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

[lmitche]

5 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

I really don’t want our inclusion of an SFP port to give people the impression that they need to run optical into the EtherREGEN to get great results. Copper is just fine.  The cable combination of John’s choice if magnetics and PHYs plus the active full isolation will deliver outstanding performance—beyond what is available in any other switch that we are aware of. 

Yes but, use of an optical SFP on the clean side implies a second optical SFP and power supply on the streamer side to convert to copper media as few streamer's have SFP based nics. Another conversion to copper demands a fiber media converter, so it is a reasonable question to ask if a second EtherRegen can be used in this role.

 

Or is the SFP on the dirty side and the clean side is copper only? This is not stated directly in John's post above.

 

 

 

[lmitche]

17 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

As one famous audiophile used to say:

 

 

Does anyone know what receiver and turntable were used in the advertisement above?

[lmitche]

20 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

centre of the known universe!

Only through an accident of geography!

[lmitche]

9 minutes ago, DelsFan said:

 

Thanks for your reply.  Does the same apply for the wireless router? 

I think my real question is:  Will the Streamer be allowed to communicate back and forth with the iPad, through the Wireless Router?  Isn't there usually some sort of security at the wireless router, and if the Streamer doesn't have the correct identification (password?) the Wireless Router won't allow the exchange of information with the "random" device upstream (in this case, the Streamer)?   Or is that security at the Modem?

 

As drawn, this won't work, or if it does it is not secure.

 

The modem needs to be plugged into the wan port of the wireless router. This puts the firewall between the modem and the lan devices. The EtherRegen would be plugged into one of the lan ports in the same wireless router.

 

Also, if possible, plug the office computer directly into the wireless router as well separating office traffic from music traffic.

[lmitche]

39 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

it doesn’t matter which’s is defining as front and rear will both have the same purpose

Alex, is this true? Is the etherregen power quality the same on both sides? Please don't answer if this is meant to be secret.

[lmitche]

12 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

It's not like you to post such an unclear question Larry. 

 

"Power quality?"  I mean we can discuss the various power networks throughout the EtherREGEN, including the 10+ LT3042/45 regulators being used to supply 22 chip voltage inputs.  

Or we can discuss the symmetricality of the data domains and how jitter reduction and clocking is accomplished.

 

So please rephrase and tell us what you are most interested in. 

Thanks,

--Alex.

Well yes, power quality is what I am after. The claim was that the EtherRegen was symmetric suggesting one side was as clean as the other. As I understand there is one power input, and there is galvanic isolation from one side to the other, I was curious if power quality is the same on both sides.

 

In other words, if I connect two devices, will it matter which side faces the DAC vs. the other?

 

Thinking further, and power aside, is the clocking symmetric?

 

I appreciate that this is mostly theoretical as no one has heard the EtherRegen yet. Some of this may be proprietary as well.

U

Is the question clear now? 😎

[lmitche]

27 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

 

But what you really want to know is if those 4 ports on that single side can “pollute” each other. Correct ?

Given the symmetry is already there between the sides. 

If you have one NAS, one server and one endpoint, with bridging they can be connected in a linear fashion with no need for using more than two spokes on each side of the EtherRegen hub. One could of course use 3 etheregens between 1) router and Nas 2) Nas and server 3) server and endpoint. 😉

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, austinpop said:

 

Alex, I'm getting mixed messages here. Are the A and B side symmetric (in terms of SQ) or not? It sounds like you're saying that it's not, and for max performance/SQ,

• the A side should be used for the upstream (router, upstream switch, bridged server, etc)
• the single100Mbps port on the B side to the endpoint.

I recently posted a picture on another thread of my current setup, where I use 2 ports on what you would call the clean (or B) side: one to the endpoint/streamer, and one directly to the DAC. This enabled me to evaluate the benefit of the switch on an Ethernet DAC, and compare the Ethernet and USB inputs of the DAC, both paths benefiting from the switch. Here's the picture:

 

My thought on how to replicate this with the EtherRegen - in the fulness of time! - was to reverse the A and B side: connect the upstream to the single port on the B side, and then connect the streamer and DAC in my picture to 2 of the 4 ports on the A side.

 

It sounds like that is bass-ackward and would be a suboptimal use of the EtherRegen.

 

Please clarify?

One could of course use 4 etheregens between 1) router and Nas 2) Nas and server 3) server and endpoint 4) endpoint and DAC!

[lmitche]

5 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

No, thank you!

Of course this would be ridiculously expensive, but if it wasn't, in theory it may be what you would want to do.

 

Testing two or more EtherRegens versus using the multi port switch side hub will be interesting.

[lmitche]

15 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

Please stop. 

 

P.S. Watch your mail box tomorrow Larry.  And it's not what you think...

Will do!

[lmitche]

34 minutes ago, JohnSwenson said:

Let me see if I can bring some clarity.

 

There are two types of "SQ degrading" influences the EtherRegen is designed to radically decrease, leakage, both high impedance and low impedance, and clock phase noise. The clock phase noise travels on the Ethernet signal itself (every edge coming out of any digital device caries the phase noise of the clock used to "clock out" that edge).

 

The very carefully chosen transformers on both sides play an important part in decreasing leakage. The active circuitry in the path across the moat adds a very major decrease as well. The result is that the leakage from A to B OR B to A is is decreased a huge amount. The decrease in leakage from one port to another on the A side is still quite significant but not nearly as much as when going from side to side.

 

The circuitry across the moat is designed to essentially eliminate the signal borne phase noise from one side to the other, it doesn't matter which direction, it works identically in both directions.

 

The circuitry between ports on the A side decreases these phase noise effects to some degree but not nearly as much as going from side to side.

 

There is ONE small difference between directions going across the moat: The clock generator is on the B side, so the circuits on the B side get a "pristine" clock. The clock from the B side goes through a very special isolator to the A side. This isolator has extremely low additive phase noise, much lower than any other isolator I could find. (it aint cheap!) The clock on the B side has slightly worse phase noise than the clock on the B side because of this. Whether this is going to be audible, who knows. Remember all the decrease in leakage and external phase noise is still there.

 

Going from port to port on the A side will be better than any other switch out there, but going from side to side (either way) will be a whole new world.

 

Because the B side has a slightly lower phase noise clock it is usually better to have the B side port connected to the streamer etc, but if you need to cross the moat the other way (such as using the SFP cage to drive optical into a streamer or DAC that has an optical input) That is also fine. The same decrease in leakage and external phase noise exists either way, the only difference is the slight increase in phase noise of the clock when going from B to A.

 

Because of this slight increase in phase noise when going from B to A, if you use a REALLY good external clock (such as a Ref10), you will only get the advantage of such a clock when connecting the B side to the streamer.

 

I hope this makes some sense.

 

John S.

Hi John,

 

Wow, that post is perfectly clear. The EtherRegen sounds like quite an achievement as well! 

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

[lmitche]

7 hours ago, Superdad said:

I’m Alex, not John.

 

We are choosing to use a 75ohm BNC and approriate termination resistors (50ohm will be available as special order).  Specifications of the clock synthesizer have nothing to do with the input impedance of the external clock connection.

 

No, we are programming it for 10MHz as that is the frequency of virtually every available external reference clock. To set it for some other frequency would not make any sense.

 

Interesting question. John might have some other thoughts on this but I can state what I know:

 

We have positioned the clock synth (and the Crystek 575 which for 95%+ of EtherREGEN users will be the internal reference clock driving it) on the ‘B’ side (the one with the lone port). The external BNC port also comes in on the ‘B’ side of the moat. 

 

So while the clocking to ‘A’ and ‘B’ sides is equally ultra-low-jitter on both sides (remember all clocking runs on very tightly controlled differential lines), the power/ground domain the external clock connects to is the ‘B’ side (refer to the board photo I posted).

Thus if using an external reference clock it is probably better to also be using—as most people will typically—the ‘B’ side port for connection to the furthest downstream, DAC-attached renderer/endpoint.  Otherwise there is a chance the galvanic isolation will be defeated. It depends.

 

Thinking about this makes me wonder about external reference clocks which typically have multiple ports (I sure can’t imagine someone buying a $3,500 ref clock just for an EtherREGEN!).  Are the output grounds of those ports common to each other? This is an area I don’t yet know much about.

 

I suppose if common ground domains (and possible power supply loops between a clock and upstream gear) are an issue, it is possible that performance may be better just using the EtherREGEN’s internal reference clock. 

[That may be the case anyway since jitter/phase-noise at the end of a long clock cable may be worse than from the internal clock.]

 

Please be careful about getting too hung up on ultimate clocking—whch in fact our circuitry is already very close to.  We think the “magic” of the EtherREGEN’s performance will come from the total leakage blocking of the active-isolated, dual data/power/clock domains—plus all the care we put into choosing magnetics, voltage regulators, logic chips and all the differential signaling.

As I’ve said, this is an Ethernet switch unlike ANY other. 

While I know this isn't the place, I have never seen a discussion of the impact of the hub based clock cabling schemes on Galvanic Isolation. It would be interesting to learn the facts about this once and for all.

 

Maybe this is a good "Novel" thread topic as many there have external clocking experience.

 

 

[lmitche]

8 hours ago, Superdad said:

 I’m in bed with a couple of cracked ribs

Oh no!!!! Please take it easy. Best wishes for a quick recovery.

[lmitche]

7 hours ago, JohnSwenson said:

One thing to consider is that your current situation of sending music through the Ethernet while playing significantly degrades sound may in fact go away when using an EtherREGEN, that is in fact its primary purpose, to get rid of anything coming over the network that will degrade sound.  It seems like your assumption is that the degradation is coming from the renderer itself having to deal with the data rather than from what is coming over the connection itself. It's hard to tell exactly which it is.

 

The EtherREGEN may clean up the external degradation so much that having music data coming over the wire wile it is being played does not cause any degradation. Or there still might be some effect from the renderer's  electronics itself. That's going to be hard to tell until you try it. 

 

Unfortunately there is no way anyone can tell you exactly how it is going to turn out in any situation, the fully functional EtherREGEN simply does not exist at this point in time. Even if I had all the equipment you have I couldn't test it since I don't have a fully functional board at this point. I'm not trying hide things or be difficult, It just cannot be done right now. There is no way I can tell yow what configuration is going to sound best. There is just no way I can do that right now. Any attempt at making a pure guess would be a disservice to the community.

 

It seems to me that the best way to deal with this, is wait until you have an EtherREGEN, then try it in the different modes, see if prebuffering everything before playing is in fact better than data coming over while playing, THEN we have some information to start coming up with scenarios for testing to find out what ultimately is best for you.

 

John S.

My assumption is the interrupt processing on the receiving PC with a streaming NIC port creates noise on it's own given the  necessary context switch, and that is going to be a constant, EtherRegen or not. I guess one could try larger frames to see if that changes things, but that is another ball of wax. No doubt ram buffering eliminates at least a part (up to half)  of this interrupt processing noise but part of it will always be there.

 

Clearly the EtherRegen will lower the noise from other noise sources which one expects to be the majority sources of noise from the network.

 

Larry

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, Ricardo007 said:

@imitche

What are u calling "interrupt" source ?  What is cause of this noise ? 

Normal I/O interrupt processing in this case from the NIC port.

[lmitche]

3 hours ago, Bernstein said:

 

@Superdad This tells (almost) everything  

 

Hey, I recognize the voice of the man in the video.  When was this done?

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, Superdad said:

So the DACs-and-everything-else-sounds-the-same folks over at the ASR forum are already poking fun:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/uptone-etherregen.9260/#post-242009

"there is absolutely absolutely zero justification for fancy ethernet switches or "power conditioning" w/rt audio
...anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you"

 

Funny, they must think that we spent nearly two years--and a lot of $$--designing this expensive-to-produce switch simply as a money-grab. I can think of a lot of easier ways to make money! Remember too, we sell our products with a 30-day, money-back guarantee.  So the risk is more ours...

This is the same site that diligently ranks almost a hundred DACs on a scale from 55 to 120 and then promotes the idea that all DACs sound the same. While the measurements are interesting, the commentary is absurd.

[lmitche]

Just now, Tubeburner said:

True! I don't know of a measurement for musicality. Some things measure wonderfully and sound sterile and lifeless.

Well said, I couldn't agree more.

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

I think I hear a difference with some of these things (some I've liked, and some I haven't); I may well be wrong. But if I'm wrong, my mistaken opinion of how my system sounds is most pleasant!  

 

I always liked the joke about the distraught parents who take their child to the psychiatrist because she thinks she's a chicken. When the psychiatrist voices confidence in a quick cure, the parents hesitate, and when the psychiatrist looks at them quizzically, the father explains with some embarrassment, "We like the eggs."

 

I like the eggs.   

 

Meanwhile, though @Superdad started us off, perhaps we ought to get back to EtherREGEN....

My suspicion is that someday we will learn that some people are music blind, or hear in various shades of gray.

[lmitche]

2 minutes ago, Indydan said:

Alex, any chance of you posting more pictures of the EtherRegen. You know, just to wet our appetites while we wait for delivery! 

Indy Dan,

 

Good idea! Hey Alex, please cover the EtherRegen with a bit of whipped cream before taking pictures please.

[lmitche]

With experience of dozens of BJC terminated cables, hundreds of feet actually, with and without self applied jssg360 shielding, and later the same with Supra Ethernet cabling, I've landed on the Monoprice Slimrun cable available on Amazon.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-SlimRun-Cat6A-Ethernet-Patch/dp/B01BGV2TDM

 

It's cheap, very flexible, and sounds great. It is just delightful to work with. No wrestling required. I learned about this from Tubelover, whom unfortunately recently passed away.

[lmitche]

6 hours ago, EVOLVIST said:

 

No, no, no...absolutely no. I totally dropped out of that conversation about the EtherREGEN after two posts, I believe, both of which did not seek answers. One post expressed for people to cool out on both sides of the argument. The other expressed my curiosity about amplifier measurements, whereupon I moved out of that thread and started talking amps.

 

So...no.

 

...and no, I love my Linn. I don't care what anybody says. It's paid for, so why not keep it?

If you haven't sold or returned your EtherRegen, I'd be curious to hear the results of a second trial after the firmware is updated.

 

You may be surprised.

[lmitche]

4 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

You may have dreamt that.   You sure did not read that from us.  Nothing wrong with under one meter Ethernet cables.

I had the same dream and in my dream the 1 meter minimum message was from Mr Swenson.

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, ted_b said:

 

Thank you Ted, well found! Happy to know I wasn't going crazy.

[lmitche]

17 hours ago, JohnSwenson said:

This has been explicitly taken care of in the EtherREGEN, I've used a 6" cable and it worked fine.

 

John S.

Yes indeed, and thank you again, it was a useful post in the pre-ER era.