Discussion of the UpTone / J.Swenson EtherREGEN 'white paper'

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

6 minutes ago, Cable Monkey said:

But we are talking about the white paper here. Is the white paper actually incorrect or are you challenging the whole spectrum of information about this product? The paper is written about what the company claims the the ER can do, and if it can do those things then there may be an impact system wide. That impact should vary from no impact due to how effective the streamer is all the way to no impact because the streamer is completely rubbish and undoes any benefits of the ER. In between should be a group of devices that benefit and that benefit should be system wide.

 

When reading the white paper, one can have the impression that the ER solves everything related to jitter and leakage current. That's all I am saying. 

[pl_svn]

... and when reading a dishwasher's user manual one can have the impression that only problem on Earth is dirty dishes 😄

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

On 3/10/2020 at 5:17 PM, Superdad said:

So in an effort to educate and shed some light on a few of the factors involved, we are presenting what we hope is an easy to digest introduction to the subjects of ground-plane noise, threshold jitter, and leakage currents—and why they matter and have an effect on various receiver chips and the DAC itself

 

Look, its not complicated to understand: at the end of the day, we all agree on the fact that all these factors are important. And we all agree on the fact that we want the DAC to be immune to them. I applaud what Uptone has done. But there is a lot more going on than what has been described in the white paper, unfortunately.

 

To take your washing machine analogy - using clean water is certainly better, no one is going to argue with that ! 

[lmitche]

29 minutes ago, hopkins said:

shed some light on a few of the factors

Is it only me or does the word few mean less than every?

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

26 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Is it only me or does the word few mean less than every?

 

Correct. Hence the 30 day money back guarantee... 

The key point is "why they matter and have an effect on various receiver chips and the DAC itself"... 

If there was nothing else going on between the ethernet receiver and the DAC that would be obvious, but it is far from the case. I think every one agrees on this, but once again, I think it should be clearly stated.

 

 

 

[PYP]

I can't claim to truly understand the technical points made, but I am interested to see if other manufacturers find that John's technical explanation and, when ready, his measurements, are compelling enough to pursue their own version of the eR.  Looking at how the USB regen market has grown, it does seems likely.  Of course, competition is good and leads to further innovation.  That said, the benefits of the current eR and the amount of technology packed into its small chassis should make it the benchmark at its price point (total conjecture, of course).  

[lmitche]

11 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

Correct. Hence the 30 day money back guarantee... 

The key point is "why they matter and have an effect on various receiver chips and the DAC itself"... 

If there was nothing else going on between the ethernet receiver and the DAC that would be obvious, but it is far from the case. I think every one agrees on this, but once again, I think it should be clearly stated.

 

 

 

I'm sorry Hopkins, but I can't see the logic of your post.

 

In the paragraph you quoted above, Alex was introducing a few of the factors, not all of the factors, that are impacted by the ER. What do these have to do with a money back guarantee?

 

There is no claim or implication that the ER solves all sound quality ills. One merely has to look at the Uptone website to see other devices designed to solve issues in different  parts of the system chain.

 

What am I missing?

 

 

[Superdad]

23 minutes ago, lmitche said:

What am I missing?

 

Maybe some funky, chunky gold chains? 

[stevebythebay]

Any thoughts re: this new entry in the audiophile switch race?

 

https://englishelectric.uk/

 

I think they are a Chord company subsidiary.

[MartinT]

It looks like it may be 'reassuringly expensive'.

[Al Jones]

The English Electric 8Switch retails for £450.

 

https://www.the-ear.net/review-hardware/english-electric-8switch-network-switch

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, stevebythebay said:

Any thoughts re: this new entry in the audiophile switch race?

https://englishelectric.uk/

I think they are a Chord company subsidiary.

 

1 hour ago, MartinT said:

It looks like it may be 'reassuringly expensive'.

 

1 hour ago, Al Jones said:

The English Electric 8Switch retails for £450.

 

Okay, if you gents really wish to discuss competitors to the EtherREGEN here in the UpTone sponsored forum, then I might as well lay out a few facts. 

 

ThunderData is a small OEM manufacturer in Guangdong, China.  

They designed a basic switch.  Here is the board. It is pretty simple, nothing fancy, probably not more than about $30 assembled (for comparison, we spend 2.5 times that just on voltage regulators for the EtherREGEN):

 

Then offer it themselves--with an inexpensive upgraded clock replacing the $0.30 oval crystal--as the Silent Angel Bonn N8.  Here is a pic of it:

 

They also offer it in a nicer case to other manufacturers, still with exact same circuits and clock. Here it is as the Nuprime Omnia SW-8:

 

And the outside:

 

And then as here it is branded by English Electric as the 8Switch:

 

How do I know all this? Because Ethan W., ThunderData's V.P. Sales & Marketing e-mailed me in January asking if UpTone would like to label and sell this same switch. (I of course demurred.) 

Out of respect and propriety I won't tell you the pricing I was quoted.  Let's just say that if I bought in volume and sold them for the same $500 that Nuprime and English Electric are, our profit percentages would be about 3 times the margin we make on the EtherREGEN! Call me a fool, but I simply have no interest in selling other people's generic designs--even if they come in a nicer box. 

[stevebythebay]

Thanks for laying bare the reality of this switch.  Not a surprise, since Chord wouldn't even put their name on it.  And it's not something they have any obvious expertise in designing.  I'd guess that the aging Cisco 2960 would easily outpace this one, at a significantly lower price on eBay @ $39.99 used in good condition. 😝

[Superdad]

10 minutes ago, stevebythebay said:

Thanks for laying bare the reality of this switch.  Not a surprise, since Chord wouldn't even put their name on it.  And it's not something they have any obvious expertise in designing.

 

Steve, I think you may be mixing up Chord Electronics Ltd. (the DAC people) with The Chord Company (makers of cables). Both hail from the UK, but it is the latter who created the brand English Electric to market the Thunder Data developed switch.

 

10 minutes ago, stevebythebay said:

I'd guess that the aging Cisco 2960 would easily outpace this one, at a significantly lower price on eBay @ $39.99 used in good condition. 😝

Well there sure is a boatload more engineering and chips on a typical Cisco Catalyst, that much is certain:

[charlesphoto]

9 hours ago, stevebythebay said:

Thanks for laying bare the reality of this switch.  Not a surprise, since Chord wouldn't even put their name on it.  And it's not something they have any obvious expertise in designing.  I'd guess that the aging Cisco 2960 would easily outpace this one, at a significantly lower price on eBay @ $39.99 used in good condition. 😝

 

Big thread on this switch over on the Naim forum. Most say it bests the Cisco (lots of 2960 users there). Worth checking out (and I know my main newer 2960 16 port gigabyte stays - went with that and an opticalModule to opticalrendu solution instead and perfectly happy with the sound). 

[R1200CL]

On 3/10/2020 at 5:17 PM, Superdad said:

He is working on the graph axis and legends and he will present these and discuss the measurement system in the coming weeks.

Do you think sometime this year ?

 

Is COVID 19 affecting you and especially John’s schedule ?

 

I was discussing some upgrades with Theta/ ATI, and they said they are several months behind cause of this pandemic. But I guess this has a lot to do with the supply chain.

[Superdad]

6 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

Do you think sometime this year ?

Hard to say. John is always working on several projects at a time (for both UpTone and Sonore), and we are not going to let anything get in the way of new product development.

 

6 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

Is COVID 19 affecting you and especially John’s schedule ?

Well it is no piece of cake for anyone.  

Orders have been way up all through this year, so I have no complaints there--other than not getting any breaks to reach out much to friends and family. Production-wise we have seen some delays but I have been ordering parts far enough in advance to not affect product delivery to our clients.

 

As for John, Covid19 has taken a lot of his time away from projects in recent months as he has been instrumental in building an advanced live A/V conferencing system for his church congregation to adapt to our social distancing world. But he finished up most of that recently and has been back in his lab and quite productive the past few weeks.

 

6 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

I was discussing some upgrades with Theta/ ATI, and they said they are several months behind cause of this pandemic. But I guess this has a lot to do with the supply chain.

Well some of the long lead time chips we use on the EtherREGEN still seem to have about the same long lead times. I've been lucky so far but I'm sure some shortage will bite us one of these days! 

[Reg19]

Sorry: 3 years late to this thread.

 

Were the measurements of post-DAC impact done?

[JohnSwenson]

I made several attempts at this but could never build a measurement system that had significantly lower phase and amplitude noise than what I was trying to measure. If your measurement system has more noise than what you are trying to measure no measurements are valid.

 

The measurement system consists of two channels of high bit (24 or more) and high frequency ADCs, being clocked by an extremely low phase noise clock. Just this part is hard enough to do, but not impossible. The hard part is getting this huge amount of data out of the ADC without adding noise to the clock signal and the circuits inside the ADC. I have tried several different approaches that did not succeed. (they get the data out but add too much extra noise in the process) It looks like what I am going to have to do is use ADCs with a very high speed single differential pair carrying all the data, feed that through an SFP+ module -> fiber -> SFP+ module to FPGA with extremely fast SERDES that can store the data to high speed RAM chips, then when sampling is done write SD card etc. Both sides of this need their own battery powered system. The whole thing in a sealed, shielded enclosure. It is getting to the point that all the components of this are coming available without costing half a million dollars. In the next year the parts to do this will probably be available for less than $10K, BUT it will be a long process to develop this.

 

It will happen but it might be several years.

 

John S.