EtherREGEN: Official news thread (locked for just UpTone posts)

AT LONG LAST! The moment many have been waiting for is almost upon us. 

The field beta-test is finished (and was a complete success);

The production aluminum cases arrive next week;

The production circuit boards arrive on the 29th;

Programming, assembly, and testing stations are all set up.

The web page for EtherREGEN is now viewable at: UpTone Audio EtherREGEN

The first 245 EtherREGEN units will be packaged and available to ship around the world on beginning November 15th.

(Barring any unforeseen disasters, acts-of-god, or interplanetary alien invasions. )

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Here is how the launch will go:

This coming Tuesday, October 8th at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time is when the AddToCart button will appear on the EtherREGEN web page. That's when everyone can scramble to get one of the 155 EtherREGENs which will be available for direct-sale from the first run. (The other 90 of the 245 first-run boards are going to several of our dealers--who themselves are already over-sold.)

As soon as those first 155 are sold--likely within the first hour and with a promised ship date of November 15th--the page will change to taking orders for units from the second 250 unit run, with an estimated ship date of December 12th.

Some notes:

Our web order system takes full payment (via credit card or PayPal) at the time the order is placed. The whole pre-authorization and charge at time of shipment thing is a nightmare, so we don't operate that way.  We simply don't accept orders for products unless we can give firm delivery dates--always quoted on the product web page just below the AddToCart button. And if we ever have any delay we individually notify people and there is always the option to cancel prior to shipment.

If you order more than one unit in time to be in the first batch, we will ship only one EtherREGEN to you in November, and your other unit(s) will ship from the second run in December. (Whatever freight you get charged for your multi-unit order will cover both shipments--even if it costs us more to do so.)

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An e-mail about the launch--with a little product information and much the same logistics info as what you read above--will go out this weekend to the approximately 14,000 e-mail addresses in our mailing list (assuming my primitive bulk-emailer s/w still works).

I am locking this thread for now and will use these first-page post positions for updates. After the launch this may be turned into a "user questions and listening impressions" thread. For the moment please continue to use the other EtherREGEN thread for conversation, comments, and questions.

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Thank you all for your patience and enthusiasm during the development of this technically and sonically groundbreaking product.  We promise this will have been worth the wait. We are looking forward to EtherREGENs being installed in music systems around the world and to reading about what you all hear. 

And thank you in advance for your patronage. Good luck on Tuesday morning (well, nighttime for many of you).  Set your alarm clocks! 

--Alex C.

From the EtherREGEN web page:

UpTone Audio is proud to announce availability of EtherREGEN. In development for nearly two years, this unique and highly advanced Ethernet switch will exceed expectations—producing surprising audible sonic improvements in fine music systems.

The goals and architecture of the EtherREGEN are completely different than any other Ethernet switch on the planet!

Other “audiophile” Ethernet switches are mostly either just clock and power supply modifications of cheap off-the-shelf switches, or passive magnetics augmented with passive filter parts and a single fancy clock board.

EtherREGEN is an all-new, from the ground-up design, built on a costly 6-layer circuit board, and its components and topology are unmatched by any other Ethernet switch.

The heart of what makes our switch so unusual is the use of ACTIVE, HIGH-SPEED, LOW-JITTER DIFFERENTIAL DIGITAL ISOLATOR chips combined with ULTRA-LOW JITTER DIFFERENTIAL RE-CLOCKING FLIP-FLOPS. No other Ethernet switch on the market attempts this (doing this, and doing it correctly is neither easy nor cheap!). On the circuit board photos you can see the isolators set across the wide “moat.”

Read on to learn the meaning and benefit of “ADIM,” the first marketing acronym we have ever coined…

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Let’s back up a moment to explain the usage and reason for the EtherREGEN:

On what we call the ‘A’-side, there are 4 Gigabit copper Ethernet ports, plus an SFP cage for a Gigabit LC optical module. A typical user will attach a cable from their main network router or switch, and if desired any NAS (network attached storage) or other devices.

Across the “moat” at the other end of the EtherREGEN is a lone 100Mbps copper Ethernet port. We refer to this as the ‘B’-side port. It is to this port that you will attach whatever is your one computer/streamer/renderer endpoint—the component that is directly connected to your DAC (of course this includes the increasing number of DACs which themselves have an Ethernet input).

So why does this arrangement matter?

There are two types of sound-degrading influences the EtherREGEN is designed to radically decrease: Leakage—both high-impedance and low-impedance—and clock phase-noise. The clock phase-noise travels on the Ethernet signal itself and travels on power and ground planes. [Every edge coming out of any digital device caries the jitter/phase-noise of the clock used to "clock out" that edge, this shows up on the ground-plane and affects the threshold of chips’ clock inputs. This is an oversimplification of a complex subject; we intend to publish a short white paper and measurements to demonstrate this.]

The circuitry across the moat is designed to eliminate the signal-borne phase-noise from one side to the other. EtherREGEN is mostly symmetrical—there is no “dirty side” or “clean side.” While it works identically in both directions, it is best to have the DAC-attached Ethernet endpoint device (computer/streamer/etc.) alone on one side—typically the ‘B’ side.

The circuitry between ports on the ‘A’ side decreases some phase-noise effects to some degree, but not nearly as much as crossing the ‘A’>’B’ moat.

The COMBINATION of the differential isolators and the differential flip-flops is what delivers the unrivaled performance of the EtherREGEN. The differential isolators prevent the data-borne clock signature from getting onto the PCB ground-plane, while the differential flip-flops prevent the signature from getting into the flip-flop’s own internal ground network. It takes both to accomplish the great feats of the EtherREGEN.

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Back to technical features:

• EtherREGEN has two entirely isolated data/power/clock domains. And on each side of the isolators we re-clock with 10GHz-capable ultra-low-jitter (less than 0.8 picoseconds) differential flip-flops.

• Importantly, all clocking lines (for the switch chip, the special Ethernet format conversion chips, and the high-speed flip-flops) are carefully run as differential lines—converted to single-ended clocks with special buffers just millimeters from those chips which require SE clocks. The clocking system runs from a special programmable, jitter-attenuating four-output clock synthesizer, referenced to an ultra-low-jitter/phase-noise Crystek CCHD-575 XO.

• Even the magnetics of the 4 Gigabit ‘A’-side ports are special. We chose a module which utilizes 12 transformer cores in each port (most Ethernet ports have 2-6 cores), and ground their center-taps through capacitors in a way that blocks port-to-port AC leakage.

• To support its performance, the power networks of the EtherREGEN are as sophisticated and costly as the rest of the design. We use 12 of the world’s lowest-noise, lowest impedance integrated voltage regulators—the famous Linear Technology LT3045 and LT3042. Supporting both the voltage regulators and the data chips are 195 pieces of low-inductance, X7R and X5R capacitors sized and selected by their derating curves.

The extreme care taken in the entire design of the EtherREGEN results in dual isolated clock/data/power domains, blockage of all external leakage currents, a vast reduction in upstream phase-noise fingerprint, and utmost signal integrity.

To sum up:

Going from port-to-port on the ‘A’ side is better than any other switch out there, but crossing our Active Differential Isolation Moat (“ADIM”) brings a whole new world of Ethernet performance for audio.

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Other specifications:

Dimensions are —112mm x 110mm x 30mm

DC power input range — 7V/1.4A, 9V/1.0A, 12V/0.8A

DC jack size — 5.5mm x 2.1mm, center-positive.

Operating temperature — 48~52C (118~126F)

Every EtherREGEN ships with an UpTone-branded 7.5V/36W world-voltage-compatible (100V~240V) SMPS brick with 45cm detachable IEC C14 AC mains cord (USA plug; use any local cord if you are overseas).

Use of a fancy linear power supply (such as our matching UltraCap LPS-1.2) is NOT required to get outstanding performance from the EtherREGEN. While great power supplies make a nice difference most everywhere else in a music system, we personally are not hearing much change with power supplies and the EtherREGEN (certainly owing to great isolation and internal power networks). But others may report some small benefits, so of course you are welcome to experiment within the +DC 7~12V range.  [Note: The original UltraCap LPS-1, with top setting of 7V,  does not have enough current for the EtherREGEN. The UltraCap LPS-1.2, with its 9V and 12V settings can easily power the EtherREGEN.]

A note about our inclusion of an SFP cage: 

Use of optical into—or out of—EtherREGEN is not required to obtain best performance. The whole point of all the isolation and re-clocking techniques we are using (in dual domains) is to make most all of the upstream stuff not matter.  Other than the complete galvanic isolation that optical offers going into the EtherREGEN (which we duplicate going across the moat), there is no advantage to running optical into it.

 If you happen to have a router with an optical port and have already run many feet of optical cable to your music system rack, then sure, use the optical port of the EtherREGEN.  But don't go out of your way to run optical if you do not already have it.  And of course for the few people who have an endpoint with optical input (the Sonore opticalRendu comes to mind), one can “turn around” the EtherREGEN and feed that DAC-connected endpoint from the optical cage.

Only Gigabit LC interface modules are compatible with the SFP cage of the EtherREGEN. They can be SX Multimode or LX Singlemode, as long as they match what is used at the other end of the optical cable.

Extreme usage with an External Reference Clock:

The Crystek CCHD-575 XO used in the EtherREGEN is about the lowest phase-noise production XO available. [Sorry, but the $50~$100 OCXOs we see tossed into stock switches do not outperform the Crystek at low-offsets where it counts; Manufacturers have to spend $500 and up to obtain OCXO clocks with significantly lower phase-noise than the Crystek we use.]

Yet some audiophiles have discovered benefits using expensive ultra-low-jitter/low-phase-noise 10MHz reference clocks with their DACs or USB streamers and conditioners. A clock synthesizer (to generate the various frequencies) is always required for a device to accept an external reference clock. Since we already utilize a very advanced one to produce the 4 clock lines in the EtherREGEN, it was easy for us to include provision for connection of an external 10MHz clock. The BNC jack and termination resistor of the EtherREGEN are for a 75ohm clock line (Yes, we can provide units with 50ohm, but reluctantly and only upon special request.)

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As with all UpTone Audio components, the EtherREGEN includes personal and responsive support, along with a 30-day money-back satisfaction guaranteed and a  3-year warranty. 

Thursday, December 5, 2019:

We just finished packing up 90 units for overseas dealers and 32 domestic units.  About to load up the van to drop them off. This is a full week ahead of the promised December 12th date. Over the weekend I will do the labels and commercial export invoices for the remaining 50 second-batch international units. Those will all ship out--mostly via very fast FedEx on Monday the 9th.  And then another 60 units to the dealers later in the week.  That cleans us out for December!

Happily, another 256 boards arrive about the 16th and we already have cases. So we will start all over again for the January-promised units. The dealers are getting less than 50 total of those because there are about 205 units direct-sales orders promised for January. The date we have settled on to ship those by is January 16th. Might be a little sooner as typical for us, but I am closing our offices from December 21, reopening on January 2nd.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020:

Happy New Years everyone!

Despite working simultaneously on a sold-out batch of 15 JS-2 choke-filtered, dual-output, 5~7.4 amp linear power supplies, production of the January EtherREGENs is proceeding very smoothly.

Today we shipped 92 units domestically. That's 9 days ahead of the promised January 16th date! 

Another 102 flashed/tested boards had their heat sinks attached today and the custom thermal silicone is curing. They will be installed in cases on Thursday, then cleaned, wrapped, and boxed over the weekend. Those will ship to international clients the beginning of next week, followed closely by 45 units going to our dealers (they received the short straw this month as the January-promised direct orders left the dealers with less than half of what they actually wanted).

Wednesday, January 15th, 2020:

The last of the January-promised EtherREGEN orders shipped to overseas buyers today! The look on the face of the clerk at our local FedEx drop-off location when we brought in 75 packages (the other 25 went via the post office) was priceless.

Another 225 EtherREGEN circuit boards arrived today (plus 275 more will be here in a few weeks). But aluminum cases for February shipments won't ship from our supplier until February 14th (hopefully sooner).  We'll program, test, and attach the heatsinks to the boards in advance, so once the cases arrive it won't take long to assemble, package, and prepare shipments. So realistically we are looking at the week of February 24th. Certainly not later, and possibly earlier. 

As of tonight, 91 of these next 225 EtherREGENs are pre-sold (for shipment late February). Plus nearly 100 are already reserved by our dealers. Wow, that's 191 committed out of 225. I was really hoping that we would not sell-out February before the end of January, but now that seems likely.

So if you are thinking about ordering an EtherREGEN directly from us, you'd best hurry as there appear to be only a little more than 30 spots open for the February batch. 

Thanks everyone!

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Some of what shipped today.

And a big batch of JS-2 units ready for Q.C./test/burn-in this weekend. No resting around here! 

Tuesday, February 25th, 2020:

After January's batch of 240 went out (several days ahead of schedule) I had triangulated and posted February 26th as the date for all 220 February-promised orders to be shipped--because the aluminum cases were not arriving until the 17th. We cranked hard all month and on this Monday the 24th shipped all the domestic orders, and today--a day ahead of schedule--shipped all the international orders. (my hand is cramped from signing 100+ commercial invoices to attach to the FedEx packages). 

The only exception being the final 11 international orders that contain either two EtherREGENs or EtherREGENs plus UltraCap or ISO REGENs, etc.). Just now printed the labels for those and those last boxes will get packed and shipped in the morning--so exactly on the 26th as promised.

While a very few of the orders shipped this week were placed as far back as the first week of December, the bulk of the what went out were orders placed in January and February. It feels really good to at last catch up, though I feel bad for some of our overseas dealers who are not going to receive anywhere near the quantities they requested for March.

Folks visiting the EtherREGEN web page will note that we are now completely sold out and waiting on more circuit boards.  Those will arrive mid-March, but I have a 1-week ski vacation planned beginning the 20th. So for now the promised date for shipment of new orders says April 15th. There is a decent chance we will ship sooner, but between pushing so hard for so many months--and some other chores (accounting, taxes, parts ordering) getting deferred--it is time to normalize the pace. 

Many thanks to all who have made EtherREGEN such a great success.  And thank you to those who placed orders and waited patiently to try one for themselves.

We are sure that as this new wave of 200+ receive and install their EtherREGENs in the coming week, they will have questions and perhaps some inevitable difficulties. Happily, there are many experienced EtherREGEN users here--and we hope we can count on you all to pitch in with guidance for the newbies. 

Friday, July 3rd, 2020:

Obviously quite a LOT has happened in the world since my above February 25th post in this thread. My heart breaks for all the ills and tragedy experienced everywhere from Covid19 (and other events).  While at times I have felt helpless to do anything meaningful from my remote residence, my wife and I have attempted to aid by making donations--locally, state-level, nationally, and internationally. UpTone Audio fans have made us fortunate--and in a position to give back amounts that we hope will make a difference in some way.

Now onto the the update:

EtherREGEN sales have continued to set records. (Even during a pandemic. ) In fact, I am not quite sure how many batches we have gone through since February. I know that we shipped a lot in April and May, and we are now in final assembly, packing, and shipping all the units promised for July 7th and July 21st.  

Domestic units are going first--about 65 today--because they are the easiest (no export paperwork drudgery), and overseas units will ship on-time this coming Tuesday. (Please do not e-mail me about when your order is shipping. We are not running late, and you will receive a tracking notice on the day of shipment.)

Once all the current direct user orders and dealer orders are shipped this month, we should still have a modest quantity (maybe 50?) left from the current 250 unit run. And those are available--still now promising to ship by July 21st.  I need to recount everything and to get more boards on order very soon.

Many thanks to you all for making EtherREGEN such a huge success.  Once this current batch is gone we will have crossed the 1,500 units sold mark!

Below are a couple of pics from this week.

Oh yeah, through all this, JS-2 sales have been a steady 25/month as well. The 15 in the photo all left here on Tuesday. Currently accepting reservations for JS-2 units to ship at the beginning of August (squeezing in an anniversary trip for a few days starting the 22nd).

Now it's time to dash off to the post office and FedEx.

Wishing you all a pleasant and healthy holiday/summer weekend!

--Alex C.

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Here is a quick status update for all (I'm supposed to be on vacation and unplugged until the 4th; good thing my wife does not read the forums or I would be in trouble ):

—All EtherREGENs promised for shipment by December 17th shipped off well ahead of schedule as is always my goal (on the 7th for domestic units, on the 11th for the internationals).

—We have zero units left on the shelf, but 250 circuit boards in production and due here about January 13th.  However, we have only about 80 aluminum cases in stock, with our 450 piece order for cases delayed for shipment from Japan around January 28th (hopefully sooner).

—Because of the above, you can see that for January we will be able to complete and ship only 80 units. And as of this afternoon those have all been pre-ordered by end-users (our dealers are getting shut out of January; guess I will deal with their unhappiness about this early in the month).

—Since we will have plenty of boards and time to program/test/affix heatsinks in advance of more aluminum cases arriving, I feel confident in quoting February 11th as the outside ship date for any new orders that people place now. And a reasonable chance such orders will ship a few days sooner than that.

Thank you all for your business and enthusiasm in 2020.  Looking forward not only to our pandemic-stricken world recovering next year, but also to releasing some of the very exciting (and still secret--so don't ask) new products we have been cooking up for a while. [Not Ethernet-related is all I will say. So keep buying EtherREGEN's--is will not change or being superseded in 2021.]

Wishing you good health and great music in 2021,

Alex Crespi

Please note that UpTone Audio’s offices will be closed from December 21st to January 4th. Packages will be received, but no outbound shipments will be made nor will e-mail be answered during this period. We thank you for understanding and wish you a healthy holiday and new year.