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

[barrows]

On 11/6/2018 at 1:47 PM, BigAlMc said:

 

Hi @Superdad,

 

Alex I'm not attacking but providing a different perspective and quoting Diecaster as my view is the polar opposite of his.

 

I have 3k invested in a sCLK-OCX10 which makes a great difference in my USB path.

 

It's 75 ohm so if your EtherRegen isn't able to support that then you've just solved a purchasing decision for me and SoTM are far more likely to get my money because sadly the Uptone switch no longer works for me.

 

I may well be an edge case but I'm also not alone.

 

Sorry if this is a headache for you but that's my perspective.

 

Cheers,

Alan

It makes a difference because your USB path does not have good clocks.  Remember, the UpTone Switch will already have a very good clock onboard.  Indeed it is very likely that adding an external clock will have no benefit with this device, given that the external clock's phase noise will be degraded by a cable and multiple connections.

[barrows]

3 minutes ago, BigAlMc said:

 

Hi Barrows,

 

Sorry but I don't follow this. My USB path has the TX-USBultra and the sCLK-OCX10 so that's some fairly great clocking AFAIK.

 

I'm curious about the EtherRegen and if it performs without needing an external clock the that's brilliant. Just not sure what you meant?

 

Cheers,

Alan

I am saying that adding the sCLK made a difference because the onboard clock of the TX-USB was not very good.  Point being that the UpTone switch will already have a very good onboard clock.  Sure, the onboard clock will not be as good as a Mutec or (maybe) sCLK, but given the degradation of the cable, and connections involved in using an external clock, it is unlikely that by the time the clock arrives at its destination it will be any better than the internal clock.

The most likely outcome is that folks using the UpTone switch will be able to sell off all there various external paraphernalia and still get better performance without all those boxes and additional power supplies...  

[barrows]

20 minutes ago, tboooe said:

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.

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.

[barrows]

18 minutes ago, tboooe said:

Any suggestions???

I did a little research on this awhile back, and my preliminary findings were that Corning "Clearcurve" OM3 fiber would be more than adequate.  But I have no experience with it.  @jabbr is probably a good person to ask about this as he has direct experience.

[barrows]

3 minutes ago, Arpiben said:

Basically:

- 850 nm Single Mode Fiber and associated SFPs for distances less than 500m

- 1310nm Multimode Fiber and associated SFPs for distances up to 10Km

 

SFPs termination are LC -> LC_LC fiber termination.

In industry there is no 'audiophile' kind of fibers (useless)

Hahaha!  How long will it take before there is fiber cable from AudioQuest, etc...

[barrows]

14 minutes ago, Blake said:

 

That would be terrific.  Chris would also be happy because there will be lots of upstream gear and related accessories for sale on Superphonica if the Etheregen accomplishes this goal!

I am sure that the UpTone switch will accomplish this goal (certainly with optical input).  Of course there will still be those who "hear" differences when they use a ridiculously expensive "audiophile" server on the upstream side (hahaha).  Once I see who these people are, I will know which peoples' subjective reporting to ignore.

[barrows]

Ummm...  By definition an optical interface is already super clean, only data travels on it, no noise.

[barrows]

7 minutes ago, Cxp said:

The expensive servers have multiple internal power supplies for the different components. The Ultrarendu uses the same external power supply to power the cpu/ram/usb output. By using dedicated power supplies you can isolate these pieces from each other. 

This is an UpTone thread, so let's not get too far away here, but you are wrong.  The ultraRendu has individual power supplies for the different internal sections using ultra low noise regulators.

There is way less noise on the ultraRendu USB output than there is from any complete music server.  In addition, a Renderer requires way less processor power, has no big noisy internal drives, and has requires much less power to run (less power equals less noise) than any full feature server.  

[barrows]

34 minutes ago, d_elm said:

However, fibre does introduce jitter.

Jitter to what?  Ethernet data is perfect, and jitter on the packets matters not at all.  That jitter does not change the data, or effect it in any way.  And the DAC never sees that jitter.

[barrows]

5 minutes ago, Kendrick said:

I understand that the EtherRegen is intended as the last device in the signal path before the streamer/dac. However, many audiophiles keep the modem/router/server far from their audio system.   In my case, the IT gear is connected  to an Aqvox “audiophile” switch in a separate part of the house with 75’ of ethernet to an Sonore Ultra Rendu.   In theory, the EtherRegen could be located either with the IT gear, replacing the Aqvox switch, or with the audio gear using both the Aqvox and EtherRegen switches.  I wonder which will sound  better or perhaps it is too early to know?  

When in doubt, simpler is usually better.  I would go with A, using only 1 switch.

[barrows]

16 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

 

The way I read this, it implies that you think John Swenson's 'clock blocking' research is a waste of time?

 

Because there is already an option of having a pair of cheap optical FMC's before a Rendu (with the most downstream FMC being powered by an Uptone grounded SMPS for example)... a relatively cheap network optical isolation solution that already exists...

 

So a pair of FMCs means no electrical network noise and there's no jitter you suggest... so what else is needed? Nothing?

 

Actually, with a pair of FMCs you have all the problems inherent in commercial computer gear with the downstream FMC, as it then outputs to the Renderer/DAC.  So the optical isolation will make whatever is upstream of it a non-issue (in terms of noise, which is all that matters in this scenario, as long as this upstream gear does not share electrical AC supply directly with the audio system), but it does not eliminate problems caused by the final FMC converting to an electrical signal.  The UpTone switch takes care of this problem by being designed to be entirely isolated from upstream gear by optical interface, and then, being designed to have the lowest possible noise footprint on its Ethernet output to the Renderer/DAC (of course care should be taken about what this switch is powered by if it is going to be located close to or in the audio system, I prefer to not have any cheap, poor quality SMPS near the audio system).

What I am saying is that any "jitter" of the optical interface is a non-issue.  Ethernet transmission of data is not analogous to audio signal jitter of a toslink interface.

Please, I would like to hear an thorough explanation of:

 

1. Source of jitter which you ascribe to optical interfaces (jitter specs for ethernet optical interfaces)

2. The mechanism of which you are concerned that the Ethernet packet jitter will effect audio sonics.

 

[barrows]

58 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

Is this for me? I have no concerns and haven't made any claims... I was just asking questions.

 

 

Noted. This noise (converting optical to electrical) is something that interests me. The noise isn't very well filtered by the downstream ethernet cable transformers ?

 

The jitter was brought up by @d_elm, after a brief Internet search I can find no substantiation of these claims, not that they would matter for two channel audio playback anyway.  Optical fiber is a great way to provide complete noise isolation from everything on the rest of the Network.

 

Noise from converting optical to electrical is not an issue for me, the noise which does appear to be an issue is the noise generated by all commercial computer products (computers, routers, switches, etc), as well as any processors.  The point of the UpTone switch is to address all possible issues and provide a clean, ultra low noise, signal with high integrity, to the Renderer.  By having this switch as the final device before the Renderer one eliminates (probably) all possible issues which could effect ultimate audio performance of the Renderer/DAC.

While ethernet transformers do a good job of providing isolation, they are not perfect devices, and still allow some noise to cause issues, the UpTone switch addresses these issues. 

[barrows]

6 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

 

Noted, so in your opinion then, if the optical-to-electrical noise conversion is a non issue, jitter is a non issue and upstream electrical noise is a non issue, then a pair of widely available optical FMC's is all you need before a networked stream/DAC, with a good PSU for the most downstream optical FMC?

Please go back and re-read my response to this.  I already explained the problems of just using two OTS commercial FMCs.

[barrows]

7 hours ago, Superdad said:

There are some theories why none of that may be true.  The same was said about USB interfacing and you know as well as anyone how that turned out.  

Hi Alex, to be clear, I was referring to jitter levels caused by the optical cable vs. copper.  I am well aware that a lower phase noise clock for both the Ethernet interface and the USB hub does matter.

Although I would like to see an in depth discussion of Ethernet packet jitter at some point.  I would suspect that as long UpTone switch, with optical input, is the last component before the Renderer, then any jitter on the optical cable would not matter (not that I believe there is any "jitter" problem with optical Ethernet).  As the UpTone switch would re-clock the Ethernet packets to it's own low phase noise oscillator, so the receiving Renderer is then not dealing with much packet jitter.

And, sorry, I did not mean to cause any thread drift, I would like to keep the discussion on the UpTone switch-but I think discussing the merits (or not) of optical Ethernet is a part of that.

[barrows]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

My other question is how much these effects show up in different types of music: grunge vs. chamber music; orchestral vs. female vocals...

Tbis is OT, so I'll keep my opinion short and limited to one comment:  I find the improvement of lowering noise via power supply improvement to apply, somewhat surprisingly, to most genres of music and qualities of recording.  This is contrary to most of my expectations...  Often I'll be playing some electronically based music (say NIN) and notice how a power supply improvement results in increased textural detail to even the most distorted grungiest sounds.