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


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  • 2 weeks later...
Just received my standard Intona USB Isolator today. Unfortunately it didn't work with my Aries. couldn't establish a stable connection. I think i will have to sell it. If anyone wants to take it off my hand, please PM me.

 

I thought the same, didn't work with Mutec MC-1.2 either. Experimented by adding a simple USB 2.0 hub on the output of the intona, and the converter was recognised.

 

The chain:

 

PC USB 2.0 out --> USB A to USB B --> Intona -->USB 2 hub (unpowered) ---> USB A to USB B --> Mutec

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What kind of USB hub is suitable for this purpose? Even a a small one seems kind of an awkward, clunky device to try to hang off the DAC or cable.

 

The USB 2 hub is a DLink P/N AUB1040CS.......A1G or Model DUB-1040. Further experiments revealed an apple keyboard works fine without the hub, but the current draw on a keyboard is nothing compared to a hard drive. In fact a mac mini works with the intoma on OSX without an issue.

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Finally got Intona to work after inserting Schiit Wyrd between the DAC and the Isolator. I also had to replace the USB cable between the Wyrd and Isolator. Now i am wondering if doing this would defeat the purpose of the Isolator.

 

btw, this setup worked for both my iMac and Aries. I guess the main issue is probably caused by Isolator dropping current from 500ma to 300ma and many DACs don't like that.

 

For the moment listened to the Intona for a few hours last night on LCD-3's. I can hear some micro details coming though now and again, a different kind of presentation, there's more noise floor gone again, certainly very dynamic and coherent. I've yet to try speakers, hopefully today and tonight when everyone is celebrating and up at all hours :)

 

Can you write the chain, be interested where the cable change occurred and what's used where.

 

Here's what cobbled together at the moment:

 

HP Z800 Win 7 with HQPlayer 3.12.0 --> NAA --> Mac Mini i5 2012 model Yosemite --> Generic USB2.0 cable --> Itona Isolator --> Nordost Blue Heaven USB cable --> Mutec MC-1.2 USB to AES3 converter mains powered --> 25m Cat5e --> RME ADI-2 AES3 input XLR Outputs

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Does it work well for a M2Tech Evo USB to Spif converter?

The way will be: PC -> Intona -> Evo -> DAC

 

In the Intona, the usb output and input connectors are Type-A or Type-B?

 

The Intona input connector is USB B.

 

The Intona output connector is USB A.

 

As for the M2Tech, if driverless for Windows to 96-24, should work. OSX no problemo.

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This afternoon was an exercise in frustration in transmitting through the Intona Isolator to a Mutec MC-1.2 on OSX and Windows. The Mutec MC-1.2 is either a USB Powered or mains powered USB to AES3/S/PDIF/Toslink converter. It requires a driver for Windows, but no driver required for OSX. For these tests, only USB power was used and multiple reboots to ensure reliability, or until something broke, which in this case didn't take long.

 

Previously OSX worked, until the MacMini is rebooted, and the Mutec is gone from the system once the machine is ready to go. Not the outcome I had expected. The Intona flashes a steady 5Hz LED meaning, there's no traffic. AudioMidi detects nothing. Added a simple USB 2 hub on the OUTPUT of the Intona, and the Mutec is there again, but there's no sound from HQPlayer. Start again.

Tried a few different USB cables from the Generic to the exotic without rebooting and all worked with a USB stick, but a few worked with the Mutec, but no consistency as to which cable was rock steady. Proof of the pudding is a reboot, and no cables worked properly, even the USB hub trick didn't work either again, must have been lucky.

 

OK, move on to Windows, see if that works somehow previously didn't at all.

 

Windows is a little more sensitive to cabling than OSX. Tried Oyaide Continental and wouldn't work, but Nordost Blue Heaven worked OK as far as the Intona was concerned with rapid LED flashing. That joy was short lived though, cause there's no output to listen to music. Device Manager reported the ! and USBview also showed !. The mouse and keyboard are on PS2 ports, so the only other USB device was a hub on the Dell monitor with nothing plugged into the ports.

 

The control panel sound cpl didn't show the Mutec at all with the Intona until the USB input cable was unplugged and re-inserted. The Mutec was now in control panel, but the test to play the ding dong sound failed.

Every cold restart of the computer,the Mutec sat there, with Device Manager reporting !. The Mutec defaulted to 48kHz sample rates every time the computer rebooted, even though the Sound cpl was set to 192k 24bit.

 

It's as if the handshaking doesn't happen, and am not prepared to plug/unplug the Intona every time the computer reboots, f%^k that, even then, the settings won't stick.

 

So the afternoon was wasted, but a valuable lesson learned. The Intona isolator works on USB sticks, keyboards quite well, but is useless for small portable hard drives, native USB Audio Class 2 or a device that needs a driver. Not prepared to try other DACs either, thought something simple would work, but not to be.

 

I'll stick with AES3.

 

Finita la musica, passata la fiesta.

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This probably has nothing to do with the present problem, but many experience similar problems with some USB devices.

USB has been problematical with me too, with Devices disappearing, or coming and going at times with W8/64, especially with an Elements USB HDD..

What worked for me was as posted in another forum, but may need to be checked again if playing up again :

 

CONTROL PANEL -Power Options - Change Advanced Power Settings - USB Settings - USB Selective Suspend Setting - Change to Settings Disabled. Apply.

 

Also that setting is available in Device Manager under properties of the individual USB host controllers/Hub. Samsung magician software has removed the advanced power usb settings, I do recall this setting from other computers and disabling helps with Dacs and hard drives on the same usb hub.

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Back to topic.

 

In trying to install the drivers for the Mutec with the Intona connected, Device Manager reports the detection of the Mutec to be USB1.0, ie "Mutec 1.2 USB 1.0 " this is in contrast to the norm of "Mutec 1.2 USB2.0". This tells me there's a barrier between the USB Host and the USB audio device that doesn't click.

When that happens, the host controller in my case the Intel ICH10(?) picks a slower (USB1.0) port creating more drama. This is of little use, since the Mutec is normally a USB2 device and there's another ! in Device Manager.

 

I eventually tried a very simple adaptive DAC, April Music Stello 100, and Windows loaded the driver OK.

 

I'm finding the Intona Isolator not fit for purpose in that it does not pass UAC2, if it does, it's a one time only, whatever you do, don't reboot the computer.

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I am sorry that you have these problems. Do you have a PCIe USB card ? Prior to that, have you contacted Daniel (of Intona) ?

 

For USB, I use the standard controllers on the motherboard. There are six of them, each with a hub and provision for at least two USB ports, some up to six available ports.

The priority of connections is a high speed port first, then as the devices fill up, the slower ports are used. I check what's connected on what controller with USBVIEW.EXE, works very well. If devices enumerate, they are listed in some detail.

On the subject of USB tools, what is also invaluable is USBOblivion, that removes old and unused USB devices from the registry, that cause problems.

 

The Intona has to work with standard ports on a computer without the need for a Sotm or Paul Pang card. The others are nice to have, but the basics first need to be managed.

 

I did email Daniel and received a reply, but it's the weekend, don't want to disturb until later in the week. Something needs new firmware.

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My conclusion is that the MSB analogue DAC can't be used with the Intona without additional power being supplied, which may make its use irrelevant.

 

Looking forward to the Forums members comments.

 

Regards

Barry

 

One of the many experiments was to add a powered USB 2 hub (Belkin) after the Intona to reduce the possibility that not enough current was supplied. The converter wasn't detected in this case.

I also tried the bus powered portable drive, they ticked over, but didn't show on the computer as a drive. The explanation is that the bus powered drives draw over the spec of the Intona, however with regular use on computers, I have not seen an alarm on screen to advise the USB port is overloaded.

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In that case , the USB port would likely end up being marked as faulty, without any on screen warnings ?

 

If the USB port is faulty, there's no mechanism to detect an overcurrent, since there's no voltage to drive the port.

 

What I meant was, I only have seen the overload alarm on very rare occasions, but not in the experiments with the Intona. All ports showed up as OK.

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Forgot to the mention that if I had to use the Lightspeed USB cable, then the only way it would work is to use a USB hub right between the DAC and the Isolator.

 

In terms of sound quality after some AB listening I am happy to report that the sound with Isolator in place with cheap USB cables is audibly better than going straight with LightSpeed USB.

 

I also noticed that the sequence of connecting input/output cables also matters. Try to connect the input side first. wait a few seconds and then plug in the output side.

 

Thank you blankdisc for these results! I did also try some generic cables, but had mixed results, one of them a 5m(!) Belkin was actually quite good, will consult my notes.

 

One more thing, if you shutdown the computer, the lights go off the Intona, right? If the computer is restarted, does everything work OK again, or is it necessary to unplug/replug?

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Well blankdisc, I couldn't quite match the price of the Monoprice cables, so opted for something four times the price, the wallet really hurt at $4 a piece, did the gamble pay off?

 

For the record, used an i5 500GB spinning drive, mac mini with Yosemite, Lindy P/N 31643 USB A to USB B 0.5m, Intona Isolator, Lindy P/N 31643 USB A to USB B 0.5m, Mutec MC-1.2 USB in. Output of the MC-1.2 is AES3 to an RME ADI-2 DAC. HqPlayer (trial), with poly short upsampled to 192.

 

Either way, connecting the Intona online or cold from a restart,several times, nary a glitch or messing about with no sound, played 100% with *complete* reliability. Listened to music with greater realism than ever before and restored my appraisal/faith in USB Audio, the Intona is that good. I would never have thought such a simple looking box could make that much of a difference in clarity and presentation.

 

Galvanic isolation is a big deal, for USB it's essential.

 

It's good, well, great actually, with very modest cabling de rigeur and expensive USB cables relegated to the market, and no additional power supplies to add either.

 

Worth persisting with despite the drama from last week. On Windows though it's a different story. The Mutec won't install at all, the Intona is not used so will work with Mutec to find a solution. I prefer Windows with ASIO and I have a license for HQPlayer, so really keen to get this moving, but in the meantime, OSX is doing very well indeed.

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You may use stuff under and above Intona to secure it from moving (dragged by the upstream USB cable). I found the adapter sounds better than using a USB cable between Intona and DAC.

 

There's a barebones version of the 7054 Isolator, if you're into tin bashing and cutting, add the card into the DAC or tower/desktop PC? Or a nicely machined billeted shiny no microphonics resonance free block. And an option of a blue LED ;) Yup big sella.

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Do you think the sound quality will be equal between the standard version and the industrial version? Would be great to save a few $'s.

 

Thanks!

 

You listen to music at home, so there's really no need to have 2.5 times the isolation. The 2500V isolation is required when you have a USB sensor, like a high voltage (>1000V) probe connected to a computer. There needs to be a higher barrier in place, in case the USB sensor shorts, it won't deliver the full voltage to the computer and blow the motherboard to charcoal.

 

For audio, we don't encounter such levels, typically our voltage for USB is 5V, extremes might be 20V if all goes pear shaped. A lightning strike can even destroy the 2500V version, so no need to put this into the equation in the decision making process.

The connector on the 7504-X version is a locking one, which is a plus, but 99.3% of the time, the isolator is in a fixed position at home.

 

I'll eat my isolator if the two versions sound different.

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Does the intona require a Psu or it takes the 5v from the incoming usb? If that's the case, would it benefit from a aqvox to replace the incoming power with a lpsu

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I just tried this just a few hours ago with a Playback Designs MPD-3, it was a disaster, HQPlayer couldn't see the DAC. Removed the 5V power and all was good. The Intona takes power from the 5V bus and according to Windows is drawing 0mA, well that's Windows.

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For those of you following the misadventures with the Mutec MC-1.2 and the Intona on windows, the good news is, the Intona is finally working, in a way, with the Mutec. Most driver installs work, but this one didn't work out so kindly.

 

 

The main problem was the installation of the Mutec Windows driver on Windows 7 (which is suported), or my PC's USB controllers' config. On Windows 10 MBP Boot camped, the Intona and Mutec worked right away, surviving several reboots and the driver sticking quite well. That's fine for Windows 10, my music server PC support ended for Win 7, and no drivers are available for Windows 10, so I cannot upgrade.

 

 

So am stuck for the moment on Windows 7, the install didn't work right away with the Mutec 3.2 drivers from the Setup.exe. After a lot of experimentation, used the add new hardware wizard HDWWIZ.exe and selected the Have Disk options, to add in a new audio component in Sound, video and game controllers. This method narrows down select the driver by manual selection, rather than an online search which was useless and bombed every time. By including the driver in Sound, video and game controllers, means the Mutec will be available in HQPlayer as a verified end point. Often the Mutec would end up in the root of Device Manager with no ! and it's pointless to install there. I found best results when Norton Auto protect was off.

The driver would be installed in the correct place in Device Manager, however still had a !. Running the Mutec setup.exe again now worked correctly, with the Mutec appearing in Sound.cpl properly. On reboot, the driver still stuck, hooray! I listened to regular test music for an hour to prepare for the next step, to add in the Intona 7054.

 

 

For USB cabling, used the 0.5m Lindy USB cables for host and device. On a reboot, the Mutec wasn't detected, surprise, surprise. Added in the Mutec as per above procedure and it worked after a few times of uninstall, add new hardware, installing.... during one of the restarts, changed the Lindy short cable to a Nordost Blue Heaven 1m USB cable on the input to the Intona. Installing the driver worked for this cable, so left the output of the Intona with the 0.5m Lindy cable as is.

 

 

Now getting quite late in the day, listened to the regular test music on LCD-3 + Phonitor 2 supplied by RME ADI-2 DAC's TRS outputs, and noted these changes when the Intona 7054 was connected:

 

 

- Increased volume, particularly the bass

- Bass is far better defined and tighter

- Upper treble instruments are clearer to be distinguished, there are instruments or sounds that are now discoverable

- Easy to focus on (vocal) vibrato techniques (Jefferson Airplane - Triad MFSL)

 

 

Now, are the changes due to the Nordost USB cable in situ or the Intona or a combination. It's too hard to change the input USB cable again, since it means lengthy re-installs of the driver. I remember initial posts from users of the then (new) Regen, in that volume had increased, similar to a loudness function on an amp. The results are striking the same chord here with the Intona Based on the observations, as to the degree, well it's certainly eye opening. It is not possible to listen to music without the Intona from a USB system from now on. That's the result on headphones, in the next few days will try on speakers. I'm expecting stage height to be at least the same if not higher.

 

 

The next phase is to procure a Windows 10 PC, looking at the Lenovo m93p, small footprint PC to avoid the driver drama and maybe some minor SQ improvements as a bonus, and leave the Win7 PC as a file/server audio DAW. The US site lists Win8.1 although other countries offer Win 10 plus 16GB RAM, strange.

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You are also likely to find with some material, that the wideband HF noise decrease results in an apparent decrease in volume, often with a noticeable decrease in harshness with some female voices ,while still having more "air" around them,while loud percussive material sounds louder, apparently due to the low level upper HF harmonics being "unmasked".

It's as if the dynamics have further improved !

Much of my listening is also via headphones, but when listening via speakers, ensure that any running A/C or fans are turned off.

 

So the wideband HF noise is being modulated on the USB carrier and masking itself as actual signal when the DAC decodes, that's where you're coming from? Is the wideband noise artefacts from the PHY, or just common mode stuff that rides along from the host or both?

 

I would expect, in theory, this to apply to DSD, but listening so far is Redbook with some hires, all upsampled to 192k as far as content is concerned.

My guess at the volume would be at least 1-2db.

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I did not see anyone mention the IFI USB 3.0 which is talked about frequently over at Headfi. Anyone considering these products should give that one a look as well.

 

This thread is about an Intona Isolator, not a IFI USB 3.0 unless you've compared them, please present your findings, keen to read about them.

 

The original IFI USB is capable about 5% of what the Intona can deliver, even with the purifier FWIW. The low noise wall wart that came with that device is bettered by even a modest linear PSU, mentioned a few times on this site. IFi would need to claw back some credibility IME quite a hike before I would depart with cash their way.

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For intona, is it recommended to be place near the dac or the source for greatest impact?

 

The type and length of the USB cable can have an influence on the overall operation of the Intona/DAC combo. Technically the output should be short cable to the DAC. The Intona and DAC is treated as one by the computer, rather than individual devices, the cabling forms part of this process.

 

Members report the best cables are the cheap short ones, with the exotic audiophile types causing problems, but where is the line drawn, is the hard question and very much unknown territory. From my experience, the 0.5m Lindy worked both sides, a 1m Nordost on the input worked, but failed when another 1m Nordost was added on the output of the Intona, can be that fickle. The end result though pays back the effort in spades to persist to get this right.

 

To his credit, Daniel from Intona is awaiting audiophile cables to reproduce what we report here and observe what goes on in the Intona to report back in due course.

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I received my Intona Industrial 1/5. I have been attempting to use it with a Berkeley Alpha USB. I could not make it happen.

 

Has anyone used one with the Berkeley successfully?

 

I switched to an Off-Ramp 5. Wow as others have stated it was a huge improvement. I have spent way more money on usb cables that are collecting dust. It is a must have for my system.

 

2012 Mini > Curious .08m > Intona > Curious Regen Link > Regen > Curious Regen Link > OffRamp 5 > Empirical Audio BNC > SFD 2 MKIII

 

Perhaps try this?

2012 Mini > Curious .08m >Regen >Curious Regen Link >Intona > Curious Regen Link > OffRamp 5 > Empirical Audio BNC > SFD 2 MKIII

 

What OS are you using?

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