cable is inherently noisy and using isolators and switches to clean it up has proven effective widely. It isn’t just the streamer’s buffering, EMI/RFI and ground level noise do corrupt signals beyond most DAC’s cleanup capabilities and reclocking makes subsequent stages at both streamer and DAC audibly better. In audio everything matters and monocausal explanations tend to be wide off the mark
It's your streamer, not your modem
So many discussions I've seen lately have been about upgrading Internet devices, especially the modems and routers to get the best possible audio. Audiogoners are talking about installing 10 GigE (10 Gigabits per second) cable for signals that barely need 10 megabits per second. Three full orders of magnitude more bandwidth than required by hi resolution audio. (192 k/24 bit)
I've also seen discussions about home Internet getting a little higher latency and jitter.
None of this should matter with a decent streamer. Let me give you an example. Because my work requires me to be online with high reliability I have two different Internet providers and a switch that detects failure in one and switches me to another.
It takes the switch approximately 40 seconds to detect the Internet is down and fail over to the other. 40 seconds. 40,000 milliseconds. For this testing I shut the modem off. In that moment, for the next 40 seconds, I had no working Internet. Then my back-up 5G Internet took over. About 3 minutes after that my primary Internet's modem has rebooted and my router has recognized it as available and switched back over.
During the testing I coincidentally had Roon playing a random Jazz selection.
Not once did my audio stop. Not even a hiccup.
Why? Buffering. Roon had gotten the entire song and doled it out to my end point a little at a time.
Point is, modem quality, router quality, switches, and Ethernet cables don't matter that much. What does is the size of the buffer and the effectiveness of the anti-jitter circuitry in the DAC.
I do by the way recommend shielded cables, Ethernet isolators and gas discharge surge protectors, but sweat a modem or router? Not me.
- ...
- 30 posts total
All your saying may be true in part But These pathetic $5 wall warts for router and ethernet switch Induce a Ton of noise , put linear power supplies on them it would dramatically Lower the noise floor , and decdnt quality cables A must if you want a streamer that sounds respectable And a good digital power cord . I purchased a Audio Art Signature digital power Cord and sounds much cleaner then more expensive High current power cord , very surprising but true Everything counts. |
@audioman58 I hope you are right about the Audio Art Signature digital power. I ordered one last Friday. |
This all gets a bit circular, but have to agree the best place to start is with a highly capable streamer. But after getting that into place, even a decent $30 switch can make a considerable difference. I couldn’t ignore the findings and suggestions from Alpha Audio and Hans Beekhausen - much as I tried! I just have to tweak to see what cheap fixes actually prevail. But seriously, was a more than palatable improvement in sound quality, tonal balance and realism with an upgraded Ethernet cable and a d-link switch before a Pi2design Mercury streamer - which is in no way a slouch of a streamer/transport to begin with. This was even after using a quality filter in that chain. Of course an Ifi wall wart for the switch and a decent linear power supply for the Mercury helped as well. Certainly imagine that something considerably higher grade like a Grimm audio or upper echelon Aurender might not as much need it. But until then, very very happy with the results. |
- 30 posts total