UpTone Audio USB Regen Listening Impressions

[ColtMrFire]

The jitterbugs really enhanced my system. I have two.

 

Regen will be here next week.

[ColtMrFire]

In my case, the jitterbug was very good at fooling me into believing there was an improvement, and there was, sort of... the music became much more "physical", meaning singers and instruments seemed to "fill out" and become more "dimensional/rounded"... in reality it was kind of false, because it was stripping musical information from the audio and really kind of making the soundstage a bit claustrophobic and cluttered... that is not an improvement to me... it's a trade off. It wasn't until I removed them, that this all became startlingly clear.

 

I tried all manner of configurations with the JB and the result was always the same. My system sounded better without it. Less perceived depth and dimensionality, yes, but the JB were adding a kind of "false" depth and "dimensionality", so it wasn't real to me.

 

This is just my own personal experience with my particular chain, so I'm not writing off the JB's objectively, YMMV and all that.

 

The Regen is the real deal... I took it away after a few days of using it to see what difference it made, and the music sounded limp, sluggish, inauthentic and shallow without it...and I have the very good Bifrost 4490 DAC from Schiit, which is nearly as good as the multibit version, an excellent DAC, so you realize just how good the Regen is, if by taking it away, that DAC starts to sound "bad" (I mean in comparison to the Regen's addition) .. I can't imagine getting a new DAC without the Regen at this point. I've hear people say it even improves the world class Gungnir and Yggdrasil DACs which are further up the Schiit line.

[ColtMrFire]

That's interesting, I have the 4490 as well and I think I'm one of the few who is not impressed by the Regen, or the Wyrd. Whereas the Wyrd makes highs smoother and the soundstage larger (both to an artificial/colored degree, I don't like it), the Regen seems to do the opposite, and to a lesser degree. I've done literally hundreds of switches back and forth and I'm consistently finding that the best results are with no Regen/Wyrd at all.

 

I can see how these devices might positively affect a USB-powered dac, but with something like the Bifrost I'm really starting to come to the conclusion that they are unnecessary, and actually detrimental depending on your preferences. I went in with as little bias as possible for both the Wyrd and Regen, and my ears keep pointing me back to removing them from the chain.

 

The truth is the differences are small, and it would be very easy to be pointed in the direction of thinking they are positive if you have expectations based on all the hype/positive feedback... especially if you aren't testing things back and forth a ton of times. It all comes down to your preferences I guess, but I don't think there is a definitive "better" with these devices connected, at least in my setup. Unless of course you are trying to fix some USB-related issue.

 

You have to realize everyone is going to get different results because not everyone has the same chain. We both have the Bifrost 4490 but I doubt we are using the same audio program/USB cable/amp/headphones/power supply. Not to mention everyone's ear canals are different. All of these affect the signal and the Regen does not operate in a vacuum.

 

Hence, writing something off based on your very specific setup doesn't make much sense. Of course you are free to write it off of your setup, but claiming it doesn't make an improvement based on extremely limited and biased data isn't something people should do.

 

I have tested the Regen in my system back and forth and the differences were striking. I am not imagining those differences.

[ColtMrFire]

You mostly referred to your setup but skirted the line between subjective taste and objective claims, at one point mentioning placebo.

 

Its one thing to say you dont hear any improvement, its another to graft that very subjective and limited opinion onto the devices themselves. The Regen and Wyrd make some pretty obvious improvements in people's systems, so they work very well.