 has the galvanic isolation. There is a digital transformer next to RCA connector.