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

[manpowre]

15 pages to read.. so I have a question.

 

I will buy one, as I have High end Headphones with High end DAC, and I do know for a fact that the issue with 8khz +14khz and 24khz peaks can affect the DAC, and you can hear the difference.

 

Question is, can I skip the High end cable TO the Intona unit from PC ? and use the High end USB between Intona and DAC only ?

I really dont want to buy another 200 dollar high end usb cable.

 

I also know that the cables themselves can produce noise on the digital wavelength. and this is also something that can affect the DAC. Therefore a reasonably good cable between PC and Intona device is necessary with good cobber, but not the 1 dollar printer cable offcourse.

 

What do you guys suggest ?

 

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[manpowre]

I was ready to buy a SOTM TX-USBhubEX but now I'm in doubt about choose it or intona industrial. Some of you guys had the chance to compare both?thanksAndre

 

On a pure technical note to the SOTM TX-USBhubEX, I cant find information that it is galvanized USB like the Intona. It does have 5V cutoff, but it seems on the other hand it needs power like a DC or battery pack, while Intona uses the 5V from each side to power the circuitry.

SOTM TX-USBhubEX has a low jitter clock, but I cant find which one, so personally I would take that information with a grain of salt (since they dont state which oscillator they use), while Intona has stated which oscillator they use and its performance too. Even Regen states which oscillator they use!

 

To me, SOTM TX-USBhubEX seems similar to Uptone Regen, but I cant find which Oscillator they use to really compare on a technical level.

 

Do note, that Crystal Oscillators like the one in Regen degrade over time. It has a aging property, while the Oscillator in Intona doesnt have aging property since it is supposed to be for industrial use.

 

I am very very happy with the Intona.

 

My next step is USB to AES/EBU with a 1ppm oscillator on the AES port (Gustard U12) and compare that with the Intona USB, and even using Intona in front of the Gustard U12.

 

Also I do measure FFT differences with and without Intona.

[manpowre]

getting new intona for hugo. is there any likelyhood and putting aside all the positive effects of the intona that it can interfere with the finely tuned sound signature of a dac like chord hugo. ie making the dac sound different to the manufacturers intention, possibly as the dac was not intended to operate with an intona type device?? cheers mk

 

The Intona unit is transparent in the setup, it can't fail the setup, if anything it helps the DAC with timing the packets together with the DAC on a general notice. For Hugo specifically, you have to look through the Intona thread for users who used Intona with the Hugo Dac. Some DAC's already have galvanized usb input and 5v cutoff on the USB input itself before feeding data to the DAC board like Hegel DAC's, so the Intona doesnt get power on the DAC side. This is why some people didnt get it to work with some DACs and some DACs feed 5V just fine to the Intona unit.

[manpowre]

Or you can try Ideon Audio 3R. A friend of mine ditched his intona & Regen for one of these

 

I just checked their spec page, I cant see galvanization, and neither the oscillator type mentioned for re-clock, and it needs a power supply which reintroduces noise from the power net.

 

3R USB Renessaince

The new rumoured Uptone is supposed to have a capacitated psu = kind of a short battery for power that gives stable current, a Crystal 1ppm oscillator to reclock like the regen, and galvanized USB. This is all in one box.

[manpowre]

 

1) how does the intona feed a clean 5v supply to some dacs. linear internal psu maybe?

2) i understand the 5v is for usb powered dacs, a mains powered dac does not need 5v from intona? just handshake.

3) with the chord hugo which is battery powered even when the charger is plugged in, does this affect the benefits of intona because charger comes after intona? does it utilise the 5v from intona or is it just a handshake again. confused here? hugo is not usb powered but still a portable with a battery.

4) is the intona compatible with micro usb ports. i will check also with daniel. was the intona even designed to output to micro usb..umm?

5) is there any better device on the market now or does intona still lead the way? uptone device?

6) transparent intona means zero effect on dac sound signature.?

7) if the intona is bidirectional and asynchrous dac clock is master controlling communication of data packets to and from the computer this works downstream with intona. but with upstream how can the reclocking of the data by intona work upstream and not interfere with the asynch. control of the dacs clock. never understood this. ok so this requires more than a yes or a no...lol

yes/no replies much appreciated. learning fast here.

thanks to all. mk.

 

I had a huge learning curve the last year too.. I just saw my own question in this thread 4th of april last year asking about expencive usb cables and about the Intona unit..

 

1. Intona doesnt feed the dac, it uses the 5vbus from the dac to power the DAC side of the USB galvanization. Basically there are 2 boards inside the Intona unit. With a galvanization chip between them, no current is transferred between the boards. Any 5vbus noise is coming from the dac itself. The computer powers the PC side inside the Intona unit, and the DAC powers the DAC side of the Intona unit.

 

2. the 5vbus is not for dac's so to say, its used for charging cell phones, and usb hub's and mouse's and harddrives etc.. the DAC unless its a small dac that only gets power from the 5vbus. In such case the DAC doesnt get power from the 5vbus with the Intona unit, a powered USB hub is then necessary after the Intona towards the dac, which again leaks noise from power lines into the 5vbus. (according to Uptone's own comments).

 

3. Chord Hugo, I dont own the unit, but if it provides 5vbus power on USB it can power the DAC side of the Intona unit. (The Hegel DAC's Ive reviewed and owned did not provide 5vbus towards the Intona unit).

 

4. qood question. The first thing I thought about this was the fact that a cell phone doesnt give current on 5v out to drain the battery does it, atleast not the amount of power Intona needs to operate ? then I went for my living room to my setup and plugged my Samsung S6 edge to the intona, no light on the PC/phone side using a usb hub between. (I know using the HUB works as Ive been using it without power connector on the DAC side a few times to see if it works without power). Then I connected power to the hub, and power lid on the Intona, but no sync signal and phone played out on the phone speakers not the DAC. So I guess not.

 

5. Some people are claiming using the Uptone regen after the Intona towards the DAC gives a better sound. I have not tried this, as the Uptone regen needs power supply too, and I dont want to purchase a 400 dollar power supply for the small regen to give it clean capacitated power. Instead personally I have been looking at similar oscillator as Uptone regen uses (1ppm Crystal oscillator) and found the Gustard U12 to have same oscillator for AES/EBU and spdif! Berkeley usb to spdif converter uses custom oscillators no idea yet what its performance is (I havent found out which type yet!) and this product also uses galvanization on usb. I will get a Uptone regen locally used here once I get the Gustard unit to do some measurements.

 

6. Transparent Intona means transparent to the system. no driver involved. The sound signature to me improves alot. All details are still there, but the soundstage improves, and bass and lower tones goes from slightly muddy to precise.

 

7. Personally I dont know exactly how this works in full detail, but I have understood it so that the digital bits/samples are timed and sent on the analogue wavelength in a more precise manner than what the USB card on the host computer can do. So basically Intona reads all the data, galvanizes the data and reconstructs the wavelength with power from the DAC itself on a as perfect can get wavelength with its non-degrading oscillator. This is exactly what Uptone regen does too. If you dont add power to the signal (like a usb hub) after the Intona towards the DAC, the only noise is created by the dac itself!

[manpowre]

Sorry, that is incorrect. No DAC provides VBUS power to an upstream connected device. Both sides of the Intona's single board are powered via the VBUS from the computer.

In the below photo you can see the Coilcraft transformer sitting at the bottom, across the moat. This is how they transfer VBUS power across without loosing the galvanic isolation. It is also why their VBUS power (when connected to a standard 500mA limited computer USB host port) is limited to 300mA.

(Sadly, they also place the one clock--which is used for both FPGAs--on the upstream "dirty" side. And then the Silicon Labs digital isolators use add jitter. Hopefully they do some sort of further rechecking in the downstream FPGA, but it must still be based on the clock coming from the upstream side through the isolators.)

 

Don't get me wrong, the Intona is effective as a galvanic isolator (I've had one for over a year). But it sure sounds a lot better with a REGEN (powered by an LPS-1 so as not to defeat the isolation) after it.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]33735[/ATTACH]

Thanks alot for that great clarification.

 

I have a Tascam UH-7000 and I replaced the power supply to a MeanWell 12v 30w power supply and got great results. I can barely hear difference on the AES/EBU output powering my Yggdrasil vs the old psu where I could hear a huge difference using AES. On the analogue part the old psu were muddy soundstage. The new psu is definetely not muddy anymore its clear as hell compared to the old psu, and in the beginning I had troubles differentiate my Yggdrasil vs the Tascam UH7000 as a dac, but after listening more I can easy tell the difference.

 

This exercise makes me think towards @Superdad's uptone LPS-1 where the supercapacitors are charged one side at a time with electronics to power things like a dac and especially measurement instruments like ADC. Just the fact that the timing mechanism of my Tascam UH-7000 which apparently has +/- 1ppm oscillator on AES output where there is such a big difference getting a proper power supply, imagine if I powered this Tascam unit with LPS-1. Unfortunately I need 11.2v so the LPS-1 is not strong enough for my usage.

 

Personally I think high end audio is moving towards usage of clean inside power supplies like the LPS-1 in the future, as the with 2-4kUSD gear we can hear and measure differences now.