I incrementally added an Etherrgen, fiber feed, Farad LPS to the regen, Afterdark 10Mhz clock, Farad LPS to the Afterdark, Afterdark upgraded clock cable, all Farad has their upgraded DC and AC cables. The sound has become quite free of digital hash, a very beautiful sound. Three weeks ago I lent it all to an out of town friend. Now the kink...i was feeding my Grimm MU1 streamer directly with the house CAT cable and the entry point house switch. What I heard was bright and has some digital grunge, but it also had better decay and the leading edge was more defined. Some of the information is being disturbed in trying to remove the digital grunge. You will need to decide if it's worth it, but in my system there seems to be a trade off at this point in the technology. Good luck and please keep experimenting and sharing.
Tweaking the network, surprising results…
I’m a complete skeptic when it comes to Ethernet switches, “audiophile” CAT cables and so forth. I’ve played around with a few switches and found zero audible difference. As is, my net consists of a Arris modem (Optimum 500 mbps) to a Netgear Nighthawk router, cabling is Supra CAT8. So after dismissing the switch idea, I decided to tweak the power aspect of the network. I installed a Shunyata Venom C7 powercord on the Arris and a iFi LPS on the Nighthawk. Then plugged both the modem and router into a PS Audio UPC 200 with a fat Virtual Dynamics power 3 powercord. The results are REALLY interesting…there is without doubt an audible shift in the sound of my system. I can’t quite put it in words at the moment, and this could totally be my mind effin” with me but it seems as if the soundstage has been pushed back further. I need to sit down and try to understand what’s going on here. If anyone has gone down the path of playing with power upgrades I’d really like to know what you made of it.