USB Regen from Uptone Audio

[jkeny]

Pearse, what are your USB cable connections into & out of the Regen - this makes a big difference to the sound.
The fact that you had trouble with it being recognised with your USB cable makes me think that this might be where your problem lies

[Sligolad]

Hi John,
Looks like there may have been more going on as today I started having trouble getting RAM to boot off the on-board Reg so I had to dial it up to about 1.4v to get it to work. Then I has OS issues and had to reload an Image of the OS on the OS Drive, then I had problems seeing the PPA v4 USB card.

It turns out the PPA V4 Card has gone bad as despite going back to GUI and moving across different PCI slots I could not get it to be seen in the OS.
Trying to boot, the system would get stuck and as soon as I pulled out the USB cable it booted up fine so it must have been firing out junk into the ground or something.
Luckily I had the old trusty JCat card so stuck this in and worked straight away so maybe my PPA USB card or OCXO that goes with it was on the way out and went out with a flourish and then gave up!!

Just getting the system back up and running again so once I am stable I will do some more AB tests next week with the JCat USB card now in the Audio PC.

To answer your question I have the PPA Red USB cable from the Audio PC to the Regen and the Regen sitting on one of those solid adaptors going into the DAC.

While I was at all this I went the whole hog and installed Streamer mode with JPlay 6.1 and AO 1.31b12 with Kazoo for playback so need to get used to this first.
Cheers, Pearse.

[jkeny]

Ah, right - the faulty recognition of the Regen suggested something was amiss on the USB port or cable.
Glad you got to the bottom of it.
I'm still up for a GTG (get together) sometime, if others are!

[tony]

More stuff to consider! I might be able to arrange something Saturday or Sunday afternoon Pearse if nothing else is arranged. Will have to confirm it later in the week.

[sebna]

We had an interesting afternoon yesterday. I must admit that I am still sitting on the fence. Some more testing will be required for me to form the final opinion as I have some reservation which only can be decided upon once I have unit for testing, which I guess solves the question if I should cancel my order ;)

In general it certainly brings improvement but is it at the cost of some other aspects of the sound?

Thank you Tony and Ann for having us and to everybody attending for great afternoon.

Cheers

[Sligolad]

It certainly did not sound as big a difference as I had previously noticed but I did like Johns modded regen with the 3.3v battery supply directly on the board bypassing the regulator, I think I will pursue that mod very soon.

What did surprise me was the difference with the different USB cables which I did not expect, that Supra cable did sound as though it tamed the sound in a nice way.

Thanks again Tony.

[jkeny]

It certainly did not sound as big a difference as I had previously noticed but I did like Johns modded regen with the 3.3v battery supply directly on the board bypassing the regulator, I think I will pursue that mod very soon.

What did surprise me was the difference with the different USB cables which I did not expect, that Supra cable did sound as though it tamed the sound in a nice way.

Thanks again Tony.

Yea, thank you to Tony & Ann
Pearse, I had this conversation with Seb - Is the PPA cable revealed as too strident by the Regen - is the Regen strident & the PPA cable uncovers this fault - is the Supra cable more accurate & balanced? Ultimately we don't know - it's a matter of preference & synergy.

[sebna]

I know how Supra behaves in compare to my Wireworld Starlight and in my system Supra is inferior in my opinion(nothing to do with Regen). Supra is in general slightly veiled in compare to Starlight plus it has less controlled and not as extended bass. It has also less extended top end (which sometimes can be a plus of course but my system is ok in this regard). It is pure copper vs silver mix in between those two.

Yesterday when we used Regen the system was gaining in quality but also gaining in edginess (less with battery power then SMPS), then with Supra it was taking a step back almost to level of system without a regen in terms of "tonality" and energy... but I hope that it retained the gains in how sound sources gain in dimensionality with it which of I cannot be sure until I have a chance to test in my own system (also to confirm rest of the observations).

Anyway those were my thoughts on the day, but after such short comparison it is hard to be sure of anything. I would not be surprised if I change my mind completely once I have it at home.

[nige2000]

It certainly did not sound as big a difference as I had previously noticed but I did like Johns modded regen with the 3.3v battery supply directly on the board bypassing the regulator, I think I will pursue that mod very soon.

What did surprise me was the difference with the different USB cables which I did not expect, that Supra cable did sound as though it tamed the sound in a nice way.

Thanks again Tony.

Yea, thank you to Tony & Ann
Pearse, I had this conversation with Seb - Is the PPA cable revealed as too strident by the Regen - is the Regen strident & the PPA cable uncovers this fault - is the Supra cable more accurate & balanced? Ultimately we don't know - it's a matter of preference & synergy.

Shame I missed this meet up

I had a feeling the regent would be both good and bad

My feeling on the cables is that the likes of the ppa will provide more detail and atmosphere and is well suited to highly modded PCs however if you use a detailed cable like this on a regular PC it will sound very edgy sharp or strident

Maybe the regen negative properties are just usb cable and PS Effects

You have to judge the regen with the most reveling cable I suppose

Did you use Tony's PC?

[jkeny]

Shame I missed this meet up

I had a feeling the regent would be both good and bad

My feeling on the cables is that the likes of the ppa will provide more detail and atmosphere and is well suited to highly modded PCs however if you use a detailed cable like this on a regular PC it will sound very edgy sharp or strident

Maybe the regen negative properties are just usb cable and PS Effects

You have to judge the regen with the most reveling cable I suppose

Did you use Tony's PC?

I don't think there's anything bad about the Regen when powered directly with battery - what I was saying is that at some point it all becomes preference. People's views of the sound become an expression of their preference as we have no reference to know if cables, equipment is adding flavour to the sound

I have analysed the sound of the Regen with headphones directly out of the back of my DAC & it's very obviously doing things right - everything improves - clarity, timing, noise reduction, fine detail, etc. So, I'm of the opinion that it is all positive. Yes, USB cables do make a difference - using solid USB adapters too.

I'm much more of the opinion, at the moment, that the Regen is doing things right & if you are hearing some downside then it probably is revealing something in the system that is off? But, as Seb says, I could well change my opinion.