Which one to buy: UpTone USB REGEN or Intona USB Isolator?

[PeterSt]

Hi all,

 

I had a larger post in here but was not confident about whether the content really was for the public eye. So I sent it to Daniel instead.

 

What I can do for the public and for Daniel too, is offering apologies for never complaining to Intona / Daniel. This now looks even worse, knowing that I received the very first one (I did not know that).

So I have been a bit of counter productive.

 

Working on it now ...

Regards,

Peter

[PeterSt]

Here's my latest "review", this time of the Industrial version :

Intona High Speed USB 2.0 galvanic isolation

 

Regards,

Peter

[PeterSt]

It should work with all compliant USB 2.0 cables, unless there is a compatibility problem with the Berkeley Alpha USB converter .

 

Hi there Alex,

 

Please be careful a bit because ... almost none of the "2.0 imprinted" cables is really 2.0 compliant. And I can know, because we use a DAC for a while now, requiring the high speed.

Buy 10 random 2.0 compliant different brand cables and maybe one works. Maybe. This includes the audiophile ones.

 

And maybe I even know a bit more about it now, because finally (although since a year ago already) we make our own USB cables (Clairixa).

 

Below you see an example of why a (China produced in (explicit) secrecy) very official USA sold high speed - and not even cheap (actually the most expensive I could find) 200 meters was returned because it did not work :

 

 

(from one of the larger cable suppliers in the USA)

 

Now you see, this is not twisted. Of course they told me at first it just was, but twisted is to be "even" and then the power wires are supposed to be curled around the data wires nicely even, just the same.

They were NOT able to send me a decent spool and they gave up and my money was returned (not the shipping costs).

 

I have more nice stories about the USB cable sh*t as nobody is really using the high speed, as it seems. Do notice that 2x 24/192 is not that (12Mbit Full Speed suffices for that). The Phasure NOS1a uses 49Mbit (at 32/768 input).

If you have some spare time and see how pathetic things are, read in here : Clairixa USB but promise yourself to skip to the Background of Development paragraph, half way in that lengthy post.

In that case I didn't even get my money back. And I still hate it to re-order at that company, but alas, their cable itself is great.

 

Regards,

Peter

[PeterSt]

Alex,

 

Because the suppliers don't know it themselves. It is very very hard to find the real USB cable *manufacturers* as all operates in secrecy. Belkin, I think, is such a genuine manufacturer. The cable we use (crazy expensive) I think is manufactured by that company themselves, I buy it from but is hard to prove at the distance.

 

The other day I was researching genuine 75 Ohm BNC-RCA adapters. Van den Hul has them, according their website.

Now I know Mr van den Hul as he lives next door to me and I know his company too. They surely don't produce them. Additionally I know how hard it is to find the real thing (world wide) so I asked him how *HE* would know it is the real thing.

He didn't answer me but instead went furious because I didn't trust him, as he told me.

My conclusion : he too doesn't really know.

 

I tried to ask about the proper impedance of cables as well, but instead I received a physics lecture and how silver is reacting with blablabla and the impedance story carefully was avoided.

Edit : It is some times quite easy to find the untruth in things, because companies really doing this stuff would need vector network analysers and what not, costing 300K or so. No audio company is going to spend that money, and no PC company does that. Telecom companies yes, but they use different cables ...

I have been searching for such machinery myself, but it really is undoable (too expensive).

 

Talking to the Gods ... also does not help.

[PeterSt]

FWIW : That is not my experience about such things. As a matter of fact it is the other way around - what's generally perceived as mediocre recording, often is about less hassle applied to the (digital) chain and that now being better and therefore more difficult to let excel. Think e.g. better dynamics because of less compression, while better dynamics first require a playback chain which can follow.

 

It could be tough to discuss what's a mediocre recording and what is the better one. This is because often we can not know. What I do, is always putting the mediocre ones aside for later revisiting, like for when an Intona comes about.

I thus explicitly observe the worser ones and see with what (future application) they may improve. Now :

 

It may be fairly easy to have consensus over the older recordings sounding worse. Think 60's or early 70's. Still this is not so as over time I learned that they sound the best (so better than today's) if only first the playback chain improves.

Of course all is logic if we see how compression etc. molests, that is, if we disregard the so much other stuff involved (read : it surely is not about compression only).

 

Usually when such a thing happens (better recordings start to sound even better while the mediocre ones show even more failure) something else is not right.

Of course you'd need to know me a bit more to believe in that without a million posts about it ...

 

Peter

[PeterSt]

Hi,

 

Both are different devices, technically :

1. The Regen is not a Galvanic Isolator but re-generates the USB data;

2. The Intona is a Galvanic Isolator and re-generates the USB data.

 

Ad 2.

This is not stated anywhere but technically will be so.

 

Technically, in my view, the Intona is the better one, assumed that Galvanic Isolation is required to do the (interfacing) job well.

Audibly everybody's "miles will vary" but when the environmental prerequisites for "a best sound" are met, the Intona implies spades of better sound. At least for my group over at Phasure this is so in 100% of cases, so far (think a few dozen).

 

As we can see in this (CA) forum, it is no guarantee that the Intona works out. We can also see that for most the Regen works out, while that too doesn't count for everybody (I am an example of that).

 

I would go for the Intona over the PSU you mention, just because the Intona is a whole different world and which brings a totally different sound. The PSU will (or should) improve the Regen which maybe is a bit odd. Notice that the Intona is powered by USB itself.

 

Regards,

Peter