Article: UpTone Audio EtherREGEN Review and Comparison

Superdad · March 10, 2020

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:

Superdad · March 11, 2020

9 hours ago, rhmmmm said:

They look pretty scary and I’m not sure the posters in those, other than the manufacturer, would reply well. This seems to be the best place for conversation about the product so far.

Are you kidding? Even I especially avoid replying over at ASR. They have knives out--attacking the slightest utterance from us. They completely dismissed John's paper, and even when we publish the measurement graphs I guarantee they will bury their heads in the sand and deny all of what we are trying to explain. If they were the least bit civil I might try reason...

2 hours ago, Nenon said:

Can't disagree with the importance of the room. I give the room 50% in my system. It's more important than any single component.

Me too. That's why I custom built my studio over a decade ago. But I can't package and ship it by mail or FedEx.

44 minutes ago, rhmmmm said:

I use a NAS/Computer to stream to an Ethernet Renderer on my MSB DAC.

I'm very interested in this product and about to pull the trigger.

Great. There are at least a dozen MSB DAC users (that I know of) enjoying the EtherREGEN, so your chances are good.

Superdad · March 11, 2020

4 minutes ago, yyz said:

If a DAC had a fibre optic input, like the Lumin X1, would something like the eR be needed? Assuming you used a good fibre switch from you router, such as this one.

.....

I have limited experience in this but my understanding is that the fibre optical cable eliminates all analog noise that can cause degradation in sound.

This question has come up before, so it was included in the Q&A at the end of our paper:

Q. What about fiber-optic interfaces? Don’t these block everything?

A. In the case of a pure optical input (zero metal connection), this does block leakage current, but it does not block phase-noise affects. The optical connection is like any other isolator: jitter on the input is transmitted down the fiber and shows up at the receiver. If the receiver reclocks the data with a local clock, you still have the effects of the ground plane-noise from the data causing threshold changes on the reclocking circuit, thus overlaying on top of the local clock.

A good number of people have already reported on their use of the EtherREGEN (in B>A direction) to feed their optical-input streamers (opticalRendu and Taiko Extreme), thus demonstrating the effectiveness of our isolation/reclocking "moat."

And among the tests that John is running (measuring phase-noise at the DAC's clock pin), he may include EtherREGEN>opticalRend>DAC to show the effect.

Superdad · March 12, 2020

12 minutes ago, k-man said:

...I hope to get a satisfactory explanation about power supplies from anyone.

Well very low output impedance (over a wide bandwidth) from a power supply is always a benefit to digital devices. And despite our having $70 (our cost per board even at 500 unit runs) in ultra-ultra-low-noise/ultra-low-impedance regs and power networks on each EtherREGEN, a find power supply still helps a little. Not much mystery there.

Also, here is a quote from John's answer to a similar question that Rajiv posed in an e-mail. Not specific to the EtherREGEN, so not included in our paper. But quite germane to your question:

It IS eventually jitter related, but is different from what I talked about with DATA issues. When the digital circuits do their things they draw current from the supply, how much and for how long varies a LOT. If the entire power network cannot properly supply the current the load wants, the voltage on the positive supply rail (note it is NOT the ground plane this time) will sag thus changing the thresholds in circuits, thus causing timing changes (jitter). The lower the output impedance, the smaller these changes are and the less the jitter related to power supplies.

Note this is dynamic impedance, which contains how fast the power network can deliver charge, but also how long it can deliver it for. A lot of power supplies have a "bump" in the impedance curve, they can rapidly supply changing loads, but they can't maintain it for longer periods. This is cause by properly balanced capacitance and inductance for high speed response, but the capacitance is not high enough to maintain the extra load for long, it needs to be "recharged" by current from the AC mains section. In a lot of designs this cannot respond fast enough to keep the capacitors charged up when high current load increases occur. After awhile the AC mains section "catches up" and can supply the needed current, but there is a period of time when the charge in the capacitors is being depleted and not being recharged fast enough.

Superdad · March 12, 2020

5 minutes ago, Confused said:

What I am wondering is what the likely mechanism is here? Has anyone come up with a theory that covers this scenario?

See the Q&A on page 5 of our paper, where John talks about buffers.

Superdad · July 19, 2020

9 hours ago, Ricardo007 said:

Any suggestion for a software or Android application intuitive and simple to use to create such network diagrammes ?

https://app.diagrams.net

Superdad · September 5, 2020

1 hour ago, Wine Doctor said:

Thus, if one wants to play Hi-Res and DSD streams, one will not be able to take advantage of the higher sound quality advertised by Melco from the S-100's 100mb ports. In addition, one may have more than four devices that need to connect to the four 1gb ports on S-100. These limitations are not reported by Melco, which is lamentable.

This seems rather off-topic in relation to the EtherREGEN review here.

But since you bring it up, I can tell you that I--and many other EtherREGEN owners--are able to play DSD512 across the EtherREGEN's moat. ('A'side ports are all Gigabit-capable, 'B' side port is 100Mbps only.) Just sayin'...

Superdad · October 8, 2020

16 hours ago, MHar said:

Will the presence of a NetGear GS-108 switch upstream from the EtherRegen benefit from the "2-switch" synergy or is it too low end to matter?

Probably will not help. And from some reports I have seen, putting a cheap extra switch before the EtherREGEN might be slightly worse. But no harm, and little cost, in experimenting!