ALLO USBridge Signature

[gstew]

+100 to @matthias' comment's on the USBBridge Sig. I'm using RPi's as I2S sources for I2S DAC Hats like Allo's Katana and Ian Canada's boards. Even with Ian's FiFoPi in the circuit, replacing a stock RPi with a USBBridge Signature is a very significant upgrade across the board. 

 

I also have a couple of RPi 2B's I modified for all linear regulation for the 1.8V & 3.3V rails using LDOVR.com's Mezzanine board.  The USBBridge Sig's better them too.

 

One thing I haven't tried yet are larger DAC setups (Soekris, Twisted Pear) where they also have I2S reclocking (Soekris in the FPGA, my Twisted Pear setups with Ian's larger FIFO). BUT those  also worked better with linear-regulator-modified RPi's over stock RPi's, so I expect an improvement on those too. 

 

Greg in Mississippi

[gstew]

5 hours ago, allo.com said:

Hi Matthias

 

  with over 550 Usbridges Sig on the market , we have one report from Tintibalum that it does not work with Cisco 28960 . No other reports of any issue with any SW

 

 While not tested (but I will have a report very soon) I am sure it wont have an issue with EtherRegen .

I am running a USBBridge Signature quite nicely with an EtherRegen since Tuesday. 

 

Greg in Mississippi

[gstew]

23 hours ago, matthias said:

 

Greg,

this is the combo I am looking for.

Can you elaborate further?

Thanks

 

Matt

 

 

4 hours ago, allo.com said:

 

 

 Hi Greg

 

Uptone guys made a really interesting architecture . How  significant is the SQ uplift ?

As of now I only have about 40 hours of runtime on the EtherRegen. So far I am very happy with what I hear but want to have >100 hours before I post a detailed report. 

 

I've had one fairly minor operational glitch that I've not had a chance to troubleshoot. I haven't seen that anyone else is using a similar HS setup, so it may be specific to my HW or it's configuration. As such & as I have a very simple workaround, I'm not worried about that. I can easily run the workaround forever with no operational impact. 

 

More in a few days. But based on what I've heard so far, it will be a positive report, the only question is how glowing. 

 

Greg In Mississippi

 

P.S. My read of the comments so far is that it will take some time for the EtherRegen user community to settle on the best use cases & optimizations in including overall system architectures, power, cabling, use of optical links or not, etc. AFAIK, the EtherRegen is a new & unique concept & implementation. Things won't always work as expected and that has already been reported. So don't take the current reports as the final words.

[gstew]

@matthias,

Actually I already have. I have used the ER in 2 setups, both using a USBBridge Sig as the player endpoint. One has a somewhat modified Katana stack, the other a somewhat modified Ian GB FiFoPi/Dual-Mono ES90338Q2M/IVStd stack. Both benefited greatly from the ER. I strongly suspect the USBBridge Sig works synergistically with the ER.

If you look at my last 12 or so posts on this board, almost all are raves about the ER in these setups.

AND my emails to Ioan at Allo about this have been even more enthusiastic!

Interestingly, I felt the Katana setup benefited more from the addition of the ER. Before the ER, I would have put my Ian GB setup a little ahead of the Katana. Now I'd say the tables have reversed. Though I'm listening to a different discrete opamp in Ian's IVStd tonight as I type and the tables may have turned again... will see after I get some hours on them.

Greg in Mississippi

[gstew]

@Heckyman,

No I have not. I use the Logitech Squeezebox architecture with the RPi endpoint with the PiCorePlayer distro/Squeezelite SW combo. Playing local files would require running the LMS music server software on the RPi and my experience has been getting the best SQ out of computer audio means the lowest SW load one can achieve on the player. SO I'd expect that to be a step backwards.

BUT honestly, I haven't tried it.

If you scan the Uptone Audio ER Listening Impressions thread, you'll see comments that the ER brought streamed source up to the level of local file-served source. BUT that is not the same as what you're asking.

Sorry, I can't help you here.

OTOH, see my comments on TirNaHiFi here:

http://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4541&p=89937#p89937

Summary... my reference digital playback source is a modified SDTrans384 SD-card player. In an effort to close the gap between that and my file-served music, I modified a couple of RPi 2B's with all-linear regulated voltage rails from an LDOVR.com Mezzanine board replacing the noisier on-board DC-DC converters. This took the RPi source into the realm of the SD player, though as the lowest level of that unit's range. When I got the USBBridge Sigs in, I had been running my RPi setups using those modified RPi and the USBBridge Sig was a significant step up from them. With the additional jump in SQ from the ER, I now know I need to recompare this source to the SD card player to see where they stand. I'm not expecting the file-served music through the ER on the USBBridge Sig to beat the SD card player, but I suspect it is VERY close to parity now.

BUT honestly, the results I'm getting now are so good that I've lost much of my will to even do these comparisons and have been focused more on DAC and power supply upgrades and getting more of my music library available on my LMS server.

Greg in Mississippi

P.S. I've posted this elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating here. I was not expecting a significant SQ boost out of the ER. My main reason for wanting them in my systems was to eventually make use of hi-quality upsampling with SW like HQPlayer, which will require MUCH more powerful (NOISY!!!) music server computers. My networked music servers setups are very low-power Zotac picocomputers feeding a switch selected for good SQ (ZyXEL) and a optical link to eliminate the possibility of ground noise contamination, again with FMCs selected for SQ (Trendnet sending, Delock receving). ALL of the gear was powered by at least DIY'd linear supplies with crucial pieces (switch and receiving FMC) powered by Uptone Audio LPS-1.2s. I modified the receiving Delock FMCs with linear regulation. AND the music files were stored on an SD card into the picocomputer which I found sounded better than a USB stick in this setup.

Given all of that I was expecting a modest SQ boost from the ER.

I got much more.

[gstew]

@Heckyman and anyone else interested,

The SD Card Players such as the SDTrans384 and DIY'd ones based on inexpensive ones from EBay CAN provide a very good I2S source for feeding an I2S-connected DAC, either DIY or the few commercially available ones. In addition, the SDTrans384 includes a wired S/PDIF output and a PS Audio-style I2S-over-HDMI cable output for use with other DACs. AND with a bit of DIY work you can add those to the inexpensive EBay units.

Benefits CAN BE a top-notch I2S feed for great sound. Of course that is all dependent on power supplies, clocks, good (and for native I2S, SHORT!) signal routing, and other implementation details. Use of one of these is not by itself a guarantee of good results.

Drawbacks are due to the limited source material you can fit on an SD Card... typically the units will operate with 32Gb or 64Gb cards max. AND the SDTrans384 won't read compressed files, which for PCM limits you to non-compressed WAV files. I have a likely mid-sized library of roughly 1.5Tb of music files, most in FLAC, so roughly 2Tb uncompressed. You have to deal with making the music you want to hear available to use on the player, which can be setting up a process for easily copying it to an SD card or pre-loading a bunch of cards with your preferred music and cataloging which card contains what. Definitely back to the stone-age (or vinyl / CD age) for content management. AND they don't support streaming at all, though with some care and advanced DIY'ing, I suspect you can create a setup that supports both.

As I've posted here and other places, I implemented an SDTrans384 setup in an effort to get a good reference for my DIY efforts. It has served well in that capacity for several years. In my thirst for the best sound, I'd put up with limited and kludgy access to my music library. Over that time some upgrades to both the SDTrans384 and the attached Soekris DAM DAC along with the attendant power supplies have kept them at the forefront. In Mid-2018 I modified a couple RPi 2B with LDOVR.COM's RPi Mezzanine board to replace the RPi's DC-DC converters with good linear regulation, I felt that setup with the best power supplies I then used put an RPi-based network player at roughly the same level as the SDTrans384 sourced setup when used with basic power supplies. While that configuration didn't challenge the SDT/SDD combo's sonic supremacy in my setups, it was getting into the same range.

My recent moves to the USBBridge Signature as an RPi replacement AND Uptone Audio's EtherRegen as my switch have together made such a difference that I suspect once I take the time to compare the SDTrans84-connected Soekris DAC setup to my RPi/USBBridge Sig-connected one, now the SQ difference may be so small that the limitations and headaches of using the SD-Card players may no longer be worthwhile. I'll try that sometime next year and report back.


More info:

SDTrans384:

https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/142562-microsd-memory-card-transport-project.html

https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/group-buys/260565-gb-sdtrans384-micro-sd-card-digital-transport.html?highlight=sdtrans384

http://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3705


Other SDCard Players:

http://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3750&start=20

http://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4541

https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/285630-sd-card-memory-flac-wav-192-24-player-ess-crescendo-ii-ak4495-dv20a.html

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/55533-audiophile-sd-card-transport/page/6/

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/55818-qls-quloos-qa361-dap-as-servertransportplayer/?tab=comments

http://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4682

https://www.ecdesigns.nl/en/ (currently offering USB-Stick players, used to offer SD Card Players)


Greg in Mississippi

[gstew]

Allo has very good regulators on their USBBridge Signature, but some are LDO's with <6V maximums.

 

Feel free to try it with a 6V battery. You may get lucky. 

 

More likely you'll have to buy another.

 

Greg in Mississippi 

[gstew]

@Tapatrick,

I have not and am sorry to sad I do not expect to do so soon.

3 reasons... first is that I'm REALLY happy with the sonics I'm getting in my 2 setups now. Since I wrote that comment in December 2019, I've:

- Tried some alternate Ethernet cables after the EtherRegen and settled on what I liked at first... the lowly Cat6 cable that came with my Baaske isolators (which came with a ferrite core around the cable near one end), a single Baaske isolator (pre-ER I had 2), and a 6" flat Cat6 from Amazon into my USBBridge Sigs. I did try all of the low-cost favs and none bettered this combo either separately or in conjunction with the Baaske isolator in my setups and to my ears. This setup just sounds more like music to me.

- Moved to newer model lower-ESR 325F UC pairs on the power feeds to the DACs and associated boards (Katana microprocessor board, Ian Canada FiFoPi) along with using LDOVR.com LT3045 regulator boards as the float-charging regulators when in-use. I still use Ian Canada's LT3042 reg boards pre-use for charge-up as I know they work safely at their native 250mA-300mA native current limit without additional heatsinking... just lazy here!

- Moved to 3000F(!) UC pairs on the power feed to the USBBridge Sigs. These of course take a hours to pre-charge at 300mA - 900mA, so when when I power-down the setups for an extended absence or predicted thunderstorm activity, I keep these charged up with a couple of 5V wall warts so I can get the systems back up pretty quickly.

- Because I have been so happy with the setups that I was more interested in listening than fooling with them, I moved to Lexar 1Tb SD cards in my Zotac PI320 micro computers configured as LMS servers. In addition to now holding almost 80% of my music files and increasing my music selections, they also brought a small but noticeable improvement over the 512Gb PNY cards there previously. Scratching my head on this one, but happy for the bumps up!

As I said above, of this has had me MUCH more interested in listening that building / tweaking / comparing.

Second, the 2 setups I planned to use to compare USBBridge Sig to SDTrans384 were my Soekris DAM DAC setups, one of which is tethered to the SDTrans384 and the other is configured for an I2S feed from an RPi-type header (enter USBBridge Sig here). While both are highly modified, neither has been optimized for use with the UC pair power rail final buffers I universally moved to middle 2019 and would need likely a couple weeks of delicate rework to get there. Both of these setups with the power supplies last used are now sonically FAR behind my current setups in most if not all parameters, so I know I need to bring them up to use my lastest power supply scheme if just to have a comparison that I'd want to listen to for the several weeks needed to get a fair listen (and have the Black Gate caps on each board run-in again as they need to do after an extended down time).

Third, I've just had less audio workbench time available because I'm shifting my focus over to my model aircraft hobbies. AND it is getting close to flying weather!

So likely no comparison until next winter at the earliest. SORRY! Based on what I heard when I switched over to the current setups in early 2019 AND what I heard as I incrementally upgraded them (MANY TIMES!), I suspect that the SDTrans384/Soekris setup will not be far ahead of the USBBridge/FiFoPi/Soekris setup IF AT ALL. A TirNaHiFi-style synchronous I2S reclocker (Acko's old S03 would also work here) after the SDTrans384 might help it pull ahead.

BUT likely no work on any of that until late this year earliest.

Greg in Mississippi