Popular Post Energy Posted September 14, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 14, 2019 As much as it sucks being the consumer and having to cough up the money, I believe that both Alex & John wouldn't mark up the prices if they really didn't have to. As the 'endpoint' I'd gladly pay for what it will be sold as. Knowing the hard work they put into their products and their continuous contribution to the audiophile community, giving us constant updates like this. I have faith they tried their best to be flexible on pricing. 😄 Narcissus, Superdad and Elberoth 2 1 ٩(●̮̃•)۶ Carbon (NET) ⇢ EtherRegen (NET) ⇢ Carbyne (USB) ⇢ Terminator-Plus (XLR) ⇢ β22 (XLR) ⇢ Diana TC (ง'-')ง 【 = ◈ ︿ ◈ = 】 Link to comment
Popular Post Superdad Posted September 14, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 14, 2019 @thotdoc, @LowMidHigh, @Pinkfaunrookie, @Energy: Thank you each for you kind and thoughtful wrords. I could probably write a whole bunch, both about our thought process regarding value pricing versus per unit profit versus volume, as well as the soul searching I have done with regards to my growth goals for UpTone Audio (as in how many employees I’m willing to manage and how hard I need/want to work for how many years). But I’ll skip doing so becuase: a) As much as I enjoy sharing details and being a “transparent” company, there are some things which should probably remain private; b) I’d like to keep the conversations in this thread focused on EtherREGEN. I will say this: I promise that the prices we set for our products will always be just enough to: Cover costs of labor and warranty servicing; Provide a reasonable—and hopefully sustaining—per unit royalty to John Swenson (at the very beginning years ago I invited him to partner with me, but he chose this simple and clean arrangement); Provide a modest income for my family (my brilliant wife has her own career so that helps) and a decent amount to sock away for retirement each year; Build up ample reserves to fund development and production of the next exciting products we have planned out (a couple of the future projects are VERY ambitious and will really surprise—in 2-3 years time). Again, thank you all for your enthusiasm and ongoing patronage. We find it nourishing in all ways! Charente, spotforscott, Aidagent and 3 others 5 1 UpTone Audio LLC Link to comment
Popular Post Superdad Posted September 14, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 14, 2019 Now back to EtherREGEN... Received all the beta-test boards from John yesterday, put one in a case with the end plates I had machined locally, and I’m playing music! Sounds terrific, but yesterday I was more focused on functionality testing and checking current, heat, and other things. This weekend I will play and listen some more. It’s been a long road—especially for John who discovered and overcame a huge number of untold engineering obstacles along the way. It has always been a serious endeavor, but having this very sophisticated little box isolating data in my own music system makes this project seem much more real. Oh happy day... rickca, Bricki, RichB and 8 others 2 9 UpTone Audio LLC Link to comment
Bernstein Posted September 14, 2019 Share Posted September 14, 2019 39 minutes ago, Superdad said: Now back to EtherREGEN... Received all the beta-test boards from John yesterday, put one in a case with the end plates I had machined locally, and I’m playing music! Sounds terrific, but yesterday I was more focused on functionality testing and checking current, heat, and other things. This weekend I will play and listen some more. It’s been a long road—especially for John who discovered and overcame a huge number of untold engineering obstacles along the way. It has always been a serious endeavor, but having this very sophisticated little box isolating data in my own music system makes this project seem much more real. Oh happy day... Mouthwatering! Link to comment
Popular Post thotdoc Posted September 14, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 14, 2019 11 hours ago, LowMidHigh said: I tell you what, let's kindly have Alex keep the price at $625 for people who work hard for their money and whose budget is tight. Anyone else who's is highly appreciative of Uptone's product can send Alex any additional amount they fancy. Would that work for you? You ask what would work for me? As you are asking me personally, I'll answer you. What would work for me is for Alex to value himself and his efforts as much as we value him. At a broader level, Alex works hard for his money, too...and deserves to get paid for the VALUE of what he brings to us, not paid for producing the mechanical box with minimal mark-up. The VALUE these mechanical boxes bring us is joy and wonderment. I can't put a price on it. Alex and John must do that. In order to get us closer to what is embedded in the 1s & 0s. Alex and John have spent tens of years training and tens of thousands of hours obsessing over details to be able to create the value that the box creates. They should charge what will compensate them for the tens of thousands of hours they spent in order to get to the place where they can create that joy and wonderment...and we need to figure out how to pay for it...if we want the value they are bringing to us. Superdad and MikeyFresh 1 1 Main: sonicTransporter I5>etherRegen>opticalRendu/ghent/UltraCap 1.2> WireWorld Platinum>YGGY Atma-sphere MP-1 3.1> Hegel 30> Maggie 1.7, REL SE 212: Zero Autoformers, Interconnects , Analysis Plus Silver Oval-In, Nordost Heimdall, Power Cables: Synergistic./Shunyata>Chang Litespeed HT:Dish>OPPO>Marantz>Hegel> 3-Maggies/2-Quads>REL Gibraltar>Custom Wire loom>APS>Samsung Plasma 55" Link to comment
thotdoc Posted September 14, 2019 Share Posted September 14, 2019 9 minutes ago, thotdoc said: You ask what would work for me? As you are asking me personally, I'll answer you. What would work for me is for Alex to value himself and his efforts as much as we value him. At a broader level, Alex works hard for his money, too...and deserves to get paid for the VALUE of what he brings to us, not paid for producing the mechanical box with minimal mark-up. The VALUE these mechanical boxes bring us is joy and wonderment. I can't put a price on it. Alex and John must do that. In order to get us closer to what is embedded in the 1s & 0s. Alex and John have spent tens of years training and tens of thousands of hours obsessing over details to be able to create the value that the box creates. They should charge what will compensate them for the tens of thousands of hours they spent in order to get to the place where they can create that joy and wonderment...and we need to figure out how to pay for it...if we want the value they are bringing to us. Alex-Sorry I did not see your above post. I get it you want to move it back to the Ether Regen. Sorry. Superdad 1 Main: sonicTransporter I5>etherRegen>opticalRendu/ghent/UltraCap 1.2> WireWorld Platinum>YGGY Atma-sphere MP-1 3.1> Hegel 30> Maggie 1.7, REL SE 212: Zero Autoformers, Interconnects , Analysis Plus Silver Oval-In, Nordost Heimdall, Power Cables: Synergistic./Shunyata>Chang Litespeed HT:Dish>OPPO>Marantz>Hegel> 3-Maggies/2-Quads>REL Gibraltar>Custom Wire loom>APS>Samsung Plasma 55" Link to comment
cool_chris Posted September 16, 2019 Share Posted September 16, 2019 Please let us know what is the ER SQ improvement over some swiches you have? Also what is the server and DAC You use in this tests ? Hope you had fantastic weekend testing your ER in action. Link to comment
GryphonGuy Posted September 16, 2019 Share Posted September 16, 2019 15 hours ago, cool_chris said: Please let us know what is the ER SQ improvement over some swiches you have? Also what is the server and DAC You use in this tests ? Hope you had fantastic weekend testing your ER in action. Uptone tend not to provide reviews of their own equipment, most probably because of the wise adage "self praise is no recommendation". Link to comment
soares Posted September 17, 2019 Share Posted September 17, 2019 Alex, I am following this thread for almost an year on a daily basis. Now that we are approaching the end game, are you planning to develop a home made clock for the etherregen? Thanks, 🙂 Jorge Jensen VRD-iFF>Router>Rj45>opticalModule> SFP>Buffalo2016>SFP>opticalModule >Rj45> IZen Mk3>Rj45> Delock62619>Rj45> etherRegen (Master Clock+ Mini-Circuits BLP)>SFP>opticalRendu>USB>IsoRegen> USB>Phoenix>USB>OPPO 205 (Modded)>HMS “the Perfect Match”>Proac Tablette Reference 8 Signature. Link to comment
Popular Post JohnSwenson Posted September 17, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 17, 2019 1 hour ago, soares said: Alex, I am following this thread for almost an year on a daily basis. Now that we are approaching the end game, are you planning to develop a home made clock for the etherregen? Thanks, 🙂 Jorge We actually have talked about it, but nothing is going to happen any time soon, we have several other products under development which we have not publicly talked about at all, those are going to take priority over our own external clock. Getting a clock that is significantly better than what is already in the EtherREGEN is not easy, the lowest phase noise clocks are OCXOs. OCXOs come in a wide spectrum, most designs are optimized for long term drift in PPB (parts per billion) range. We do not care about that, we want low phase noise. Inexpensive OCXOs generally have decent drift, but phase noise that is no better than what is already in the EtherREGEN. The off the shelf designs with very low phase noise are also ones that have very low long term drift, which we don't care about. So we either pay a lot of money for low drift which we don't need OR we have a custom design made which optimizes low phase noise without worrying about very low drift. Without actually going through the exercise I don't know which is going to cost less. Sending clocks through coax and BNC jacks is terrible for preserving very low phase noise, a good differential system is MUCH better, but there is no standardization on connectors for this. Belden makes some REALLY good differential cable/connector systems that would be ideal, but they are expensive and not standardized in any way. It really rubs me the wrong way to build a really low phase noise clock then run it through coax and BNC jacks. I could build a hybrid system with the Belden system on the clock box, and a little box that plugs directly into the BNC jack on the other end which converts from differential to single ended, but if that conversion is done actively, you need a power supply for the little box! It might be possible to do it with a transformer, but again one good enough for this is probably going to need to be custom designed, UGH! Then there is ground connection from the power supply of the clock box to the receiving system, which kind of points toward optical as a good transmission choice. Fortunately some of the SFP+ optical modules really DO have phenomenally low additive phase noise and would work great for this. So the clock box has SFP cages as outputs, then I need a little box with SFP cage and and BNC plug, but this definitely needs power, which really should be from the receiving device, but of course there is no standard for that. Again UGH! So in summary, to do it WELL and not cost a fortune is not an easy task. There are a lot of engineering decisions as well as marketing decisions to make. John S. soares, Bernstein, Blake and 4 others 1 5 1 Link to comment
Bernstein Posted September 17, 2019 Share Posted September 17, 2019 Thanks a lot @JohnSwenson Coax is something I can’t really digest in a digital world...so your explanations make totally sense to either integrate a good clock inside the unit or to go the (impractical and expensive) way of developing something rather complex and without relying on proven standards. My understanding from the beginning is, that the clock input is needed to show the world: we can do it and we are comparable to other high end devices, but it isn’t necessarily needed. Looking at the future: I think the world needs a decent Roon Core from Uptone which can compete e.g. with the Antidote. Based on roon rock. I expect with your background you could redesign a mainboard and power supply to decrease noise a lot. Link to comment
Popular Post Superdad Posted September 17, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 17, 2019 File the above as an inside peek into John's expansive mind. But please let's not let the conversation veer into distributed clock engineering possibilities in this thread. I actually have a lot to report on about EtherREGEN--facts, usage experience, progress details, final price, etc. But I'm really hungry, it's been a long Monday, and tomorrow morning my assistant returns from vacation and we have a half-dozen JS-2s to pack and ship as well as other tasks to keep moving with. So the update will have to wait until at least Wednesday. I will say that the beta-test units will be going our to the select few (very few) on Thursday--Friday at the latest. John and I had a long and substantive discussion over the weekend. We realize now that to explain and have people understand how truly unique EtherREGEN is, we need to back up and explain--really for the first time--the facts about the what, why, and how upstream jitter gets through conventional Ethernet switches. His explanation of what is and is not going on--and it is not at all what many people, even other engineers, think--is really fascinating. And it is measurable, though he is still setting up for that. When he is not too swamped with getting final tech things ready for the launch, or when he feels inspired to make a first pass at distilling the talk we had, I'm sure you will see what will likely become first draft text of a "white paper" about this. Time for dinner... soares, lmitche, Bernstein and 11 others 2 8 4 UpTone Audio LLC Link to comment
soares Posted September 17, 2019 Share Posted September 17, 2019 Thank you John for sharing with us your ideas and challenges behind designing a clock. Remarkable... and yes I agree with Alex! Yes an ‘expansive mind’ :-). And yes it’s time for further details on the etherregen. And of course if you need an extra beta tester I am here! Cheers, Jorge Jensen VRD-iFF>Router>Rj45>opticalModule> SFP>Buffalo2016>SFP>opticalModule >Rj45> IZen Mk3>Rj45> Delock62619>Rj45> etherRegen (Master Clock+ Mini-Circuits BLP)>SFP>opticalRendu>USB>IsoRegen> USB>Phoenix>USB>OPPO 205 (Modded)>HMS “the Perfect Match”>Proac Tablette Reference 8 Signature. Link to comment
simon_pepper Posted September 17, 2019 Share Posted September 17, 2019 If there is an offer of Beta testing, I am available as well. Port B would be connected to a Naim NDS/555DR network player. Port A’s would be UltraRendu running the SonoreUPnP Bridge (giving Roon capability to the NDS), a RPi2 running Asset UPnP server, and the connection to the ‘backend’ components upstairs (NUC running ROCK Roon Core, NAS containing the content, some 8TB of music (~6k Albums/80k tracks) EtherRegen would be replacing a Cisco SG110-5 unmanaged switch, with a 12v/5v dual voltage LPS. Hopefully a ‘drop-in’ upgrade. thanks, Simon (in Dublin) soares 1 Link to comment
Superdad Posted September 17, 2019 Author Share Posted September 17, 2019 9 minutes ago, simon_pepper said: If there is an offer of Beta testing, I am available as well. .... Simon (in Dublin) Hi Simon: Thank you for offering, but the few beta-test units we have must remain in the USA. UpTone Audio LLC Link to comment
Popular Post simon_pepper Posted September 17, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted September 17, 2019 Had to try! soares and MemoryPlayer 2 Link to comment
Pinkfaunrookie Posted September 17, 2019 Share Posted September 17, 2019 Lolz..us europeans are getting discriminated...whahahaha i have a nice Pink Faun streamer who volunteered to be a test mule also..with some Blue Circle Audio goodness..poor us...hehehehe Link to comment
Bernstein Posted September 17, 2019 Share Posted September 17, 2019 Is there a technical difference driving the EtherRegen with 9V or 12V beside the different current? Maybe heat I guess... Link to comment
JohnSwenson Posted September 17, 2019 Share Posted September 17, 2019 1 hour ago, Bernstein said: Is there a technical difference driving the EtherRegen with 9V or 12V beside the different current? Maybe heat I guess... There is a slight difference in power with voltage, but it is very small. My tests so far show somewhere around 9W, so just divide that by the voltage for the current. The range is from 7V to 12V. Whatever you have in that range that is good for 10W (that is continuous Watts, not "peak") is probably fine. John S. Link to comment
Superdad Posted September 17, 2019 Author Share Posted September 17, 2019 1 hour ago, Bernstein said: Is there a technical difference driving the EtherRegen with 9V or 12V beside the different current? Maybe heat I guess... Last week I measured EtherREGEN current draw from external power source (an UltraCap LPS-1.2 with my favorite B&K multimeter in series): With activity/connections to both an 'A'-side copper port and the 'B'-side port, and with an SFP module installed, draw was 0.72A with 12V and 0.92A with 9V. Draw at 7V will be somewhere about 1.25A, just out of range of the 1.1A UltraCap units. EtherREGEN runs warm/hot at all voltages; I did not notice notice any temp difference between input voltages. Perhaps a degree one direction or the other. I'll check sometime with my FLIR thermal camera. Certainly no sonic difference between input voltages, but more on that in my next post... UpTone Audio LLC Link to comment
Popular Post Superdad Posted September 18, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 18, 2019 Conclusions from my first days with EtherREGEN First off, I am going to keep this post as short as possible because: a) I have a lot of other work to do; b) I am not very good at describing sonic differences--even large ones; c) There will be a great many people posting their impressions once EtherREGEN is in their systems. Let's just say that after listening, both John and I are quite confident we have another winner on our hands. So here are the few things I will report which some of you may find interesting: [The basics of my set up are: iMac on desk with music storage drives and Roon front-end >> Ethernet cable to DSL modem/router >> 25-ft. BlueJeans/Belden CAT6A cable from modem to (formerly Cisco Catalyst 2960 100Mb switch) EtherREGEN 'A'-side Gigabit RJ45 port; Mac mini (with MMK/JS-2) running Audiolinux, Roon Server, and latest version of HQ Player Embedded >> 1-ft. BJC/Belden CAT6A cable to another 'A'-side port of EtherREGEN; 2-foot BlueJeans Belden CAT6 cable from 'B'-side 100Mb port of EtherREGEN to (customized by @lmitche) Audiolinux NUC (powered by UlttraCap LPS-1.2) running as NAA; USPCB A>B Adapter from NUC to (LPS-1.2 powered) ISO REGEN >> Phasure Lush^2 USB cable to heavily modified Singxer SU-1 (also LPS-1.2 powered) >> Wireworld Choma 7 HDMI cable feeding I2S/LVDS to Holo Spring L3 (Always set to NOS; Fed either native DSD64, HQP upsampled DSD256, or PCM at 352.8Khz.) 1-meter Hovland G3 (shielded, silver-plated, Teflon-dielectric, star-quad) interconnects to Slagle 47-position "ElmaFormer" auto-former level control >> Hovland RADIA-i power amp >> Hovland Ref Spkr. cables >> Hovland LS-1 3-way speakers. My short report: Previously the Cisco Catalyst 2960 was the best switch I'd ever had in my system. I've reported on it before, and it was a year ago when I made this surprising, significant, and cheap(!) upgrade over my direct/"bridged" iMac > DAC-attached machine (Mac mini or microRendu at the time, did not have the NUC when I first got the Cisco). I wrote somewhere at the time and told all my friends that the Cisco served to amplify my enthusiasm for the EtherREGEN project, as this was the first time I heard a switch make a really obvious difference. I even recommended it in this very thread as an inexpensive alternative for those waiting for the EtherREGEN. John even bought two (one 10/100 version and one Gigabit version) to play with, and his examination of this industrial beasts gives clues to why the Cisco sounds good. (Unlike all cheap switches, the Cisco has a separate PHY for each port; The significance of that will come out when he has time to write his "white paper" about the real issues with all this stuff.) Anyway, I removed the Cisco and popped the EtherREGEN in. Oh my! Not subtle. Never going back. Feeling very confident about it being a hit. That's all I am going to say. However--and now we really get to the stuff I wanted to report about--after a few hours, I thought I would try a couple of key experiments, to address some questions people have had and some suppositions of ours that we had not yet proved with our own ears. Namely: a) Does an upgraded power supply improve the EtherREGEN's performance over the UpTone-branded 7.5V/36W SMPS brick that will be shipped with every unit? b) Does running optical fiber into the 'A'-side port as the feed to EtherREGEN sound any better than running into one of the 'A'-side Gigabit RJ45 ports? The short answer to both the above is NO. Not to my ears (and I'm able to hear lots of little tweaks such as HQP filter settings, USB fussing, @lmitche's Audiolinux tweaks, plenty of other power supply stuff, and countless elements and changes that went into designing Hovland gear; I've been in this for 4 decades now ). For power supply I tried both an UltraCap LPS-1.2 and a JS-2--versus the SMPS brick. For the optical, I disconnected all copper cables from the 'A'-side, plugged in matching Gigabit SFP modules--and fiber between them--into both the EtherREGEN and the Cisco, and then plugged both the Mac mini Roon/HQPe server and the feed from my router into the Cisco copper ports. ============= So there you have it. I did go back and forth a couple of times will each one of the above experiments. Other EtherREGEN users may hear it differently and that's fine. Some of you hear things I can't. I admit that I am mostly interested in things that are obvious. The "low-hanging fruit" as they say. Yet neither of the above comes as much of a surprise to us. The heart of what makes the EtherREGEN entirely different from any other switch is our use of active low-jitter high-speed differential isolators to feed data and clocks back and forth across a moat galvanically separating power planes. Our design goal was to make a noise, leakage, and clock-phase-noise-modulation fingerprint moat so effective that nothing (or as close to) coming in on the ‘A’-side of our switch has any effect on what comes out of the single ‘B’-side copper port. Achieving that goal should (via the extreme and expensive measures of power and clocking and isolation engineered into it) naturally result in neither power supply nor optical making any difference. Beyond the above experiments I have not had the time--nor will I until after the launch--to see if other upstream/server-side stuff makes a difference once EtherREGEN is doing its big moat/clocking/isolation job. Will leave all that such testing and reporting to the first happy EtherREGEN owners! --Alex C. Matias, jaynyc, rickca and 14 others 3 8 6 UpTone Audio LLC Link to comment
savjam Posted September 18, 2019 Share Posted September 18, 2019 Alex I really appreciate you taking the time to provide an early feedback on the EtherRegen. I hope the beta testing goes smoothly and we will have the product available to us soon. Thank You Superdad 1 Link to comment
Popular Post Superdad Posted September 18, 2019 Author Popular Post Share Posted September 18, 2019 OFFICIAL FINAL EtherREGEN PRICE ANNOUNCEMENT: After a final run through of costs, including some last items and an assessment of unit preparation and test-cycle labor, we have settled on a retail price of $640 (USD). [I know that I gave a tentative price of $625 previously, and $15 difference does not seem like a lot. But I refuse to change prices after a product is launched, and the profit margin on EtherREGEN is already lower percentage-wise than for any of our other products. Really the price ought to be $710 to bring it inline (or $1,400 to just undercut the other brand product which will expect to surpass ). Fact is, we would have loved to come out with this groundbreaking product at $495 or $595. But with what these boards are costing--owing to a LOT of expensive required parts--such pricing would be terrible for us.] And sorry, there will NOT be a EtherREGEN/UltraCap $50-savings bundle the way there is for the ISO REGEN/UltraCap. I don't feel a need to go into the rationale behind this decision, but I might share my three good reasons sometime if asked. beautiful music, jjraffin, Matias and 9 others 4 4 4 UpTone Audio LLC Link to comment
Matias Posted September 18, 2019 Share Posted September 18, 2019 What are your 3 good reasons not to be a $50-savings bundle? 1. WiiM Pro - Mola Mola Makua - Apollon NCx500+SS2590 - March Audio Sointuva AWG 2. LG 77C1 - Marantz SR7005 - Apollon NC502MP+NC252MP - Monitor Audio PL100+PLC150+C265 - SVS SB-3000 3. PC - RME ADI-2 DAC FS - Neumann KH 80 DSP 4. Phone - Tanchjim Space - Truthear Zero Red 5. PC - Keysion ES2981 - Truthear Zero Red Link to comment
savjam Posted September 18, 2019 Share Posted September 18, 2019 Excellent Alex! I would have been more than willing to split the difference. I hope you have a volume seller on your hands. Link to comment
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