Effect of Internet Service Quality on Streaming?

Linear power supplies on router, as well as your switch 

jcat Ethernet reference Ethernet cables more natural then the AQ Diamond 

i own one put the Jcat as your end point , and digital power cords which have extra screening . 

Thanks All, lots of ideas and as I mentioned I’ve been dealing with this issue for a few years now, with numerous changes to my system during that period.

Lots of great ideas to improve my upstream network to consider. That said, while these ideas may improve my system, I am doubtful they will resolve my occasional extreme quality dips. Because, like others have said in this thread, I think it must be a power issue as opposed to network. I started this thread hoping maybe I did have a network issue as I think that sort of issue would have a better shot at being solvable.

I’ve experienced a few dips since starting this thread, but not as extreme as last Friday evening. During the recent dips, I did try to see if the gap between the local and streamed file widened, but it did not - they both seemed slightly degraded which again points to power - or possibly RF noise - being the culprit…

Maybe grounding boxes will help, but that would be an expensive shot in the dark to hope it’s the solution! I’ll keep trying things.

@nyev I don’t see anything in recent posts as to whether you’ve gone back to your ISP to have your ONT checked. That’s the converter to change fiber to either coax or RJ45. Fiber itself doesn’t use a modem,

Your previous post said that you’re using the ISP provided fiber modem and wifi router. Is the modem truly a fiber to RJ45 or coax to RJ45 connection? If it’s coax to RJ45 then get the ISP to get you a connection into your house that’s an RJ45 ethernet connection (they can do this if the outside connection is an ONT panel that’s a Motorola or Calix which they can set to provide both). The problem with the coax is that it’s usually using the old RG6/RG11 that’s interconnecting throughout your house through a number of splitters. The ISPs usually like doing this because it means that they don’t have to rewire your house when they put the fiber in.

As far as the ISP provided router is concerned, dump it and get something decent. The ones provided by the ISPs are usually cheap (for them) Arris or Actiontechs that probably cost them about $2 each. Go buy a decent wifi router such as a Netgear Nighthawk X5400 or TP-Link Archer X5400 or a mesh system such as Netgear Orbi, Eero Pro6, or TP-Link Deco. You’ll probably find that this is where your problem was. I’m surprised that with all the money you’ve spent on filters, conditioners, and the like that you didn’t do this first.

like others have said in this thread, I think it must be a power issue as opposed to network.

That is where I was headed. I haven't had any comments regarding my comment on ev's, so let me elaborate. Where @nyev and I live in BC there is zero incentive for off-peak hours to charge ones electric car, unlike most states which have adopted time of use for electricity to attempt to shift the load on the grid and balance the system. Therefore, without incentive to change ones habits people will do what is most convenient- charge their car when they get home from work, the same time as they turn their electric heat on (there are many homes on the island without gas, and it has been cold in BC lately), turn the lights on, and start their microwaves, ovens, TV's, then put in a load of laundry etc. The reason for peak demand for electricity and the reason for the poor sound quality, I am assuming due to the increased noise on the lines moreso than actual reduced capacity- I think our infrastructure has eliminated the potential for brown-outs. Most or all here know about this, I am not saying anything you all don't know already, but maybe all aren't aware in my case at least when I plug in it is a 240/60amp breaker? Which is the same amount of electrical draw as 2 arc welders. Now imagine there are 3 neighbors on the same transformer as the OP, essentially 6 arc welders are being used the same time as he wants to listen to his tunes, and of course in addition to all of the other "peak use" electricity appliances listed above. What if it is 10 neighbors with ev's? Which is quite possible. It must have some effect on the quality of our electricity. The term "peak electricity use" did exist before electric vehicles, now it is even more of a factor.

Maybe grounding boxes will help, but that would be an expensive shot in the dark to hope it’s the solution! I’ll keep trying things.

It is definitely more cost effective to just not listen critically during 4-7 pm 😁

@mvanwoert  Google "Roon buffer size" and you'll find several useful discussions about this.

Open up the Roon ap, right click on your DAC / streamer and then scroll to the bottom and look under advanced options.

@nyev Have you considering running your system on batteries?   I have an Ecoflow Delta 2 Max and a Growatt 1300, (both are lithium iron phosphate with pure sine wave inverters) and I can run my system on them for over 24 hours before recharging.  

@tonnesen that is a very interesting option (running off of batteries).  Are there any downsides to the SQ vs other more traditional alternatives?  

I did read a report from a fellow Audiogoner who had much experience with conditioners before going to a Stromtank - which is a very, very expensive solution.  But even that he mentioned in a post that he felt there was some loss of dynamics.

@nyev is your amp plugged into the PSM156? Reason I’m asking is, when I had this power conditioner I noticed a very significant reduction in dynamics. I always had the amp plugged into the wall outlet because of it. Even the DAC and preamp were affected. I ended up selling the PSM156 and I have everything plugged into the wall now. I would at least try running the amp directly from the wall for a week or so. See what happens. 

@audphile1 , I used to have the amp plugged into the PSM156 but have been running it into the wall directly for some time now, in a dedicated 20A line.  While I prefer it plugged into the wall, I didn’t actually experience any loss of dynamics, end like now, the sound quality would occasionally dip very low.  As I mentioned I’ve tried a number of conditioners none of which helped with this issue.

I tried the battery experiment for one day, and I should try it again for a longer period and with different amps - but I was not aware of a change in sound quality.  I was using my AGD Duet amps that draw about 13 watts each while listening to music, so they were well below the capacity of the EcoFlow battery  (1800w, Surge 3400w).   In any case, it's good to know I can still listen to music during power outages. 

@nyev

And, one kid is playing games online and the other is FaceTiming friends in a marathon call.

@wsrrsw

Have you asked, bribed or manacled your kids and others to cease web activity during the sound downturn times?

There is a much better solution than cajoling your kids. Look up Quality of Service (QoS) and how to set it on your router. This will enable you to allocate bandwidth to streaming that cannot be usurped by Call of Duty or FaceTime.

You don’t need to allocate a lot to streaming. Even a hi-res 192/24 stream only uses about 10 Mbs.

Lots of good recommendations !  I had issues with streaming music versus the EXACT same album loaded on my Innuos ZENith MK3 with a Phoenix USB re-clocker.  I use Qobuz which in my listening opinion sounds slightly better than Tidal.  No matter what time of day though did streaming sound much better until I added in an Uptone-Audio EtherREGEN device between my Ethernet modem and the ZENith.  Finally the music streamed was very close to that loaded onto the ZENith.  I believe re-clocking the Ethernet signal with high-quality clocking and noise isolation from the EtherREGEN made all the difference no matter what time of day. It's the most cost-effective $-for$ I've spent for sonic improvement.  My present cable internet service is ~300mbps.  I will soon be going to fiber-optics with another ISP and their minimum service is ~500mbps.  So, with this change I'll know if anything improves, as I will keep both running and do a direct comparison before cancelling the cable service.  I'll let y'all know what I find !  In my opinion, I don't think for audio you would need any more than what I have presently for internet speed as sonically the streamed music is extremely close (splitting hairs) to that stored on my music server.  

I have recently been through a refresher coarse, so to speak. We had issues with cable TV., so we are streaming TV now. I had previously been streaming over 4 years.  Here are a few items I found out.

-it takes 1Mb to stream music

-each tv uses 25Mb.

-then of course you would have all the others connected to WiFi. Cell phones, laptops, printers.  It is easy to have a dozen items connected

-anything over 108V is considered acceptable to the power utility..  132V is OK on the high side. 

-Noise coming in the line is one thing but wall warts, connections all add EMI/RFI.

-LPS on router/modem. Add a filter to your ethernet line from router to streamer.  You could experiment with some $50 DX Engineering inline filters.  I have a Furman that I plug everything in to.  My accuracy and sound staging took a big step forward after reducing vibration, having good connections and cleaning up noise in the digital domain.

It’s probably some external change since internal changes (audio chain components) do not happen according to the 24 hour clock - worse dinner time then problems ends at the latest midnight.  Therefore the obvious eternal influences are power and internet connection, or somehow EMF/RFI spikes periodically in his living zone.  

Seems the only external influences come from RFI, EMI, power line, internet connection.  If not within the home, then it’s the power line or the internet connection.  Both peak times coincide when people use both more power and personal internet resources, dwindling as people go to bed.  It can also be some business using more resources, like a restaurant, illegal manufacturing lab, Internet cafe.

If it’s the internet connection, then maybe change carriers or change carrier line if possible.

If it’s electrical, then maybe get your power quality tested. For crappy power, Stromtank or solar panels + battery storage system to at least get your system off the grid.  Maybe balanced power conditioner like Equitech o EquiCore might help.  Or a power generator like PS Audio.  Good luck. 
 

Unless you are hearing dropouts, it's definitely not your Internet connection.

I suggest building a dome around your house so you can control light, air pressure, and humidity.  Then your only remaining variable is your mood.  There may be ways to control that too!

Seriously, none of the gear- or connection-based variables being discussed here should have such a dramatic impact on sound.  That's why, while I joke above, I gotta think it's some other external thing - mood, weather, something. 

And I have experienced the phenomena - many people have commented that music sounds best when it is dark out.  I have experienced that too, albeit that also mostly correlates to how much THC I've consumed. 

Occam’s razor time.

@nyev you’ve appear to have spent a lot of money and time on everything but a new router and good Ethernet cable. Dump the router from your ISP as they are worthless. Also, change out whatever Ethernet cable you’re using to Cat-8. As cheap as Cat-6e but super shielded. Check Amazon.

You’ve also mentioned that your problem occurs in the late afternoon, after your kids get home and hit the internet. Sounds like the crappy ISP router can’t take the load and is dropping out (high chance one of your internal connections is bad and causing excessive packet retries which drag down a cheap router). Also the cheap routers don’t have any sizable ring buffers so they can’t queue things up well.

Remember that 4k video requires 34Mb of bandwidth.  Add on whatever else you’ve got streaming (phones (cellular using WiFi and VoIP), internet streamers/radios, television, etc. and you’re probably using 50-74Mb bandwidth easy. Bet the router you have came from when you had 100Mb or less internet. 

I recently attended a demo of Shunyata Altaira $3k. This works to correct

noise caused by poor grounding. No idea what your issue is but I will

say that demo provided the best sound I have ever heard. Go Shunyata!!

Thanks All - New Router, CAT-8 Cables, Grounding Boxes, and THC - Got It!

These are all great ideas that will likely improve sound quality (esp THC - what is that, “Total Harmonic Control” or something?  Sounds promising.

But none of these will fix the dips in quality, which in case you haven’t read my post above, I agree with everyone that has said it’s not my network.  Because, playing an equivalent local file is also bad when quality is bad.

That leaves noisy AC power and RF as likely culprits, but probably AC.  And as above I’ve tried many conditioners and isolation transformers.  It may be that my only solution is a Stromtank, one day down the road.

@nyev If you play an equivalent local file at the same time you have bad internet quality and it’s bad too, then it’s definitely something internal. Whatever’s causing it will be between the source and the receiver.

In normal circumstances if your source and receiver are both connected to the same Enet switch then you’d troubleshoot by swapping ports, that is moving the devices to a new port, one at a time, and seeing if the problem clears up, because ports on switches can go bad. However, you may have a problem with doing this if both the server and receiver are on your Innuos switch as it’s only got 3 ports. In that case you’d swap in a temporary switch to see if the problem clears up.

I then ask, since it appears that you have more devices then the 3 on the Innuos, what are you using in front of it as your main switch, how is it connected in circuit, and are your server/receiver both on the Innuos?

I have observed degraded streaming from time to time. I have a well isolated setup with 2 of the Jcat M12 switches cascaded into an Uptone Ether Regen w sfp to my server. 
While I do not see the daily fluctuations I do notice a degradation over time and found that a hard reboot of my router gets the sound back to where it should be. 

The scripted  "Perform a hard reset" is what they always say to do when we call for internet problems, even though it usually has nothing to do with service being out.
From what the internet people say, the reset will reset the connection on their end as well and there is a whole host of things that they are doing in the background that can effect the network connection. We were being throttled frequently and once we were told that there was more than 1 person on out IP address. 

Who knows what is really going on on the provider side however for me I will reset the connection at least once a week.

I once had a modest system that would pick up noise and talking whenever a local radio operator was active and even do so at lower volume when the system was off! You might ask your neighbors about HAM radios or look for towers, and try some shielding on your speaker cables. An oscope might help in determining if it’s power or RF. Just use a short wire as an antenna for RF. I'm really looking forward to your impressions of all the NA stuff, esp the Tempus.

It is hard thing to A/B test.  I am not about to rip out my cabling that runs in walls and drop ceilings and replace it with newer digital cables and then go back again, and even expect that an aural memory from one listen to another is reliable.  I did some testing between bog standard cat 5 and the most expensive alternative at the time, by running wires directly from the router to the streamer of the day and couldn’t perceive any difference.  I split the difference and bought something costing in between just in case I was wrong but I’ve been happy with the results.

  I also tried a fancier router and didn’t perceive any improvement.  Recently ATT changed us to fiber and again I don’t detect any difference.

YMMV.  I would just comment that if your system is so fine tuned that changes in digital cables can sound very significant, then I congratulate you on the excellence of your gear

@nagel You are right that the problem you had would be caused by a rogue radio, CB, or ham operator (in my day, when the FCC would actually be chasing these guys down they'd operate out of a mobile location (n.e. car/van) to stay ahead of them).

The problem you had is called "rf rectification".  Simply, what you heard was a subharmonic of the RF signal that a non-shielded electronics is picking up and "translating". Shielding speaker wires will get you nothing as it's actually a bi-product of incorrectly or insufficiently shielded electronics.

Although I haven't run into this is a long time the cure used to be putting aluminum foil around the receiver, installing a numetal shield, or replacing the piece of electronics.  

@nyev   May I recommend any of the harmonic AC conditioners / resonators from Coherence Systems. Their brand is ADD Powr. They work quite well especially for systems with bad power. The Sorcer Apprentice will revive the life in your system. It is a good value of price vs. performance.

Also, for usb ethernet, hdmi digital signal boost the Symphony I/O is a no brainer. It restores the harmonic integrity to your system. They give you 30 days to try anything so you have nothin to lose.

I stream over a T-Mobile unlimited data plan and it works just fine. There’s some startup latency but once the track commences there’s very rarely any interruption.

Sound quality versus file playback from a network HD is quite close. I use a dCS Rossini Player/DAC with clock. The unit seems impervious to tweaks upstream such as using fiber connectors, Ethernet filters, etc. It just works well without any fuss. I don’t have an answer as to why the sound of the OPs system is flat at certain times of the day, my understanding is that streaming services are sending packets of data that either arrive intact or don’t arrive at all, so they’re benign when it comes to issues of sound quality?

@mahler123

. . . I would just comment that if your system is so fine tuned that changes in digital cables can sound very significant, then I congratulate you on the excellence of your gear

Thank you! 🙏

IMHO, the excellence is in assembling a system where the gear has wonderful synergy . . . with special attention to the cabling, power conditioning & power management.

You gotta try either the ADDPowr Symphony I/O or the Vivid! You'll be pleasantly surprised!