UpTone Audio USB Regen Listening Impressions

[firedog]

update: Alex asked for ordering to be done through the web site, and not by way of the other Regen thread.

If you send him your email address and there are still less than 100 Regens sold, he may send you the code to get into the site already today. AFAIK, the web site will be open to the public tomorrow - the 14th.

[firedog]

Would be interested to hear from any early receivers of the Regen who also own a JCAT, SOtM, or PPA card and how it compares to them.

[firedog]

I figure it will take at least another week for mine to arrive and get through customs. Your descriptions have me salivating at the thought of plugging that baby in.

[firedog]

Jud-

Which version of Revolver are you listening to? "I'm Only Sleeping" sounds pretty different on some of the different releases.

 

 

Couple of additional comments about a day in:

 

- Yes, the well recorded stuff is great, but what I'm finding more gratifying is that the ordinary recordings are sounding more real. Tom Petty, Jimi Hendrix, John Mellencamp, all from CD rip, are sounding better than I've heard before.

 

- Acoustic and electric bass sound quite good, not from any frequency boost, but from greater clarity. The "rosin on the bow" with bowed bass and cello, finger plucks, vibrato, "bending" notes and other intonations are nicely audible.

 

- Uninhabited Man from Richard Thompson's Action Packed greatest hits album just played, and it's yet another example of a song (and album) that now has a beautiful clarity I don't remember being evident before.

 

- I do have to put in a word about the well recorded stuff. Bad Fog of Loneliness from Neil Young's Live At The Cellar Door, recorded in 1970(!), was amazing - I'm not sure anyone there heard Neil better than I did.

 

- I'm Only Sleeping, from Revolver, recorded almost 50 years ago, just came on, and it had all of that great old trippy quality.

 

If I sound happy, well, I am.

[firedog]

Thanks for posting that. Just the other day I wondered about the use of an iPower with the Regen.

 

When I moved to the Auralic Aries my system became free of switching mode power supplies. The Regen will be bringing one back. If iFi's marketing material is to be believed, the iPower might not be a bad way to go if one wants to minimize sources of noise.

 

Good thought. I"m thinking of buying 2-3 of those.

[firedog]

should. I'd do the first one - and I will as soon as mine gets released by the local customs office.

 

Would this work? Just curious.

 

Streamer-->Wyrd-->Regen-->DAC

or

Streamer-->Regen-->Wyrd-->DAC

[firedog]

Well, I finally got mine after it sat in customs for a month. First impression that it definitely reveals some more detail (I guess that's getting rid of noise) and the instruments sound more natural.

Have to do some serious listening this weekend. It's definitely an additional (small) improvement from what I had when using a Schiit Wyrd.

 

Once I get used to it, I'm going to hook it up in series with the Wyrd and see if that makes any difference.

[firedog]

Have got a lot more listening in now. Listening mostly to stuff I know well - to see if it sounds different.

 

The difference I hear is its easier to hear detail with the Regen and an there's also an increase of air/space. Location clues are also better. I listened to the opening of "Sgt. Pepper": the crowd noise sounds more real and has more depth and space - more like a real crowd. Likewise, the opening guitar in "Pinball Wizard" really "rings out' now. Also instruments sound more real - in the rattling of a percussion instrument you clearly hear each separate piece rattling around inside.

[firedog]

Okay, have listened pretty extensively now. What I'm hearing is:

 

a) more detail: extended cymbal fades, background instruments and percussion are clearer and more audible;

b) general clarity is improved;each instrument easier to hear;

c)wider soundstage - and I listen in a small home office, so anything that makes it seem as if the sound is (more) outside the speakers is really doing something;

d) more air and space around and between instruments;

e) instrument sounds/timbre seems more real. Example: bass drum hits have more "thud".

 

I assume some of this is due to a little less noise induced jitter, and some is due to just more "quiet" in general, so that detail and spatial clues are easier to hear.

 

I don't think any of these individual changes are very large, but taken together I'd call it a noticeable uptick in SQ, in just about every parameter. (And the "amber" is going to be better? Can't wait!)

 

Other than that, yesterday I connected the Schiit Wyrd between the server and the Regen. I don't have any good way of doing a comparison, but it seems this made a very small additional improvement. I'll remove the Wyrd in a few days and see if I hear a downtick in SQ and report back. In any case, running the Regen from a Wyrd or specialist USB card can't hurt.

[firedog]

I haven't gotten my "amber" yet, but the "green" is pretty amazing. I'm hearing a level of detail/clarity/space I've never heard before in tracks I've heard hundreds of times - really old stuff like the Beatles, Byrds, Hendrix.

 

I don't know exactly how to put my finger on it, but things just sound better. When something can make a track like "A Day in the Life" sound new and different to me - well, that's saying something.

 

Thanks again Alex and John.

[firedog]

 

“One track” turned into 3 hours and I am fighting to resist the temptation to forget all about a deluxe beer tasting tonight that I have already paid for. This is without question the best $200 I have ever spent as an audiophile music lover.

 

 

Go to the beer tasting. The Regen will still be there when you get back. I went to a similar tasting a couple of weeks ago and had a great time.

[firedog]

 

P.S. I still have that Fisher receiver. It was a special silver-soldered unit that my dad got when he worked for Fisher--reporting directly to Avery Fisher as head of their stainless-steel muffler division--not kidding. He brought Avery a great opportunity in a new-fangled thing called seat safety belts, but Fisher did not think they would catch on!). The silver-soldered units were done for the military.

That receiver is also how I met Bob Hovland at 12. My kittens chewed the dial strings off the Fisher and I brought the unit into Pilot Stereo Center in Santa Monica where Bob was service manger after leaving Marantz in Simi Valley (just after completing the inherited disaster project known as the massive Marantz 500--look it up). There is more to THAT story but is certainly O.T.

 

Boy, that old Fisher stuff was great equipment. Cool that you still have one. I couldn't afford one back in the day. I did have their "audiophile" LP for testing your system - an especially well recorded and well pressed LP sold at audio dealers. It had various tracks of music designed to test the full spectrum playback of your system. Narrated by Avery Fisher, telling you what the next cut was and what to listen for.

[firedog]

Jud, very interesting.

 

If you can go to the trouble could you try the iPower on one or two other devices powered by wall warts, and see if it makes a difference? I'm assuming you have one or two such devices. Or maybe just substitute it for the Meanwell with the Amber (without the Green) and see if you hear a difference?

 

Just trying to see if the iPower is generally effective as a substitute for standard SMPS wall plugs.

[firedog]

I also have a Wyrd in front of the Amber and find it makes an additional contribution to SQ.

[firedog]

Let's just see what the one 'Amber does for now. With a current 1.5 month backlog. I can at least wait for a quicker turn around if it's shown to definitely be an improvement for 2 without a further better solution.

 

If Alex ever gets his head above water with the Regens, I'll probably ask him to sell me a case for the green, so I can conveniently use it in series with the Amber.

[firedog]

Pretty amazing how when your system gets better, you find out that most of the Beatles recordings were really good - there is a lot of info/detail there, if your system can reproduce it. Says a lot about the quality of the crew at EMI/Abbey Road.

 

One of the big things I noticed with the Regen is how much more realistic drum hits sound. Very noticeable to me on the Beatles recordings, which I know very well and often use as test recordings.

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.) On I'm Looking Through You, recorded almost 50 years ago, Ringo's percussion sounds a little like the thigh slaps from I'll Follow The Sun, but maybe a little "drier." Looked it up and turns out it's supposedly Ringo tapping on a box of matches.

 

These are 16/44.1 recordings, and no optimization, just playing my collection on shuffle from the external HDD, my laptop plugged into its SMPS, with my tuned-by-ear A+ PCM upsampling.

 

Based on the Green-Amber combination, although I'm someone who typically wants to minimize the number of boxes, if I had one Amber and $175 to spare, I'd certainly consider a second.

[firedog]

Ah, Jud, you're a listener very much in my mode - book or iPad in hand ...

I'm looking fwd to checking out the Beatles 24/44.1s I've got (from the usb they released) with the amber, then green-amber ...

 

Those 24 bit files are basically the "master" of the 2009 stereo releases. I listen to them often, and the better my system gets, the better they sound.

[firedog]

I will just say again: Ever since I got the Regen, I have never enjoyed my system as much. Just sounds better than it ever did before. Not a night and day difference, just noticeably better.

[firedog]

Any idea what makes the two regens in series sound so good as compared to a single regen? Is it that the first regen "refining" both the data signal and power so the next regen doesn't have to work so hard or something else.

Be interested to hear your thoughts Alex or John.

 

My understanding from JS's posts is that even though the Regen "cleans up" the signal, it internally produces some noise itself - that simply is unavoidable. By linking 2 devices, you are giving the Regen at the DAC a slightly cleaner signal to work with from the get go, so it then produces slighty less noise, etc., and the DAC gets a slighty better quality signal than it does with just one Regen.

[firedog]

We've seen over the past few years how vulnerable to less than optimal sound the USB port on our DACs can be. Apparently most manufacturers don't know how to improve it, or don't do it in order to hit a price point. Only a few manufacturers like Ayre and MSB (I'm not saying they are the only ones) seem to have devoted the resources necessary for a true audiophile USB connection.

[firedog]

My home has HardiPlank siding with a 50-year guarantee that was installed when I was 50 years old. I've always said I wanted to live to collect on it.

 

Around my 50th birthday I started adding to consideration of expensive purchases that they might be the last time I'd ever buy something of that type (meaning they might outlast me, even if I live to a nice old age). Expensive purchases are much easier to justify that way .

[firedog]

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 now have a REGEN amber (love it!) and a JS-2 will arrive today that I will use on the Mac Mini and REGEN. Will likely get another REGEN for a separate system, but I would still like to hear why two in series is an improvement over just one.

 

 

BTW I like what Toast is proposing in the previous post.

 

For the same reasons as Alex said, those of us who have used 2 in series, or in series with a Schiit Wyrd, or basically along with anything else that feeds the Regen a cleaner signal, results in an uptick in sound quality.

[firedog]

Perhaps I should have named my company UpTick Audio instead.

 

I think you made the right choice: you don't want your company coming up in search results for "lyme disease" and the like.

[firedog]

Was looking forward to more comparisons with Schiit Wyrd and Audiostream's review says:

"to my ears the Schiit Wyrd offers a similar yet more subtle improvement as compared to the REGEN, while the JitterBug appears complimentary to both."

 

So I will leave my Schiit Wyrd in a secondary system, and I decided to order the Regen for the main system.

 

Question 1: I also use Aqvox USB power supply to cut the 5V coming from the USB cable and insert clean and regulated one from their power supply.

Should it be used before or after the Regen?

 

Question 2: if I use 1 good USB cable with Regen, should it be used before or after Regen for better results? Of course adding another and using both would be ideal but $$$.

 

1) Try it and see. Others have used similar devices with positive results;

2) Recommendation is to use the direct hard connector from Regen to DAC, and cable of choice after Regen; but again, try both and see...

 

I have a setup of USB source>Wyrd>Regen>DAC and think it is slightly better than same setup with Wyrd Removed

[firedog]

Whoa Firedog. I'll assume that was just a typo and that you know the recommendation is the reverse.

Please put the solid adapter on the output of the REGEN and plug it directly into the DAC. This results in the DAC getting the fresh, high-integrity signal just millimeters from where it is produced, and the impedance will be most ideal there as well.

 

Ciao,

Alex C.

 

 

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