Ok, so back to Discovery Channel. As promised, I come back with my findings related to the ISO Regen regarding what he can do and, more importantly, cannot do when connected to a Chord Qutest. But first of all, the story begins when I found on a local forum an ISO Regen for sale at the price of approx 250USD. Since the stock price was somewhere around 310 USD and if I order a new one I will have to pay 20% VAT and the shipment charges, I have decided to give him a try. The unit came without any power supply or even power plug, but with the "famous" USBPCB adapter which Uptone tells you it is much better than any cable, more exactly the version with B-Plug turned 90-degrees. The seller provided also the invoice, so it was bought in 01.2018 at the price of 350 £ from an UK audio store. Expensive in my humble oppinon, since these were all the included accessories:
Because I had no other way to power it, I searched for a simple "stecker" which will provide me 7.5V DC and at least 1A. And the result was this one, which I measured it and check the polarity to be sure everything is fine:
I never trust these kind of power supplies, but I measured it and it showed 7.6V, so I decided to give it a try:
Without being able to plug it in the Furman unit (because I had no Schuko cable for this one), I decided to plug it where I normally charge my phone:
And because the Regen, in a vertical position, the only one allowed by the 90-degree turned USBPCB was not keeping the DAC in an horizonat position, I had to find a workaround:
Well, at this point I was able to start my listening session. Elise was already turned on for 30 mins when I choose 3 albums (1 DSD format, Led Zeppelin I and 2 FLAC, the romanian progressive band I always use and a death metal band from US called Immolation).
So, let's start with the improvement: the soundstage was somehow bigger and there was a slightly better instrument separation. I had that feeling of a more "relaxed" sound with more air, maybe closer to the one you perceive while listening to speakers instead of headphones.
But now it comes the bad part, all what I previously mentioned came with the cost of the overall clarity, the bass lost authority and precission and was somehow muddy. I said ok, let's wait, but when I finally decided to remove it, the sound became richer and the bass was back.
I started to read the specs of this device and found that it has 2 switches, one I / ON on the unit itself (a red one) which means "Isolation" and "No Isolation" (yep, even if I was convinced that NO was meaning ON and I guess 99% of the people will think like me).
The second switch was on the USB adapter on and it was related to VBUS = ON / OFF. So I said, OK, let's turn these switches to the other position, but this stopped Qutest from working, which tells me that Qutest needs some Voltage on the USB port, at least for USB protocol handshake.
I was brave enough to put the switches back to Isolation and VBUS = ON and made a second try but the perception was the same.
In conclusion, my experiment failed to impress me. I got a bigger soundstage and some airiness at the cost of clarity and the clean and impressive bass I had before. Maybe my problem is the power supply and with a dedicated LPS this unit will have a better impact on the sound, but I do not plan to buy the one Uptone sells at somewhere around 400 USD just to check this.
I have a not used MCRU LPS of 12V (made for 2Qute) which might be used, but Uptone tells me that I can put up to 20V on ISO Regen only if I am sure that the DAC does not absorb anything via the USB port, and since I have observed what happened when the VBUS = OFF I have decided not to try this.
What I can do is to find a Schuko power cable to plug this device from the Furman, but I am not sure if this will really improve things or not.
Ok, at the moment the mighty ISO Regen goes to its box and maybe in the future I will try it again, or not. However, it was an interesting test. The seller told me that how he can describe it is that it provides a more "natural" sound, and he was using it for a speaker setup with a DAC of around 3500 EUR (so much more expensive than mine, exaSound Audio Design e22, which I have no idea how it sounds). He sold it because he upgraded to a better USB filtering solution.