Uptone EtherRegen

I just purchased one today so it will be interesting to try it out; hopefully I'll get it in a couple of days.   

My switch supports both fiber and copper so I'll start out with the copper cable and then jump to the fiber to see if I hear any difference between the two, along with the primary comparison relative to my switch straight to my streamer.  Adding an extra box isn't ideal, but I like the idea in theory at least of decoupling my noisy equipment (NAS, NUC running Roon, switch, etc.) from the input of my streamer (which along with the rest of my audio system is on a dedicated AC line.  Anyhow, time will tell...

I've got maybe ~70hrs on my Regen and overall I'm happy with it and call the purchase a success.   For me it has been incremental changes which all add up to make a nice improvement.   The flexibility it allows in setting things up is a big bonus in my eyes.

1) Just dropping the unit into my system and moving the 5M generic Cat6 cable from my Bricasti M5 to the Regen and adding in another generic Cat6 patch cable to connect to the M5 I heard a small but noticeable improvement.   

2) I then was able to finally use my high quality 1.5M Ethernet Cable for the last run to the M5 and again another small improvement.

3) Lastly I swapped out the 15M Cat6 with 15M of fiber and yet another small improvement.   My audio system is on its own dedicated AC line and now by switching to fiber to the Regen I've cut an electrical connection to my noisy digital equipment all spread throughout the house (e.g. NAS, NUC running Roon Rock, Ethernet Switch, etc...).

I'm using the stock Regen switching power-supply but at least have it plugged into a different AC circuit than the one feeding my other audio equipment.   My last Regen related tweak will be to try a linear power supply sometime in the future.

For fun, try swapping the cables between the A and B ports and see if you hear a difference (e.g. swap the clean and dirty sides of the Regen) :)

If you don't want to add an extra device to the signal chain, another option is to simply replace an existing Ethernet switch with one that has an SFP slot; that is how I added fiber to my home network.  This relatively cheap switch has worked great for me so far connected directly to the EtherREGEN:  https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/poe-switch/tl-sg1210p/

I added an UltraCap LPS-1.2 to my EtherREGEN this week and am happy with the improvement I hear with the limited listening time I have on it.   I'm now curious if an after market DC cable will make any difference compared to the stock one that comes with it.   Have any folks swapped the cable and heard a difference?  Ghent Audio and Audio Sensibility both make DC cables that look tempting to try with it.   There of course is the option to replace the AC cable feeding the LPS power supply too; it never ends... :)