ISO Regen performance Improvement Cheap!

[sligolad]

Been checking here for several weeks now and I am really surprised no one has commented on the single most bang for buck upgrade you can add to your system when using the ISO Regen.

In fact I think it would be a perfect add on that should be offered with all ISO Regens at point of sale.

 

If anyone has followed Rob over at US Audio Mart (seen you there often Alex) you will be aware of the discussions on the serious uplift in sound quality you get with just adding about $10 of cable between the power supply and the IR.

Its basically a quick and easy cable snap in and then just sit back and be blown away by the greater separation, low frequency dynamics and overall amazing depth to the music never heard before, i listen to Red Book files...its all there!

 

For those looking for an explanation on how adding cheap cables into the power in on the IR could make such a difference I have to say this has me dumbfounded and I was a complete skeptic, the low cost and easy install was the only reason i tried it.

 

Its basically adding a CAT7 cable with passive POE ends to carry the DC between power supply and the IR, when you connect up the 2 pieces just stick the power supply in the female jack on one end and stick the male jack on the other end into the IR and sit back and be amazed.

 

Some links below:

POE Ends

CAT7

[sligolad]

OK posted some pics to help.

 

The set shown uses a 2 metre CAT7 cable which is the flat cable in the link.

I also have a round Ibra CAT7 but the IR was having difficulty seeing USB signal so maybe some may struggle with the round cable though some have had success with other CAT7 cables.

A POE set comes with male and female ends so if you have a female to female power connector already t5hen you will need to order 2 POE sets.

I ordered a 5 set as they are dirt cheap and already use 3 POE sets in my system, the other 2 on the DC feeding both Startech Lex & Rex.

 

Lots of good discussions here for those interested in the last 10 pages or so:

POE from the discoverer

 

 

[sligolad]

Thanks for the thoughts John.

 

Could be this particular implementation of Star Quad and wire gauge alright so would also be interested to hear feedback from someone with a good home made star quad compared to the plug and play option presented here.

 

The passive POE setup has no transformers involved so the 2 pairs in the network cable go direct to the positive and negative on the DC ends.

Works with all network cables i tried from CAT5 up but benefits improve as you go higher, CAT7 was best but someone suggests after tests that CAT8 (hard to find a cheap 1 metre) is even better so I have one on order.

 

There is no continuity on any of the cables i have between the shielding and the DC negative on the POE ends.

[sligolad]

Great feedback Quadman and perfectly details the jump in listening pleasure I experienced.

It is all a bit baffling but no doubt about what you will hear as a result.

 

From my end I managed to get the IR to work with the 1 metre IBRA round Cat7 with double foil shielding. Can be fussy but once it settles in it works reliably from then on.

 

I also soldered a flying lead to the gold shield on one end of the CAT7 cable and ran this to an earth i have from a spike in the garden, this to bleed off any energy that may be pulled out...no idea if this is what is happening but with 3 of these POE sets in my system the music is incredible.

[sligolad]

Already have cut up the POE connector and nothing in there Larry.

Just direct connection to the pins.

[sligolad]

General consensus seems to be moving towards the cables with greater levels of shielding but early days yet.

Awaiting delivery of 2 types of CAT8 cables to see if any further improvements can be found.

All complete guess work but maybe the shielding is inducting away some crap on even high quality dc supplies 

 

To give me some better chance of helping the shielding I have soldered grounding lines to the shield on one end of the CAT7 cables and fed these to an earth.

I also cut back a POE connector I use and found at least the DC positive and negative are taken directly off the ends of the wire spring pins from the Ethernet connections so probably best case for this application. I expect there are varying quality cheap POE connector sets out there.

 

POE connection below, DC wires are multi-strand silvered copper. Pair 1&2 negative and Pair 4&5 positive.

 

IBRA Round CAT7 with soldered ground wire of shield, easy to solder shield!!

[sligolad]

We should be careful when lumping cable shielding under one brand since my experience after opening a flat IBRA CAT7 it had really good shielding on the pairs. The foil was really heavy and coated and it took a bit of work to open it.

I will open one of the round IBRA CAT7 cables i have to see how good it is.

[sligolad]

Apologies but not completely gone yet Wushuliu ?

Been waiting forever to receive CAT 8 cables, one Supra 1 metre ordered almost 2 weeks ago and the high quality German cable referenced in Robs thread and still no delivery yet.

 

What I had done recently was strip back the POE connectors and soldered 4 pins to V+ out an 4 pins to V- out on all cables with 2 pairs on each. This gave a nice improvement and I thought it could not get any better.

 

Brought my audio PC with all these cables and power supplies to a meet with some of the good audio guys here in Ireland thinking I would be able to blow them out of the water or at least match this new SD card setup.

Unfortunately the SD Card beat the hell out of my audio PC which really surprised me.

 

The kicker was as soon as i brought my audio PC home and hooked it up to the Big7 with all my power tweaks and cables and speakers the sound was better than what I heard at the meetup.

 

So either there is great synergy with my Lampizator and cables and speakers that works with my audio PC or something was not good at the meet with using my audio PC on a Soekris modded DAC, a modded Lampi Level 4 and another small DAC through homemade speaker setup.

 

Either way back to back at the meet the SD player with SLC SD card was exceptional, maybe when i get it running here on the Big 7 and my own speakers and setup it will be an even bigger improvement.

 

So in summary sticking with the audio PC in my own rig for now until we get one of these modded SD Card units working with my home rig.

 

Will be exciting if this SD Card player beats my audio PC here at home when i get it soldered up with reclocker and power supplies.

Sorry for the long diversion but anyway the thread seems to have moved away from cheap POE setup to networking and more expensive connectors!!

[sligolad]

13 hours ago, lmitche said:

Why do you think comparisons were not made?  A disciplined process was followed. Tests were performed on multiple systems. Outcomes are clearly communicated. What is missing?

 

Agreed, John and Alex having a great track record of adding value and insight into CA solutions.

Must admit I am also confused with the feedback here as DC cables for DC seems to be contrary to ethernet cables for DC as per what we are investigating here.

Good to see that John is now testing Ethernet for DC so hopefully some good clear feedback soon from the master of clear comms!!

[sligolad]

Wow blink for a day here and all hell breaks loose....hope we are back on track here now and can focus on the OP.

I finally got the Supra CAT 8 (1 metre) and after inserting it into the POE's between Paul Hynes 5v and the ISO Regen it sounds better to me out of the box compared to the IBRA.

Note that I have bridged the pins in the POE's to provide 2 pairs twinned for both V+ & V- (1-4 bridged and 5-8 bridged).

No use of the outer screen so just the 4 pairs in use and sounds very good so far.

Still waiting on the German cable to test German CAT8

[sligolad]

The passive POE do not have any connection to the outer shielding so they just handle the 4 pairs inside the cable.

The good thing I like about the POE connectors is that I can easily swap in and out different CAT cables to see if there is any difference.

 

So far the higher grade CAT8 cable in my system seems to provide better improvements in sound, and most benefit still seems to come between power source and ISO Regen.

 

I have not tried any of the outer shielding tweaks others have tried yet so cannot comment on these.

From my side i am just focused on a change that can easily be put in place my the majority of not tweakers to give a big improvement in the sound using the ISO Regen.

 

It is good to see all the other testing going on and being posted here with different cables and configurations of pairs, with connectors and with shielding but I am guessing the returns on these are much smaller than just adding the CAT cable with POE ends just to get started.

 

Still amazes me the improvement I have achieved just by adding the CAT7 & CAT8 cables in the DC Lines.

[sligolad]

4 hours ago, rb2013 said:

Hi folks RB2013 or otherwise known Tubelover2 here...you know the fellow who discovered this PoE DC miracle.

 

As for my own continuing PoE DC explorations - you guys have seen NOTHING yet!  Oh man - the new topology is another even bigger breakthrough then my first PoE discovery.   Details to be announced in a new USAM thread once I have all the variations optimized.

 

And if it's ok with the thread starter sligolad I'd like to pop in from time to time to comment...if not then just carry on.

 

Cheers!

Rob

Great to see your input here Rob and all this thread was meant to do was spread the good news of your discovery and offer up a very simple and cheap install for ISO Regen owners to allow them to get a real big boost at very little outlay.

 

It is turning into a DC cable thread but at least it seems on balance the majority of feedback has so far been very appreciative of the simple CAT cable and POE connector benefits which for me have been astounding so far.

 

Always appreciate your feedback as I trust your golden ears based on all the work you have done over recent years so feel free to chime in at any time.

 

As for this thread I can see the writing on the wall based on posts over recent days so it will be more likely i will be following your new thread more than you popping in here.

 

Looking forward to seeing what new discoveries you have found and please post a link when you get up and running as at the end of the day its all about the music and hopefully we can all bite our lips when the partisan minority appear.

 

I had a suspicion that further improvements could be made going the CAT cable route given all the possible variations on offer with shielded pairs ?

[sligolad]

The configuration i am currently using in the POE connectors can be seen in the pictures below.

The first picture is the standard passive setup where the POE connectors are wired, these are visible when you cut away the outer casing.

 

Its got the Red positive bridging across the pins from 4 & 5 which i think takes one of the wires from 2 separate pairs.

The Black negative is bridging pins 7 & 8 which is using both wires in a pair.

 

 

I basically desoldered these and pooled solder on pairs 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 for Red Positive and the pooled solder on pairs 5 & 6 and 7 & 8 for Black negative.

 

 

I thought about staggering the pairs but went with the above and very pleased so far.

[sligolad]

Aw come on Limitche can you please let this go, we have been doing good so far and I have not seen any bashing of the thread.

Lets keep it civil and and we can do without asking people to go back to where they came from, maybe you have Mod rights here but I would like to keep the thread clean and I have kept quiet so far.

 

Hope we can move on and get back on track as we are seeing some good feedback, ideas and thoughts recently.?

 

[sligolad]

All good with me if the thread gets moved as the original intention was to share the benefits with as many as possible who have bought the ISO Regen.

So far gretest of benefits for me have come when feeding the ISO Regen but I have been using these cables in several other parts of my chain recently with smaller incremental improvements.

Seriously thinking next to break into all the DC lines in a Meitner MA1 to see what happens by adding CAT7 cables so I expect this discussion could break out into other areas very soon.

 

Hopefully all this point scoring will run out of gass soon and we get to the bottom of what is going on here, it will help move us to even better DC cable standards where audio is concerned ?

[sligolad]

I can vouch for Cornan's recommendation on these supplies, big jump in performance and sound will astonish you.

 

I went from a Paul Hynes SR7 5v supply through a full paired POE CAT8 input to my ISO Regen to now:

The old Meanwell SMPS 7.5v I had from an old Regen purchase going through a paired POE CAT7 into a LS-HPULN set to 5v out then through a paired POE CAT8 into the ISO Regen and best sound ever.

 

I was surprised at the improvement.

[sligolad]

6 minutes ago, tims said:

Hi Sligolad

Your Paul Hynes SR7 is a pretty awesome PSU. 

Are you using it just to feed the HPULN's?  How much did the SQ improve using the HPULN (fed by the SR7) rather than just using the SR7 by itself?

 

Thanks

The SR7 only has 5v and 12v rails so I do not use it with the HPULN as I do not want to drop 12v down to 5v.

No point in using the 5v rail into the LS-HPULN set to 5v as it would not be doing much.

 

The SR7 already feeds the 12v on the Audio PC motherboard, a 5v rail feeds an Oven clock for the Audio PC motherboard, and a 5v rail feeds another LS-HPULN set to 1.35v for RAM on the motherboard in the Audio PC.

 

As stated I am using a cheap Meanwell SMPS at 7.5v into another LS-HPULN set to 5v, so only a 2.5v drop and it easily beats the 5v out that i previously used from the SR7.

[sligolad]

1 hour ago, Cornan said:

 

Thanks for sharing sligolad! ?

The LS-HPULN (former HC-HPULN) is worth the praise. I cannot beleive the SQ I got from two in series powered by a balanced & isolated toroidal (50+50VAC) feeder supply. It keeps on improving by the hour! ?

Another thing is that I now can listen to -20dB through speakers. Before max -50dB!

One of the finds of the past year alright Cornan, thanks for sharing the site link as I did not realize Michael had set up a new site.

[sligolad]

Too many projects at the moment but I finally received the CAT 8 Patchkabel 2000Mhz 1 metre from Germany, took a few weeks to get here!

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/282850879626?ul_noapp=true

 

Anyway worth the wait as it has jumped to top of the pile for all the cables tested so far, have not had a lot of time listening but as soon as I put it in I could hear the improvement.

It is the most rigid of all the cables tested so far and I did not think to order 2 at the time so I could cut one open.

 

Going to convert all DC lines in a Meitner MA1 DAC to the IBRA CAT 7 cables at 1 metre to see how they work.

3D printing some tubes to hold the cables in a coiled container for space saving and will post once the experiment is done.

 

Already converted the Meitner to a SD Card player direct into the digital high speed differential drivers and made a big improvement in listening to redbook files, using SLC SD Cards.

SD Card Player

[sligolad]

6 hours ago, marce said:

funnily when I stopped trusting my ears my system improved....

Could not let this go...gave me a chuckle when i seen it ?

[sligolad]

2 hours ago, Speedskater said:

Any product that is sensitive to the DC supply cord is a poorly designed product. Industrial audio Consultant Dick Pierce pointed that out two decades ago, about expensive hi-fi digital products that were sensitive to digital interconnect cables.

And if a $10 piece of cable helps mitigate that then that is a win in my book....which is what the thread is about!

[sligolad]

10 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Right, but I want to be clear for us folks who are reading and trying to understand why a DC cable might possibly (or not) affect the SQ of the ISO Regen, supplied by LPS 1.2.

Lets no confine this thread to just supply by the LPS 1.2 as this was never the point of the thread or was never inferred in the title, I started this thread not ever having an LPS 1.2.

I stated i used the Meanwell SMPS and a Paul Hynes Linear 5v supply and still heard improvements so lets keep the focus on what the cables do irrespective of source of supply.

[sligolad]

1 hour ago, Cornan said:

@sligolad I wish you could tell @Ralf11, @sandyk and @One and a half to deal with their personal issues somewhere else. All these interceptions makes the thread impossible to follow for people that cares about this perticular subject. I must add that @mansr, @marce & @Speedskater may have disagreements to the actual findings, but they are still not off topic.

@The Computer Audiophile are as always our guardian angel! ?

I  think you have taken this thread to a whole new level Cornan and I have enjoyed reading about your journey despite the usual distractions on any thread here where doubters and naysayers feed on any heavily active topic.

Keep doing what you are doing and do not heed those trying to debunk or distract, all the attention shows you are making good waves here.?

I am waiting on a delivery of Kemet's myself for testing so we are taking heed. Tight or loose connections are only a minor distraction on what the thread is about so I take no notice of  these discussions...for the record I default to soldering.

 

I have been distracted working on SD playback through I2s and give up on USB for the moment, but saying that good DC power and cables are still a a key feature of current experiments.

Keep up the good work.?

[sligolad]

12 hours ago, Superdad said:

I am SO glad I had Chris move this thread out of the UpTone sponsored area where someone had started it.  Much stumbling about and numerous bizarre and misguided notions. Don’t know where to begin.  You’ll notice that John has steered clear too. 

Sorry guys...

Shame yourself or John did not follow through on the simple test of the passive POE setup at the start of the thread to see the positive difference as i thought you had already ordered the pieces for test some time back.

 

Would have been good to get either a yea or nay from either of you on this simple cheap test....other reasons i guess!

[sligolad]

Sad to say I had to use the Ignore button for the first time at CA....hope Ralf relaxes a bit and can see that we are all just trying out things here that do not make sense much of the time, all that is often asked is just to try it out and if it does not work for you then fine but if it leads to a better experience then great.

I will leave the reasons why to others with more expertise and desire to root out the subtle effects that DC can have on digital chains.