I have perfected my network for the nth time

@fastfreight 

Stuttering in playback is the buffering not working as designed, usually from poor wifi or ethernet.  I will wait to be corrected if I am wrong!

You are not wrong. 

@tonywinga are you implying that there is some different standard for music?

@mahgister nice try, however, the people with the made up theories are the ones with the tinfoil hats. And there are a lot of you on this forum.

It is really amazing to me how many people there are that wants to be taken advantage of! 
 

@singingg

Ah, now I have cornered the "(*&%scientist%&*)" with the tin foil hat.

I can’t imagine what a person must be like to be this arrogant. You can’t even see your reflection because your entire existence is covered in tin foil. I posted several links and articles on how Ethernet actually works, granted, they were well beyond your comprehension, but they are factual, and contrary to your experiments, backed up by thousands more easily accidentally.

you got one thing right, your experiments are flawed and have no value.

@nonoise i recalled you are not operating with a full deck of cards, so no point in discussing anything with you. 

@kennyc 

We have established two things:
1) you know nothing about networking and you still assert yourself as an expert

2) we have not discussed anything except fictional networking here, so no conclusions can be drawn about anything else. 
 

the rest is pure conjecture and projection on your part.

@kennyc like everyone knew, you have no relevant experience, and you can’t poke a hole in even a basic high level description of how Ethernet works. 

and yet you go on about self worth and other completely unrelated topics, so who is it that really has a self worth issue? I know I don’t, and I don’t claim to know things I don’t. You however, do over and over again.

@nonoise I am seriously concerned about your mental health and your ability understand your surroundings. I will disengage now before you cause harm to yourself. 

@nonoise here you go making things up again. I said that your premise that video streaming is inherently bad is wrong, and gave you the example of Kaleidascape…

you said 4K OTA isn’t a thing, which is wrong. And so on, over and over again. Nothing you posted was rooted in reality. 

yeah, I know you don’t hold facts in high regard, but seriously, seek help, now: https://988lifeline.org/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=onebox

@lalitk yeah, that's always the response for absolutely ridiculous and impossible scenarios... Ethernet is not directional, that is a simple fact, here is no difference at all, doesn't matter what people like @tonywinga says, it is 100% in their head, confirmation bias. And since some people are so easily fooled by their own biases, you just can't trust anything they put out. 

Quote from the article I posted:

Taking potshots at "audiophools" dumb enough to believe that a $10,000 cable will somehow improve the playback of NAS-hosted music is a little bit like making fun of Kim Jong Il’s golf scores—both are so obviously delusional that it’s impossible to not point and laugh. In the case of the AudioQuest Ethernet cables, subjecting the things to a double-blind listening test isn’t even necessary to prove that the manufacturer’s claims are bunk—a basic understanding of what Ethernet is and how it works demolishes the foundational claims that the cables can possibly do anything special in the first place, and everything else crumbles once those are gone.

I don’t doubt that they’re nice cables and that the plugs are sturdy, but if you buy these, you deserve to be parted from your $10,000.

@nonoise what is wrong with you? You were destroyed in that thread on topics from Streaming as a media, 4K OTA, cable TV, and so on. Each a topic you didn’t know anything about but yet you had an expert opinion. I should post all the DMs I received laughing at you, but I am seriously concerned about your mental well-being as is.

@singingg  here is the crux, with your one example of Ethernet directionality, Ethernet isn’t, cannot be ever. So, if you hear things change, you are literally hearing things.

and since this is the case, it is invalidates everything else, it is literally all in your head, so that is what experiments without knowledge gets you, and I oppose anyone who puts out this type of garbage because it makes it very confusing to people who actually want to learn.

@nonoise you are, of course, wrong again. Someone saying that Ethernet is directional as an example is absolutely ridiculous without any type of evidence showing that at 50 year old network protocol autonomously changed how it works with the swap of a cable. As just one example. 

Congratulations on wasting a ton of time and money on this useless experiment!

the only thing you did of real value was to turn off Wifi on your router, which can interfere with lower end equipment, the rest is useless and it is physically impossible for it to make a difference. 
 

and Ethernet is absolutely not directional, it is a two way communication street at all times, anyone telling you otherwise is selling you snake oil. 

@nonoise lol, you really think that highly of yourself? I certainly didn’t do any blunders in the previous thread, but your ignorance was on full display. And of course you want no part of actual facts, because then everyone would see you for the noise you are.

if someone claims that an Ethernet is directional, clearly they attributing mind ghosts to system performance improvements, as that is simply impossible. So, you are, as usual, wrong.

@singingg Lol, yeah, facts don't play well on this forum, people can't handle when they are challenged by basic facts. 

End of story - Ethernet is not directional, it is two way communication with equal speed and other performance metrics in both directions. 

Here's one link: https://arstechnica.com/staff/2015/02/to-the-audiophile-this-10000-ethernet-cable-apparently-makes-sense/

@nonoise  I'm pretty happy in general, so I would disagree, and I certainly have some sort of knowledge, and do not resort to personal attacks. So, there is that. Enjoy your noisy day.

@nonoise Nope, I didn’t, I just called out your ignorance. That is all. You successfully prove in every post that you don’t even want to know anything about the topics you post about, and then you attack people who thinks you are just noise.

@rubicon15 no one has any data, because none exists.

And just FYI, Qobuz and others always buffer, streaming isn’t a continuous stream, but a series of downloads, I.e. pulling as much data down as fast as possible.

@singingg

Yes, tipping my hat to all IT professionals, ethernet cables are bi-directional by design. Here is where I will get into my theory and it is only a theory because I DO NOT KNOW. When streaming music, do we listen to both transmissions to and fro? I think not.

There is where the complete lack of understand of how Ethernet and the TCP/IP (OSI) stack works comes in. YES, you always, always, have two way communication between the sender and the receiver. Here is a diagram how it works.

@singingg it’s figure 2.5 from here:

http://books.gigatux.nl/mirror/unixnetworkprogramming/0131411551_ch02lev1sec6.html

There are three types of standard Ethernet cables: straight (standard, 99.99% of cables), crossed, and rolled. they have a standardized pin layout that you can find here:

https://www.computercablestore.com/straight-through-crossover-and-rollover-wiring

Which pins are being used for what is determined on the standard in use, which basically means speed, here’s a picture of an example of that:

You can lead a horse to water….

@jji666 a cable cannot create emf, there needs to be some sort of radiation, internal or external, and the cable can be influenced or even act as an antenna. This goes for all cables.
you can mitigate this in a number of ways, shielding is one, another way is active noise suppression, like a balanced cable, and so on. Ethernet cables are balanced, and therefore reject most noise under 1000 MHz. If there was a deliberate design that upsets this balanced design to any degree that would perceivable, it would show up as loss of connection and frame corruption.

@tonywinga  you lost your money, that we can agree on, and someone made money off you. 

@kennyc sure you are, like I said, we all can agree that someone had tonywinga for his money. What he got for it, however isn’t debatable, there are facts and fantasy world, and that is where we get to newbies who think you have to buy directional Ethernet cables with $8k “audio” switches with external master clocks for streaming to sound decent, which is 100% false.

@kennyc that’s the point, newbies read threads like this, and then the threads about how to start with streaming, and so on. Complicated, expensive and snake oil.

Audiophile switches, ethernet filters, LPS, master clocks, etc can make the sonics "better"
 

no, they do not. It is physically impossible. It is 100% snake oil. 

@jji666 actually, you can prove it in this case, just do a full spectrum analysis of the same passage in a song with and without “audiophile” Ethernet cables, or a switch, and if there is a difference you will see it there. 
 

and, this has been done, and no difference. 

@soix let me correct you, what you should have said “it is amazing how different the brain can interpret it’s surroundings”. Because that is the truth. No one hears with their ears, the brain interprets sound waves coming, based all sorts of biases, and that is where our hearing comes from. 

again, it is impossible for an Ethernet cable or switch to improve anything, including jitter. That is not how it works. However a poor switch or cable can add jitter and other issues. 
 

@soix agreed, and even more sad that you don’t understand that you are Giuliani in this case. 

@kennyc and others, none of you don’t have the faintest idea how streaming or TCP/IP work. No idea whatsoever. So arguing with you about facts isn’t very conducive.

but here is some empirical evidence, 0 people with actual knowledge of network can hear a difference, and it seems like 50% of people without actual knowledge can’t hear a difference, so what is the probability that there is an actual difference? 0.

Regarding the DACs and external “master clocks”: While I am far from an expert on DACs, DACs and network equipment are fundamentally different, do not operate in the same space. Master clocks do not exists outside mixing studios where they are used to synchronize multiple different digital nodes. So calling it a master clock is wrong to begin with.

Any pro audio guy will give you this detail, and if all these things actually worked, pro audio would have implemented them long time ago, but these “audiophile” clocks, switches, Ethernet cables do not exist in the pro audio world, because they don’t provide any value.

@kennyc there is no “both sides”. There are facts, and fiction. You don’t know anything about Ethernet, end of story, so you can’t even begin to argue anything, and that is why your comment about noise over Ethernet means nothing, it is fiction, pure fiction.

And it is not conducive to continue down this path, like I said, no one in this thread has shown that they have the slightest understanding of streaming and the associated protocols. So that you think it is irritating just actually just funny. 

@cleeds

i am not looking to convince fanatics, I am looking put doubt in newbie minds about the need for these fictional improvements.

facts do not matter to fanatics, I am well aware of that.

@kennyc 

1) No you can’t we have not discussed high end audio in this thread at all, just fictional networking.

2) since you don’t know anything, as established, you can’t educate anyone.

Regarding RFI/EMI, given my civil engineering degree in computer communications, pretty sure I know more than you. Regard power supplies etc, no, I am not an expert on this, nor do I claim to be, which is more than can be said for you regarding Ethernet, and possibly other things. 
 

But, regardless, noise coming from the Ethernet cable in a residential setting is a red herring, and if you don’t understand that, you shouldn’t say anything about a topic you clearly don’t know anything about. 

@kennyc you have not, and you will never, point at something where I  wrong. Like I said, facts don’t matter to fanatics. Noise is a non issue in residential Ethernet, and no one in this thread knows enough to argue this. 
 

Here are the facts, on the analogue level, an Ethernet cable is a balanced design that removes all noise in a residential setting under 1000 MHz. Since Ethernet is a point to point communication today, no noise can be propagated down the chain. 
 

if there is so much interference that the receiver can’t read what is on the wire, the the protocol Ethernet kicks in, and it will discard the frame because it failed CRC checksum. Since streaming used HTTPS, TCP would then fail to ack this packet that was in the Ethernet frame, and a retransmit would occur. 
 

at a high level, that is now it works, and I already posted this in detail with diagrams earlier in the thread, but again, no one here understands these very simple diagrams of how it actually works, because they never wanted to learn in the first place. It is like talking math with a 1 year old, there is a complete lack of understanding. 

@mahgister fanatics because facts do not matter to them. If you want to put yourself in this group, that is up to you.

regarding the newbies, experiment is of course encouraged, but experiment with things that at least has a theoretical possibility of making a difference, and there is no theoretical improvement possible with Ethernet, because it is very very different from everything else. 

@kennyc go ahead, poke hole in what I posted on how it actually works. Show us your superior knowledge in RFI/EMI and Ethernet.

but before you do, share your relevant education and how many years of work experience you have with networks.

@mahgister no, defined by how Ethernet, TCP/IP, and streaming works. Has nothing to do with my education and experience, I did not design these protocols, I merely practice the a living.

The facts are that there is no theoretical improvement possible with any audiophile tweaks, and you have to have a solid understanding of how things work to understand that. And here is the problem, people without any relevant knowledge make fantastical claims of things that just cannot be true and it is easy to verify that is the case.

if I told you that if your speaker cable is green, all other things being equal, the sound quality would be superior, you would rightfully call me a fanatic and crazy. Not a perfect analogy but close enough. 

@mahgister i have seen your pictures and read about your system, and it is a very interesting approach. I have no idea about any theory behind any of what you have done, not my area of expertise. But I think that is a system worth listening to.

the point about the color is that it can’t matter, and without an understanding of Ethernet, TCP/IP and streaming, no one can understand why a switch or cable can’t matter in the way people say they do. 

Here is why reclocking of Ethernet cannot work:

Most DACs include asynchronous clock recovery and data buffering to isolate the actual DAC inside the box from the incoming data stream. This isolates the DAC itself (the thing inside the box that does the actual digital to analog conversion) from any jitter on the incoming data. A phase-locked loop (PLL) with a separate reference clock is used to pull the data from the internal data buffer and provide a "clean" stream to the DAC. The PLL is designed to lock onto a clock and filter out any noise outside its bandwidth. It has been done this way for many years, and for systems well beyond audio. (For example, the PCIe and SAS/SATA busses inside your computer that handle billions of bits per second with a bit error rate per spec of better than 1e-12, -240 dB error rate if you express it that way.) This applies to any data coming into the DAC no matter the input (USB or Ethernet). About twenty years ago when I first started looking more deeply into audio DACs, and especially as HDMI band USB became popular, it was obvious that the incoming data stream had substantial jitter, and different DACs did better or worse jobs of rejecting that jitter. Since then, buffering and reclocking has become universal AFAIK. It is included in all the modern chip sets and has been for many years now.

If there was jitter imposed upon the source, e.g. by the ADC used to convert the original analog signal to digital, then that is part of the data and the DAC cannot do anything about that. But neither will anything else -- it's in the recording.

Ethernet data is packetized -- it comes in "bursts" that include the data and a bunch of additional info for framing and error correction, and any Ethernet link adheres to that standard. That means the data ultimately provided to the DAC is recovered, buffered, error-corrected, reclocked, and all that jazz so there is essentially no way for jitter on the Ethernet wires to reach the DAC. The Ethernet receiver must capture all those bursts, strip off the framing and other protocol information, do the error recovery (and request another packet if it cannot recover the data), create a continuous stream of data, and deliver the recovered data bits to the DAC. Ethernet also includes galvanic isolation per the standard so there is normally no chance of forming a ground loop or introducing ground noise from the Ethernet cable. Not to say some bad designs might mess that up, but it is very rare IME. We use Ethernet all over at work to connect million-dollar test equipment far more sensitive and with much greater bandwidth than our hearing and it all works just fine.

That said, I have seen noise added by some power over Ethernet (PoE) devices that did not properly implement the standard. As PoE becomes more common, those "bad" devices are becoming less common, natch, and most consumer switches do not include PoE as it is still pretty rare in the home AFAIK.

HTH - Don

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/something-about-reclock-dejitter-which-i-couldnt-comprehend.34614/

@cleeds first, I have posted facts, other have made fantastical claims (change the direction of your Ethernet cable and your 5k system will sound like a 50k system! (Slight exaggeration, but to the point)).

second, I am not an prosecutor, nor do I have a claim of injury from these manufacturers. You have to be a defrauded party to have a claim, and I have not fallen for it, thus they continue until someone in threads like this admits that it is crap, and sue. But since that will never happen, fanatics cannot be wrong, facts be damned, here we are.

@antigrunge2 there cannot be any reclocking of the signal. That is not how it works, plain and simple. It is impossible, and has been debunked so many times.

@earthbound we know everything about Ethernet and TCP/IP, not 99.99% of people of on this forum, but as humans we have all the knowledge related to these protocols. Why? We designed them. Comparing Astrophysics to something we designed is just silly.

@singingg 

Ahh, I feel so much better now that I have made myself comfortable, a placebo here, a placebo there.

Notice the One Trick Pony will not listen to some music of his choosing (30 seconds) walk across his room (1 second to stand up and 3-5 sec to walk) grab an ethernet cable and reverse it (2 seconds from his life) reseat himself and pickup his remote (5-7 sec) and replay the track (30 sec) and think what he has heard, and if nothing, redo the experiment several times ( 1min 12 sec a pop) to make sure of his perceptions. Screaming and shouting is so much easier on everyone.

I have done this, and I certainly hear no difference. I have also tried various Ethernet switches. Second, not screaming and shouting, I leave that to the fanatics who don’t understand the technology.

Going to @earthbound comment, if 0% of people who know how the technology works say they can’t hear a difference, and about 50% of people who don’t know anything about the technology hear a difference, there is only one conclusion that can be drawn, there is no difference, and the 50% of people who don’t understand the technology are influenced by their biases. 

I also find it very interesting that people think they can control for things they have no understanding of, like bias control, one of the hardest things to control for and physiologists are involved in real trials to design the control protocol for populations.

as far as I know, no one here is a physiologist, and even then, you can’t control for it in a population of 1, especially when that population 1 is the one both designing and executing the tests or trials. Again,  not how it works.

@toro3 

Not specifically, I am referring to the arrogance of most people on this forum and other, as soon as they call themselves “audiophile”, their reality defies all known knowledge of the universe and they are way more knowledgable than people who have dedicated their lives to a topic, on all topic, every single subject ever considered in the history of humanity. 

it is a joke, they just understand that they are the joke.