richardloh

Hi Stereophile, I got weak and bought a 2nd ER to be before cx for streaming albiet not so weak to purchase another Afterdark double crown oxco clock but just a China recycled oxco clock from 4G base station/repeater not unlike Afterdark or even earlier Cybershaft's type 1 & 2 ones. I can easily switch my acoustic revive triple cable to distinctly hear improvement in sound quality of both the ER/oxco before cx and ER/oxco between cx and ex as advised by Uptone for them to be nearest to my upgraded T+ dac. However do watch out on avoiding breaking the moat of ERs in this complex/confusing setup of clocks, ER dc power sources and upstream/downstream sources' dc power .. I only managed to current best sounding setup ever in making sure of that with 2 isotransformers, stock 30A line and 2 dedicated 20A/30A lines as I do not have 4-8 isolated dc power. Cheers. PS: ER between cx and ex without the Afterdark clock sounded worse ... harsh

Hi Stereophilus, Does below attachment helps ? For me, I care only for usb and i2s and especially the latter without any further transmitter and receiver circuitry of spdif as well as crucial dsd playback for me. Unfortunately, Mark shared that there is absolutely no space in my cx/ex to add needed mobo for native i2s output i.e. not reclocked ones like P2 from usb inputs during the oladra upgrade ... else I will prefer it to be done in my upgraded Denafrips T+ where it is closest to the r2r ladder array. Cheers. Richard

Hi fellow Simpleporean Kishore, I contacted Mark at Antipodes many moons and suns ago and was referred to Terry below. Was a breeze .... Cheers. Audio Reference 96 Nataringa Rd Devonport Auckland 0624 P: +64 21 880884 E: terry@ar.co.nz W: www.audioreference.co.nz

Hi SteinigerGE, Is it still working ? My son in Australia can sign up for Qobuz not available Singapore but can I sign in to listen and not blocked ? Cheers. Richard

Hi Delphi17, Thanks for your advice and sharing My ex and cx had been back for last 3 weeks after the not inexpensive oladra upgrade. With moving the ER and AD double crown oxco clock between the ex and cx i.e. nearer my T+ dac as advised by Uptone Audio, SSD playback is now better than streaming free 16bits 44.1khz full flac. In addition, I believe my previous impression is also due to me being misled by consistent SQ dependent of certain broadcast stations and I naturally followed best sounding ones like full flac hionline, Frequence 3 etc. Even 192khz the wave or MRTI jazz sounded wide and deep ... yes, streaming can sound great and I hope for 24bit 192khz like Qobuz in the future. Cheers. Richard

Indeed and same for me ... my 25m supra cat 8 cable is in the storeroom as dedicated wire mesh sounded better. However, wifi within a streamer must be needing hell of a lot of design and materials with still doubts to me ... having my wire mesh near any of my components, digital or analog, corrupts sound and at worse case added obvious artifacts that I thought the tweeters on my Salon 2 were goners. Cheers.

Hi Stereophilus, For you, local stored files or streaming Tidal, Qubuz etc. sounds better ? Probably stored files but my situation differs and hence seeking confirmation .. and hopefully find out why Cheers. Richard

Hi Delphi17, How do you compared stored music files and streaming ? I am streaming from free full flac internet stations likd Hionline, Frequence 3 etc., 320kbps stations and even 192khz like The Wave - Relaxing music which I find generally better than my ripped stored files in my 2x4TB samsung 860 SSDs. Streaming music seems to be sounding less compressed and certainly of wider stage than even most dsd stored files .. and the difference is the same after the oladra upgrade albiet overall had obviously improved. I am on squeezelite and and android squeezer app for control with less than favorable room accoustic. Cheers. Richard

And Antipodes will be offering their latest development of Oladra versions as upgrade to DX models

Hi Stereophilus, Indeed a personal thing due to many considerations and indeed grateful to Mark of Antipodes to have invested to offer this latest oladra upgrade but unless I ditch the Antipode cx+ex stack, I will be stuck with a non-upgraded one as there is also a time limit for availability of this upgrade. And I really need the blue leds Just to add, I would also recommend having Uptone ER and an oxco clock like the Afterdark double crown one at the least to take full advantage of our separate boxes. Until I can have the usd15k K50 in my system, I like to think that usd1.5k on ER and Afterdark clock had made up for the 10-20% or even more to have taken over the K50 until they have oxco clock options . Cheers. PS: With defining songs that I have been listening for days weeks, months and years, I have no doubt of the improvement from this oladra upgrade .. blacker black that expanded the stage with more details not heard or distinctly so and music just "pops".

No facebook account but just saw another oladra upgraded cx+ex in glorious blue leds like mine Glad that Mark offered this to all after I contacted him almost 1 yr ago to have mine with blu leds as I had modded all my equipment but will not risk it with the Antipodes ... ymmv but green led is so outdated. Cheers.

Hi, Apri 2021 onwards. Cheers. Richard

Hi White, no ... it was just that I am asking for some custom mods and had been advised to hold until the upgrade to be available to send over my units. Cheers.

Looks like I am ready with the budget in Apr2021 for Oladra upgrade ?

Hi, Received my EtherRegen this afternoon here in Singapore much earlier than expected from Jan 2021 shipment batch ... Was busy modifying my Bel Canto FM-1 tuner from green to blue led display with newly received vacuum desoldering kit for 72 pins of 4x 18 pins 8 segment leds but managed to hook up the EtherRegen with accompanying adaptor to my diy 2kVA isotrans in star topology and pulled out my unused Meicord Cat 6 ethernet cable to wired up my wifi mesh. From the EtherRegen, it is all Audio Revive metal shield ethernet cables to my Antipode EX+CX stack. Wow ! Whichever and whatever limitation I had must had been serious and solved by having the EtherRegen because full flac internet radio station of HiOnLine, RadioParadize etc. as well as local lowly 64k AAC bitrate stations suddenly became more detailed, expansive and music just pops ??. Highly recommended ! Cheers.

Thank you for your order Richard. You are lucky to have gotten into to the January batch--as the very last available unit for that month! Here is a quick status update for all (I'm supposed to be on vacation and unplugged until the 4th; good thing my wife does not read the forums or I would be in trouble ? —All EtherREGENs promised for shipment by December 17th shipped off well ahead of schedule as is always my goal (on the 7th for domestic units, on the 11th for the internationals). —We have zero units left on the shelf, but 250 circuit boards in production and due here about January 13th. However, we have only about 80 aluminum cases in stock, with our 450 piece order for cases delayed for shipment from Japan around January 28th (hopefully sooner). —Because of the above, you can see that for January we will be able to complete and ship only 80 units. And as of this afternoon those have all been pre-ordered by end-users (our dealers are getting shut out of January; guess I will deal with their unhappiness about this early in the month). —Since we will have plenty of boards and time to program/test/affix heatsinks in advance of more aluminum cases arriving, I feel confident in quoting February 11th as the outside ship date for any new orders that people place now. And a reasonable chance such orders will ship a few days sooner than that. Thank you all for your business and enthusiasm in 2020. Looking forward not only to our pandemic-stricken world recovering next year, but also to releasing some of the very exciting (and still secret--so don't ask) new products we have been cooking up for a while. [Not Ethernet-related is all I will say. So keep buying EtherREGEN's--is will not change or being superseded in 2021.] Wishing you good health and great music in 2021, Alex Crespi Please note that UpTone Audio’s offices will be closed from December 21st to January 4th. Packages will be received, but no outbound shipments will be made nor will e-mail be answered during this period. We thank you for understanding and wish you a healthy holiday and new year.

Hi dbastin, Not sure why but the 25m supra cat 8 is in my closet cos I bought it with the expectation from typical negative comment on wifi that it will sound better from router directly to the CX as server and EX as player but it did not vs current setup with the wireless mesh. Perhaps no leakage current that I read somewhere is one key negative impact to sound quality that ER also addresses in addition to noise aka jitters ? Not sure the expected 12V dc psu needed for router and mesh nodes again previous use of ifi ipower units but I read that zerozone lps based on AMR sigma 11 isn't too bad and zonotone 7nps 5050 powercord used for the zerozone lps to the receiving node to the CX should be ok and in fact an overkill being 3 times the $. https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/31119-power-supply-8-group-test-lps-and-smps/ Thanks for the warning of the rabbit hole but I am quite adverse to be spending more than 20% of the accessories, including cablings, power supply etc. It is only because of how much the Antipodes cost that I bought the acoustic tripleC lan cables. However the thought of some technologies on the ER does seems attractive and hence the consideration but still had not learned if it will indeed helps in my use case and why. Cheers. Richard

Hi, I run wireless mesh node powered by zerozone 12v for ethernet to my Antipodes ex+cx stack via acoustic revive tripleC lan cables. Will added ER between the node to Antipodes CX used as server improves the SQ for what it does and how so ? Many thanks in advance. Cheers. Richard

Hi Stereophilus, How is the cheap ofc yellow cable for you ? I went all accoustic revive ones since I figured I wanted to invest a bit more and close the ethernet and i2s cable topic for my set up. http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/pcaudio/lan_cable.html Cheers. Richard

Hi dbastin, Oops ... did not realised offtopic but it is all about our experience here on antipodes and in this case it was about my attempt to get streaming music ? Indeed all about subjective and personal perceptions and value but oh no, I can tell difference of noise from lower noise floor and mentioned dullness, details, loss of dynamic etc as well as appreciates you mentioned bass definition aka body, tonality aka lifelike of midrange, extensions especially of chimes, bells and cymbals etc. I had been into car audio for the last 15 years which near field listening and tuning means I am very sensitive to all these mentioned "KPIs" and being a physic honour graduate also means it is not difficult for me to fully appreciates as well as understands what you are sharing ... hope this does not sound challenging but let's get this behind us and have no further doubt. BTW, my current 3 year old forester xt is equipped with 2x steg masterstroke class A, 2X steg masterstroke msk1500, MicroPrecision Z series 3 way front speaker system with all drivers in customised box, Helix dsp pro mk2, allo digione signature powered by ifi iusb3.0, Ideon 3R regen for usb from android HU powered by more lps, 2X odyssey batteries as reservoirs etc. and do amp gain matching, employ real time analyzer aka RTA etc. but this will really be off topic. Indeed supra cat 8 being coiled up may have its negative effect but I frankly doubt of any significance and will nevertheless try since again, it is bought and available without any speculation but easily done. I had also wished that hardwired instead of wifi mesh nodes and hence this attempt but unfortunately not the case so far. As for playback and playlist to judge, I may have not been clear on my this ethernet attempt on only streaming and not audio files and storage. For audio file playback, I only rely on the best route as recommended by Antipodes of internal 2X 4TB SSDs installed in the CX as server with the 2X10TB Synology NAS purely for backup only. Painfully but gladly added the sgd2k cost for the 2X 4TB SSDs to avoid the need, doubt and endless debate as well as endless mindblogging $ on various ethernet cables, switches, lps etc. As such, my finding and sharing here is really only on streaming from full flac internet radio stations only like Hi0nline, F3, JB Radio, Rondo Classical etc. and not listening to spotify, tidal etc. which to me are of lesser sound quality. You can now imagine that I will never have the same music being repeated in the last night's AB audition by both myself and my wife and the lost connections mean that it is not as definitive but we both have no doubt that streaming from these full flac radio stations sounded better on the wifi airties than hardwired supra cat 8 cable ... ymmv. BTW, I believe my ONR is not your NBN as I do not have to add any further cables or lps like you are seemingly doing so to your downstream router ... ONR is optical network router where external fiber connects to and itself is a router where I simply plug in the Supra cat 8 or the cable to the first Airties mesh node to transmit and both my ONR and Airties are already 12v powered by the Zerozone lps. Hope this clarifies albeit not to your expected finding of wired vs wifi solution for streaming but glad I tried and know for myself in my current system and setup to stop wondering and enjoy listening to more music. Cheers, Richard

Hi, More audition and still no love for the wired connection by supra cat 8 cable ? In comparison to wifi airties mesh node, it is just more dull, flat and obvious loss of dynamics. Last ditch effort to have my wife to do an AB blind test with me swapping cables and 2-3 lost connections without actually swapping but she got it 5/5 on preferred wifi airties mesh node as I do. Wasted aud360 in my use case of this well reviewed 25m supra cat8 cable and pls pm me with your offer if interested. Cheers. Richard PS: photo of supra cat 8 in original packaging ready for shipping to its new owner

Hi dbastin, Passed midnight and decide best time to audition ... hooked up the 25m supra cat8 cable. Initial finding was that it was certainly no worse than via the airties mesh nodes .. more 3D and detailed. However, further audition revealed that it was dull and in fact more flat ... it was not easy to AB as this is streaming and changeover is not immediate with lapse of quite a few seconds. Will hold any permanent fixing of the 25m supra cat8 as it is with non preferred visible trunking ... to audition further by me and others but not convinced it is an improvement at this juncture. Cheers. Richard

Hi dbastin, Not sure what is a nbn box but my isp is already fiber directly into a ONR or optical network router which I connect the 1st mesh node to: External fiber > ONR > airties mesh node > airties mesh node > cx+ex ... all powered by zerozone lps. The 25m supra cat8 should "burnt in" after about 2 weeks of being connected from another airties mesh node to cable box to tv in my master bedroom ... having transferred much more data since video and not only audio. Will try out and see if worth the effort to run it permanently into the false ceiling from the ONR router to the cx+ex but guess no more discussed isolation ... though no wish to spend on additional isolator with added dc power as well as more externet cables. Fingercrossed then but hopeful as some old dunno cat what cable did sounded better than previous connection to common switch to airties mesh node for living room tv, nas etc. .... and not current dedicated mesh node for the cx+ex. Cheers. Richard

router > WW Platinium > wifi mesh node/access point > wifi mesh node/access point > WW non-Platinium > Devialet endpoint Hi dbastin, Would the above be an option to try and eliminate the "many" metres of cat5e utp ? Andno more switch like this one: ???? https://jcat.eu/product/m12-switch-gold/ These mesh nodes are cheap and in my case of cheap used airties 4920, I swapped the single chinese Aishi 470uF 25v with reknown Panasonic fm ones for sgd1 each while it seems the clock to be already higher grade 20 ppm ones ... not sure which part of ckt is the new Panasonic fm caps are for but cannot be bad thing. ? This reminded me to also employ one of the china yellow cat8 ofc from my router to the airties mesh node which is now with stock computer aka sgd2 ones ... both powered by the latest zerozone lps I bought. Cheers. Richard

Hi dbastin, Do you mean direct Worldwire Platinium from router to your cx/ex instead of wireless via the Airties in my case ? You will then need some "isolation" between router and your cx/ex i.e. as well as 2x Worldwire Platinium cables ? I do wish to avoid any added components and more cables and I do have the supra cat 8 to try router to the cx/ex ... Cheers. Richard