I’ve been a bit fed up with the recent purchase of an Antipodes EX server. I was intrigued by the reviews and being in the market decided to pick one up, foolishly not understanding the compromised setup as it comes out of the box, once I finally got the thing to work at all…
It really needs a better quality DAC to give its best but for £80 this little unit is really quite impressive and in the future it doubles up as a USB to SPIDF adaptor when the time comes to invest in its replacement…
Spent the morning setting this up. A&K SR25. Earphones not here yet, but on the way so I’m told about six times by Royal Mail.
I have a pair of Audeze EL 8’s for the big system, so I have tested it out. Sounds good.
Well this is my newly arrived etherrregen. I bought direct from Uptone so had to wait. The interesting thing was i was expecting to have to pay vat and duty when delivered…but i did not have to? So this actually cost me £520 at an exchange rate of 1.30, instead of the UK price of £665…happy days. @NigelB out of the box cold positive thumbs up, very natural, more detail…next shipment is November 15th
Out of curiosity i just looked at the shipping packaging. It is defined as a home use network switch…value 150 dollars, which probably explains it sailing through customs.
gazza, I just got one last week… see my thread in streaming section
some observations: smaller than I thought, seems well put together and packaging nice.
After 5 days I finding listening to music is less fatiguing and backround quieter.
Let us know your findings
Enjoy!
David
Yes, it is rather small…but it is a ground up design, not a modification of another product which that with the reviews drew me to it. Will listen tonight after a few more hours burn in.
I would think that with your higher resolution system (ND500, 552) that the ER might even be more effective compared to the effect on my system .
Keep us posted
David
I bought an additional cable for my Audeze headphones from the US. A month later I had a bill for £22 from FedEx as they had to pay import tax when it landed. Bit of a surprise.
Oops perhaps i am celebrating too soon, though royal mail normally collect on delivery. Though as it was classed as 150 dollars, still will be cheaper.
Gazza you may have read of the potential SQ benefit from a switch having IGMP snooping, particularly if you have multicast traffic on your network. Your Cisco 2960 has IGMP snooping (enabled if it had a factory reset) but the EtherRegen doesn’t.
Therefore if you replace the 2960 with the ER, and your router does not have IGMP snooping, you will have effectively removed IGMP snooping from your network.
So you might want to check if your router has IGMP snooping (and it is enabled), and also listen with the ER on its own, and with the 2960 sitting between the ER and the router.
I think I have got this all correct. @Simon-in-Suffolk is the go to person on this subject if you have any doubts.
I have a very old virgin hub 2 which whilst working i leave well alone…do not want to get on the phone to a call centre in India. System is now Virgin router to HP procurve via external cat 5 cable, AQ Cinnamon to ER, then AQ Vodka to ND555.
Will give it a good outing tonight and repost.
Don’t know if the Virgin Hub2 or if the HP procurve have IGMP snooping, but you should be able to check (Google?) without having to call India.
Happy listening!
BTW I discovered that a CatSnake 6a is way better than a Vodka on the connection to the ND555. Weirdly the Vodka performs very well between my daisy-chained 2960s. So worth playing around with the Vodka, if you can be arsed.
I have no IMG snooping and connect my ER directly to my router. It sounds best without the Cisco in the chain, the same for some who have compared here.
So better try if it sounds better with or without the Cisco, IMO.
The HP procurve does have IGMP enabled. I cannot go direct to router as i need the procurve switch for other items on that side of the room. But i can swap it out and try the Cisco in its place when this has burned in.
the benefit or not will depend on the amount of group data on your network. if you haven’t got any you won’t hear the benefit - so clearly depends on your environment and the traffic types on your netowork. I seem to remember in the past you had quite a simple demand and setup - and if the case then it might well not provide any benefit of course
S
Can be… typically IPTV, some home automation apps, some wifi mesh systems , Roon, UPnP discovery use multicast groups, albeit UPnP discovery has tiny amounts of data so sort of irrelevant.
Streaming video when it is not real-time tends to be tcp session based as opposed to multicast … like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc.
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