PC - DAC ground loops - which Isolator Topic is solved

[Ashirgo]

Dear all,

I've been looking at the Intona Isolator products to address my problems with ground loop between my PC and a DAC connected to it via USB (RME ADI-2 DAC).

The problem manifests itself from time to time as high pitched noises. They usually go away after re-connecting the USB cable.

I don't have unfortunately any equipment here to measure the currents which may (or may not) be affecting the connection.

For this PC - DAC scenario, which product would be more suitable?
Intona 7055-C - which isolates only the DC current
Intona 7055-D - which isolates the AC current

Admittedly I don't know enough about isolators. Any help appreciated!

Freundliche Grüsse,
Chris

[Daniel (Intona)]

Hi Chris,

first, I need to rectify the isolation property:

Intona 7055-C - which isolates only the DC current
Intona 7055-D - which isolates the AC current

This is not correct. All isolators do both AC and DC isolation. The difference is that the amount of isolation is specified differently here. The 7055-C isolates the particular USB 3.0 lines (they coexist in parallel to USB 2.0 in the same cable) in a different way that makes AC specification too complicated. So we chose specifying a DC value for this.

In general, don't bother about AC, DC or Isolation voltage. Your ground loop is maybe somewhere in the millivolts range. All Intona isolators will break this reliably, regardless of model 7054 and 7055.