The Innuos Phoenix USB Reclocker Is it Set To Rise Or Remain in the Ashes?

With the advent of streaming firmly cemented in the homes of countless music lovers, manufacturers everywhere are looking to improve the quality and capabilities of their products to keep up with the high resolution audio provided by the likes of Amazon Music and Tidal. But what if you didn't want to change your streamer? What options are actually out there? The answers are few and far between, but Innuos just might have something of interest.

Innuos developed the Phoenix by replicating technology found in their flagship model, the Statement, which retails around the £10k mark.

The Innuos Phoenix USB offers three separate components all in one sleek unit. A USB regenerator, a linear power supply (which means mains power is supplied to the transformer via input filtering and helps to eradicate mains-borne noise) and an external master clock with its own linear power supply.

How does it work? The Phoenix reclocker takes the USB signal from any source and completely regenerates it to an extremely high-precision signal to feed into your DAC by re-clocking it and allowing it to perform at its best. For those of you who aren't aware, re-clocking is a technique of rounding incoming data to match with generated clock signal from a new source, reducing random data jitter.

We were lucky enough to have the guys from Innuos visit us in the Portsmouth store with the pre-production model in hand, so we were quick to set it up and had a play. Whilst some products when added to an existing set-up make a subtle difference, the Phoenix is a powerhouse of change.

Personally I was shocked as to how much depth and detail the re-clocker was able to bring to what you assume is already a pristine digital sound. The first thing that really hit me was the effect it had on increasing the soundstage, not only in width but also height – Things got way bigger! Secondly, but arguably more important, was the change in clarity and separation in the music – you could really pinpoint each instrument in the mix. It also gave a depth of sound that was akin to making a 2D image 3D.

We demonstrated the Phoenix with several different streamers from different manufacturers at varying price ranges and found it made the same difference on each one.

I think that it's safe to say - Much like its namesake, the Phoenix is a thing of pure magic.

We'll hopefully be seeing stock of the Phoenix towards the end of February, but if you can't wait until then Innuos will be showing off this box of tricks at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show.

Brad, Nick and Joe - Audio T Portsmouth

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Innuos products are available at all Audio T Stores.