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UpTone Audio EtherREGEN Switch Review

DonH56

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I bet it's possible to make a DAC so badly designed that this things helps it.

Years ago DACs relied on the incoming bit stream for clocking. For many years now they have included on-chip buffering and clock recovery to isolate them from the incoming data stream so clocking is no longer an issue. That would not be an issue with Ethernet anyway due to the transmission protocol. Ethernet is already galvanically isolated so isolation is not an issue.

So, yeah, you could, and I could make a car with square wheels, but...
 

Wes

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I bet Yugo or Trabant could make a really bad DAC.

The other prong of that exploratory frontier is whether the drive to make a very high end 'special' DAC might lead someone to create a poorly isolated unit...
 

DonH56

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I bet Yugo or Trabant could make a really bad DAC.

The other prong of that exploratory frontier is whether the drive to make a very high end 'special' DAC might lead someone to create a poorly isolated unit...

Isolation is part of the Ethernet spec, nothing to do with the DAC.

Searching for a reason for this thing?
 

Wes

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not talking about Ethernet

no searching, but someone whose opinion I respect did mention that he found it helped with certain DACs - he is a very objective guy
 

tw99

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not talking about Ethernet

no searching, but someone whose opinion I respect did mention that he found it helped with certain DACs - he is a very objective guy

His objectivity must have deserted him that day.
 

Wes

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maybe find out more before dismissing things eh - objective has meaning, as does bias
 

DonH56

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not talking about Ethernet

no searching, but someone whose opinion I respect did mention that he found it helped with certain DACs - he is a very objective guy

maybe find out more before dismissing things eh - objective has meaning, as does bias

Alright, since this thread was about an Ethernet switch, I assumed Ethernet was involved, sorry.
 

Wes

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just a BTW, technically I think it is possible to get a tiny common mode current past the transformers on Ethernet

We need to be careful to distinguish the unlikely from the impossible, and the negligible from the small...
 

milosz

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just a BTW, technically I think it is possible to get a tiny common mode current past the transformers on Ethernet

We need to be careful to distinguish the unlikely from the impossible, and the negligible from the small...

Can you elucidate? What's the mechanism? Leakage through the insulation?
 

Wes

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field interaction in the transformer is not perfect and you will get what is called parasitic capacitance

It is highly unlikely to an issue - but that is just an engineering/psycho-acoustic judgement, not an experimental result.

OTOH, while looking for a diagram for you, I found this really cool paper (which has nil relevance for audio SQ):

https://www.researchgate.net/public...Mode_Noise_for_Flyback_and_Forward_Converters
 
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Jinjuku

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just a BTW, technically I think it is possible to get a tiny common mode current past the transformers on Ethernet

We need to be careful to distinguish the unlikely from the impossible, and the negligible from the small...

It's why we have instrumentation. Technically its possible to through a powerful enough microscope on anything and find flaws. Whether a 100X or Scanning Electron Microscope...
 

tmtomh

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just a BTW, technically I think it is possible to get a tiny common mode current past the transformers on Ethernet

We need to be careful to distinguish the unlikely from the impossible, and the negligible from the small...

Don't @amirm 's tests (and accompanying video) of the Uptone Regen and the Silent Angel audiophile switch directly acknowledge this theoretical possibility - and then demonstrate conclusively that this possibility does not manifest itself in practice, making it so unlikely as to be a practical impossibility?

In other words, aren't you raising an issue that's already been addressed in testing?

On a related note, when it comes to ethernet and USB de-noiser/de-crappifier products, I find it quite amusing that some audiophiles (and some vendors) insist that if you can't hear a difference it's because your equipment isn't good enough - but by the same token whenever it's shown that there is no difference, it's often claimed that's because the equipment Amir tested the device with was too good - it is claimed that it has to be tested with a DAC with poor noise rejection, or with a noisy PC source.

These devices apparently only work if you use them with special audio equipment that has the magical quality of being simultaneously extraordinarily good and extraordinarily bad. :)
 

Jinjuku

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Don't @amirm 's tests (and accompanying video) of the Uptone Regen and the Silent Angel audiophile switch directly acknowledge this theoretical possibility - and then demonstrate conclusively that this possibility does not manifest itself in practice, making it so unlikely as to be a practical impossibility?

In other words, aren't you raising an issue that's already been addressed in testing?

On a related note, when it comes to ethernet and USB de-noiser/de-crappifier products, I find it quite amusing that some audiophiles (and some vendors) insist that if you can't hear a difference it's because your equipment isn't good enough - but by the same token whenever it's shown that there is no difference, it's often claimed that's because the equipment Amir tested the device with was too good - it is claimed that it has to be tested with a DAC with poor noise rejection, or with a noisy PC source.

These devices apparently only work if you use them with special audio equipment that has the magical quality of being simultaneously extraordinarily good and extraordinarily bad. :)

I've asked manufacturers of said products to simply publish the equipment that they used to establish baseline performance of their 'solutions' with.

It's been crickets for years.
 

Wes

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Don't @amirm 's tests (and accompanying video) of the Uptone Regen and the Silent Angel audiophile switch directly acknowledge this theoretical possibility - and then demonstrate conclusively that this possibility does not manifest itself in practice, making it so unlikely as to be a practical impossibility?

In other words, aren't you raising an issue that's already been addressed in testing?

On a related note, when it comes to ethernet and USB de-noiser/de-crappifier products, I find it quite amusing that some audiophiles (and some vendors) insist that if you can't hear a difference it's because your equipment isn't good enough - but by the same token whenever it's shown that there is no difference, it's often claimed that's because the equipment Amir tested the device with was too good - it is claimed that it has to be tested with a DAC with poor noise rejection, or with a noisy PC source.

These devices apparently only work if you use them with special audio equipment that has the magical quality of being simultaneously extraordinarily good and extraordinarily bad. :)


It's not @amirm - it's other people making absolutist claims without experiments or even lesser evidence to back them up

Such biases play directly into the hands of Slithering Subjectivists who would love to attack nt only this site, but science based evaluations in general.
 

tmtomh

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It's not @amirm - it's other people making absolutist claims without experiments or even lesser evidence to back them up

Such biases play directly into the hands of Slithering Subjectivists who would love to attack nt only this site, but science based evaluations in general.

Okay, but it's not as if Amir's evidence only belongs to Amir. The evidence is out there, and the evidence appears to support a pretty absolutist claim that these devices don't do anything.
 

Wes

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if you go back and read my post, I am discussing edge cases and holding open the chance that it might help a really badly designed DAC

I use WiFi to get music to my DACs so don't care; and for the record I intensely dislike Dogbone's rip off business model and have directed much derision at them in the past. If he pokes his head in again, I'll do it again...
 
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amirm

amirm

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if you go back and read my post, I am discussing edge cases and holding open the chance that it might help a really badly designed DAC
A DAC is not connected to Ethernet. It connects to a streamer that connects to Ethernet. So you have to first show that it makes a difference to a streamer. Then show that said difference travels through a badly designed DAC. One of these is next to impossible to show. Two of them cascaded requires multiplying their probabilities together and that makes the number as impossible as impossible gets.
 

tmtomh

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if you go back and read my post, I am discussing edge cases and holding open the chance that it might help a really badly designed DAC

I use WiFi to get music to my DACs so don't care; and for the record I intensely dislike Dogbone's rip off business model and have directed much derision at them in the past. If he pokes his head in again, I'll do it again...

Thanks for that clarification. I get the logic of what you're saying. But I would respectfully say that you're leaving out two important factors
  1. Cost/value: If a DAC is really badly designed, why spend $650 on an EtherRegen when you can get a well-designed, superbly-performing DAC for less than that and just replace your entire bad DAC?
  2. Effectiveness: Your argument here assumes that these devices would be effective with a bad DAC. That is a flawed assumption, and it remains to be proven. Given that Amir's text showed the EtherREGEN and similar products to have no impact on noise, jitter, or distortion that come out of a good DAC, and that he ran tests on frequencies from below 20Hz up to 1MHz, it would appear that it is far from a safe assumption to make that these devices would do what they claim in any situation, even with a "really bad" DAC.
 

Wes

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wrong on both counts

1. I am unconcerned with purchasing one as I noted above.

2. I do not so assume.

Please read my posts above so that - if you want to argue - you can argue against what I actually said.
 
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