UpTone Audio USB Regen Listening Impressions

[YashN]

Hehe, smart dad. I guess the next time you invite him over to listen to the Amber Regen, he takes that one home as well.

[YashN]

Edit: Think about the fact that it's been pretty uniformly reported that the direct solid adapter connection works better than any length of USB cable.

 

Yes, I've seen numerous reports of that, but aren't the power connections and signal leads very close in an adapter? I don't doubt the reports at all, just trying to think it through vs a cable with separate power and lead lines which are individually double-shielded.

 

Can we consider a USB adapter a 'very short USB cable'?

[YashN]

[snipped]

[YashN]

AES3 is still packetized, but there is no "dead air" in-between packets. With USB and Ethernet there is significant space between packets, a furious amount of work happens when a packet shows up, then nothing for a long time, then another blast of activity. That doesn't happen with AES3.

 

I was reading one of your earlier informative posts about the Regen earlier today, and the thought came back to me about why we can't just bit-blast a pin from a computer without any packetised interface in between. DSD with that would be fun. I could do bit-blasting with an Arduino for Fast PWM...

 

More generally, a real, non-packetised DSD bitstream.

[YashN]

I [snipped] have decided

long ago that signal integrity must be the starting point for good sound.

 

Goes without saying for me. On the other hand, each way of transporting/processing the signal has its own set of issues to deal with along the chain.

[YashN]

The biggest selling point of owning an exaSound DAC is the bitperfect transmission, right? ("USB Input: Proprietary ZeroJitter™ asynchronous USB interface with error correction on classic B–Type connector, USB cable included.") I would like to see even a theoretical explanation of how this could possibly improve sound with those DACs.

 

Bit-perfection is necessary but not sufficient.

[YashN]

Cool review, Al.

[YashN]

Have the Green running into the Amber, and it's well into "Holy sh*t!" territory now. Stuff is sounding real. Never heard cymbals sound so much like live.

 

On Hey Jude, recorded 47 years ago, I could tell from the difference in sound that Ringo's tambourine wasn't recorded at the same time as the rest of his drum kit. (After hearing the song I looked it up, and yep, the tambourine was overdubbed later.

 

Hey Jud,

 

You took a sad song and made it better?

[YashN]

Update: After few days listening made one change yesterday, substituted Corning Optical with Supra.

 

Totally opposite, the sound is crisp, fresh, superbly detailed, very smooth and musical. Can't stop listening. It was an effort to turn off the music before going to bed, and first thing in the morning I did was turning it on again.

 

Amber upgrade with Supra is magic. Not sure I will want to try my Nordost USB instead of Supra anytime soon. In several days, maybe.

 

Very cool review, AnotherSpin.

[YashN]

With regen (first green and amber now) I hear much clearly the difference between various preferences in HQPlayer (filters, etc.) It helps the selection of optimal mode. In other words, regen is not just a small piece of miracle itself, it makes possible better setting of other parts of audio.

 

Very interesting observation/feedback, AnotherSpin.

[YashN]

I can say my digital set up bests my turntable set up in perhaps every way now.

 

Well done. Same here, and making digital sound at least as good as analogue was one of my goals initially.

 

Regen is on the wish list for now though.

[YashN]

It would be quite interesting to hear from John and Alex on why serial REGENs make improvements that are stated here (and by intelligent and critical minded posters).

 

I did see a reply from John about that.

[YashN]

Nope, I'm not getting paid by SBooster This upgrade for the Meanwell SMPS gives an easy to discern audible improvement and is well worth my € 65,--.

 

Wondering if for that price you couldn't replace the Meanwell + SBooster with a Linear Power Supply and perhaps get better results.

[YashN]

YashN, don't miss John Swenson's comments that follow

 

Interesting feedback, Mike and Al. Thanks to both.

[YashN]

Then you may still want to try a normal usb cable as what the totaldac does most on (power) is being disconnected in the regen

 

Disconnected? It at least uses the signal lines and providing the Regen with as good a signal integrity sure helps.

[YashN]

It's a stock usb cable with a single common mode choke on the datalines, a series capacitor between the shields and a filter on the ground/+5V.

 

How did you find out, did you open one?

[YashN]

Both systems have custom balanced isolation trafo power systems with 3 stage serial/shunt/serial HF filters .

That advanced power cleaning system have practicaly no influence from SMPS, including noise from computers.

 

Hi Ivars, do you have any info you could share about your custom balanced transformer power build?

[YashN]

Yes. Not trying to ditch the product here, you actually get much more then is usual for "audiophile cabling", there's an actual circuitboard with smd caps and chokes.

 

Thanks, I was researching the subject as I am building my own USB short cable and looking to add filters to it and thinking about potential upstream enhancement or plain conservation of signal integrity before one day feeding it all to the Regen.

[YashN]

Going "transportable" with the USB Regen

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]20124[/ATTACH]

 

More info: UpTone Audio USB REGEN - Page 17

 

Nice!

[YashN]

I am not sure what--if anything--those inductors on the Jitterbug are doing to the signal lines. They may just be on the VBUS.

 

Some choking can be done on the signal lines for removing common-mode noise, but the material and characteristics have to be chosen well so as not to impair the signal frequencies.

 

And the bass kick that Michael hears from both the Jitterbug and the REGEN may just be that they too added resistance to the ground line.

 

It could also be just the filtering applied to both power lines. I got back a good chunk of bass info when I filtered these two in my short USB cable build. I have yet to try the additional resistance to it as I did in my previous USB cable, but that's going to be easy to test as things are currently partly on breadboard.

 

In some ways I miss the "greens" because the bass improvement (why the bass I still don't know) with the ground/shield line resistors of the "amber" kind of overshadows all the other, more subtle but still significant benefits of the REGEN.

 

Sounds like if you allow a variable resistor here, you could 'voice' the Regen to taste.

 

One last observation that I probably should not make but which strikes me as interesting:

--The Jitterbug has already had at least 6 published reviews in the past 6+ weeks, but it does not begin shipping to Audioquest dealers or distributors until later this month.

 

They probably have a marketing person or more pre-emptively spreading the word.

 

To be clear though, I am VERY happy with the review, and particularly happy that they ran my remix of John's USB/REGEN "white paper" writing in its entirety.

 

Yes, I thought that was great as well. You have to give Michael and the Audiostream team props for positioning with the love of audio and music stance without getting bogged down in the all-too pervasive debates, but also delving deep in the technical where they can.

 

Just the industry Q & As are a treasure trove of great information and knowledge.

[YashN]

I thought that's what I wrote when I wrote "connector", guess I should have written adapter. Sorry for the confusion.

 

It's the cable 'after' which caused the confusion.

[YashN]

P.S. The above does not preclude the possibility that a really good, ultra-short USB cable could sound better than the $0.50 solid adapter. Some of you DIYers ought to buy a pair of raw A & B plugs and make your own "solid" adapters using 5mm (NOT cm) wires and maybe some epoxy and heat shrink tubing.

 

Some experiments going on around this, with short USB cables.

 

The thing with pure connectors and very little wire is that they don't give me the leeway to use my own geometry, but I do have an idea toying in my mind for a while - I guess that's going to be a future experiment.

[YashN]

It is both!

 

With a manual switch for both modes so we can do some comparisons?

[YashN]

the plugs are then pushed a little closer together (that's when the wires kind of fold back on themselves) and placed into a jig for a machine to then mould a hard, milky white plastic over the wires and a bit of the metal of the plug shells. The wires are embedded in that. Then another machine puts the black outside rubbery grip onto the assembly

 

Based on this description and some pics of an opened one (maybe that was yours too, Superbad), this makes the hard adapters have some random geometry - not too good.

 

BTW, not sure if you saw my congrats for that first paragraph on the Audiostream round-up, so 'Congrats!'

[YashN]

well known engineer John Westlake (late of AudioLab) ran an eye-pattern test on a USB signal without and with a REGEN. He posted the graphs and talks a bit about what he saw:

MDAC First Listen (Part 00101001) - Page 46 - pink fish media

 

Very interesting screenshots by Westlake here and very cogent reply, but bear in mind it can fall on deaf ears for someone with an agenda.

 

I'd mention the Trinity DAC too in the list of high-end DACs which are known to benefit, Lampis as well, correct?