[loving_it]

Don't be so sure about that. What the Regen does is very different.

That would be great if it did a better job than the Totaldac , I would purchase one for sure .

[poseidonsvoice]

That would be great if it did a better job than the Totaldac , I would purchase one for sure .

Just to add some more drama...

I am on the order list for the Uptone Audio USB Regen (w/standard power supply that comes with it).

I have on hand, the Total Dac USB cable, DH Labs (standard) cable and a DIY USB cable. I will compare all three with and without the Regen. I use an Auralic Aries (wireless configuration with a QNAP NAS) and an Auralic Vega.

Hopefully that will help some of you folks...

Best,
Anand.

[sfox7076]

Thanks for the unsolicited offers to buy mine.  I want to play with it more.  Will be trying a few other USB cables before selling my Regen.  I want to hear what it does when it isn't being used with the Dana USB cable.

[hifial]

Big Red, the Regen should ALWAYS be the last into the DAC. So the TotalDAC cable was into the Regen, then the Regen into the DAC.

Loving_it, I think you are confusing the Regen and a USB cable. It is not designed to replace what a USB cable like the TotalDAC can do. But it might in some cases minimize the need for a USB cable like the TotalDAC, IF there is a "standard" USB cable that works very well as a substitute for the TotalDAC cable when used with the Regen. 

I personal feel that it will not be an off the self USB cable, like a Belkin or Blue Jeans, except the Corning USB Optical or ones of its ilk that may work. Though an after market USB cable that is around entry level or there abouts that is +/- $100 and with the Regen then might give the TotalDAC cable by its self a run for its money. But that is just guess and it may only be one after market USB cable out of 100.

But that one in 100 with the Regen still will not beat the TotalDAC cable with the Regen, IMHO.

Though the Corning USB Optical with the Regen is another story. That might be one out of 1,000!!   

Oh, and one more thing, Some are wondering if TWO Regen's and NO USB cable, one at the source and the other at the DAC, back to back to each other connected just by an adapter would sound like.

[loving_it]

Big Red, the Regen should ALWAYS be the last into the DAC. So the TotalDAC cable was into the Regen, then the Regen into the DAC.

Loving_it, I think you are confusing the Regen and a USB cable. It is not designed to replace what a USB cable like the TotalDAC can do. But it might in some cases minimize the need for a USB cable like the TotalDAC, IF there is a "standard" USB cable that works very well as a substitute for the TotalDAC cable when used with the Regen. 

I personal feel that it will not be an off the self USB cable, like a Belkin or Blue Jeans, except the Corning USB Optical or ones of its ilk that may work. Though an after market USB cable that is around entry level or there abouts that is +/- $100 and with the Regen then might give the TotalDAC cable by its self a run for its money. But that is just guess and it may only be one after market USB cable out of 100.

But that one in 100 with the Regen still will not beat the TotalDAC cable with the Regen, IMHO.

Though the Corning USB Optical with the Regen is another story. That might be one out of 1,000!!   

Oh, and one more thing, Some are wondering if TWO Regen's and NO USB cable, one at the source and the other at the DAC, back to back to each other connected just by an adapter would sound like.

I guess you might have a point , I am using my totaldac USB for the reclocker in my totaldac server so I probably wouldn't benefit as much as others

[orientalexpress]

Will this benefit Xmos usb ?

[sts9fan]

So I am guessing this thing is redundant if you are using a SoTM USB card?

[barrows]

So I am guessing this thing is redundant if you are using a SoTM USB card?

That is a very good question, part of the answer probably depends on the quality of the power supply feeding the SOtM card, does it have a separate, clean DC supply?  Anyway, I would suspect that the biggest improvement from the Regen will be for those using standard computers, and that users of fully dialed custom server designs will see less benefit (but there still may be improvements).
When it comes to noise reduction, more is almost always going to be better, and it appears that what we are really talking about is noise reduction, so maybe belt and suspenders will be a good approach here.

[*Scotty*]

From reading the technical explanation of what the Regen does, it appears that the optimal solution would be to have the Regen or something that solves the same problems in the server itself and then the Regen or its function built into the DAC. The Regen, at this point in time, is probably the best available "real" world solution barring someone actually designing in a solution inside the server and the DAC.
 It would also appear that at a minimum a true transmission line condition should exist between the USB sender and receiver and it is highly doubtful if even this basic criteria has been met with any regularity.
 What I hate is that in all cases, we are left with a best guess at the what the actual data is instead a ironclad guarantee that what we have as data in the DAC is what we started out with when it was a file on the computer.
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.
Scotty

[jtwrace]

Here are the updates from Computer Audiophile
RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILE!

First I must apologize for the big build-up this week. This announcement, while it does result in a great sonic advance, is not, as some have speculated, an announcement of an entirely new UpTone/Swenson product. No UpTone optical gadget, no magical power supply.
Actually, the news is better—and I have nothing new to sell you (well maybe some of you).

I will cut right to the chase:
We have added $0.40 worth of tiny resistors to the circuit board of the USB REGEN and increased its musical performance by 40-50%—most especially in the bass! Anyone who has a REGEN will be astonished by the improvement, and anyone who hears the new one for the first time will be even more amazed. Given the already unanimous rave reviews being heaped on the REGEN—by the 95 people around the world who got one from the mid-April first run—it is hard to fathom how the thing could get that much better. But it has. And John and I are feeling rather gleeful about it.

[If you wish to skip the below story and just find out about what this means for the REGEN you either have in your hands or on order, just jump to the very bottom of this post.]

Actually, some of you have heard a bit of exactly the improvement made to REGEN, and there is a short story behind that. It of course involves the recently popular Corning 3.Optical USB cable which some of you have bought (and some struggle with for compatibility/reliability reasons).

The Corning is interesting, and is a more complicated device that it might seem. Corning had to design a small ASIC circuit to translate the semi-differential USB signaling to a format that could work with the timing of their optical transceivers. And the receiving end of the Corning cable needs a small voltage to run (which may in fact be 12 volts converted with a switching regulator at the send end, as the USB 5V from the computer would not survive their shortest 10 meters length), so there is a pair of 28awg wires run alongside the optical fiber.

So not only does the Corning not provide galvanic isolation from the computer, but there are some other things going on with its power and USB ground wires. (As most of you know, the REGEN ignores the pin 1 +5VBUS wire from the computer or the Corning and does not connect it to anything since the REGEN has its own power and also makes clean 5V for DACs that need it.) Still, aside from the REGEN as hub often helping the Corning work with computers and DACs, having the Corning feeding the REGEN sounds good—especially in the bass as many have reported.

Now John Swenson had speculated that cutting the Corning’s wires and feeding cleaner power to the receiver near the DAC end might help it further, so he bought one to listen to and planned to then dissect it. When I was at his place last weekend (before and after the fun ComputerAudiophile Berkeley lunch get-together), we were listening to the Corning with the REGEN (I brought a thumb drive will all my favorite test tracks), and indeed the Corning seems to significantly increase bass detail. Quite a nice combination.

Then John began speculating about the extra resistance that 10 meters of 28awg wire presents to the USB ground wire. The typical ground path in an audio system measures between 0.3-0.5 ohms. But that 33 feet of thin wire is going to be more like 3 ohms, and that forces some of the USB ground currents to take other paths. Maybe that is a good thing? So he carefully cut open one of the 6-inch USB cables I supply with the REGEN kit (for those who can't use the solid adapter), disconnected the shield entirely, and inserted a resistor in series with the black ground wire.

Now we had just listened to that same, unmodified, 6-inch cable feeding the REGEN (straight from John’s Squeezebox Touch just inches away—so it was Touch>6” cable>REGEN>solid adapter>Bottlehead DAC), and as I have posted elsewhere, I don’t like the sound of that 6” cable at all—even before the REGEN.

But now we go and put the same short cable—with resistor in series with the ground wire—back between the Squeezebox Touch and the REGEN. Oh my! Exactly the same sort of benefit we heard from having the Corning cable feeding the REGEN. Wow! No doubts at all. So we turned to each other and then raced to his engineering bench room to do the logical thing: Lift USB input pin 4 of the REGEN and put the resistor between it and ground. (The data +/- pair of USB really does need a ground reference to work reliably.) Back to the studio to listen to it fed by the much smoother Supra USB cable instead of that nasty 6-incher. Nice.

After that, we of course wanted to hear what if any benefit the Corning might still have feeding the REGEN. And guess what, to our ears it sounded a little worse. We think that the Corning’s benefit previously (before modifying the REGEN) overshadowed whatever effects its complex circuitry has.

So as far as we can tell, the Corning benefit was all about that extra resistance in the USB ground. The resistor we chose to use is greater than the 3 ohms John calculated that the Corning inserts, but I’d prefer not to say what value we settled on.

On my drive home I realized that while we cut the shield with the 6-inch cable, when we first modified the REGEN we did not lift or insert resistance on its input jack shield contacts (virtually all USB hosts and devices end up connecting pin 4 ground to shield at some point), thus some ground currents were finding a path over the shield. I asked John why we still heard such a big difference, and he thinks it is because USB shield wires are far more symmetrical around the +/- data wires and thus they are more equally affected by whatever ground-noise currents and cancel out. I think very few USB cables shield the data wires separate from the power and ground, so the ground wire is not symmetrical about the data lines.

So that night John drilled out the ground vias for the jack, and listened with and without resistors there too. The board we had modified with the one resistor was one of the pre-production prototypes (not a production REGEN board with the layer stack-up he optimized impedance matching for), and I took that one home with me to listen to. Thus the REGEN John further modified and listened to was the production unit I gave him (his first with a case!), and he said it sounded even better when he was all done.

So that’s the long story. Maybe you will or will not continue to like the Corning cable with the updated REGEN. But you WILL be absolutely delighted by the sound of the new version.

_______________________________________ ___________ ______________


Okay, now you all want to know what this means both for the USB REGENs you have on order, and for those 95 units already in use by the earliest adopters.

Well I scrapped 150 bare boards that were about to be populated at my board house. The new version, with the 3 added ultra-low noise resistors, is at the PCB maker now for a 500 unit run. And I just mailed a 5-figure check to the assembly house to cover those 500 bare boards and parts and labor to stuff 350.

Previously, if your web order number was between 1091 and 1223, the promised shipping dates were from May 29 to June 3. Orders in that range will now be shipped by June 10th. Only a 1-week slip. Worth the wait I promise!

If your order number is 1224 or above, then the hold-up is not the new circuit boards, rather it is the aluminum cases. Japanese “Golden-week” holiday ends this coming Monday and so next week we will have an answer regarding delivery of the case order that will cover these latest orders. People in this group, beginning with order 1224, already saw—at the time they ordered—a promised ship date of June 18th. So for this group there is no further delay at all. In fact, your REGENs may ship 2-3 days earlier than that.

So once again: All unshipped REGENs will be of the awesome new version!

Some of you who already have a REGEN have ordered another (or several!) more—thank you. How will you tell the difference between the first version and the new one? Well, sonically you will hear it right away. But just to make it easy, and to not have to change the case markings (too late for my enclosure vendor), I selected an amber LED to replace the green one. Maybe that will match the amber dot LED of our JS-2 and in the “p” of UpTone on the web site. I am trying to avoid calling the new version “REGEN Amber,” but I know some of you might and that’s okay.

This post is already ridiculously long, so I am going to make another explaining how existing, “REGEN Green” owners can update to “Amber.”

[jtwrace]

Read this only if you already have a USB REGEN in your hands.

For the 95 people who have been enjoying the benefits of an UpTone USB REGEN for the past few weeks:
I have thought long and hard about how to offer an upgrade to your devices in a convenient manner and at the lowest possible cost.

I am going to subsidize a part of the cost, but to do so I also have to put some strict guidelines in place so that time involved in the process is kept to a minimum. So here is the deal:

$45

What does this get you?
One new, pre-tested REGEN circuit board; One T8 Torx wrench for removing one end-cap of your REGEN case. You just slide the old board out, slide the new board in, and screw the faceplate back on.

What do you do with your old board? Whatever you want! You can use it bare without a case, but you will need to provide your own power supply for it, and your own cables/adapters. Or you can just stick it in a drawer. But I bet you will first want to compare it to the new one. Remember the power-indicator LEDs are different colors so you won’t get mixed up.

Okay, so what are my rules and restrictions for this deal?

1) Wait until June 10th. But don’t wait past July 10th as this upgrade offer expires then.

2) No e-mails about it. E-mailed questions or requests about the upgrade will go unanswered.

3) PayPal $45 to my account (account is the same as my e-mail address; I don’t publish it here, but you can get it from the e-mail also being sent out; it is easy: my last name @sti.net). This upgrade offer is not being handled through my web site. I’ll just receive the PayPal notification and I already have everyone’s address on file from when we shipped you your REGEN (put a note in the PayPal if you must have it to go to a different address than before). No invoice will be issued as I don’t even plan to run this through my accounting system.

4) Absolutely NO ADD-ONs; Don’t ask to order cables, extraUSB adapters, power supplies, or more REGENs with the shipment.

5) No other special requests regarding shipping. The $45 price includes first-class postage (not Priority Mail) for a small box. There is no insurance and no tracking number (well maybe there is some sort of tracking, but I’m not going to lengths to send that info out). For international I’ll probably declare the box to $20 (yes, some value must be declared, please don’t ask for any other special value).

6) If you do not already own a REGEN with a green LED, do not try to get in on this program. I know who all the owners are of the first units. A couple of you have 2 REGENs—yes, you are allowed to upgrade both of them if you wish.

I think that about covers it.
Some of you are handy with a soldering iron and may be thinking about performing the upgrade yourself. Sorry, but I can not support that since to do it right one would have to drill out 2 ground vias, de-solder the contact wing of one USB jack, and install 3 resistors, finding good grounds for them.
Just buy the new board and end up with an extra one to play with.

I hope this all sits well with everyone. Product updates/upgrades are a fact of life in high-end audio, and it is always tricky to please everyone while not making a mess of business in the process.

All the REGENs which will ship early June will have the changes, so those users will never know what a crazy sonic breakthrough this stupid simple change has brought. But those of you who upgrade will get to compare.

Thanks to you all for your enthusiasm and support.

Regards,
--Alex C. & John Swenson

[poseidonsvoice]

Thanks Jason. You rock. 

My order is 1154 so I'm right in there...

Oh...and so do Alex Crespi and John Swenson! 

Best,
Anand.

[jtwrace]

One thing I forgot to do is provide the direct link to Computer Audiophile where these posts are from.  Here is the link.

[hi5harry]

I'm really impressed with the existing customer service. That is a very fair price to upgrade and I really appreciate the minimal cost and no downtime. I'm In!

[jtwrace]

I've been able to confirm that if anyone purchased one second hand; the upgrade is open to you too.   

[gregfisk]

Thank you Jason,

I'm very impressed with the Regen already and I'm running it into a M2Tech Evo Stack before my dac.

Can't wait to hear even more improvement and for $45.00 it's a no brainer.

[loving_it]

Is the Regen USB 2 Compatible , I'm thinking of trying it along with the Totaldac USB filter

[HAL]

Looks like I am in the June 10 shipping group.   

[wisnon]

Is the Regen USB 2 Compatible , I'm thinking of trying it along with the Totaldac USB filter

Yes and others seem to have made the pairing to good effect already...

[loving_it]

Thanks I will give it a try