Article: UpTone Audio EtherREGEN Review and Comparison

[austinpop]

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[The Computer Audiophile]

Thanks for all the hard work on this one Rajiv! I know the AS community appreciates it greatly!

[davide256]

Excellent review. My industry training also made me skeptical about audio unique benefits from an Ethernet switch but clearly something is going on that affects an audio USB

device with an active NIC. Based on your review, looks like I'll be buying yet another DC power supply to power the Etherregen 😉

[austinpop]

23 minutes ago, davide256 said:

Excellent review. My industry training also made me skeptical about audio unique benefits from an Ethernet switch but clearly something is going on that affects an audio USB

device with an active NIC. Based on your review, looks like I'll be buying yet another DC power supply to power the Etherregen 😉

 

Thanks David.

 

Have a look at Uptone's white paper, linked in the review. Food for thought.

[Bruce Orr]

GREAT review, Rajiv!!  As usual, you take more time and effort, and exceed all expectations!  Very illuminating with specific POVs that still allow us to ponder, but now with more and better info. Congrats to @JohnSwenson and Alex for creating a great new switch at an affordable price!

[elan120]

Very top notch review!  This is the type of review should be used as baseline for all reviews.

 

Well done, Rajiv!!

[Superdad]

I would like to express our heartfelt thanks, not only to Rajiv for his thoughtful and in-depth review, but also to the now almost 1,200 people around the world who have purchased, installed, listened to and written about our compact yet innovative switch and the impact it has had on their musical enjoyment.

 

To be honest, during the near 18-month design cycle for the EtherREGEN, we had only a slight idea what the audible result would be. Not until the final pre-production boards did we begin to comprehend the sonic impact of the piece. Even then (and as will other groundbreaking UpTone products before it such as our USB & ISO REGENs and our UltraCap supplies), we had no idea what reception it would receive from users with diverse systems--from modest to mega-buck.

 

While we always know that the technical underpinnings of our products are sound (no voodoo or "snake oil" is ever mixed in, only solid engineering and expensive parts ), it always comes as a surprise to us just how quickly people hear and embrace the direction we are going.  And while yes, the success of our products is fiscally rewarding, our deeper gratification comes from offering these innovative components at a very fair price so that the largest number of people can enjoy them.

 

We know that our just released 5-page 'white paper' will stir discussion and raise questions--that is very much the point of it.  To that end, I just now started a new thread for that purpose, and it starts with a introduction:

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I will also note to all the people around the world who’ve used this product, please leave a review and star rating of the EtherREGEN on our Polestar platform. 
 

 

[Le Concombre Masqué]

Looks admirably thorough but have you tried with cheap CAT6 UTP cables, you know the ones with plastic connectors so they don't create ground issues to start with?

[latenz]

Thanks for this extensive review and the different evaluations.
I still have a basic question.

Did you try once, playing form an internal drive in your music computer? I know in "theory" there is no difference for stylus in ram. But you need all the different stuff and different cables to feed a „one-box-solution“?
Thanks again for your impressive deep review.
Btw…nice music decision…

[PYP]

1 hour ago, elan120 said:

Very top notch review!  This is the type of review should be used as baseline for all reviews.

 

Well done, Rajiv!!

 

+1.  This is a perfectly organized review.  And the graphics are very helpful to understanding what you changed and how.  I appreciate all the combinations you tried, since this answers many of the questions that fewer options would raise.  Very nicely done!  

 

I especially like your point that the eR can be improved, if one wants, incrementally over time.  That is what I've done and enjoyed the process -- first adding an UpTone JS-2, then a Sonore oM -- and there were additive improvements as you explained.  It was helpful to use the eR as is (with SMPS) for a few months before tweaking since it forms a good baseline of operation.  As you mention, the eR is great as is and that gives the user choices about whether to continue tweaking or not.  

 

It is interesting how much you have tweaked and experimented with your system -- Where does this end, indeed!  That the eR brings the kind of change you wrote about to an optimized system is a testament to the design.  

 

[hopkins]

Great review, but perhaps one obvious point should be emphasized: the ER only addresses signal quality upsteam from the source connected to the DAC, so its effects are limited. 

[FredM]

What a review @austinpop, I very much appreciate your effort, with all the different use cases a fantastic source for those want to learn more about the EtherREGEN. 👍👍👍

 

 

 

 

ps. For those who want to learn about The Linear Solution (TLS), be aware! Here are some first hand experiences... :

 

[Norton]

I’m not in the market for this type of product, but that was one hell of a review.

Thanks for putting in the hard work to help the AS community Rajiv, much appreciated and a model for reviewers everywhere.

[Geoff13]

What an amazing review. Well done! Wow! 

[RickyV]

Wow Rajiv it is Indeed a masterful review, very very good.

[auricgoldfinger]

I think you have exceeded the high bar you previously established for yourself with this review!  Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences!

[kennyb123]

Excellent review!!! Really well done and exceptionally-well communicated.

[Nenon]

Great stuff. IMO the best review I have read on this web site. Thank you, Rajiv.

[Nenon]

4 hours ago, Le Concombre Masqué said:

Looks admirably thorough but have you tried with cheap CAT6 UTP cables, you know the ones with plastic connectors so they don't create ground issues to start with?

 

Have you actually read the review? Let me point one part out:

Quote

Ethernet cables

 

One axis I did not explore was to vary Ethernet cables. Since I’ve been experimenting with switches for some years now, I have tried many different cables in the past. Yes, cables do sound different in my system. Some time ago, I had picked the SOtM dCBL-Cat7 cables as the best fit for my system, for their rich and balanced character. For this review, I held these cables constant in all the comparisons.

Have you looked at any of the diagrams that clearly list "generic cat 6 cable"? I counted at least 15 diagrams, so that should have been obvious.

 

Rajiv did not specify that, but this review is about cutting edge technology. Yes, those cheap CAT6 UTP cables with plastic connectors made a huge difference what feels like ages ago when everything digital was a ground noise bomb.

If I was still using a cheap laptop connected to my all-in-one cable modem via Ethernet and directly connected to my DAC via the USB cable provided with my printer - yes, they would make a significant difference over the ones with metal connectors that pass the ground from one device to another. But also, not every ethernet cable with metal connectors passes the ground from one end to another.

 

When you have a complex system like Rajiv's with multiple custom Paul Hynes DR SR 7's connected to your network devices, fiber isolation, multiple well designed switches clock synced by a top reference clock, JCAT Net Femto NIC powered by another Paul Hynes LPS, and so on - I can tell you what happens to those cheap CAT6 UTP cables with plastic connectors - you throw them in the garbage because they are the biggest enemy of your sound system. That's what happens :).

 

I will tell you this - I had a JCAT Reference Ethernet cable that I had to replace with a regular cheap cable (pretty well made actually). The sound stage collapsed, the clarity disappeared, everything went downhill with my Qobuz streaming. I have no desire to listen to Qobuz until that cable is back in my system, because I know what I am missing. And I actually have both - the Melco and the etherREGEN switches currently connected together like in the review above.

Rajiv was delicate enough not to open up this can of worms but ethernet cables make as much difference as the switches in this review. And most of these cheap cables with the plastic connectors are actually horrible.

 

Sorry if I am too harsh, but I wanted to send a clear message out there. Nothing personal. Those conversations about Ethernet cables and switches and the useless never ending debates have been had over and over in this forum and I am kind of getting tired of hearing them.

 

@austinpop deserves a big thank you for the honest and very well thought out review.

He even gave credit to the manufacturers who declined or did not respond to the request for review samples. How many honest reviewers are left out there that would do that? I don't know because I stopped reading audiophile magazines a while ago and stopped getting any influence by reviewers. But this review is really good.

[auricgoldfinger]

18 minutes ago, Nenon said:

When you have a complex system like Rajiv's with multiple custom Paul Hynes DR SR 7's connected to your network devices, fiber isolation, multiple well designed switches clock synced by a top reference clock, JCAT Net Femto NIC powered by another Paul Hynes LPS, and so on - I can tell you what happens to those cheap CAT6 UTP cables with plastic connectors - you throw them in the garbage because they are the biggest enemy of your sound system. That's what happens :).

 

Amen!!!

[Confused]

Rajiv, a fine review, thorough would be an understatement!

 

One point to clarify, you placed the SQ of the EtherRegen and S100 as being very close.  Am I correct that this was with the EtherRegen using the REF10’s reference clock, and the S100 necessarily using its own clock?  I think I have this right, but I’m not completely sure. 

[austinpop]

4 hours ago, latenz said:

Did you try once, playing form an internal drive in your music computer?

 

This is a deep topic in its own right, and will take this thread off-topic! So, please post any followup on the thread I'll link below.

 

Yes, I have indeed tried internal drives, and it takes a lot of effort and optimization to mitigate for their presence in the music computer. Not saying it can't be done, but it's not as simple as just hooking up an NVMe SSD or SATA HDD.

 

The reason I went the NAS route is based on the simple idea that NO storage disk is quieter (from a noise perspective) than even the quietest one. And this was facilitated by the use of Euphony OS and Stylus. Once you can pre-buffer the music before playback, you've taken the storage device out of the picture.

 

I suggest you take a look at this thread: https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/ Check out the index in the first post, and do some searches. You will find people have discussed these tradeoffs extensively.

 

 

4 hours ago, latenz said:

Thanks again for your impressive deep review.
Btw…nice music decision…

 

Thanks!

[austinpop]

46 minutes ago, Confused said:

Rajiv, a fine review, thorough would be an understatement!

 

Thanks!

 

46 minutes ago, Confused said:

One point to clarify, you placed the SQ of the EtherRegen and S100 as being very close.  Am I correct that this was with the EtherRegen using the REF10’s reference clock, and the S100 necessarily using its own clock?  I think I have this right, but I’m not completely sure. 

 

Yes, exactly right.

[Bricki]

This is an astonishingly well written, thorough and enjoyable read. 

 

Congratulations Rajiv, you're a real talent 👍

 

P.S. I agree with your assessment. The Etheregen has brought new levels of musical engagement and realism to my system too 😁