The importance of re-clocking in a streamer on the sound quality

My DAC’s ( Denafrips ) all have a data buffer on their input. Meaning that the data it received from the streamer is stored and around 200 ms later played out / decoded via FIFO.
The DAC completely ignores the incoming clock and only uses its internal clock.

I’m using a raspberry pi as streamer.
So far I have been using USB + a uptown ISO regen to electrical isolate the Pi USB output from my DAC.

Recently i’ve bought a Denafrips DAC with a I2S input and wanted to use that instead of USB.
I’ve therefore upgraded my Pi with a reclocker and HDMI module (IAN Canada) .
All works great, but…

The reclocker also improved the sound via the USB port.
It improved it so much that the uptone ISO regen became a limiting factor and I had to take it out of the chain.

But why has the reclocking module on the pi such a positive impact ?
the DAC is using a 200ms input buffer and it ignores the incoming clock.

What I always thought :
As long as all bits arrive at the DAC uncorrupted it shouldn’t matter if the incoming dataclock is perfect or not for this DAC with a buffer . That said, I do hear a big difference … . where does my thinking go wrong ?

Any one ? thought ?

Hi, I am interested in this topic as I recently bought the reclocker and HDMI transmitter hats from Ian Canada too. It’s my Christmas project!

@Hans_Bogaert can I ask how you are powering your hats? Are you powering directly from the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins or doing something more exotic?

Great Christmas project !

The hat needs 3.3V. Because I only had 5V available at home I’ve ordered a dual Ian Canada powersupply for this project.
one is feeding th pi and one is feeding the hat. Transformer that feeds the power supply is 2x7V
You can also use the usb c port on the pi to feed the pi. then you just use 1 3.3v power supply to feed the hat.
See below my experimental setup. in front of the transformer I’ve added a filter to clean the incoming AC power.

Wow, that looks awesome! I’m afraid my skills don’t extend very far in this area and I have a healthy fear of electrocution, so I will be erring on the side of caution. My plan is to power the pi conventionally, probably with an ifi SMPS that I have already. For the hat I will probably go with the Ian Canada mini battery power that has recently been released.

I realize I have hijacked the original question in your post, so sorry for that!

When did you change the power supply to the Pi? If you did it at the same time as the reclocker then I’ll assume you’re hearing the benefits of the improved power supply instead of the reclocker.

The changes made were done in one go.
I’ve always fed the Pi via a linear power supply as indeed you can hear the difference.
Although the Ain Canada could be a better power source compared to the one before I don’t think the differences between them are massive.