UpTone Audio REGEN Power Supply Add-On

[Superdad]

Alex, I can understand your reluctance to name/discuss any products that are forthcoming. But may I ask if it is possible for you to say whether you think you will have them out by the end of the year +/-?

 

Well yeah, it's only the end-of-February now. We darn well better have some new products out--by summer or well sooner! I'm not dumping a boat of cash into a new building for nothing.

[Superdad]

I would not have asked had you not mentioned some projects in other threads.

 

No worries! I am truly thankful for all our curious fans...

 

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

You're very welcome. ;-)

 

Thank you JASON! (Just seeing if you were paying attention… )

[Superdad]

When are we at least going to learn what it is?

 

Very soon, I promise. John is arriving at my place for some tests and fun in just about an hour. We'll talk about the timing of the announcement. Thanks for your patience. I promise the surprise will be worth the wait.

 

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

Alex, is the "FPGA-based LPS" you mentioned below anything to do with the "mystery power supply" or is it a still to be announced/forthcoming "new" power supply? Anything you can tell us about it?

 

More specifically: They are one and the same.

The reveal about the tech will be coming very soon.

 

Best,

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

My previous Q was missed; can you power two of these units (set to different voltages) from a single Regen supplied Meanwell SPMS to power two separate low power devices?

 

Hi Dean:

 

The short answer is no.

 

Each of our mystery DC-DC LPS units will need to be "energized" (again its not a battery supply though) by either 7.5V/2.5A, 9V/2.0, or 12V/1.5A.

 

So if you had a 12V/3A SMPS or cheap LPS you could, with a 'Y' cable, power two of our new units.

 

As explained upthread, the new supply, when available, will be sold either with or without an energizing SMPS. Given that the SMPS units are quite inexpensive, there won't be that much difference in price. We are just trying to save the planet a little and a few dollars for those who already got an SMPS with the REGEN or have their own suitable regulated SMPS or LPS to power our special isolated supply with.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Best,

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

Dear Alex and John

 

When you start selling this new product, would it be in the package that fit for internatioal mailing as Regen does? It would be nice to have the same style of package and I will not have to pay custom.

 

Thank you.

 

Yes, I always do my best to make shipping packages small to keep postage low and international mailing troubles to a minimum. (And I NEVER charge more for shipping than my actual cost; in fact, the current $32 charged for a REGEN to ship overseas via tracked and insured Priority Mail is $1.75 less than what we pay.)

 

Although the new supply at 11 x 11 x 3 cm (plus the included 70cm DC cable and whatever "energizing" PS gets chosen for inclusion in full kits) is larger than a REGEN, I am looking for a box that will fit inside a USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Padded Envelope. Those ship for the very same price as the Small Flat Rate Box we use for the REGEN (and finding stock boxes that fill that Small Flat Rate USPS box is difficult).

Whatever box the new PS comes in will also fit easily inside Express Mail (EMS) or FedEX Pak Tyvek envelopes. So unless weight in those changes the rate, even the fast services should cost about what we charge to ship a REGEN.

 

Best,

 

--Alex C.

 

P.S. We know everyone is anxious to hear the real details of this supply--lord knows you have all patiently waited long enough. But in discussing the matter with John a couple of days ago, we have decided to wait until the pre-production boards are in process (a week or so), and until John has time to sit down and make a block diagram of the device to share and explain what the beast is and how it all works. Once you see that--and the almost comical parts count and engineering headstands required to pull this off--you will all have a better understanding of why we think this new supply is groundbreaking, and why it has taken so long to finalize.

[Superdad]

How do you manage the logistics for a device with 216 parts? The prospect makes my brain hurt.

 

Well fortunately on the board itself there are "only" about 52 different parts due to lots of the same part being used in places. Even more thankfully, our board house does all the ordering (with most parts on reels) and inventory, though I do pay extra for the privilege of having them do so.

But to keep costs down, I build big spreadsheets comparing the volume prices between the distributors as no one distributor has all the items anyway. That part can be a bit mind-numbing (my task this week), though it takes orders of magnitude less brain power than it does for John to design and lay out a circuit like this. 4 power domains, 4-layer board, parts on both sides, FPGA programming, and control of noise, impedance, currents, and heat. That's the stuff that makes MY brain hurt.

 

(But I must say, I do take a little pleasure in having gotten to the point where I can be reviewing one if his preliminary boards layouts and catch some semi-glaring error that he just had not yet picked up on. Sometimes I wonder if he puts them in there just to help me me feel useful…)

[Superdad]

Why would a power supply add on be micro SD card equipped???

 

Well since it uses an FPGA (with a VERY, VERY slow running clock), the SDcard slot is there just in case we ever need to issue a firmware update. The slot will be empty, but if the need ever arrises we could either mail out microSD cards with the code ready to auto-load, and/or make a download image available.

[Superdad]

We'll send the drone over to your place. The Apple HQ flyovers are getting old.

 

LOL. Be careful though. My well-armed neighbor (guns are NOT my thing) will be happy to shoot down any pesky drone that happens by.

[Superdad]

Alex, any indication to the expected price for the "mystery" ps ?

 

Well the BoM (bill of materials) is mostly added up (some discrepancy--read surprise increase--on the case cost still needs to be resolved), and we have PCB fabrication/population quotes from 1 of the 3 vendors I put it out to bid on. Our original target retail price was $300, but the way it is looking it will have to be between $350-400. There is a LOT of stuff (214 parts to be precise) on both sides of this 106mm x 100mm 4-layer board!

[Superdad]

Ok, I understand. But is it a linear power supply just like the JS2 or something else ? what is the input to this ps ?

 

Sorry, I suppose until I put up a web page for it then people just joining this thread will be confused as information came out piecemeal over time. Tried to find a concise post upthread, but the closest I came was this one:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f27-uptone-audio-sponsored/uptone-audio-regen-power-supply-add-24963/index16.html#post468055

Since then we have expanded the voltage selection to a 3-postion switch to include 3.3V in addition to the original 5V, and 7V choices.

 

So in essence it is a 1A DC-DC LPS. It gets externally powered by any PS in the range of 12V/1.5A, 9V/2A, or 7.5V/2.5A--and the quality of that PS will make ZERO difference to the quality of the 100% isolated DC output. Give it the nastiest input voltage you can possibly come up with (as long as it is in the voltage/current range just outlined), and you will get the same ultra-clean and fast power out of it.

 

It is true that--for those whose AC mains and rest of system are allergic to any SMPS--the new piece as shipped does not address that. But plenty of people have little El Cheapo LPS units that would feed our box nicely, though traditional (trans/diodes/caps/reg) linear power supplies are all also guilty of putting harmonics back into the AC line--just at lower frequencies than an SMPS--and good level V and VI SMPS units (like the Mean Well we ship with the REGEN) spread their noise across a wide very high frequency spectrum).

 

Hope that helps. When we fully reveal then everyone will understand what makes this such an exciting supply.

[Superdad]

Ahh, now I understand. So you really need an actual power supply and the "mystery" ps will scrub the incoming and output clean power.

 

Sorry, but no, not at all like DC iPurifier! Our piece is not a filter. We are NOT cleaning or "scrubbing" the incoming DC at ALL! We are 100% disconnected from the incoming DC at all times.

 

John and I have promised each other we would not reveal (though it should already be apparent to some) what the thing really is until the boards are in process at the fab house. In large part because there will immediately be a flood of questions about how it works and John wants to have a couple of evenings to write something up that explains it enough to do justice to how cool it is and to the monumental effort the design has required. Actually it would be much more fun to wait to post photos of the first boards at the same time. But we are all impatient.

Hang in there, it won't be long (famous last words I know…)

 

Thanks,

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

I more of think its a typo and should be $1399 instead. Wishful thinking ?

 

Yes, I am pretty sure that is a typo because I too recall Jesus telling me $1,399 during our phone chat over the weekend. Cut them some slack as they are really slammed with the MicroRendu launch and the logistics of lots of orders all at once.

[Superdad]

Looking for a comparison of the two PSUs on the microRendu?

 

You mean two power supplies that have not yet shipped--on a device that people are getting just this week?

[Superdad]

It might have not been clear but this question was NOT meant for any of you guys. The question was specifically for John S. If anyone would know, if at all, it would be him. Its a different matter if he doesn’t want to comment and I completely understand :-)

 

Really quite impossible because:

a) Our new LPS at the moment exists as a series of boards and wires hooked up on a test bench--the full pre-production boards are just now going through process with out board house;

b) The new Sonore LPS was designed by Barrows, and until my conversation this weekend with Jesus, neither John nor I knew any technical info about their unit.

 

I know it gets confusing because John has done designs for both UpTone and Sonore. And while the three of us are friends and mutual fans, our projects are separate.

Thanks for understanding. Please be patient as things develop.

[Superdad]

I am a bit confused by your comment on this. Earlier you stated that the feed supply for MPS is irrelevant and it will perform the same if its fed from a $50 supply or a $1000 supply. So based on this why wouldn’t the feed supply be cheap ? I am sure there are reasons behind this but wanted to understand the perspective better.

 

Well the energizing supply the mystery LPS will come with is cheap. It's a level VI, fully certified around the world, tabletop SMPS with detachable AC power cord--the same as what comes with the REGEN (though for those who already got that supply with their REGEN or have something suitable already, we can omit it from the kit and save the buyer $15 and be kinder to the planet).

 

There is never going to be any energizing supply for our device that will affect its DC output. Period.

As I have explained, the ONLY reason to use any other energizing supply is if you don't want an SMPS plugged into the wall. But virtually all conventional linear supplies also put harmonics back into the house mains since they don't draw current through the whole waveform. Only a power-factor-corrected supply will be "line quiet." The choke-filtered JS-2 is the only power-factor-corrected LPS that I know of (John calculated as having a PF of about 0.97).

 

Yet producing a small choke-filtered LPS just to be an energizing supply for our isolated device seems silly, and indeed would not be cheap (anytime you have to have a transformer, power switch, fuse, voltage selector, and inlet jack in a chassis, there is labor and expense)--and we don't have Chinese factory scale.

 

But John had [another] radical idea for a highly AC line quiet PFC supply with rather few parts, and that is the follow-on piece he mentioned. While its DC output will be modestly quiet, that is not the goal--since our forthcoming DC-DC LPS doesn't care about that. Rather it is about kicking less back into the wall mains than any other LPS or SMPS (again, our big JS-2 being the exception).

Cost for that piece will be all about the transformer, the case, and if I can find the right combination of AC inlet/switch/fuse/voltage selector parts that are all PCB mount as any hand wiring adds labor and cost.

 

Hope that puts things into a little perspective. And please don't ask about the when for that follow-on piece. We have a lot on out plate now and I just don't know. Frankly, since I use 1:1 isolation transformers for my front-end gear, and plug any SMPS directly into the wall before those transformers, my AC system is not terribly sensitive to SMPS high frequency noise and spikes.

[Superdad]

John

That sounds very much like having completely separate low noise feeds derived from separate batteries.

You can't get much more isolated than that.

Kind Regards

Alex

 

Sorry Mr. K, no batteries!

[Superdad]

Now that folks are getting their hands on mR, any idea when possibly the MPS is expected to ship Alex ?

 

Don't know about shipping, but we intend to end the "mystery" of the tech and post pictures by the end of this week. Am trying to get the rest of my biz and e-mail under control first as I know there will be lots of chatter and questions.

 

Thanks,

AJC

[Superdad]

When will pre-ordering be opened up?

 

Only when the final-final production boards are on order with a scheduled ship date from our board house. Not a moment before. I have an ethical bias against taking peoples' money without being 100% sure of the delivery date. Crowd-funding/fleecing is not my thing.

[Superdad]

Alex, currently I use the ifi 9v 1,5a power supply to power my microrendu. You specify 9v 2a to run the mistery power supply. Does that mean this current standard power supply for the microrendu can not be used ?

 

That's correct--9V/1.5A will not be enough. Save your iFi iPower for something else. It will not benefit our new supply in any way, and the iFi being a SMPS is not going to be more wall-benign than the SMPS that will come with our unit.

 

(Omitting the SMPS from the package will be an option on the web ordering page--saving probably $15--because so many REGEN users and others already have an appropriate supply--one that hits 12V/1.5A, 9V/2A, or the Mean Well 7.5V/2.93A that came with the REGEN.)

 

Hope that helps.

[Superdad]

Alex, the iFi iPower I got with the micro rendu says 9V/2.0A on the box, so I'm confused by your comment.

 

I appears that iFi has updated their iPower and that there have been two versions (and that is leaving out the early one that they used to ship with their product.) Here is the pic of the back of the box from the unit I got from Rich at Signature Sound about a month after shipments began.

 

[Superdad]

iFi has clarified that the original iPower packaging contained printed spec/current ratings that were very conservative due to the non-completion of certification testing at product launch.

 

That certification testing is now complete and all newer iPower shipments contain a sticker covering the original ratings on the packaging with the newer certified higher current ratings, but all previously shipped iPower units are identical and thus conform to the newer higher current rating too despite what is printed on the packaging.

 

Their older ULN power supply that wasn't available separately and only shipped bundled with DAC/amp products is a totally separate product, and this new current rating does not pertain to that older design, only the iPower.

 

Hi Mikey:

 

Thanks for clarifying that. I do have a programmable DC load machine (use it to torture-test JS-2s!), so I could put my 9V iPower SMPS wart on it and see how it holds up for a couple of hours at 2A continuos. Might be a bit stressful for it, but I am willing to sacrifice in the name of science--and to verify if it will be okay to use to power our new supply.

I still think people will want to find a different use for their iFi since it is not anymore AC-mains-quiet than any other SMPS, and its improved output will be of zero benefit to the our piece.

 

--Alex C.

[Superdad]

Hi gang:

 

Closing this thread because the party is moving over to here!

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f27-uptone-audio-sponsored/mystery-revealed-uptone-audio-ultracap%99-linear-power-supply-1-a-28609/