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

[One and a half]

Found a pic for the internal view from here: Intona High Speed USB isolator! - Page 4; isolation is provided through Silicon Lab's Si8660.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23484[/ATTACH]

 

Wonder what the small connector is for on the input side.

[One and a half]

After a week or more of agony with the one HP-Z800 Workstation to get the Intona/Mutec combo going, gave up. I bet the new ASIO driver conflicted with the RME card, that's why there's the trouble.

 

 

Hauled out of the dust, a Sony Vaio Dual Core T-9600(?) Win7 Home Premium laptop, and ran as source. No drama, worked right out of the box, two years laying dormant. Woohoo! I liked what I heard, stayed up a few nights very late listening, well worth it.

 

 

The Sony's replacement arrived last week, a Lenovo m93p, tiny thing it really is, a little less than a Mac mini in size, except the power supply is rather half the size...! That machine also accepted the Intona/Mutec combo with any cable I could throw at it, finally settled on Nordost Blue Heaven input and output. Sound is just superb!

 

 

Technology doesn't sit still, great minds must think alike and develop ideas at the same time. Mutec have released their USB to 5 way AES3, S/PDIF, AES3id, Optical et al converter, Mutec MC-3 + USB. This device isolates the USB to the other outputs to 2500V. Throw in a super clocking mechanism discussed here at CA of a sister product, and there's one less cable to buy...! USB straight into the Mutec and out with super reclocking, yum. Does this get any better?

 

 

Mutec MC-3 + USB.

 

[One and a half]

This Mutec reclocker is no different to BADA Alpha USB, which also offers galvanic isolation from USB in to SPDIF out (and many other USB/SPDIF converters, that have transformer coupled digital outputs).

 

On the BADA USB, their description of isolation is unprecedented. That doesn't describe a level at all, do you know what it is?

[One and a half]

The greatest disadvantage of the MUTEC is that all incoming DSD signals are converted to PCM. There is output of PCM signals only.

 

Matt

 

Moot locally, and see your point. If you want to listen to DSD, use a DSD DAC. If it's not critical, HQPlayer does a reasonably great job of DSD to PCM conversions. Just need to find the right filter.

 

My place, DSFs are burned to DVD and played in SACD player and decoded as DSD stream, works very well. Means having to get up out of the chair to spin a disc, am willing to do some exercise and hunting

[One and a half]

I'm not sure if Mutec has galvanic isolation on power AND DATA lane...

It is not specified on webpage and have a doubts...

 

Like the Intona, all lines are separated from input to output. It is not possible to maintain a level of 2500V with just the power pair isolated.

[One and a half]

Exercise and hunting are great, but you are limited to DSD64 and you asked:"Does this get any better?"

IMHO, the best would be to have a reclocked high quality USB output with DSD256 support in the MUTEC.

 

Matt

 

OK, your opinion, no problem.

[One and a half]

I received my industrial version Intona yesterday and tried to install this evening. No matter what configuration (with or with Regen) or combination of USB cables I try, my OS (WS 2012 Essentials R2) tells me that the USB device is not recognized or compatible....

 

The below worked for me recently, can only offer some help in desperate times.

 

If the software for your DAC is installed remove it for now.

 

Disconnect the Intona feed in cable of now but have the device side connected to the DAC.

 

Use Winzip/RAR something to expand the driver, so you can see the inf, sys, files.

Press WIN+R and run the hardware wizard, HDWWIZ. Add in a new Sound, Video or game controller and Have Disk and point to the location where the inf, sys, files are.

Now at least the drivers will install.

 

When finished re-connect the Intona.

[One and a half]

 

I just want to confirm that for those who have made a connection between the Intona and the Mutec, you didn't need the Regen or a powered USB hub to do it? Any tricks to making the connection work?

 

I really don't want to ditch the USB cable I'm using for another one.

 

Thanks,

 

Joel

 

I'm not sure of the firmware version of the Intona you have and the one at home, let's say they are the same batch. I tried quite a few cables, from the very short & cheap 0.5m Lindy cables to 1m Nordost Blue Heaven. On the machine I had driver troubles with, a hub worked, but a reboot caused that to fall in a heap, the powered hub soon vanished. When the Oyaide continentals were used, the signal dropped totally on a proper working machine.

 

I had better results in changing the cabling with the power off even pulling out the computer's power cable just to be sure. Changing cables live had mixed results and not generally a good idea to have the player operating while live cable testing is performed.

 

The difficulty most likely can be overcome with a firmware upgrade, not sure how this can be accomplished, user download would be good, like a .bin file loaded via usb input and a simple exe. Perhaps Intona can chime in on how this can be accomplished, without sending the Intona back to Germany.

[One and a half]

In trying to debug the Curious cable edginess, I thought that the cable was wired wrong, or there's a partial short circuit, something else, so time for a bench test.

For the test, 2 old USB cables were cannabilised with flying leads out to test. It would be simple to disconnect and leave the curious cable intact. I don't have an impedance (RLC) meter or milliohm tester, just a DMM, but let's see.

The Curious 0.8m cable, both of them were wired correctly, so +5V Vbus, GND and the differential pair passed through OK. The USB shell did not go through, was disconnected. Hmm, 10M Ohm +, so open circuit.

 

Checked the Lenovo m93P computer's USB USB2 shell (power off) and to earth was 0.98M Ohm, similarly, the "GND" connection of the DC power supply connector was also 0.9M Ohm above ground. So the USB system floats above earth, OK, move on.

There is no direct connection between the Input and Output USB shells of the Intona. The USB shell on the HP Z800 is connected directly to earth, so computers do vary.

 

When the Curious cable connects to the Lenovo, the USB shell floats above ground at the input to the Intona. The output of the Intona connected to the Mutec and there the USB shell is grounded to earth (0.1 Ohm) utilising the earth connection from the AC Power cable.

 

This means, the shield in the Curious Cable's shield is floating above earth, and depending on the capacitances in the system can couple quite a bit of crud to the Intona where (my guess) is summarily rejected. The Intona then flashes slow and the DAC is not found. I even bypassed the Intona and connected to the Mutec directly with the Curious cable and it still didn't work. HQPlayer would not accept any file to drag and drop and then the sample rate shown is a blank, so nothing will happen.

 

I tested a fistful of generic USB A to USB B, Mini, Micro, left overs from hard drives, phones and the like. The resistance of the shell from end to end varied about as much as the price at the fuel pump to fill up your car. No consistency at all, varying from tens of Ohms to 400k to open circuit. Both the Oyaide Continental USB and Nordost Blue Heaven USB cables passed the shield through with no resistance, the latter I've good results with the Intona 100% connection rate every time, and consistently has very good SQ. The Oyaide is temperamental, and it's shorter, not sure what's going on there without the test equipment to verify.

 

For those of you with problems, perhaps the cure is to find a cable that has the shell continuous. How to find.....

 

This is an extract from a TI data sheet on testing of USB cables worth the read and transcribed here.

 

5.2 USB Cables and Connectors

When sending full speed signaling, USB cables rely on the shielding integrity of the cable and connector

shield. Field tests with 65% braid show no measurable leakage through the shield. However, the shield

must be carefully terminated to the connector. Most shielding failures can be traced to improper

termination of the cable shield to the connector or connector shell to the receptacle. Full speed USB cables

are specified to have a woven or spirally wound copper shield. Such a shield can be crimped to the

connector shell yielding 3600 shield coverage at the connector. The use of a foil shield with a drain wire is

not recommended due to the series inductance of the drain wire and the tendency of foil to crack with

cable flexing. Low speed USB cables are not required to have shielding or to maintain a specified

impedance.

 

USB receptacles should maintain high quality shielding and a low RF impedance between the receptacle

shell and the mating connector on the cable. This may be accomplished by means of multiple wiping

contacts on the inside of the receptacle’s shell. A minimum of four contact points is recommended. A high

degree of shielding may be achieved by enclosing the sides, top, and back of the connector with a metal shell. The shell should be provided with a low impedance connection to signal ground and, in cases where a metal chassis is present, a means of accepting a metal EMI gasket clip.

[One and a half]

Correction to above post, the Oyaide Continental USB A to B works with the Intona, full loom.

 

Cables with shields at one end only advice from marce. I suspect this to be the case with the Curious Cables.

[One and a half]

That is all quite interesting, but it does not explain or justify why the Intona isolator is so sensitive and particular about USB cables.

 

I too have a drawer full of stock Belkin Gold and other quite standard cables, and for the life of me can not get my Intona unit to work with my XMOS-input DAC without a REGEN betWeen the Intona and the DAC. And even with the REGEN in, if I try to use the Curious cable I can not get the DAC recognized as able to do anything beyond 96KHz (USB 1.1 Full Speed). Rather frustrating.

 

If the cables have imperfect shields, then they may as well be antennas. But you subscribe to float everything above ground, I don't need to convince.

 

Daniel from Intona is working on the solution as far as the handshaking is concerned. Is it possible to borrow your scope from JS to look at the data for crud with a scope? Or a USB analyser?

[One and a half]

Hi,

it's my first post here and I'm pleased to have the opportunity to share my thoughts and my audio experiences with the CA members.

 

I have been reading this thread from the beginning so i would like to ask if someone has tested this isolator that it seems to be like Intona but in lower price.

It's a high speed usb isolator with interesting features and it provides an input for external power. So it solves the issues that coming from power hungry usb inputs...

 

Cool, comes complete with industrial locking USB cables. I can see the debate to rage about Boutique USB cables being outfitted with locking connectors. Thanks for the tip on the product. Quite a large box isn't it, the DC connector is for downstream support, so this should be clean 5V or discarded if DAC doesn't use it, like Auralic Vega.

 

FYI. The Intona creates an I2S stream from the incoming USB, transverses the barrier by capacitive coupling and re-creates the USB waveform.

 

Had a thought to obtain a bare-bones Intona, and mount a Regen in the same enclosure. Avoids several USB cables which can be expensive and cause impedance problems. Power supply for the Regen can be then battery, LPS built in the same enclosure, like an Acopian, whatever you like, quite few choices there.

[One and a half]

Actually, that is not correct. The SiliconLabs Si866X isolators used by the Intona use tiny RF transmitters and RF receivers separated by a semiconductor-based isolation barrier (see: http://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/TechnicalDocs/Si866x.pdf).

 

[bTW, those isolators add 350ps of jitter which needs to be reclocked out. John Swenson greatly prefers the NVE GMR (giant-magneto-resistive) isolators as they are quieter and add less jitter.]

 

So it is,as described on page 22. Where did I get the capacitive info from them? Now you need to quantify "less jitter" akin to "whiter than". Anyway, it may not be important if the data is treated with re-clocking on the output side, doesn't matter (for audio) if the delays are through the barrier.

[One and a half]

If you are thinking of DIY using a linear PSU to avoid battery charging hassles, then a dual bobbin transformer which has less capacitive coupling through the primary and secondary windings back to mains earth, may be a better choice than even an r-core. In your case though, with your set up you shouldn't have mains earth loop problems at, all which is possibly why the Curious cables were far from an improvement, by opening up the possibility of RF/EMI ingress ?

 

The dual bobbin is a good idea, perhaps in combo with a Microphone transformer. We don't need that large current draw, and the mic transformer has high CMRR, saw one with 98dB rejection. The turns ratio is a little difficult quite a few are high gain jobs, saw one with 1:4 ratio, which means a 36V secondary on the bobbin down to 4 gives 9Vac, through a regulator. Getting a bit OT here. Just some ideas.

[One and a half]

I can only guess that the Mutec must add back a little noise after the Intona but this could be just down to my setup.

 

Can be a very unforgiving hobby/obsession at times but at least the music gets better :-))

 

As more USB cables and fixers are added to the chain until the final destination whether it be a DAC or USB->S/PDIF converter, the hum (or ground loop voltage) on the cable shell increases relative to the source at each step. The ideal is to have 0V on either end of the USB cable chain, but we never get there, unless the insides of the source and destination are wired to have the same philosophy.

 

Or make a Music Server that stores music files with (balanced) analog outs and be done with all this.

[One and a half]

The Uptone audio regen is a gimmick and snakeoil "audiophool" product. This has been proven over at whatsbestforum where it actually causes increased jitter and 8khz packet noise. Alex said he would do a blind test and now he has backed out from it.

 

The intona is an actual real product solving real problems. So it gets my recommendation.

 

Who are you again?

[One and a half]

All: Without having a chance yet to read this entire thread quite yet...

 

Would the Intona USB Isolator Industrial be compatible with Mac/curious usb 5v/usb wired 4 sound recovery/curious 200m no 5v/auralic vega processor?

And do we have any success stories with this exact setup?

 

Thank you.

 

Is that stirred, not shaken?

[One and a half]

Thanks Robert the advice gained here can literally save mega pounds. would the wired for sound recovery achieve similar improvements in overall SQ? It is a much easier prospect with regards to setting up. however if the intona performs better it would make no sense to pursue the recovery especially as the price difference is marginal. at the end of the day i want my computer to see the dac if i get the intona. as i said before reports to the contrary worry me.

 

The Intona and Recovery do different things. The Intona kills leakage currents from the computer to DAC. The Recovery works on the Signal Integrity of the USB signal. Use both items, unless someone makes one unit that can do both functions.

[One and a half]

If you can afford one, the Intona industrial or JCAT (same device) is 'the one'.

 

Agreed.

[One and a half]

one a half said "unless someone makes a unit with both functions?" my first quote above from intona surely confirms this. ie the intona std., does fulfill both functions. (apologies for double post)

 

Ahh OK, please refer to this post from John Swenson about leakage currents and what the regen and intona as well as just a USB cable does in playback from a computer.

[One and a half]

With regards to the intona standard it states that it does work at all speeds low , medium and high with regards to usb data transfer. would this then benefit someone who uses tidal hifi//i'm assuming it must if it works at all speeds and that high speed usb data transfer is mainly for 24/192 files and similar. still learning!! For the given quality below what speed would usb data transfer utilise here?

Flac 1411 kbps - Lossless : TIDAL HIFI(16/44.1 khz)

 

The Intona standard or industrial can throughput DSD256 (44.1Khz x 256) that I know of reliably, perhaps it can do DSD512(?), so certainly 192 or 358 is easily achievable.

[One and a half]

Has anyone purchased the HiFime High speed USB isolator? Priced at USD79.

[One and a half]

USB has earned a reputation of not a great interface, principally for a direct connection from the computer to Dac.

If you search through these pages at CA, treatments to tame the noise includes:

Separate linear PSU for hard drives

Linear power supplies inside the computer

Shielding of ribbon cables

Specialised dedicated motherboards just for audio

Special software for minimising processes

Clean 5V supplies

 

Some if not all have an influence on the output regardless though, there's still leakage current via the computers power supply that heads toward the DAC.

 

All the fixes inside the computer are relatively benign when the USB cable is isolated from the DAC. I haven't bothered with anything special in the computer, only choosing different players.

I use the Intona and the RUR and they certainly affect Sq for the better. The advantage is, the transmission is unaffected, no special 5V required, since the leakage currents travel via the shield...

 

Compare simple USB to Ethernet transmissions. The best solution is pc to renderer without switches and use unshielded UTP cables. With renderer, it needs a PSU, naturally isolated of course, otherwise we end up with more loops and more leakage current.

 

At the moment, keep things simple and direct, IMHO that means USB. One day someone will come along and invent a combined usb isolator, high speed with signal integrity. That will mean one less cable and another wall wart to worry about...sigh, will it ever end.

[One and a half]

Hi One and a Half,

 

With my DAC isolated from the PC, I expected this was true. However after upgrading my PC by powering the SSD with an LPS1, sound quality greatly improved. I'm afraid this theory is not true.

 

Sorry,

 

Larry

 

Point taken, no problems with your experience. A computer then is forever doomed to spew rubbish on the USB differential which is a bad thing and deserved the reputation it has, AES3 has some bright hope yet.

 

As to how much tweaking is required for a PC to clam up the noise is a matter of patience and expense, which I don't have, so I don't bother, hence the theory

 

For the Aurender, Aries, Lumin, Azur 851N, SGM have a bright future after all, small signal paths, nice.

[One and a half]

Thanks for your note. I don't know why the SSD powered by the LPS1 has such an impact on SQ. Looking at the operation of an SSD, they are huge noise makers in the gigahertz band and never seem to idle, hence always processing in an effort to retain data.

 

Given that, why would the delivery of a very clean fast five volt power matter. Perhaps it's the speed of the lps1? I don't know.

 

Ideas?

 

I'd say the LPS-1 has stopped some of the leaks.

 

Here's a structural diagram of a typical switchmode and the leakage paths, that are conducted only, let alone emitted...! If it's not clear, I enclose the pdf where it came from. There are a lot of leaks to plug.

 

 

2004NOV16_POW_TA.pdf

 

The point is a computer has many such power supplies, the leakage paths that go to ground, see those? They will end up on the SB out, or on the shield of a CAT5/6. There's still some that can jump transformers in NICs unless those transformers have shields between windings.