Audiophilleo - still no conclusion

A great big bucket of inconclusive
 
It’s now day #5 since the Audiophilleo 2 USB->SPDIF converter arrived and I am still unable to conclude whether or not it makes a positive difference in my system.
 
I have a few theories, and some findings. As a busy man, I’m not sure how much more time I can immediately devote to tackling my indecision on this product, the threat being that I lose the ability to return it  under the terms of the 30 day guarantee.
 
Let’s start with what I have found.
 
First, aural memory being an imprecise tool which can easily fool you into thinking ‘there is a change’ when in fact you’re just noticing something that was there before through re-listening, I have therefore been careful to listen to a track, listen to it again without change, and then make a change to see what difference I can find.
 
My Macbook has a selection of losslessly-ripped CDs on its’ local hard disk, all replicated to a network drive using GoodSync in case the laptop expires, and both an optical cable from the headphone socket of the Macbook to input #1 of the Dacmagic, and the supplied USB cable into the Audiophilleo which is directly connected to the back of input #2. Both inputs are set to use the Linear phase filter, and I can quickly switch between outputs in the Mac’s system preferences, to compare the two.
 
I am using ITunes, but have also used Decibel for a putatively superior upsampling and control of the digital data stream.
 
With the Audio/MIDI control panel set so that both outputs are constrained to 16-bit and 44.1KHz I am fairly confident I’m comparing apples with apples by playing a track (twice) then switching inputs and playing that track twice again.
 
The Audiophilleo seems a bit warmer, more detailed, more spacious, richer tone on strings, more detailed and a stage set a tad further back. But I could be wrong as the differences are currently subtle at best.
 
The optical cable presents a flatter and brighter image, possibly.
 
In a simple test, I got my wife (who is politely interested but would really just prefer to read her book) to listen to the two as I switched from A to B and back a few times. To my surprise, she ended up preferring the optical cable over the Audiophilleo, although she did say she could hardly tell.
 
I paid attention to my feet; they tapped with both options.
 
Interestingly, setting the bit depth on the Audio/MIDI setup panel made for a more-easy-to-identify aural impact – in error I set the sampling frequency to 48KHz at 24 bit and ended up with a compressed, hard soundstage with what felt like all instruments smack in the middle of the speakers, not spread out. Changing to 24/96 smoothed things out a bit, but veiled the performance as well compared with just sticking to 16/44 (which all my test material is anyway).
 
I concluded iTunes, or Os X core audio, is just not doing a good job at sample rate conversion. The DacMagic has a proprietary chip from Anagram Technologies which upsamples using its own filters, so arguably presenting it with a ready-upsampled data stream is going to sound worse that what it does natively. I could see the sample lock light change to show the 96KHz transmission so I was able to correlate what I was hearing with the tweaks I was making on the Macbook.
 
Finally, I tried Decibel with the output set to 24/96, but I ran out of time to definitively pin down whether or not that was better or worse than iTunes despite the claims for superior upsampling, memory play and ‘hog mode’ for whichever output device I had selected. It seemed different, perhaps better and more detailed and less veiled, but exactly how I am not sure. More testing required.
 
Friday night I popped over to visit a fellow GA with some Living Voice horn loudspeakers. Not quite Vox Olympians, but still pretty extraordinary, and very revealing in the midrange. I brought over my second MacBook Pro, a library of Apple-Lossless CDs on external USB hard disk, the Audiophilleo and cables, and the DacMagic power supply from Custom Hifi Cables of which I am a big fan.
 
We listened to his system – Arc SP8, Quad II performing standby duties during redecoration work and pending the arrival of a Tron pre/power combination that is being serviced, Oppo CD player into DacMagic with Maplins power supply for source, and then plugged in my new power supply.
 
Even before we sat down to listen properly, we could hear a clear improvement; guitar sounded more real, more detailed and tonally richer without having to listen for the change. Entirely positive, so it stayed in place.
 
We then oscillated between my laptop/Audiophilleo and his Oppo transport. We started to form fairly clear conclusions which then become less clear as we progressed.
 
The Audiophilleo once again demonstrated more depth, width, detail and richness to the presentation – but it felt as if there was some kind of veil between you and the music. After going back and forth for a while I realised I was using iTunes and had set the Audio/MIDI panel on this Macbook Pro to 24/96, so with poor upsampling, reset it to 16/44 without telling my GA pal what I had done and just asked him to evaluate again.
 
At that stage we felt any difference in musicality was slim to inaudible between CD transport and laptop hard drive. Knowing what to listen for I felt as if I could hear a technical improvement with the Audiophilleo over the CD player, the increase in width, depth, detail and tonality, but again it was slim pickings. As fellow Gentlemen Audiophiles should know, whilst we can focus our efforts in improving our reproduction of music, it can’t be at the expense of enjoyment. The positive change is one where you improve an element of something like detail or soundstage depth, but without at the same time removing a link between the GA and the musical message.
 
Time did not permit further testing so I retrieved my equipment and left, without conclusively deciding whether or not the Audiophilleo was a winner.
 
I note a few more thoughts. First, I know that it sounds hard and bright from cold; it takes at least an hour to warm up and for that hardness to disappear. Second, it draws its power from the USB bus and the laptop I use as transport in my system, an old white Macbook, has a dead battery and runs entirely from mains. In fact, portable external hard drives which are powered from the USB bus rather than self powered fail to mount onto the desktop reliably, where they mount fine onto my Macbook Pro. I conclude that the Audiophilleo may not be operating at optimal level with the current setup and need to so something about it, either by investing in a powered hub or the AQVOX low-noise power supply, or by substituting the Macbook Pro temporarily to see how that impacts the sound.
 
Computer Audio is frustratingly un-simple. Persevere we must!
 
In conclusion, I think there is much that is positive about the Audiophilleo, if we are able to decide it does positively improve the sound. It feels churlish to say ‘I can barely heard a difference’ and actually continue to use a $500 device that seems unable to outperform a $20 optical cable, but I feel it is not operating at its best with the laptops’ USB power output, it is brand new and not run in and frequently I’m running it from cold because the laptop is shut down when not in use and it is unpowered. I need to tackle these issues before making a comprehensive conclusion.
 
My hope is I will ‘tune in’ to what is good, or not so good, about the setup and enable me to decide. More testing this week…