In my own setup, I use an Ethernet Opto-Isolator that sits between the ethernet cable that feeds my "sterile" PC and the router that the cable connects to.
This device stops any electrical noise from traveling thru the copper conductors of the ethernet cable before it gets to my music server. Same concept as installing a dedicated circuit for your audio equipment, but for the LAN connection.
All the cheapo routers, NAS drives, ethernet printers..etc found in the home environment have no need to perform their function in a silent manner nor where they designed to do so. If you start to add up just the Wall Wart switching power supplies alone in the path between your PC and your DAC you begin to see an ugly picture form. Certainly the PC needs no additional help when it comes to generating noise so I feel anything you can do to help isolate it from the rest of this crud is a bonus.
Granted, the number of configuration choices one could pick from to setup a music server are fairly broad so some may be more affected by said noise than others and if you have done nothing at the PC level to help lower its own noise than all of the above may not matter anyway.
In my own setup I use a low power ALIX computer running Voyage Linux which only requires about 12 watts of power to perform its duties. I feed the ALIX computer power via an adjustable laboratory grade linear DC power supply. In my case this Opto-Isolator makes sense as the music server is already pretty clean from noise so any additional filtering is a plus. My DAC is also optically isolated from the Alix computer over its USB port Input (Ayre QB9).
This device stops any electrical noise from traveling thru the copper conductors of the ethernet cable before it gets to my music server. Same concept as installing a dedicated circuit for your audio equipment, but for the LAN connection.
All the cheapo routers, NAS drives, ethernet printers..etc found in the home environment have no need to perform their function in a silent manner nor where they designed to do so. If you start to add up just the Wall Wart switching power supplies alone in the path between your PC and your DAC you begin to see an ugly picture form. Certainly the PC needs no additional help when it comes to generating noise so I feel anything you can do to help isolate it from the rest of this crud is a bonus.
Granted, the number of configuration choices one could pick from to setup a music server are fairly broad so some may be more affected by said noise than others and if you have done nothing at the PC level to help lower its own noise than all of the above may not matter anyway.
In my own setup I use a low power ALIX computer running Voyage Linux which only requires about 12 watts of power to perform its duties. I feed the ALIX computer power via an adjustable laboratory grade linear DC power supply. In my case this Opto-Isolator makes sense as the music server is already pretty clean from noise so any additional filtering is a plus. My DAC is also optically isolated from the Alix computer over its USB port Input (Ayre QB9).