EtherRegen saved my Devialet experience

[RJHD3]

My digital streaming experience over the past twenty-four months has evolved from Sonos to Sonos with an external optical connected Parasound zDac to a Coax driven Chord Hugo.  All feeding into various Hegel and BelCanto amps, and most recently a rare Line Magnetic tube integrated. I hit audio happiness when I brought in some Zu Druid V speakers and moved to a Roon and PS Audio DirectStream DAC. The box count was sky high, and Tubes are a spontaneous music listening experience killer.  So I decided I’d give Devialet a shot. 

I was really underwhelmed. The same networking stack (Orbi mesh WiFi) didn’t change.  But the sound through the Devialet 140 (and later a 250) was just unpleasant compared to the DirectStream. A lot of piano music in the middle registers would sound like it was recorded with the microphone too close to the instrument.  That is the sound was harsh and unpleasant.  I basically gave up on streaming with the setup and was only listening to vinyl.  


I was seriously doubting the Devialet brand, and about ready to ditch the Devialet experiment altogether and accept the high box count, probably moving on to Pass Labs or the like.  

On a random late night browsing session I ran across the UpTone EtherRegen.  I’m not a big audio woo-woo guy.  Audio power cables or RCA cables have rarely made a noticeable difference to me.  But I’d invested enough in Devialet to give it a shot.  

Essentially, if you aren’t aware, the EtherRegen is a box that sits between your router and the Devialet.  It addresses jitter and reclocks the signal and isolated a bunch of noise.  It’s relatively inexpensive at under $700.  

I have now haBe the UpTone EtherRegen in my setup, with the Roon Nucleus hard wired to an Oorbi router, and then the same router serving as Ethernet output to the Devialet, but now with the EtherRegen  in between.

The sound has absolutely and fundamentally improved.  The clarity that was present with the DirectStream has returned to my system.  The harshness in upper registers and in guitar is absent, and the sense of musicality has returned.  I am overjoyed with this result.  Such a simple purchase ha allowed me to keep the Devialet and now I feel like I can let the DirectStream go and settle on just enjoying my Devialet with Roon. 

Highly recommended people give this a try if they feel like streaming sound quality on their Devialet is overly harsh, hard, aggressive or just not musically satisfying.  


Caveat emptor...different configurations in network setup, room setup, speakers, in house electrical wiring, etc apply.   This just reflects my own experience and results in my unique situation. 

Link to UpTone Ausio site:

https://uptoneaudio.com/products/etherregen

[NickTMS]

I have also had excellent results with the Uptone EtherRegen switch. I also tried cascading it with a Cisco 2690 switch but found it sounded better on its own.

[Snoopy8]

I have now haBe the UpTone EtherRegen in my setup, with the Roon Nucleus hard wired to an Oorbi router, and then the same router serving as Ethernet output to the Devialet, but now with the EtherRegen  in between.

The sound has absolutely and fundamentally improved.  The clarity that was present with the DirectStream has returned to my system.  The harshness in upper registers and in guitar is absent, and the sense of musicality has returned.  I am overjoyed with this result.  

I too have an Orbi (excellent mesh network) and the EtherRegen (ER) made a difference. Suggest adding a linear power supply to the ER. I also added an Ubiquity EdgeRouter + PSU before the ER and connected them to the ER using Ethernet over optical.

[Antoine]

@RJHD3, I agree, it’s a wonderful little device that etherREGEN!

Some of us have bought it as well and in case you missed it, here’s a (long) thread that discusses it and other audiophile switches out there. https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Audiophi...generation

[pvanosta]

Couple of questions (as I have the recurring 'dropout over RAAT via gigabit ethernet' bug):
- do you use Roon RAAT (the Roon Ready input vie ethernet on the Devialet)?
- did you ever have any dropouts? Or just poor/harsh sound?

I am currently playing Roon RAAT via wifi but would prefer to use a stable ethernet conenction. I have tried hanging a 10/100 switch off my gigabit switch and connecting the Dev to a 100 mb port but I still get the occasional dropout, so then I switch back to wifi.

Does anyone have any opinion or experience on whether the Uptone EtherRegen mitigates the gigabit ethernet bug on Roon RAAT?

[PeppaPig]

I have the EtherRegen, and the Expert 1000 Pro.

I don’t hear any difference with or without it when comparing to WiFi connection. I did a blind test with my friend and he cannot guess if I got it connected or not.

Technically TCP/IP does not impact by jitter, clocking issue. The internal DAC clock and the buffering memory ensures it will work perfectly using WiFi or built-in Ethernet port.

But the Etherregen has a 100Mbps port so it might resolve the 1Gbps issue if you suffering from it.

[ogs]

There is a reclocker in the CI units similar to the Mutec MC-3 +USB (definitely in the 250/1000, but most likely all CI Experts). I guess that may be one of the reasons there is little or no difference with the EtherREGEN. The ER should remove noise if your network environment is noisy. The Mutec still makes an improvement in front of an Expert amp though...

[sam1000]

@RJHD3 , I'm glad EtherRegen worked for you. I'm using alternate systems to stream music via Roon (220 and Trinnov Altitude). Trinnov only accepts Ethernet connection and I'm happy with the sound. However, I have ordered EtherRegen based on the feedback on this forum including yours. If it improves the sounds, ordering LPS would be the next step for me. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[David A]

Couple of questions (as I have the recurring 'dropout over RAAT via gigabit ethernet' bug):
- do you use Roon RAAT (the Roon Ready input vie ethernet on the Devialet)?
- did you ever have any dropouts? Or just poor/harsh sound?

I am currently playing Roon RAAT via wifi but would prefer to use a stable ethernet conenction. I have tried hanging a 10/100 switch off my gigabit switch and connecting the Dev to a 100 mb port but I still get the occasional dropout, so then I switch back to wifi.

Does anyone have any opinion or experience on whether the Uptone EtherRegen mitigates the gigabit ethernet bug on Roon RAAT?

I use RAAT with ethernet and I have an ETHERRegen. I used RAAT with a gigabit connection to the Devialet before getting the ER and with the 100 Mbps connection after getting it.

I'll make 2 observations.

The first is that there is a lot of variation in what people experience with the gigabit ethernet bug. Before I got the ETHERRegenb I rarely esxperienced any problem from the bug when I streamed contend at its native resolution but I have no music at a native resolution of 192/24. If I had Roon upsample to 192/24 and stream that to the Devialet I had lots of dropouts. Since I could never hear any improvement in sound quality between streaming at native resolution or having the music upsampled and streamed at 192/24, I never bothered with letting Roon upsample what I was streaming. After getting the ETHERRegen, streaming at native resolution was just as trouble free as before but I can now have Roon upsample everything to 192/24 and play it without problems. I still don't hear any advantage to having Roon do the upsampling so I'm still streaming at native resolution but I did spend some time listening with everything upsampled to 192/24 when I first got the ETHERRegen to see if that still caused problems and, as I said, I never had any.

Second, the gigabit ethernet bug isn't the only reason for dropouts with ethernet and perhaps once every 4-6 weeks I get a dropout for 30 seconds to a  minute or so with no error message. There have been comments on the ETHERRegen forums of occasional dropouts while a router is renewing a DHCP address for a device (apparently this happens at regular intervals as a normal network process) and I suspect other network problems can cause dropouts as well. If you want to get guaranteed performance with no dropouts ever, then I think you're going to have to forget about networked music. I've had my ETHERRegen for a bit over 5 months now and I've had maybe 4 dropouts in that period and no sign of any other problem, plus no reason to connect the dropouts I've had with the gigabit ethernet bug.

I've never had poor/harsh sound before or after getting the ETHERRegen.

I haven't heard of any Devialet owner using the ETHERRegen, and there are a few of us, who have had problems with the gigabit ethernet bug while using the ETHERRegen.

[Greg]

I have the EtherRegen, and the Expert 1000 Pro.

I don’t hear any difference with or without it when comparing to WiFi connection. I did a blind test with my friend and he cannot guess if I got it connected or not.

Technically TCP/IP does not impact by jitter, clocking issue. The internal DAC clock and the buffering memory ensures it will work perfectly using WiFi or built-in Ethernet port.

But the Etherregen has a 100Mbps port so it might resolve the 1Gbps issue if you suffering from it.

my inclination, although I have never tried an EtherRegen is to believe your conclusions on sound. A fancy bit of kit that probably isn’t necessary. Alternatively, if your experience is different and the EtherRegen works for you, it’s a bargain upgrade. I’m pretty sure this is not about the technology and more about what happens after our ears and inside our heads. Some will hear a benefit and others will not. No point in arguing about it because we are all wired differently.