UpTone Audio EtherREGEN Listening Impressions

I had planned to start a "Listening Impressions" topic a couple of days after making the first shipments but you beat me to it! 

While I am sure that people will talk about their set ups as part of their usage reports, I do ask that questions about how best to use EtherREGEN be kept to a minimum in this thread--at least at the start.

There is now a separate thread: 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/57586-etherregen-installation-usage-difficulty-questions-thread/

And for goodness sake, let's please avoid detours into Ethernet cable comparisons. 

Thanks everyone.  Hope you enjoy your new EtherREGENs!

--Alex C.

I hope folks mention their setups before and after the EtherREGEN in addition, of course, to what they are hearing.  Agree that waiting a few days gives a better perspective, but imagine some will find such an immediate improvement that they will want to share that experience.  

Also hope there is a separate "installation/problems" thread, as Alex mentioned, so that the "Listening Impressions" can remain just that, while elsewhere folks work through installation.   I've read a thread for another product that combined the two and it was difficult to follow and enjoy.   

The message I just sent to friends:

“Only 20 or so minutes of use so far, but I really like what I’m hearing.  Greater ease, reduced harshness and a more natural/beautiful sound are immediately apparent. 

It should take a few days for this to burn in, but at this point it’s already earned my recommendation.  

I’ve been sitting here unable to press send as things have gotten even better.  I’m arriving at the point where I’m about to say the EtherREGEN should not be considered to be an optional accessory given the noise present in our networks.”

Too early to conclude that, but color me very impressed so far.  I’ll follow up with another post after it’s settled in some more.

As far as usage, a 5m length of Wireworld Chroma ran from my wall jack to my Zenith.  I inserted the end of the Chroma into the EtherRegen “A” side and then used a 1m length of Wireworld Starlight to make the connection from the “B” side to my Zenith. I’m using the included power supply.  

1 hour ago, stevebythebay said:

Kennyb123: 

Just trying to understand your network before/after but what switch are you replacing with the ER?

Nothing got replaced - the EtherRegen plus a WW Starlight was Just placed right before the Zenith.

I have fiber coming into my house.  Cat5e runs into each of the rooms within the walls from a patch panel in a closet.  The fiber coming into my house gets converted to copper via a Fios device.  This runs into the closet there it enters a Synology router, which is also my internet gateway.  From the patch panel a very long length of copper travels inside the wall up to a wall jack in my listening room.  A 5m run of WW Chroma went from the wall jack to my Zenith..  I disconnected the Chroma from the Zenith and connected it to the A side of the EtherRegen.  Then from the B side to Zenith I used a 1m WW Starlight.

I finally get a chance to listen to my system after having EtherREGEN installed earlier today.  The improvement is very evident from the moment music is played, and this is with everything in stock, basic setup, such as stock power supply and internal clock.

The music took a good step forward in just about all areas.  Sound stage is wide, high, and deep to a point the boundary is getting hard to determine.  Detail and clarity is well improved that all the music I have played through thus far show subtle details that was not detected in the past.  Music presentation is very smooth with no harshness to speak of and is more 3 dimension like then ever.  This is a very impressive engineering jewel.

In the coming days, I plan to experiment with different power supplies, cables, as well as external reference clock to see what effect it will have after it is burned in further.

I am very glad having this piece added to my system, and it is clearly an outstanding product Uptone made, again.

5 hours ago, elan120 said:

The music took a good step forward in just about all areas.  Sound stage is wide, high, and deep to a point the boundary is getting hard to determine.  Detail and clarity is well improved that all the music I have played through thus far show subtle details that was not detected in the past.  Music presentation is very smooth with no harshness to speak of and is more 3 dimension like then ever.  This is a very impressive engineering jewel.

 

Exactly what I’ve been hearing - I couldn’t have said it any better.

Harshness is a weird thing in that we pick up on it, but we really don’t get a full appreciation of how much it had been imposing upon us until we hear it stripped away.  I’ve been repeatedly surprised by the absence of a hardness that I had become accustomed to hearing.  
 

How much clarity has improved has been a surprise too.  I mean, I suspected that noise had been entering my system through the network, but until hearing it stripped away I had no clue how badly it had been harming the music.  
 

Those of you waiting to receive your EtherREGEN - you are in for a treat.

I appreciate the listening impression posts so far, however, as a point to note it would be appreciated if people could briefly summarise where and how they are using their EtherRegen.  For example, is it feeding a DAC directly, a network endpoint, or whatever.  Plus, what is upstream of the EtherRegen, PC, Mac, NUC, Network player or whatever?  Some posters have sufficient detail in their signature, which is great, but for those that do not some basic details of your "audio chain" would be very useful in order to give context to your observations.

Thanks!😀

My wife picked up the ER in the mail yesterday, but I spent most of yesterday and early this morning in bed with a reaction to the new shingles vaccine I received Friday, so I haven’t had a chance to hook it up yet. (Hey, I’ll take a day in bed over a case of shingles any time.) So these listening impressions are from the beta version. All purely subjective.

My system before ER: From my router, Ethernet cable to a Cisco switch; optical Ethernet to a second Cisco switch; Ethernet cable to microRendu to IsoREGEN to DAC. The Cisco switches are powered by internal SMPSs.

I compared one Cisco switch feeding the ER via optical to replacing both Cisco switches and feeding the ER via Ethernet cable from the router. I liked the latter better. Perhaps it has something to do with the non-grounded SMPS in the Cisco vs. the grounded SMPS for the ER. (Speaking of grounding, I'm not using the grounding knob on the ER.)

- The thing I immediately noticed with the ER was greater solidity of images. Vocals and instruments seemed more stably fixed in space.

- Initially vs. the Ciscos there was less "air" around vocalists and instruments. However, after about 10-20 hours the sound with the ER seemed to open up.

- Something that may be a little hard for me to explain, but I'll try: The sounds of instruments seemed to be more "integrated." The pluck of an acoustic guitar string and the note from the string, for example, were all part of the same sound rather than separate from each other. This made instruments sound more real to me, because that's how I hear it when I listen to someone playing an acoustic guitar in front of me.

Hopefully today I'll get a chance to start listening to the production version.

As one of the lucky EtherRegen beta testers, I can now talk about my impressions. In short, installing the EtherRegen had an immediate and positive impact on SQ quality here. It is powered by one of the LT3045 rails of my Hdplex 200 watt LPS. The 'A' side links to both a Linksys RE9000 LAN extender and a Roon server with the 'B' side connected to my NUC i7 endpoint.

For over five years I have experimented with various products and configurations to gain better SQ by tweaking the Ethernet end of one and two boxes solutions. This started with learning to bridge server NICs under Windows and Linux. This technique was later popularized by others as a "Novel Approach and Massive Improvement" in sound quality. Products tested include Tplink Fiber Media Controllers, Emosystems and Baaske medical transformers, Netgear FS105, FS108 and Cisco 2950 switches all with LT3045 double regulation and running at 100 or 1000mbps, various cables from Blue Jeans cable, Supra, Monoprice, etc ... were used with and without external shielding. On top of this, most recently I settled on 5ghz WiFi connections and USB3.0 NICs with success. Without the EtherRegen 5ghz WiFi sounds better than a direct wired connection from endpoint to the network extender.

When the EtherRegen arrived, I disabled the WiFi connection on my NUC endpoint, enabled the NUC LAN port and ran a 10 foot Monoprice Slimrun cable to the EtherRegen 'B' side. The network extender and server were connected with two 3 foot connections to the EtherRegen 'A' side.  SQ took an instant jump. I then realized that while it was not in use, the WiFi card in my NUC was still installed. The EtherRegen enabled physical removal of this card and doing so delivered another bump up in SQ.

I was thrilled and called Alex to share my findings. He was hearing a similiar improvement with his AL/NUC based system as well.

The EtherRegen is a terrific new technology that is going to benefit most systems.

I've now hooked up the production model and had a brief listen. This reminded me of some other things I noticed about the ER:

- Bass seems less muddy. Notes instead of rumble on some tracks with low bass. Multiple instruments and/or vocals seem less congested.

- On the bass end, the combination of image solidity, the more "integrated" instrumental sound, and less muddiness combine for greater low end impact.

- At the high end, more "integrated" instrumental sound, greater image solidity and less congestion translate to a sense of overall clarity and less harshness.

Here is my review -   You can pry this new toy out of my cold dead fingers!       

The focus of most other audiophile switches on the market seems to be on the use of much better clocks.  It’s been becoming more apparent that the EtherREGEN’s better clock plus the reduction of clock phase noise have increased precision in the time domain.  This is most apparent in the bass - especially In the attack of bass drum beaters - which have more of the “feel it in your gut” impact of a real bass drum. Time domain improvements aren’t just limited to the bass though.

This improvement was there from the beginning but may have improved since the EtherREGEN’s clock has had a little over 24 hours to stabilize.  

My EtherREGEN arrived just before 6 PM last night; set it up with a minor change to my prior configuration. 

Here was my configuration prior to the arrival of ER using my Pace router* w/ 4 RJ45 ports† that function an "Ethernet switch".

Bedroom/Study: Mac Mini/Roon Core->copper Ethernet->Pace router->copper Ethernet->TP-link FMC w/ Sonore SOPT-specification optical tranceiver->Tripp-Lite OM-1 LC/LC fiber running direct from study to main audio rack in living room.

Living Room/Main Audio Rack:

Fiber (from bedroom/study) -> Sonore Optical Module -> copper Ethernet-> SOtM UltraNeo network bridge->USB cable->Schiit Gungnir Multibit DAC††.

Gotta say, this setup sounded pretty dang good, however....

New configuration (with changes bolded/italicized):

Bedroom/Study:

Mac Mini/Roon Core->copper Ethernet->Pace router->copper Ethernet->Optical Module->Tripp-Lite OM-1 LC/LC fiber running to main audio rack.

Living Room/Main Audio Rack:

Fiber (from bedroom/study) -> ER using SFP/optical transceiver on A-side -> copper Ethernet on ER B-side-> SOtM UltraNeo network bridge->USB cable->Schiit Gungnir Multibit DAC††.

(all Ethernet cables are Shunyata Sigma; USB cable is Shunyata Alpha USB) 
 

First impressions right  out of the box last night....

Listening to Kenny Burrell's “Saturday Night Blues” on the Midnight Blue (24/192Khz) album, and I can I can hear the "reflection" of Kenny's guitar off the far wall in the recording studio...his guitar is on the left, and I can the secondary reflection of his guitar off the opposite, right wall in the room they were playing in…whoa. 😲

Most of what I notice is lower noise floor, a quieter, and more natural presentation with improved imaging spacious, definition and "clarity" (e.g. hearing the secondary reflection of Kenny's guitar off the opposite wall in the recording studio). And this is with <90 minutes of burn-in time.

Never heard the secondary reflection off the opposite wall from Kenny's guitar before...

I fully agree with KennyB  that a significant portion of this the audible improvements is due to a notable reduction in clock phase noise.

* – the Pace router has the SMPS ground strap shunt for shunting high-impedance leakage currents for its SMPS that John posted about in another thread a while back) 

†– I also have a TP-Link Ethernet switch, but it turned out using the RJ45 jacks in the Pace router sounded notably better than the TP-Link Ethernet switch, which is why I use the RJ45 ports on the Pace router. Go figure.

†† – OM powered by Uptone Audio LPS-1.2 w/ Shunyata Venom V14 Digital power cable. SOtM is powered  Keces P3 linear power supply w/ Shunyata Venom V14 Digital power cable. DAC powered by Shunyata Venom NR-V12 power cable.

Hope this helps, and more later count on it...I found I needed about 72hrs of burn-in with Optical Module, and then it came fully on-song. 

20 minutes ago, thyname said:

‘Sure. But that would not matter much upstream, when the EtherRegen is downstream, would it?

It doesn't matter to a large degree, but replacing TP-link with the OM resulted in a notable audible improvement. I attribute no small part of this to the reduced clock phase noise from the superior femto clocks in the OM relative to those in the TP-link FMC. This just means that the digital "thumbprint" that John has referred to coming that is coming out of the OM and going into ER is cleaner & sharper than the one from the TP-link. 

This is same reason that other Ethernet switch mfrs. (who shall remain nameless) have found using a number of their Ethernet switches in series results in improved sound quality. 

3 hours ago, Jud said:

I've now hooked up the production model and had a brief listen. This reminded me of some other things I noticed about the ER:

 

- Bass seems less muddy. Notes instead of rumble on some tracks with low bass. Multiple instruments and/or vocals seem less congested.

 

- On the bass end, the combination of image solidity, the more "integrated" instrumental sound, and less muddiness combine for greater low end impact.

 

- At the high end, more "integrated" instrumental sound, greater image solidity and less congestion translate to a sense of overall clarity and less harshness.

I agree on all points. 

There is also more "listening ease" in the presentation; sounds more organic and natural, and thus, engaging. The imaging and soundstage are notably better and this is quite noticeable with symphonic classical music; the hall ambience is also more clearly defined and textured. 

You don't know what you have until it's gone! I'm 30 hours in and the improvements wrought by the ER are consistent and obvious. It's like a really clean window on the performance. The sound stage grew in all three dimensions. The front of my room disappeared. As other have noted, bass definition, weight, and transient quickness are all improved. The texture and timbre of instruments and voices are startlingly clear. You can listen at lower volumes without losing information. At the same time, you can listen at high levels without fatigue (careful there!). For lack of a better way to say it, it just sounds more like a live performance with the ER in the chain.

All this comes on top of some recent and very positive changes to my system. I added an ISO REGEN powered by an LPS 1.2 to the USB output of my JS-2 powered Roon Nucleus+ into my PS Audio Directstream DAC (a huge improvement). I also grounded the LPS 1.2, my internet switch and the DS DAC to to my Synergistic Active Ground Block.  My systems is star grounded and powered by two twenty amp circuits on the same phase.  I had a second ground rod added at the breaker box and the system is dead quiet.

My current setup is copper from the switch into the A side of the ER with the B side connected to the Bridge II input on the PS DAC for streaming Tidal MQA files. The Nucleus+ is connected to the A side. This seemed to perform slightly better than the B side into the Nucleus+ and the Bridge connected to the A side.  (Perhaps I need another ER?!?!) On Tidal MQA material, so far I seem to slightly prefer the Bridge II input over the DAC's USB input (more testing needed here--also more comparisons to ripped files stored on the SSD in the Nucleus).  The ER is powered by an HD Plex and is grounded to the SR Active Ground Block.  All Ethernet cables are AQ Cinnamon.

I anticipate another late night of very pleasurable listening.

1 hour ago, Puma Cat said:

Its a matter of semantics, I guess, but I think my meaning was clear; regarding the "smearing" of the digital "fingerprint/whatever" due to clock phase noise.  

 

Apologies to John if I misquoted...

I'm still in the process of writing the paper that goes into great detail about all this. I wanted to include some actual measurements of systems with and without the EtherREGEN, but I'm having some trouble getting measurements made. The super sensitive jitter analyzer I recently acquired cannot be directly connected to the circuits, I have to build an interface circuit and the first one did not work, I've designed a completely new one which should not have the problems of the first one, but the board has not come yet. With the holiday it won't be here until Tuesday, then I have to solder all the parts in etc, that will take a little while, then try and get it to work properly with the test equipment. Its all taking much more time (and money) than I had hoped.

So I'm not sure whether I should just finish the paper and post it or wait for real measurements.

John S.