UpTone Audio EtherREGEN Listening Impressions

[RickyV]

37 minutes ago, Avalfa said:

I had to register to reply here, have been reading around for a while now. 

Today my etherregen from Audiostore in the UK arrived in the Netherlands. And it's in my system right now for about half an hour.

 

My first impression? ( I have given it time to warm up a bit for 15 minutes,before connecting Ethernet cables)

 

First seconds of music, my jaw dropped at the floor, thinking WTF!!?  Just brilliant. Way, way more details, wider and deeper sound stage, more definition, more ease, more calmness etc. 

 

A serious good investment this one.

 

For who's interested, it replaced a basic d-link switch between home network (desktop PC somewhere in the house used as NAS)  and streamer/pre-amp, with basic cat 5e and cat6 cables of all kinds of brands that I just had laying around.

( I just use my streamer for local file Playback)

Welkom bij audiophile style en gefeliciteerd met je Etherregen, veel luister plezier.

 

Welcome to audiophile style and congratulations with your Etherregen, happy listening.

[RickyV]

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

[RickyV]

1 hour ago, Superdad said:

 

Wow, we are getting into rarified territory here!  The MSB web page shows the Select DAC starting at about $84K, plus $20K+ of available power supplies and other upgrades, including the $2K Ethernet input module.  And our humble $640 EtherREGEN was immediately an improvement for you?  Nice!  

@Superdad it sound like the ER is a real winner have you considered sending an ER to Stereophile or/ and 6moons for review? Maybe after John finish his paper and measurements.

[RickyV]

4 hours ago, Puma Cat said:

I think the possible reason you didn't hear a difference/improvement with ER is because the Linn is just...SO DAMN GOOD. I mean, just look at the engineering specification of the K/DS3: the K/DS3 uses Linn's Katalyst Digital to Analog architecture, brings multiple isolated power supplies, a high-precision master clock, careful optimisation of the data before conversion and a new low-distortion output driver stage.

 

This is clearly a world-class, state of the art streamer/network bridge.  Acc. to What HiFi? the best music streamer on the market, period.

 

Also, given that Linn has extensive experience in digital reproduction, from making superb recordings all the way through to digital streamers, players and DACs, its a safe bet that...these guys really know what they are doing when it comes to digital. 

 

My guess is the $20,000+ Linn K/DS3 manages jitter and phase noise so well that adding an ER may not bring anything discernable to the table with respect to sound-quality that the K/DS3 hasn't already got covered. 

I think this sounds like a perfectly good explanation as to why the ER doesn’t have anything to improve anymore. We might as well have found one of the few streamers that is so well designed that the guys from ASR would finally be proud. That would be a great plus for Linn. The only downside is it's 20k and nobody at ASR or me can afford it so we buy the EtherRegen instead. 😁

[RickyV]

10 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

I thought this thread was for listening impressions???

Well a lot of people are waiting for the second batch of etherregen to be sent off. X amount of days later the second wave of listening impressions will flood in again.

Stay tuned.

[RickyV]

28 minutes ago, Superdad said:

Actually, we just finished packing up 90 units for overseas dealers and 32 domestic units.  About to load up the van to drop them off. This is a full week ahead of the promised December 12th date. Over the weekend I will do the labels and commercial export invoices for the remaining 50 second-batch international units. Those will all ship out--mostly via very fast FedEx on Monday the 9th.  And then another 60 units to the dealers later in the week.  That cleans us out for December!

 

Happily, another 256 boards arrive about the 16th and we already have cases. So we will start all over again for the January-promised units. The dealers are getting less than 50 total of those because there are about 205 units direct-sales orders promised for January. The date we have settled on to ship those by is January 16th. Might be a little sooner as typical for us, but I am closing our offices from December 21, reopening on January 2nd.

 

I know this information belongs elsewhere. But I'm in a hurry. Will cross-post it later.

WHoooaaa!!! can’t wait to get the Etherregen. Excellent work. 

[RickyV]

💫🎁🎉 I got my EtherRegen today 🎉🎁💫

 

It took me 10 minutes to pull out my old Netgear fs105 and replace it with the ER so burn in can start.
Oh so happy, thanks superdad and superJohn.

[RickyV]

I listened to the ER briefly on Thursday when I first got it, it sounded promising but left it at that. Thinking I rather listen to it after some burn-in time.

 

First toughs after 28 hours of music playing burn-in: 

Oh wow, need to recalibrate my brain. Much more precision in the whole soundstage meaning that every sound has now more of its own space around it, definition, decay and depth. 

Great stability, tight bass definition.

I think there’s still some harshness but I am confident it will disappear.

 

Oh I am tired 😴, going to casual listening mode now. 
 

Thanks SuperJohn and SuperDad for this SuperBad switch, just fantastic.

 

Music: (all via Tidal)

Iggy Pop, Free: Loves missing.

Supertramp: school.

Benjamin Clementine, At Least For Now.

Daft Punk, Random Access Memories: Giorgio by Moroder, Motherboard, Contact.

Fink, Bloom Innocent.

 

Ps etherregen fed with 12 volt gives it a toasty 43C.

[RickyV]

18 minutes ago, elan120 said:

Looking forward to read your result.  I did the similar comparison recently except for a different USB cable and was between endpoint and the DAC.

What is the verdict of that comparison? I now go from my server via a lush^2 to the IR and via uspcb to the DAC. The IR is now nicely tugged a away out of sight behind the DAC so that’s a plus. If I switch it around the IR comes in to view, I prefer not to have that. I have a spare original lush usb cable so maybe server->lush->IR->lush^2->DAC is an idea.

[RickyV]

On 2/13/2020 at 12:23 AM, Crimmind said:

Take a look at Hans Beekhuyzens video this friday. He will review ER and I have heard it will be good 🎶

 

Here it is.

 

[RickyV]

7 minutes ago, http404 said:

WHOA! Not at all subtle!

 

The cat ate yet another optical cable between my fiber media converters (grrrr) so I decided to try the ER. My hopes were along the lines of the improvement I got from powering my UltraRendu with an UltraCap LPS 1.2. Forget that ... more along the lines of putting the Tesla in Ludicrous mode ... big grins! Thanks guys.

aren’t cats awesome, hide the fiber better. 👍

 

You could use one FMC and go optical into the ER.

[RickyV]

My bet is still that it is a usb to optical to usb device. But hopefully with 24 MHz external clock input and SFP modules.

[RickyV]

5 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

Not sure why 24 MHz ?

The usb controler chip uses 24Mhz, like the chip in the usb regen. And because I ordered a 24Mhz clock kit from DIY audio 

[RickyV]

11 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

 

Digital external clock transfer would be a nice development. Would also end the discussion 50 vs 75

I mean square wave signal, also has 50 or 75ohm impedance.