ISO REGEN launch thread! (product web page up; photos, etc.)

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19 hours ago, tboooe said:

And this is precisely why I trust Uptone and am willing to buy their products without any sort of audition.  Business ethics is not an oxymoron.

?+1

I also ordered one from Martin at Vortexbox UK and I managed to snaffle one on Monday. When Martin was setting up his webpage I thought to have a look and there it was so I ordered. Looking forward to comparing to my Wavio USB>Spdif board powered by LPS-1. 

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9 hours ago, JohnSwenson said:

The red switch on the ISO REGEN defeats the isolation, it shorts the the upstream and downstream grounds.

 

The switch on the USPCB turns the 5V (VBUS) off for the downstream device. Both of these are for very unusual circumstances that most people will never encounter so can pretty much be ignored by most people.

 

One of the purposes of the ISO REGEN is to isolate the grounds between the upstream and downstream ports. (this also includes isolating signal and VBUS) This blocks leakage currents (not enough space here to talk about leakage currents, see the hundreds of posts I've made on the subject) and will be a significant SQ improvement for most people.

 

BUT we noted in our tests that some systems that have already gone through extensive isolation techniques that the isolation in the ISO REGEN causes the entire audio system to be so isolated from the outside world that static charges build up on the whole system which every now and then discharge through some path (unknown at this point) and when they do the data traveling to the DAC gets interrupted causing a click or pop in the audio.

 

The switch is there to short the grounds which will get rid of the ticks and pops.

 

We have found that there is usually another way to fix this problem, which is to make sure that one and only one place in the entire audio system is grounded. This prevents the buildup of static charges and does NOT cause any leakage loops and ground loops. This is the preferred method to get rid of these ticks and pops, the switch is the backup in case there is no way for you to ground some part of the system.

 

Any device with a three pin power plug is going to automatically be grounding the system (DAC, preamp, poweramp etc) so if you have something like that currently in your system you probably don't have to worry about that.

 

You can also use the switch diagnose the problem. If you add the ISO REGEN into your chain and start getting ticks and pops, try flipping the switch, if they go away you know you have a system that needs grounding at some point. So then ground something and flip the switch back to the ISO position and the ticks and pops should be gone.

 

So to recap most people can ignore the switch, it is only need in a small number of systems.

 

John S.

Thank you John another valuable piece of information on grounding/leakage etc that helps fill in the knowledge gaps. 

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On 24 May 2017 at 5:09 PM, Superdad said:

That's quite the word salad there!   But I'll reply to a couple of those vegetables anyway.

Priceless.. made my wife and I laugh out loud Alex