UpTone Audio EtherREGEN audiophile switch

Once it was discovered that ethernet switches do have impact on the sound quality, many manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon. UpTone chose another type of transport playing another song… Although there are people that can’t understand why a switch can have impact on the sound quality, once you’ve heard it, there is no denying. Of course your stereo needs to be of sufficient quality and you do need to be interested in sound quality. Any switch that isn’t broken will pass on audio bits. But starting with my setup 2, differences between a € 40 switch and an audiophile type are absolutely audible.

00:47 - In my setup 1 even differences between several makes and types are clear, see my playlist on network switches for details. They all roughly do the same: filter electric contamination and reclock the signal. The EtherREGEN on review here differs from the others in that, next to the filtering and reclocking, it offers one unique network feed at 100 Mbit/s that is fully isolated from the other network ports and fully reclocked. It is this feed that is to be used to feed your audio computer, streamer or network bridge. If you want to connect your computer directly to your stereo, you need a digital to analog converter - DAC for short.

01:37 - That can be a separate device, connected to your amplifier - as drawn here - but it can also be integrated in your amp of cd-player. You connect the computer or laptop over USB, SPDIF or TOSlink to the DAC. You could also use the analog outputs of the computer but the quality will be rather poor and I think that adding the EtherREGEN won’t improve that. Usually USB will give the best sound quality. But not all DAC’s have a USB input. The EtherREGEN.s B ethernet socket is connected to the ethernet socket on the computer.

02:16 - Then one of the ethernet sockets on the A side of of the EtherREGEN is connected to your router. If you use a streamer or network bridge, the EtherREGEN’s B ethernet socket is connected to the ethernet socket on the network player or network bridge while one of the ethernet sockets on the A side is connected to the router. The computer, now functioning as music server or network share, is also connected to your router or to the A side of the EtherREGEN, if that’s more convenient. The connection between the EtherREGEN and the router or another switch in your network can also be made using fibre optics, as we will see later on. The EtherREGEN is only a small device, measuring 110 by 112 by 27 mm.

03:08 - If you take the BNC connector in account the depth is 125 mm. It weights 310 grams, the medical grade switch mode power supply weighs 220 grams. On the A side we see the SFP cage for an SFP module if you want to use fibre optics. I’ll come back to that. Further more there are four 1Gb/s ethernet ports with integrated status lights. On the secondary side, the so called B side, there is a DC power input. The matching 7. 5 volts DC medical grade switch mode power supply is included. Next to it a ground terminal that in most cases is not needed. Then the B-side 100Mbit/s ethernet port that feeds the cleaned up ethernet signal to the hardware playing the music. Normally the internal clock is used but an external 10 MHz clock signal can be connected to this BNC and will be used in stead when this switch is put in the EXT position. When we look at the circuit board we see it is galvanically divided in two parts: the A-side that handles the network side and the B-side that does the feed to the audio player.

04:26 - Although just one board is used, electrically it in fact are two boards. This is clearly visible on the flip side of the board where can be seen that there is no copper running from one side to the other. There, of course, need to be some transport of bits from one side to the other and that is done using these high speed Analog Devices isolators. In a same manner an isolating DC converter provides power to the B-side. UpTone Audio calls the separation between the two sectors in the board the ‘moat’ like the moat that used to surround a city or castle.

05:05 - So the Isolators could be seen as draw bridges or ports that only grand access to people and goods that are allowed in. But enough fairytales. The A side holds the 4 ethernet ports module with integrated magnetics and transformer cores. The first line of defence, you could say. To the left the SFP cage. Below this heat sink the ethernet switch electronics, format converter, clock buffers and ultra low jitter differential flip-flops are hidden. The power regulation for the A-side is situated here. The B-side is fed - as we have seen - by this isolating DC converter while further ultra low noise voltage regulation takes place here.

05:50 - When the network signal has passed the isolators, they are sent to the B-side ethernet switch electronics, format converter, clock buffers and ultra low jitter differential flip-flops. These are controlled by the ultra low phase noise Crystek CCHD-575 crystal oscillator and SiliconLabs jitter-attenuating clock synthesiser. Unless the clock switch is set to external, in which case the external clock signal is used. I promised you some more info on the SFP cage. SFP stands for small form-factor pluggable and it hold modules like this that translate electrical signals to optical signals to be used with fibre optics cables.

06:38 - From a computer network point of view there seldom is a reason to use fibre at home. Fibre is for covering really long distances. But in an audio network there might sometimes be an improvement in sound quality. I know of no research that confirms this, by the way. The only reasons I can dream up is galvanic separation and the absence of influence by stray signals of any kind.

07:04 - In my case it did give a small improvement in sound quality, perhaps because I live close to the most powerful digital radio and digital TV transmitter in my country. Since there are several ways to convert electrical network signals to optical signals, you need to use compatible SFP modules. They cost you a couple of tenners and fibre cable is about a cheap as UTP cable.You do need separate optical strands for send and receive, usually available in twin cable. If your switch doesn’t have an SFP cage, you can use a media converter like this.

07:41 - It is connected to for instance your NAS or router over UTP network cable, the SFP module is inserted and then over fibre connected to the EtherREGEN. As you might know, I own the AQVox AQ-Switch SE and the SOtM sNH-10G. They sound about equal, the SOtM offering two SFP ports and therefore is placed in my setup 1. Since I bought the Auralic Aries G2 digital transport I hadn’t compared these switches to a cheap switch. I had no idea to what extend the Aries G2 was able to filter out nasties coming from the network. The sound quality using the Aries G2 did improve so much. But replacing the SOtM switch for the EtherREGEN gave a very clearly improvement in sound quality. The stereo image was yet another step more royal, voices even more natural and especially the lows were a clear step better. Not only was there more texture, it was better placed in the stereo image without getting unnatural. Since the SOtM was now unemployed, I placed it near my Intel NUC Roon Rock server at the third floor in stead of the Zyxel switch with SFP.

09:04 - I couldn’t imagine this would make a difference but it did. It wasn’t a big difference, I switched several times to be sure and lost 1 kg running the stairs - which is good. Using the SOtM switch upstairs in stead of the Zyxel switch made the sound even more relaxed than it already was. Again, it was a small difference I and wouldn’t spend € 1000 for it. But it was a difference nevertheless. Another thing I wanted to do is to try alternative power supplies.

09:37 - I have tried three: the sBooster BOTW P&P ECO MK2 12 volts, the Uptone UltraCap LPS-1.2 set to 12V and the Syntaxx Xtreme Performance Icon 12 Volts. They all three brought some improvement. The difference between the sBooster and the UpTone was very small and it was hard to say which one was better. The Syntaxx was the best of the three but also here the difference might be too small to spend the extra money. In my case, with the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge already being powered from the Syntaxx it was a matter of connecting the second DC output to the EtherREGEN.

10:20 - Whether spending money on either of the three would offer fulfilment to you, is hard to say. But if you can spend the money, it is worth trying if your dealer allows you to return the power supply if you’re not satisfied. Next to the two switches I own, I also reviewed the clearly cheaper Silent Angel Bonn N8 switch. Again, see my playlist of audiophile switches. Costing only € 400 it did give a clear improvement compared to a normal consumer switch. But the AQ Switch and the SOtM, costing more than double, were also clearly better. And that’s fair. At $ 640 - about € 700 including VAT in Europe - the UpTone Audio EtherREGEN is priced in-between the Silent Angel and the SOtM and AQ Switch. But it performs clearly better than all three. The number of ports is lower than the others that offer eight ethernet ports. The SOtM additionally offering two SFP ports.

11:26 - But if you need more ports, that will probably be to connect a computer or game console and then adding a consumer switch to the A side of the EtherREGEN will be no problem. It will be interesting to see what next improvement is around the corner. Digital audio has come a long way and is - or at least can be - of extremely high quality, nowadays without costing you a much as your house. I already heard of a new switch on the horizon so if you don’t want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you’ll be informed when new videos are out. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up.

12:05 - Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially, it keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on Youtube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music. .