UpTone Audio EtherREGEN Listening Impressions

[Darryl R]

My new EtherREGEN sounds marvelous.  I had been running from bridged JCAT Net connections on my Linux server directly to the Ethernet Renderer module in the MSB Select II DAC.  Now I'm running out the EtherREGEN and I hear more detail.  I'll no longer need the bridge.

[Darryl R]

and out of respect for Alex's earlier comments, I won't even mention my Shunyata Ethernet cable

 

Seriously though, I can't get any work done.  It's almost as if I can hear the felt hammers on the piano strings.  Call me nuts, I don't care.

[Darryl R]

5 minutes ago, FredM said:

That’s very interesting! To understand you correctly, please elaborate on your finding:

a) is the EtherREGEN better than the JCAT Net? (A vs B comparison) or..

b) does the EtherREGEN make the JCAT Net redundant (no benefit from JCAT Net with the ER in the chain)

c) ..?

 

Case (b) would be a stunning result/achievement!

 

 

Fred, I'm reluctant to say one is better (and I've never enjoyed spending a lot of time doing A/B comparisons).  I can say that I am and will continue to use both, and that as of today, I only need one of the ports on the JCAT card.

[Darryl R]

3 minutes ago, RickyV said:

@Darryl R I think you’ll have an interesting and busy “tweakend” coming up. 😁

 

Yes, I keep thinking of the guy who posted in another forum that he spends more time tweaking his system than listening.  I really want to get away from all the tweaking (after I try headless Audio Linux and ramroot ;))

[Darryl R]

15 hours ago, Darryl R said:

 

Fred, I'm reluctant to say one is better (and I've never enjoyed spending a lot of time doing A/B comparisons).  I can say that I am and will continue to use both, and that as of today, I only need one of the ports on the JCAT card.

 

I wanted to add to my response to Fred another thought, that if the industry assimilates the JS moat concept, perhaps the two could combine into a REGEN card.  But right now, you can use both.  That said, the post below may imply you can jettison the JCAT and use a plain motherboard port.

[Darryl R]

Because I was close to pulling the trigger on a hi-end server, like for instance the Pink Faun 2.16x, and I don't think I will now, I asked John a few questions about those touted enhancements like, for instance, motherboard clocks.  Since he was kind enough to give me some of his valuable time, I thought I'd share his response here so we all can start to better understand the phenomena (except, of course, for those of you who already know it all).  It's an extension of what he and Alex have been telling us:

 

My paper will really go into all this in much better detail ... In a nutshell, each device has its own clock phase noise, the phase noise from upstream devices can "overlay" the phase noise of the local clock. Making the local clock better stops being useful when the overlay is much greater than the local clock phase noise. So in some situations doing things like putting really good clocks on a motherboard may help, but it may not.

 

The EtherREGEN gets rid of all this so upstream stuff like that doesn't really matter. The only clocks that really matter are the renderer AFTER the EtherREGEN and the DAC fed by that. THOSE two WILL benefit from lower clock phase noise, no matter how you get it there, whether it is built in or coming from some external source. Because the EtherREGEN interrupts the clock over laying process, you can clearly hear the differences in clocks in the downstream devices.

 

So if the external clock is feeding the NUC feeding the DAC, yes, that is a good thing, if it is feeding the motherboard of the server feeding the EtherREGEN, probably not worthwhile.

 

I know these concepts seem weird and not what other people are talking about, but the intent of the paper is to really get down to the nitty gritty about how all this happens and what the EtherREGEN does about it.

 

John Swenson

[Darryl R]

39 minutes ago, Crom said:

@Darryl R have you tried leaving the cat card in place and adding the ER between your bridge and dac? I’d be interested to hear results and if improving the Ethernet signal using the jCat made any difference/improvement at all. 

 

That was a combination that was on my mind to try, but I haven't yet.  I supposed I rationalized the difference would be so small, that of going into an 'A' port with only two other 'A' inputs (my LAN, and my NAS in the SFP cage) versus none at all, and the ER spec stating 'A' side isolation is likely better than any other switch on the market.  I also liked the idea of removing the bridge so as not to have two layer 2 "devices" in such close proximity, for what that's worth.

 

EDIT:  And now that I think of it, I'd need to keep my old switch as well.  Further, JS responded to some questions of mine, one of which I posted above, and he pointed out some misconceptions I had.  Namely, that leakage and clock phase noise are the issues, and ER is cleaning those up just before the renderer.  So in my setup, ER was an ideal choice.

[Darryl R]

Some initial posts on the WBF corroborate ours.  From user dminches:

 

I wanted to wait at least 2 days and after 4-5 listening sessions to post my initial feedback.

The biggest difference I am noticing is a big drop in the noise floor. Whatever was there before is no longer masking some of the finer details in the music. While one can play the music lower because of this, I am finding that I want to play the music louder because it is that more pleasing and there is zero fatigue.

It goes without saying that the “bang for the buck” with the EtherREGEN is extremely high.

Anyone who is running Ethernet into either a DAC, server or end point could benefit by inserting one of these.