Listening through TOSLINK, and comparing it to my vanilla ethernet connection from my home router has been pretty fun, so far.
TOSLINK sounds cleaner, more "ordered", and has a dryer, "just the facts" kind of character. Background is blacker. Makes the Susvara sounds more electro-stat-like.
The quality of the treble and bass are perceptibly different. Treble is smoother, and bass sounds "truer" and runs deeper.
It also sounds leaner, without question (and which is most pronounced with my speaker setup).
In contrast, my "untreated ethernet" connection sounds fuller, with more bass quantity, and "richer" lower mids, with a stronger center channel when using speakers, and generally presents the perception of more depth. And sounds more dynamic and vivid. It kind of drives me nuts to consider the possibility that all these "positive" qualities might just be byproducts of intermodulation distortion. As a regular end-user schmo, my best guess is that there must be more at play than that, but...
I should also note that until just recently, I tried using a pair of off-the-shelf FMCs connected to an Shanti LPS between the router and the DAC. This definitely sounded different from "vanilla ethernet" as well. I really liked that solution for a while but ultimately concluded it did more harm than good (Too bright, basically). I think I'll want to revisit the ethernet connection angle again soon (rabbit hole that it is), but for now, listening to plain SPDIF being fed by a laptop on batteries has so far been pretty interesting, and with some music at least has been an undisputable net win. Longer term, though, we'll see (as always, heh).
TOSLINK sounds cleaner, more "ordered", and has a dryer, "just the facts" kind of character. Background is blacker. Makes the Susvara sounds more electro-stat-like.
The quality of the treble and bass are perceptibly different. Treble is smoother, and bass sounds "truer" and runs deeper.
It also sounds leaner, without question (and which is most pronounced with my speaker setup).
In contrast, my "untreated ethernet" connection sounds fuller, with more bass quantity, and "richer" lower mids, with a stronger center channel when using speakers, and generally presents the perception of more depth. And sounds more dynamic and vivid. It kind of drives me nuts to consider the possibility that all these "positive" qualities might just be byproducts of intermodulation distortion. As a regular end-user schmo, my best guess is that there must be more at play than that, but...
I should also note that until just recently, I tried using a pair of off-the-shelf FMCs connected to an Shanti LPS between the router and the DAC. This definitely sounded different from "vanilla ethernet" as well. I really liked that solution for a while but ultimately concluded it did more harm than good (Too bright, basically). I think I'll want to revisit the ethernet connection angle again soon (rabbit hole that it is), but for now, listening to plain SPDIF being fed by a laptop on batteries has so far been pretty interesting, and with some music at least has been an undisputable net win. Longer term, though, we'll see (as always, heh).
Most definitely! It's of course very much worth calling this out explicitly.
