THE CLEANEST POSSIBLE STREAMING SIGNAL
The SmoothLAN Regenerator helps create the ideal environment for audiophile music streaming – delivering a pure, clean digital signal to your hi-fi.
The SmoothLAN Regenerator takes the network digital signal, filters, re-clocks and regenerates it, before passing it straight through to the music streamer. It features compartmentalised isolation, optimised grounding and an ultra-low noise power supply, all designed to produce a clean, noise free signal.
A Dedicated Connection for the Purest Audio Signal
Digital chips in home networks inherently introduce unwanted phase modulation (jitter) onto the data they process. In audio systems we typically hear this as an edgy or brittle quality to the sound. The most critical connection is the one feeding the streamer, as this is where digital noise can leak into the analog domain and degrade sound quality.
The SmoothLAN Regenerator is designed with dedicated single input and output ports, eliminating unnecessary network traffic and ensuring only the cleanest possible signal reaches the DAC. With double passive filtering and triple active reclocking, it delivers an ultra-pure, noise-free connection for uncompromised music streaming.
The SmoothLAN Regenerator operates at 100Mbps for optimal audio performance, minimizing network noise and interference for cleaner sound.
Filtering within a data signal range is not feasible as it would distort the signal and cause errors or data loss. A 1Gbps network operates across a much wider frequency spectrum, limiting the ability to filter noise effectively. By being able to apply filtering above 100Mbps you can remove more unwanted noise outside signal range without affecting the data.
100Mbps is more than sufficient for audiophile music streaming. It is fully capable of handling the highest-resolution audio files with ample headroom, ensuring flawless playback without dropouts or buffering.
COMPARTMENTALISED ISOLATION
Digital data transmission generates electromagnetic interference (EMI), which can disrupt nearby circuits. Even low-noise components emit EMI, leaking into adjacent circuitry and degrading signal integrity. Since multiple circuits share a board, shielding is crucial.
The case of the SmoothLAN Regenerator is machined from solid aluminium and acts as a compartmentalized RF shield, blocking internal and external emissions to enhance performance. Inside, each functional block on the PCB sits in a seperate cavity – isolating the circuits and minimizing RF cross-coupling. An exposed gold border around each circuit grounds directly to the case, ensuring the lowest impedance and shortest path to ground. This significantly reduces noise and cross-talk, preserving signal clarity and audio fidelity.
Before and After Using Our Regenerator
BEFORE REGENERATOR
after REGENERATOR
Chart analysis
What is an Eye Pattern?
An eye pattern (or eye diagram) is a visual tool used to assess the signal integrity of a high-speed digital signal. It overlays many bits of data on top of each other to form a shape that looks like an eye. The more open the eye, the cleaner and more stable the signal. A closed or blurry eye opening indicates distortion, noise and jitter.
How to Read It
The shape of the eye patern reveals how much jitter and noise is present in the signal. A wide and open eye opening indicates low jitter and accurate, consistent timing. A narrow or closed eye indicates high jitter and signal integrity distortion.
When the signal crosses into the central area where it shouldn’t — called the eye-opening — it’s known as an eye violation. These violations increase the risk of bit errors and jitter within the receiver.
Colour intensity shows how often the signal passes through certain points. Brighter areas reflect consistency; scattered samples indicate instability.
What does the eye shape show?
It reflects signal stability and timing accuracy. A clean, open eye means low jitter and reliable transmission. If the signal crosses into the central “eye” area, it’s called an eye violation, which can lead to decoding errors.
Why are the colours important?
They show signal density. Brighter areas mean more consistent transitions; cooler colours show noise or less frequent paths.
Why does the second image look better?
The regenerated signal has less distortion, stronger amplitude, and significantly reduced jitter — all visible in the wider, cleaner eye opening.
What test equipment was used?
Probe: Tektronix P6247 Differential Probe
Measurement Point: At the end of a 20-metre Ethernet cable
Router: BOX7F-SDM-RO – FTTH fibre router by Altice
Why does the second image show higher amplitude?
The regenerator regenerates the signal, removing noise and jitter. This produces a cleaner waveform, resulting in a larger, higher-amplitude eye diagram
HIGH-PERFORMANCE POWER Supply
The SmoothLAN Regenerator power supply design follows the same meticulous approach as the casework and PCB. A custom low-noise external switch-mode power supply ensures clean, stable power delivery. Inside, multi-stage filtering suppresses high-frequency noise, while active regulation stabilizes lower-frequency variations for ultra-low noise performance.
Each circuit block has an independent power supply to prevent interference, with the clock’s supply especially isolated to minimize phase noise and jitter. This results in a cleaner signal, reducing distortion and improving overall audio clarity and detail.
MULTI-STAGE FILTERING
The SmoothLAN Regenerator combines passive filtering with active resynchronization of the data signal, ensuring maximum noise attenuation while maintaining signal integrity.
Dual-layer passive filtering is applied at both input and output stages, significantly reducing RF noise compared to single-stage filters.
Following the input passive filtering, the SmoothLAN Regenerator optimizes the data path by re-timing and synchronizing the signal to attenuate jitter. This is achieved through three cascaded active jitter attenuation stages, which resynchronize the data to a high-precision, low-phase-noise internal master clock.
After the third stage of reclocking, the final-dual layer passive filter removes any residual noise introduced during active processing, delivering an ultra-clean output signal.
The Master clock
At the core of the Regenerator is the master clock, vital for signal integrity. To shield it from thermal fluctuations and electromagnetic interference, the oscillator and crystal are housed in an isolated cavity, ensuring a stable, low EMC environment.
The clock tracking is buried in the PCB, with shielding vias creating a metal barrier around the clock and data paths. The dedicated low noise power supply is specifically designed to reduce phase noise and prevent clock jitter.
These refinements enhance sonic clarity, revealing greater detail, depth, and transparency in audio reproduction.
Active filtering
The SmoothLAN Regenerator optimizes the data path by retiming and synchronizing the signal to effectively attenuate jitter. This is achieved through three cascaded active jitter attenuation stages, which resynchronize the data to a high-precision, low-phase-noise internal master clock.
Specifications
The SmoothLAN Regenerator takes the network digital signal, filters, re-clocks and regenerates it, before passing it straight through to the music streamer. It features compartmentalised isolation, optimised grounding and an ultra-low noise power, all designed to product a clean, noise free signal.
A cable cannot enhance an audio signal. Instead, the aim is to preserve the signal purity and suppress interference. Our connecting cable is designed to safeguard the purity of the Ethernet signal between the SmoothLAN Regenerator and the music streamer. The supplied cable is an oxygen free copper, CAT 7 cable, with gold plated connectors.
Physical Specifications
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between the SmoothLAN Regenerator and the SmoothLAN Network Filter?
The SmoothLAN Regenerator, in addition to passive filtering, includes active electronic stages that regenerate and reclocks the signal, ensuring an even cleaner data stream for improved audio performance.
What cable comes with the SmoothLAN Regenerator?
A cable cannot enhance an audio signal. Instead, the aim is to preserve the signal purity and suppress interference. Our connecting cable is designed to safeguard the purity of the Ethernet signal between the SmoothLAN Regenerator and the music streamer. The supplied cable is an oxygen free copper, CAT 7 cable, with gold plated connectors.
Between the network switch and streamer, data is sent in packets as a file transfer, I though jitter and clocking only apply to a bitstream?
While Ethernet transmission is packet-based, there is still a continuous data stream between the network switch and the streamer. The Ethernet connection does not stop and start intermittently; instead, Ethernet frames are constantly transmitted—even when no actual data is being sent. These frames still carry phase noise, jitter, and RF interference.
Ethernet receivers rely on detecting fixed data patterns, such as ‘starter frame packets,’ to maintain synchronization. Even when there is no payload data, empty Ethernet frames are not simply zeros; due to Manchester encoding, each bit is flipped in the next cycle to prevent a constant stream of 0s or 1s, which would create a DC signal that transformers cannot couple. This ensures there is always a flow of alternating 1s and 0s.
The transmitting device inherently introduces jitter when sending these bits—meaning the timing of each transition (from 1 to 0 or vice versa) can vary slightly. Ethernet receivers remain active at all times to ensure no packets are lost, and the physical link remains constantly engaged, even when there is no audio data being transmitted. This is why jitter and clocking still matter before the streamer converts packets into a bitstream.
My DAC/Streamer already has inbuilt re-clocking, why would this product help?
Even though nearly every DAC and streamer re-clocks the audio data, the key issue is that the clock is operating on a shared ground plane with the Ethernet circuitry. This means noise from the Ethernet interface—generated by switching regulators, common-mode currents, and leakage from network components—pollutes the ground before the DAC’s internal re-clocking even happens.
By using a high-quality network regenerator to re-clock and clean the Ethernet signal before it enters the DAC or streamer, you’re effectively minimizing the amount of noise that the DAC’s clock has to work against. This leads to lower phase noise (jitter), reduced modulation of the ground plane, and ultimately, better sonic clarity, blacker backgrounds, and more natural detail retrieval.
Where is the best place to put the SmoothLAN Regenerator?
The ideal placement for the SmoothLAN Regenerator is between your router (or network switch) and your streamer/music player, and as close to the streamer as possible using the supplied cable. This setup ensures the cleanest possible signal as it enters your audio system. While this placement works best for most systems, you can experiment with other positions in your network to fine-tune performance based on your specific setup.
Why does 100Mbps sound better than 1Gbps?
100Mbps networks generate less RF noise than 1Gbps networks due to their narrower bandwidth, allowing for more effective noise filtering without affecting data integrity. This results in a cleaner signal and improved audio quality. Additionally, 100Mbps provides more than enough bandwidth for high-resolution audio, ensuring flawless playback without dropouts or buffering. The SmoothLAN Regenerator can be used in 1Gbps networks as the router will automatically recognize it as a 100Mbps device and transmit the data signal at 100Mbps, enabling the Regenerator to operate as designed.
Why does the SmoothLAN Regenerator only have one input and one output?
Unlike multi-port network switches, which distribute data to multiple devices and can introduce additional noise, the SmoothLAN Regenerator is designed for point-to-point signal optimization. By focusing on a single input and output, it ensures the cleanest possible data stream, reducing interference and maximizing the effectiveness of its reclocking and noise filtering. This direct connection approach provides superior audio performance by eliminating unnecessary signal processing and potential noise contamination.
I already own a SmoothLAN Network Filter. Should I use it with the SmoothLAN Regenerator?
It depends on your system. The SmoothLAN Regenerator already includes passive filtering, so adding the Network Filter may not always provide additional benefits. While some setups will see improvements, endlessly cascading network filters isn’t always effective. It’s worth experimenting with both and considering alternative placements—such as using the Network Filter elsewhere in your system—to find what works best for your setup.
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