USB Regen from Uptone Audio

[tony]

Seb 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.

Would agree there were lots of changes and not right to come down categorically with an impression on its effects.

Whatever track John introduced(some dodgy scot with lots of sibilance in the voice)
definitely sounded a lot better once the regen was introduced and this was with the ppa cable. It smoothed out the sibilance and brought much clearer detail to the track.

The supra we reckon is copper hence it could round everything off whilst the ppa tz is silver. There did seem to be a distinct change when the supra was introduced.
I was impressed with the regen and whilst we didn't do enough testing/rechecking I thought when two regens were installed it was possibly another improvement.

I preferred the battery supplied regen.

Also did some fairly brief testing on Fryderck's unix based player.
Sound promising but couldn't get it to work on my audiopc to have a direct comparison with Mqn/2012R2. Felt the audiopc(mine Nigel used for all the regen testing) was far superior to the unix laptop. But we would expect that as a no brainer.

Fryderck hopes to return with a debugged unix/player that will work on my audiopc

[Ken Moreland]

Good meet-up yesterday and very enjoyable exploration of Uptone Regen (200$ including shipping by USPS). Sound quality improved with basic Regen and then again with battery powered Regen, even 2 Regen's were tried (one at either end of the USB cable) but the jury is out on that trial. For afters we had Frederyck's player too. Couldn't stay for coffee and cake , instead I chugged up the road with the traffic from Terenure Vintage car show. Many thanks to our hosts. KM

[Clive]

I've been trying out my Regen over the last couple of days. I have one from the latest August batch so it is an"amber". I run an untuned W10 laptop with Bug Head (Infinity Blade IQ) feeding a Metrum Octave mkII DAC with has an M2Tech USB card internally. I normally power the DAC USB card via an iFi iUSB power supply. If I use USB power from my laptop the sound is frankly unlistenable.

I can't know whether the differences I hear between DAC+iFi iUSB and DAC+Regen are down to the power supply differences or the Regen doing it's regeneration. With the Regen I'm using a linear regulated PS at 7.5V, this is an improvement over the standard switching supply.

I use a couple of different OB speaker setups, one is more forgiving of poor recordings, the other is more "explicit". With the forgiving OBs it's hard to detect much difference in sound between DAC+iFi and DAC+Regen. With the explicit OBs it's easier to pick up on what Regen brings; greater clarity, more natural sibilance, cleaner upper treble (hi-hats and tinkly sounds), there's greater separation and delineation between sounds. Bass is a little tighter and therefore subjectively a touch leaner too. Trumpet and piano are smoother with just the right amount of bite.

There is cable sensivity....my short Elijah Audio cable matches it really well.

The level of difference is not as great as I was expecting. The difference between short and 1m usb cable is of similar magnitude. Cumulatively the differnce is more worthwhile.

Is it worth it in my system? Yes.
Is it indispensable? No but it's nice to have. But usb powered usb card clouds the issue.

I tried it with Foobar too with similar results, I wanted to try Foobar in case BH was already cleaning up the sound. Maybe I need to try one of John's batteries for the usb chip (not the usb card power source).

[Clive]

Since I posted I've had a breakthrough. The iFi iUSB Power forces me to use two USB cables, one of which is double headed (power + data). This results in a lot of cable. I've reconfigured with the Regen to use the shortest cable I have do I've move the DAC. With everything properly in place I'm finding the Regen, linear ps and short usb cable are now delivering a greatly improved meaty sound....but I can't know how much of the improvement comes from regenerating the usb signal as there are three variable in play in my situation.

[sebna]

I am returning mine. I think regen brings some improvements but also has its own set of problems. Maybe I did not try hard enough to address them but at the same time I did not feel the need to do so. I just like my system better without it.

[Ken Moreland]

I wish I had known Seb was returning his Regen, I ordered mine following Tony's meetup and it finally arrived this morning having been mailed on 13th via San Francisco through New York to Dublin where it spent last weekend in PortLaoise Customs getting a charge of 16.49€ added. When it was released from Customs it was sent by AnPost to Galway (I'm in Meath) despite being properly addressed.
Anyhoo, it arrived and works straight out of the box and the sound is greatly improved even though it has had no run-in time. Looking forward to hearing how it develops.

[sebna]

I wish I had known Seb was returning his Regen, I ordered mine following Tony's meetup and it finally arrived this morning having been mailed on 13th via San Francisco through New York to Dublin where it spent last weekend in PortLaoise Customs getting a charge of 16.49€ added. When it was released from Customs it was sent by AnPost to Galway (I'm in Meath) despite being properly addressed.
Anyhoo, it arrived and works straight out of the box and the sound is greatly improved even though it has had no run-in time. Looking forward to hearing how it develops.

Ken I did not know myself if I will be returning it till the very last minute. Even in the post office I was considering to keep it because of not extreme outlay in grand scheme of already endured costs but then I thought why would I keep it if I am not using it and posted it back as I it was last chance to do it as I was running out of time on agreed test period.

So that was one reason why I did not advertise it here. The other was that mine came without original power supply as I did not need it and it was causing delays with shipping so I opted for not receiving one at all as I already had LPSU for it. Lack of PSU would probably force me to lower the price beyond any sense and practicality of sale in the first place, not to mention that the interest could be very low in such package.

Hope it makes sense and I am glad it is working out for you with it. Are you using hard usb connector with it?

I have already spent the money on some audiophile fuses ;)... Let's see what those can do... Some people swear by them.

[Ken Moreland]

Seb, I was only moaning cos mine had been travelling for a week already when I noticed your post. I ordered it in July 5th following Tony's meetup and enjoyed it there but there's no substitute for hearing it in your own set-up. It just took so long to arrive even though everybody was very helpful including Customs, and the guy in Galway AnPost Parcel depot who took my call at 7:15am. He went down to the parcel area carrying the phone , I could hear him looking for and finding the package.
It's currently working with my Chord Hugo which doesn't use any power except for a handshake at start-up.

[Ken Moreland]

I've been enjoying the Regen since end of August .It works perfectly for me , even using the accompanying power supply, which I haven't got round to replacing yet.
I had already ordered the Audioquest Jitterbug and it has now arrived and is installed at the PC end of the USB cable , directly into PPA USB 3 card. The Regen is at the other (Dac ) end. In Michael Lavorgna's Audiostream article http://www.audiostream.com/content/usb- ... LfJvBci.97 he rates the Regen and Jitterbug sonic impact as 15 and 10 respectively compared to the impact of new speakers at 100.
Regen and Jitterbug work happily together and the SQ is as good as I have achieved. Jitterbug is available from http://www.futureshop.co.uk/ for 41.50 Sterling inc postage.

[Mike19]

I've been trying out my Regen over the last couple of days. I have one from the latest August batch so it is an"amber". I run an untuned W10 laptop with Bug Head (Infinity Blade IQ) feeding a Metrum Octave mkII DAC with has an M2Tech USB card internally. .

Thinking of buying a Regen for 2012 M2Tech Young, Uptone doesn't know if it will work with M2Tech USB bulk data transfer technolgy used, is this tech used in the Metrum
Mike