EtherREGEN: The long development thread. [Some Gen2 dev. pics and update starting on page 92.]

[tboooe]

On 3/22/2018 at 10:51 AM, Superdad said:

EtherREGEN (that's just a working codename, not saying we will use that)

Put me down for a pre-order unit!!!!! 

 

BTW, love the SFP port!

[tboooe]

I am really excited about this.  When I switched to Server 2016 core, I lost the ability to have a direct Ethernet connection between my HQP PC and NAA via a bridge.  Having to use a switch has taken away some of the dynamics and magic.  Hopefully this new Uptone product will help restore the great sound I was getting.

[tboooe]

Here is the wireless bridge i've been using for a while now.  Rock solid, cheap and handles DSD and high res in my system without any drop outs.

 

https://www.amazon.com/D-Link-Wireless-Gigabit-Extender-DAP-1650/dp/B00JFOP688

[tboooe]

Hey Alex...how about accepting Pre-orders perhaps providing a little discount for early adopters!  I am afraid by Feb I will be out of money because of xmas, property tax, etc...in other words take me money now!!!!!!!

[tboooe]

32 minutes ago, Superdad said:

Sorry Tommy, we can't do that.  

a) It goes completely against my business ethics to accept money in advance for a product that does not yet have production PCBs and cases in production with firm delivery dates;

Yes, I am totally aware and respect your company policy.  I was only messing around, though not really kidding about being out of money after Xmas....

[tboooe]

1 minute ago, Superdad said:

now let's talk about something other than clocking, which, in our opinion is far from the most important or interesting aspect of what EtherREGEN will be about. 

Yes!  How about this...are you guys testing different fiber cables (single vs multi) or is that outside the scope?

[tboooe]

16 hours ago, Superdad said:

While the EtherREGEN will have four Gigabit copper RJ45 jacks, one 100Mbps über-isolated copper port, and one SFP cage for Gigabit fiber, we were not planning to include the fiber SFP module.

I agree to leave out the SFP. I was only wondering if you plan on testing the different kinds of fiber cable to see if there is any sound impact. I highly doubt it but perhaps your new device will reveal differences that standard fiber switches are not capable of.

[tboooe]

14 minutes ago, barrows said:

Good quality fiber cable is fairly inexpensive, so it is probably worth it to purchase something nice.  The termination process for fiber cable is very important, so I would suggest that one purchases fiber cable from a trusted supplier who know how to properly terminate it.

Any suggestions???

[tboooe]

5 hours ago, thyname said:

Just a silly question (please delete if inappropriate here): why would this Ethernet Switch would work better than fiber optics converters? Provided the one downstream converter is powered by a nice / clean LPS of course.

I have used multiple FMC in my system.  Even if you power it with a good LPS, a weakness is still is still the internal electronics of the FMC like the voltage regulator, caps, etc.  This is where I see the Uptone product having an opportunity to be better.

[tboooe]

1 hour ago, Superdad said:

$600 switch

Ok good to know.  Need to start saving my pennies now.  I've got a difficult decision to make though.  I squirrelled away enough money during Xmas to buy another LPS-1.2 so now I need to decide if I should wait to buy the EtherRegen?????  I know the right answer is to buy both but I've got two highly demanding daughters that think otherwise.

[tboooe]

On 1/15/2019 at 11:51 PM, JohnSwenson said:

As far as the clock noise attenuation goes there are two domains: one has the 4 RJ45 jacks and the SFP cage. The other side has the 5th RJ45 jack.

 

So going from any of the 4 jacks or SFP cage to the 5th jack blocks the clock noise. Going from the 5th jack to any of the 4 jacks or the SFP cage blocks the clock noise. Going from a 4 jack to another 4 jack does NOT block the clock noise and going from a 4 jack to the SFP cage does NOT block the clock noise. So as long as the 5th jack is involved in the path then clock noise is blocked.

 

John S.

So based on this explanation for people like me that's uses HQP with an NAA, the best configuration to take advantage of the 5th jack nose blocking is:

 

Connect router/switch to any of the 4 jacks

Connect 5th jack to HQP PC

Connect NAA to any of the 4 jacks

 

This way, date coming from the router/switch to the HQP PC and upsampled music from the HQP PC to the NAA willl get noise blocking.  Did I get that right?

 

[tboooe]

46 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

You’re idea is interesting but,

 

 

Diecaster is correct about this.   DAC-connected endpoint should be best by itself on its own side.

 

Realworld experimentation could yield other results though. 

Ok, so there is no benefit to going through the 5th jack more than once.  One pass through it it's b enough.

[tboooe]

1 hour ago, Superdad said:

John's clock-block

That  made me laugh!  I had to do a double take on that to make sure I read that right!!!

[tboooe]

I know this is all conjecture right now until the product is officially released but hey, its fun to hypothesize about audio right?

 

Anyway, right now in my 2 pc setup, I have my HQP and NAA machines connected directly using a Blue Jean CAT6 cable and IPV6.  My HQP pc has a dual fiber and single copper nic.  The fiber nic is connected to Cisco Catalyst 2960 switch which is connected to a wireless bridge via copper.  

 

My initial thought was that I would plug everything into the EtherRegen, replace the Cisco switch and I would no longer have the direct connection between the HQP and NAA pc.  However, I got to thinking that perhaps keeping the direct connection is still superior.  In that case, I would still keep the Cisco switch and put the EtherRegen in between the HQP and NAA pc's.

 

I would appreciate any thoughts on this especially if the EtherRegen incorporates the advantages of a direct connection in a 2 pc set up.

[tboooe]

On 7/9/2019 at 3:09 PM, Superdad said:

As long as you are crossing the “moat” from one side to the other, the benefits of our special active isolation, ultra-low-hirer differential flip-flops, and femto clocking will be obtained. 

And even on the multi-jack side we made a number of efforts to passively isolate the ports from one another (12-core per port magnetics and center-tap grounding and capacitors).

 

In my NAP + NAA set up, does it make any sense to set up the EtherRegen so both PCs are getting a "clean" signal?  I was thinking of connecting my wireless bridge and NAA pc to the A side and my HQP pc to the B side. This way, the signal crosses the most twice, once going into my HQP pc from the wireless bridge and once going into my NAA pc from the HQP pc.  Or is all that matters is the final device getting the clean signal?

 

[tboooe]

47 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

You have me a bit confused--about the crossing the moat twice stuff. You might need to post a diagram of your system. 

 

But again, there is no "clean side" or "dirty side."  There is just the moat separating the two clock/data/power domains.  And ideally the DAC-attached device is alone by itself on one side or the other. But its certainly okay to put two end-point renderer devices on the 'A' ports side and feed in from the rest of your network via the 'B' port.

 

Hope that helps. 

Sorry for not being more clear @Superdad.  I understand the idea of no clean or dirty side.  As long as the signal passes the moat then the EtherRegen will do its magic.  I am trying to take advantage of this concept by having the signal pass the moat twice, once as the music is transferred from my wireless bridge to the HQP PC and another time when the HQP PC transfers the upsampled music to the NAA PC.  I am wondering if there is any advantage to sending a clean signal to the HQP PC or is all that matters is the NAA PC getting the clean signal. Here is a diagram:

 

 

[tboooe]

16 minutes ago, Ricardo007 said:

@Superdad @JohnSwenson

I have ISP contract for 200Mbps. My ISP integrated modemrouterswitch is connected to a cisco 2960 switch and from theres to my network audio. I plan to buy etherregen and add it after the cisco.

Now my question is the following:

By using etherchannel i can aggregate 2 100mbps copper ports for higher speed 200mbps to the etheregen side A. For streaming service use would that be in theory better?

Streaming high res uses way less than 100mbps so there is no need to aggregate.  In my system, even DSD512 uses only about 50mbps.

[tboooe]

38 minutes ago, Nenon said:

 

Don't forget that there are other use cases.

In my system (Euphony/Stylus), when I hit the play button, the track gets downloaded from my NAS to my music server, loaded completely in RAM, and played from RAM. It would take close to 3 minutes to download a 2GB DSD512 track over 100Mbps connection. Luckily my files are not that big at the moment, but if they were, I would have to wait 3 minutes between tracks...

I read the technical explanation why the port is limited to 100Mbps, but it is kind of a bummer.

 

Agreed but I thought the original question was regarding specifically streaming services like Tidal, etc.