If the measurements on the analog side of the DAC on IMD and jitter are below human threshold of what's audible I wouldn't worry about it. There are a lot of what's and maybe but the problem of DACs dealing with these issues isn't a concern anymore unless your DAC is poorly made.
Question on audiophile Ethernet cables and switches
I understand that cable construction and EFI/EMI conditions can affect the quality of an analog signal carried on speaker, interconnects, and Ethernet cables. In the Ethernet case, poor quality can result in bit errors which result in frame re-transmissions.
I am having a hard time understanding how audiophile Ethernet cables and switches affect sound quality.
The typical Ethernet controller has two physical interfaces. One to the system bus for reading and writing frame contents to system memory. The other physical interface is to the transceiver for transforming an analog signal to/from bit(s).
A generic flow for reading a frame: Ethernet controller receives a read request via the system bus. The read request will contain the address in the main memory for the frame contents. The Ethernet controller engages the transceiver to receive bits. These bits are assembled into an Ethernet frame. Once a frame is identified the CRC is validated to ensure there are no bit errors. The controller will also perform MAC filtering to ensure that the frame is destined for this machine. The frame contents are then written to system memory. Once the contents are completely written to memory the operating system is notified that a new frame has been read and the next process in the chain takes over. In this scenario, there is no jitter between bits in a received frame.
I have a separate music LAN which uses cheap CAT-5E and the cheapest gigabit Ethernet switch I could find. In monitoring my music server I find there are no Ethernet frame errors or re-transmissions on the transmit or receive sides.
So can someone explain with technical details how an audiophile Ethernet cable or switch would affect sound quality?
I am having a hard time understanding how audiophile Ethernet cables and switches affect sound quality.
The typical Ethernet controller has two physical interfaces. One to the system bus for reading and writing frame contents to system memory. The other physical interface is to the transceiver for transforming an analog signal to/from bit(s).
A generic flow for reading a frame: Ethernet controller receives a read request via the system bus. The read request will contain the address in the main memory for the frame contents. The Ethernet controller engages the transceiver to receive bits. These bits are assembled into an Ethernet frame. Once a frame is identified the CRC is validated to ensure there are no bit errors. The controller will also perform MAC filtering to ensure that the frame is destined for this machine. The frame contents are then written to system memory. Once the contents are completely written to memory the operating system is notified that a new frame has been read and the next process in the chain takes over. In this scenario, there is no jitter between bits in a received frame.
I have a separate music LAN which uses cheap CAT-5E and the cheapest gigabit Ethernet switch I could find. In monitoring my music server I find there are no Ethernet frame errors or re-transmissions on the transmit or receive sides.
So can someone explain with technical details how an audiophile Ethernet cable or switch would affect sound quality?
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