The EtherREGEN thread for various network, cable, power experiences and experiments

[atxkyle]

Received my EtherRegen end of April and, although I’m just getting around to posting, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it for these past 2 months. Significant increase in realism and imaging and a recognition that—yep, there was a ton of unhelpful junk coming in via the network. A huge thanks to UpTone for this product!

 

Yesterday a new SR4T power supply arrived and I swapped that in for the provided SMPS. Whoa. Richer and realer. To my ears by an equal margin of improvement to adding the eR itself. 
 

Right now I have the SR4T set to 9v and I like that very much, but haven’t done detailed comparisons of 12 v 9 v 7 volts.

An interesting finding is that I also tried putting the SR4T on my Chord 2Qute DAC and moving the LPS1.2 (that usually powers the DAC) on the ER. Did NOT like this combo.

Then I put the SMPS back on the ER and was surprised to find that I clearly preferred the SMPS brick to the LPS1.2 for the ER. 
 

Then went back to the 1.2 on the DAC and the SR4T powering the eR and everything clicked again. Back in audiophile heaven.

 

My hunch is that the eR may do best with some headroom from its power supply—the SR4T provides 2.5 amps vs the 1.1 of the LPS1.2, and the SMPS brick actually provides > 4 amps. (Whereas I think the 2Qute DAC is a very low power device, perfectly happy with 1.1 amps.)

 

Finally, another upvote for the Cable Matter Cat8 Ethernet cable. It was a nice improvement over the other generic Ethernet cables I had on hand. Thanks to the folks that made that recommendation.

[atxkyle]

5 hours ago, agladstone said:

Any thoughts on why I need to constantly turn off and turn back on (reboot) my eR? 
My Aurender which the eR is feeding tells me there is no IP and I need to reboot the eR almost every listening session to get my Aurender to register an IP address again? 
I leave my eR and Aurender powered on at all times. 
@Superdad 

I had a similar issue and it turned out to be a bad Ethernet cable. Swapped out cable and no more connectivity issues. 

[atxkyle]

10 hours ago, savjam said:

Sorry if this has been discussed before.  Is there any advantage of using the LPS-1.2 over the stock power supply with the EhterRegen?

My experience was that the Uptone LPS1.2 was worse than the stock power supply for EtherRegen. I suspect the 1.2 is just a tad underpowered for it. Suggest going to an LPS with at least 2A continuous (I use a Paul Hynes SR4T for this but I think Paul hynes is still out of business; Uptone JS-2 or Farad Super3 should be good options). 

[atxkyle]

On 1/5/2023 at 10:43 AM, Superdad said:

When you tried it did you also then attach an Earth Ground wire to the Ground screw of the EtherREGEN—as per the instructions for when powering with a “floated” output supply?

 

Yet I agree that choice of PS for EtherREGEN is a matter of taste—and can be pretty subtle (as compared to PS significance for many other devices).
A really good external clock and fiber feed from the network are bigger upgrades in my experience with our switch. The power networks on the EtherREGEN are already pretty sophisticated. [Those 13 pieces of expensive LT3042/3045 regs get you something! ]

I did not. Perhaps that was the problem.