EtherREGEN: Installation, Usage, Difficulty, Questions thread

[Meridimac]

45 minutes ago, dancause said:

Meridimac : interested in your experience with placing the ENO before or after the ER in the chain : what is the impact on SQ.  I'm juggling with the same situation with a weaversa lan filter (The filter works pretty well just before the DAC but I want to test what would happen before the ER. 

Hi dancause. I’ve preferred ENO after ER for the main stereo system (Meridian active speakers) where the goal is widest/deepest soundstage. -But my hobby is to keep experimenting with different switches, power supplies and interconnects among four listening situations: Now I’ll try ENO alone for 7.1 theater sessions based on the recommendation that ER be one short cable away from my living room endpoint.

 

With all of the odd audio items floating around my house, and my obviously suggestible, expectation-bias brain, you would be wise to take anything I say with barrels of salt: the $150 iFi iPurifier3 sounds different to me when flipped around at opposite ends of the same usb cable between the same two components…

[Meridimac]

Here’s another question: since I’m moving both ER and Roon server to the living room (which is connected to my audio-only network segment by a long length of CAT5e), is there any advantage connecting the NUC to a Cisco switch ahead of the fiber into ER vs. directly to an “A” port on ER afterwards?

 

Some would have us believe that noise from the NUC might be attenuated by the 10G Finisar transceivers and fiber. I will try it both ways, but wonder about any theories or real-world feedback on this point.

[JohnSwenson]

8 hours ago, Meridimac said:

Here’s another question: since I’m moving both ER and Roon server to the living room (which is connected to my audio-only network segment by a long length of CAT5e), is there any advantage connecting the NUC to a Cisco switch ahead of the fiber into ER vs. directly to an “A” port on ER afterwards?

 

Some would have us believe that noise from the NUC might be attenuated by the 10G Finisar transceivers and fiber. I will try it both ways, but wonder about any theories or real-world feedback on this point.

An SFP+ module CANNOT decrease jitter. In fact all such devices INCREASE jitter, the electrical to light and light to electrical conversion can only add jitter. The switch where the SFP+ module is plugged into CAN possibly decrease jitter since it does reclock the data. How much depends on how the switch electronics are implemented and the phase noise of the clock inside the switch box. It may decrease the jitter from say a $15 switch, but unless it is specifically designed to radically reduce jitter it is highly unlikely  it could do better than an ER.

 

John S.

[Meridimac]

5 hours ago, JohnSwenson said:

The switch where the SFP+ module is plugged into CAN possibly decrease jitter since it does reclock the data.

Thanks, John.

Do the Catalyst and Meraki switches reclock the data through their two uplink ports? -And how do these series otherwise compare when it comes to electrical noise and jitter?

[JohnSwenson]

8 hours ago, Meridimac said:

Thanks, John.

Do the Catalyst and Meraki switches reclock the data through their two uplink ports? -And how do these series otherwise compare when it comes to electrical noise and jitter?

The term "reclock" has somehow come to mean some special magic, it is not. ANY circuit, chip etc where the output come from a flip-flop with a clock is being "re-clocked" by that clock. So ANY chip that is run from a clock is "re-clocking". What the jitter is on the output is determined by many parameters, the phase noise of the clock, the noise of the power network, the the design of the last flip flop and any drivers, the geometry of the power network inside the chip, etc. There is no way to determine what these are going to be without measuring.

 

Unfortunately ALL commercially available jitter analyzers are pretty much worthless for our purposes. They are all designed to measure jitter meeting specs for the various serial interface standards. ALL of these ignore low frequency jitter components so all of the available jitter analyzers ignore low frequency components, which are exactly what we are looking at. The only way out of this is to design my own jitter analyzer that DOES look at low frequency components. I have a design for this but it will need a chip that is not available yet (I've been promised some time in 2024). It's not cheap but it will be able to properly measure jitter components that ARE appropriate for digital audio.

 

So at this point there is no reason to measure different devices since the results are meaningless for us. So until I get the analyzer up and running all we can go on is guess and listen.

 

John S.

 

 

[Meridimac]

26 minutes ago, JohnSwenson said:

 

So at this point there is no reason to measure different devices since the results are meaningless for us. So until I get the analyzer up and running all we can go on is guess and listen.

Then I guess l’ll be listening to Catalyst and Meraki combinations -followed by my ER at the end of the network chain- so that I can report back in a couple of weeks.

 

Thanks again for your patient willingness to share expertise despite my tendency to wander into “special magic” land.

[dctom]

Unfortunately my EtherREGEN has stopped working. The lights come on and it gets warm but it does not pass the ethernet signal  through, tried rebooting, plugging into  alternative sockets on A side. Had been a bit temperamental on connecting for a while. Have been powering it with the uptone supplied psu.

 I have substituted a Tplink switch same cables etc and it works fine. 

 

any suggestions?

[Superdad]

10 hours ago, dctom said:

Unfortunately my EtherREGEN has stopped working. The lights come on and it gets warm but it does not pass the ethernet signal  through, tried rebooting, plugging into  alternative sockets on A side. Had been a bit temperamental on connecting for a while. Have been powering it with the uptone supplied psu.

 I have substituted a Tplink switch same cables etc and it works fine. 

 

any suggestions?

 

Sorry to hear you are having difficulty with you EtherREGEN.  

To assist you we will need many more details about your system.

And we will also need your name to determine date of purchase and firmware revision that might be on your unit.

Best to contact us directly via e-mail or our website Contact Us page so that we can carry this on.

 

Actual EtherREGEN failure is extremely rare, so before jumping into all the above, let’s test your EtherREGEN just as a switch—outside of your music system—by following these steps in order:

1) Be sure that the Clock switch of the EtherREGEN is in the INT position.

2) Remove power from the EtherREGEN and then reapply power to it. [For this test, use the included UpTone-branded 36W AC>DC adapter brick--not any third-party power supply.]

3) Attach network feed into an ‘A’ side port. You should see an amber LED flickering over that port. 

4) Attach a (powered on) standard computer with display screen into ‘B’ side.  Wait a moment and you should see the green LED flickering.

5) Launch a web browser and try to browse internet with that computer. 

 

Report all results (including if the LEDs look different than above).

If you are unable to get on the internet with your computer attached to the ‘B’ port, try moving the computer to one of the ‘A’ side ports—alongside your network feed.  Again report results.

EtherREGEN is an unmanaged switch and should just work. If you can not get computer onto the internet through the EtherREGEN, then please try different LAN cables—both to the EtherREGEN from router and to computer from EtherREGEN.

 

If you can get on the internet through the above tests, then we reattach to your music system and we can move on to discussing your streamer, player software, etc. (please draw us a diagram of your system).

[dctom]

12 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

Sorry to hear you are having difficulty with you EtherREGEN.  

To assist you we will need many more details about your system.

And we will also need your name to determine date of purchase and firmware revision that might be on your unit.

Best to contact us directly via e-mail or our website Contact Us page so that we can carry this on.

 

Actual EtherREGEN failure is extremely rare, so before jumping into all the above, let’s test your EtherREGEN just as a switch—outside of your music system—by following these steps in order:

1) Be sure that the Clock switch of the EtherREGEN is in the INT position.

2) Remove power from the EtherREGEN and then reapply power to it. [For this test, use the included UpTone-branded 36W AC>DC adapter brick--not any third-party power supply.]

3) Attach network feed into an ‘A’ side port. You should see an amber LED flickering over that port. 

4) Attach a (powered on) standard computer with display screen into ‘B’ side.  Wait a moment and you should see the green LED flickering.

5) Launch a web browser and try to browse internet with that computer. 

 

Report all results (including if the LEDs look different than above).

If you are unable to get on the internet with your computer attached to the ‘B’ port, try moving the computer to one of the ‘A’ side ports—alongside your network feed.  Again report results.

EtherREGEN is an unmanaged switch and should just work. If you can not get computer onto the internet through the EtherREGEN, then please try different LAN cables—both to the EtherREGEN from router and to computer from EtherREGEN.

 

If you can get on the internet through the above tests, then we reattach to your music system and we can move on to discussing your streamer, player software, etc. (please draw us a diagram of your system).

 

Thank you for your detailed  reply - I have carried out the instructions you gave and also cleaned all the connections. Very happy to say etherRegen is now working without a problem.

I do not know what the issue was previously.

Thank you for your help, apologies for false alarm!

[mourip]

22 hours ago, dctom said:

 

Thank you for your detailed  reply - I have carried out the instructions you gave and also cleaned all the connections. Very happy to say etherRegen is now working without a problem.

I do not know what the issue was previously.

Thank you for your help, apologies for false alarm!

Are you able to identify any particular point in your troubleshooting where the ER started working again?

 

In other words do you know what did the trick or did it just start working again at the end of performing all of the tips?

[dctom]

4 hours ago, mourip said:

Are you able to identify any particular point in your troubleshooting where the ER started working again?

 

In other words do you know what did the trick or did it just start working again at the end of performing all of the tips?

 

I can not say what re-enabled the device. I cleaned all the ethernet ports and cable plugs with caig, possibly the extended disconnection reset the device, I had left everything disconnected overnight before going through the process listed above. I had  pretty much done the things Jon suggested but redid them anyway. It might have been my computer/streamer being temperamental although I had restarted it several times.

[Markus8]

This is very interesting! Featuring the EtherRegen and also the MUON Pro as well as new insights/measurements.

Also @JohnSwenson is namend and thanked explicitly.

 

 

[Superdad]

36 minutes ago, Markus8 said:

This is very interesting! Featuring the EtherRegen and also the MUON Pro as well as new insights/measurements.

Also @JohnSwenson is namend and thanked explicitly.

 

Yes, and I replied directly to Hans--since while he understands some things, he seems to have very much forgotten others.

 

[Markus8]

I somehow cannot find your comment in the Video on YouTube. Do you see it?

[Superdad]

32 minutes ago, Markus8 said:

I somehow cannot find your comment in the Video on YouTube. Do you see it?

It is there--though you see it reposted it here in the forum yesterday (see link above to other thread).

On YouTube it shortens long comments so one needs to click "Read more" to see the whole thing.

[simon_pepper]

Hi, @SuperdadCould you comment on whether the Chord EE1 device would add anything further to the downstream feed into an EtherREGEN?

Any further noise reduction, through galvanic isolation?

 

https://chord.co.uk/product/english-electric-ee1/

 

Thanks,

Simon

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, simon_pepper said:

Hi, @SuperdadCould you comment on whether the Chord EE1 device would add anything further to the downstream feed into an EtherREGEN?

Any further noise reduction, through galvanic isolation?

 

First, it is rarely if ever a good idea to put any additional devices after/downstream of the EtherREGEN--between our active-differential-isolated and reclocked 'B' port and the streamer/renderer/DAC endpoint.

 

Second, it is getting tiresome seeing so many highly overpriced (versus parts cost) passive in-line Ethernet devices making all sorts of claims.  Every Ethernet port in the world is already galvanically isolated by an array of small magnetic transformer cores. They are arranged variously (see for example spec sheet of a series from Pulse).Pulse J0G-0003NL.pdfPulse J0G-0003NL.pdf

With the EtherREGEN we go to extra expense of using 12-core-per-port magnetics for all our RJ45 ports.  Sometimes you see a switch or device use inexpensive ($1-2) DIP style magnetics--separate from the jack itself, but there is no advantage to that, and the same choices of number of cores and how they are arranged and grounded are options with those.

So I can guarantee that this new $300 inline "filter" from English Electric contains nothing more than a couple port magnetics modules, and likely a few capacitors and resistors playing with the center taps of the cores. Similar to the $89 iFi LAN Silencer:

At least iFi shows their work--and does not charge an outrageous amount for it. 

 

 

 

[Markus8]

Well there are definitely many approaches by various vendors. In the end being it an iFi LAN Silencer or a Network Acoustics MUON Pro etc. it’s all about what the improvement to the sound quality brings. 
To me in addition to the EtherRegen there was a noticeably improvement I wouldn’t want to miss anymore.  

[Atriya]

Might be a naive question:

 

Are ethernet switches of any use other than noise isolation, when connecting only two devices?

 

For example, I have a streamer connected to a laptop via ethernet, but using dual-FMCs for noise isolation. So basically:

 

Laptop -> ethernet cable -> FMC -> optical cable -> FMC -> ethernet cable -> audio streamer

 

In this scenario, would inserting an ethernet switch before/after (or instead of) the FMCs be meaningful at all, since there are only two devices (laptop & streamer), so there's no "switching" going on (from what I understand).

 

The point of this post is not etherREGEN vs. optical isolation. Rather, it's to clarify if any "switching" (that a network switch can do better) is happening at all, when only two devices are involved, or whether an ethernet switch is only useful (again, aside from the issue of isolation) when 3 or more devices are connected.

[JohnSwenson]

On 11/7/2023 at 4:03 PM, Atriya said:

Might be a naive question:

 

Are ethernet switches of any use other than noise isolation, when connecting only two devices?

 

For example, I have a streamer connected to a laptop via ethernet, but using dual-FMCs for noise isolation. So basically:

 

Laptop -> ethernet cable -> FMC -> optical cable -> FMC -> ethernet cable -> audio streamer

 

In this scenario, would inserting an ethernet switch before/after (or instead of) the FMCs be meaningful at all, since there are only two devices (laptop & streamer), so there's no "switching" going on (from what I understand).

 

The point of this post is not etherREGEN vs. optical isolation. Rather, it's to clarify if any "switching" (that a network switch can do better) is happening at all, when only two devices are involved, or whether an ethernet switch is only useful (again, aside from the issue of isolation) when 3 or more devices are connected.

The packet data (sometimes called the "payload") going through your path with the FMCs should stay the same no matter the number of the FMCs or switches in that path. What DOES change is the leakage current and jitter on the data. So If you ignore the leakage current and jitter there is no difference between a single wire and combinations of switches and FMCs etc. The number of devices and cables you add in the path will significantly increase the probability that said payload WILL wind up getting corrupted or stopped all together at some point in time. My recommendation is to only add stuff when it does decrease the leakage current and or data jitter. If you have a very long run (say 100 feet or more) a fiber run in there may make sense. Switching to fiber, or an EtherREGEN in the path may in fact make a significant improvement, but just don't assume it.

 

There is one situation where a switch in such a case may make a huge improvement. This is when different parts of the system are running at different Ethernet rates (100Mb VS 1Gb). This may need what are called "pause frames" to mediate between devices at different rates. Some audiophile devices do not support pause frames but most switches do. This issue mostly shows up when using HQ-Player and an NAA but I think it has shown up a couple times with Roon. This is a pretty rare occurrence.

 

John S.

[Atriya]

7 hours ago, JohnSwenson said:

The packet data (sometimes called the "payload") going through your path with the FMCs should stay the same no matter the number of the FMCs or switches in that path. What DOES change is the leakage current and jitter on the data. So If you ignore the leakage current and jitter there is no difference between a single wire and combinations of switches and FMCs etc. The number of devices and cables you add in the path will significantly increase the probability that said payload WILL wind up getting corrupted or stopped all together at some point in time. My recommendation is to only add stuff when it does decrease the leakage current and or data jitter. If you have a very long run (say 100 feet or more) a fiber run in there may make sense. Switching to fiber, or an EtherREGEN in the path may in fact make a significant improvement, but just don't assume it.

 

There is one situation where a switch in such a case may make a huge improvement. This is when different parts of the system are running at different Ethernet rates (100Mb VS 1Gb). This may need what are called "pause frames" to mediate between devices at different rates. Some audiophile devices do not support pause frames but most switches do. This issue mostly shows up when using HQ-Player and an NAA but I think it has shown up a couple times with Roon. This is a pretty rare occurrence.

 

John S.

 

Thanks, that's very informative. So specifically for the case of connecting only 2 network devices, using a switch (etherRegen included) should have no benefit over a fiber-based solution with an inbuilt OCXO clock? It seems like the latter would provide both isolation and jitter reduction via re-clocking.

 

Again, this is for connecting 2 devices only. I can totally see that once 3 or more devices are in the picture, a switch would be needed.

[JohnSwenson]

On 11/9/2023 at 8:10 AM, Atriya said:

 

Thanks, that's very informative. So specifically for the case of connecting only 2 network devices, using a switch (etherRegen included) should have no benefit over a fiber-based solution with an inbuilt OCXO clock? It seems like the latter would provide both isolation and jitter reduction via re-clocking.

 

Again, this is for connecting 2 devices only. I can totally see that once 3 or more devices are in the picture, a switch would be needed.

Again that depends. A fiber connection is only going to block leakage currents if both sides are completely independent power domains. Fiber connections ADD jitter. Whether that can be taken care of by clocking closest to DAC depends on the implementation, even if there is an OCXO involved, I can't give a blanket statement that it will always be better.

 

John S.

[Jud]

5 hours ago, JohnSwenson said:

A fiber connection is only going to block leakage currents if both sides are completely independent power domains.

 

This for me raises the question of what constitutes a completely independent power domain. A whole separate circuit? Or something short of that?

[Markus8]

22 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

This for me raises the question of what constitutes a completely independent power domain. A whole separate circuit? Or something short of that?

Same for me too! 

I am using an Audioquest Niagara 5000 which has independent Slots - so is that seperation enough?

[JohnSwenson]

5 hours ago, Jud said:

 

This for me raises the question of what constitutes a completely independent power domain. A whole separate circuit? Or something short of that?

Unfortunately, that depends. Independent power domain means power supplies where leakage current cannot flow between the DC sides. Remember that leakage current is low frequency AC so "galvanic isolation" is not sufficient. Anything where the "grounds" of the two supplies are connected is definitely out. Also because of the "high impedance" leakage current (read other posts of mine on that), the impedance between grounds should be at least 1 mega-ohm. What this means is that the grounds should have a capacitance of around 10pf or less. Measuring this is not easy.

 

You also have to make sure there are no "sneak paths", DC power connections from the same supply output going to different devices on opposite sides of the isolation (ER or fiber link). External clock boxes are notorious for this.

 

Two completely separate power supplies meet the requirement. Supplies with multiple outputs may or may not meet this. Unfortunately this is hard to measure. Nobody makes such a tester, so anything has to be DIY and this is not easy. My setup uses some very expensive test equipment and my own circuits. At LEAST the grounds between outputs need to have very high resistance when measured with an ohm meter. This does not mean they are guaranteed to be isolated as far as leakage current is concerned but it is good first step.

 

Hmm, thee might be an inexpensive way to test this, take two outputs, put a 1K resistor on one ground, between that resistor and the other ground connect a battery powered 100Hz sine wave oscillator (NOT a square wave). Use a scope to measure the amplitude across the oscillator, then measure the amplitude across the 1k resistor. If it is 1/1000 the amplitude or less, you are good to go. As an example if the oscillator has a  an amplitude of 1V then the amplitude across the resistor should be 1mV or less. Many scopes have probe grounds connected to the AC safety ground which will likely totally mess up this up. Maybe use a battery powered headphone amp. Connect across the oscillator, adjust the volume until you hear a good output, but not blowing your ears off, then connect across the resistor, if you can just barely hear the tone (or not at all) you are good to go. Maybe somebody ought to make one! NOTE!! the positive outputs of the supply are NOT connected to ANYTHING in this test, it is just between grounds.

 

I hope this makes some sense.

 

John S.