AUDIO over IP - REDNET 3 & 16 Review. AES67 Sets A New Standard for Computer Audio

[wushuliu]

I have a Lynx E22 right now as well. The Rednet 3 is indeed a little better, but only just, with both going into my Mutec.

Size, color, and inability to follow sample rate keep making me consider offloading the Rednet, but the sound...

How would you describe the difference in sound quality between the lynx and the Rednet

 

[Luckbad]

How would you describe the difference in sound quality between the lynx and the Rednet

 
The Rednet has more authority. More impact and weight to the sound overall. The Lynx has a good deal of detail and is a bit more airy in its sound.
 
Note that neither unit is fully burned in.
 
I prefer the overall sound of the Rednet, but the Lynx requires only a PCIe slot, takes up virtually zero space, sounds almost as good, costs way less, and is a lot easier to get functioning without any dropouts.
 
I wiped my entire drive and I'm running as little as possible right now. My dropouts have gone from one an hour to about one every two hours.
 
I'm increasing my buffer size now to see how long that gives me.
 
Basically, if I get a dropout when playing music overnight on Rednet after the latest optimizations, I'm not keeping it. The Lynx hasn't dropped out once.

 

[atomicbob]

Dropouts here only occur during infuriating Win10 phone-home-to-check-for-downgrades, usually limited on my machine to Tuesdays. Otherwise nothing. Have metered internet option enabled, but W10 still checks and hogs system.
 
Having made so many changes recently I am going to get off the money-go-round, pause, and catch my breath. Listening fatigue is so low as to be non-existent at the moment. Sense of space, dimension, timing, transient event snap has improved enormously. It is time to enjoy the library. Many old musical favorites that weren't the best technical recordings are demonstrating a huge improvement. My current source system:
 
JRMC with both Sonarworks compensation, Waves NX 3-D spatialization, some custom tweaks, and phase reverse
 
VSC ASIO -> Ethernet -> RN J16 -> AES/EBU -> MC-3+ -> AES/EBU -> Yggdrasil
VSC ASIO -> Ethernet -> RN J16 -> AES/EBU -> MC-3+ -> SPDIF -> Gungnir MB
 
Silver Sonic Air Matrix for unbalanced RCA to Zana Deux or Liquid Crimson
Balanced XLR to V200
 
Norne Draug 2 cables from amps to 4 pin XLR phase reverse to 4 pin XLR to HD650 or HD800.
 
Some will disagree with my analogy, but to me the auditory improvement is similar to upgrading from a
Nikon NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G kit lens - which is already very good at 55mm - to a
Zeiss 55mm f/1.4 Otus Distagon T* Lens - Stunning visual improvement.
 
It has been warm here lately so I have not been running the Zana Deux or Liquid Crimson but keeping the heat down with a Violectric V200 run balanced from the Yggdrasil. I don't remember the V200 sounding this good. Source chain matters. Still prefer ZD or LC over it, but the V200 is sounding very good indeed.
 
Back to rediscovering more CDs in the library.

 

[somestranger26]

Originally Posted by atomicbob /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
JRMC with both Sonarworks compensation, Waves NX 3-D spatialization, some custom tweaks, and phase reverse
 
Norne Draug 2 cables from amps to 4 pin XLR phase reverse to 4 pin XLR to HD650 or HD800.

Why the phase reverse in software, and then you're undoing it with the XLR?

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

Power supply and tube magic happens; Bob and JJ can explain it better and probably already have in JJ's DIY thread.

I'm thinking of trying it with my speakers...

Why the phase reverse in software, and then you're undoing it with the XLR?

 

[somestranger26]

Power supply and tube magic happens; Bob and JJ can explain it better and probably already have in JJ's DIY thread.

I'm thinking of trying it with my speakers...

Never heard of this before... speakers certainly seems like the easiest way to try it since speaker wires are already individual phases for each channel. If I made an adapter for my headphones to try it, it might affect the sound quality and impact the comparison since my HE6 are using a 6N OCC silver cable with 4% gold added... that would be one pricey adapter to match the materials.
 
By the way, I have not noticed any dropouts for several days. Coincidentally, the THD on my power has been around 5.5% (people are on vacation?) instead of the usual 6.5% reinforcing my thoughts that the two are related.

 

[johnjen]

  Why the phase reverse in software, and then you're undoing it with the XLR?

This is what I call PRT (Phase Reversal Tweak) where the L & R channels are run out of phase WRT each other.
Then the load (headphones, speakers) are again phase reversed so that the music is heard normally.
 
This imparts significant sonic improvements, just ask SGTM or Atomic Bob or Big Poppa or Musiqboy etc.
 
For more read this post, http://www.head-fi.org/t/781268/the-diyrs-cookbook/210#post_12300653
 
JJ

 

[Luckbad]

Decided to try foobar2000 instead of JRiver. Several hours of music playing without the latency spike--about twice as long as JRiver has ever gone.
 
Might be zeroing in on the problem.
 
Update: Still going strong without a single dropout/latency spike in foobar2000. Definitely related to JRiver.

 

[johnjen]

  Decided to try foobar2000 instead of JRiver. Several hours of music playing without the latency spike--about twice as long as JRiver has ever gone.
 
Might be zeroing in on the problem.
 
Update: Still going strong without a single dropout/latency spike in foobar2000. Definitely related to JRiver.

Have you run the "Benchmark" tests within Jriver to see if your hardware is 'robust' enough?
 
JJ

 

[Luckbad]

Have you run the "Benchmark" tests within Jriver to see if your hardware is 'robust' enough?

JJ

Nope. I'll check that out tonight. That said, my hardware is pretty bonkers fast.

 

[jabbr]

Nope. I'll check that out tonight. That said, my hardware is pretty bonkers fast.

Do you have NAS and let JRiver do Library Management on the NAS? That might cause periodic bursts of network activity by JRiver.
Do you have the RN3 connected to a switch or do you connect directly to the RN3 from the PC?

 

[Luckbad]

Do you have NAS and let JRiver do Library Management on the NAS? That might cause periodic bursts of network activity by JRiver.
Do you have the RN3 connected to a switch or do you connect directly to the RN3 from the PC?

 
I technically have a NAS hard drive, but it's in this machine and isn't actually serving anything else at night. The RN3 is directly connected from the PC.
 
It's always a 14.x ms burst of latency, and it's always a while after I sit down and stop messing around on the computer. My best guess is that JRiver likes to do background operations if you aren't using the PC even if you have music playing through it, and when it kicks in, it gives me a momentary dropout.

 

[mourip]

   
I technically have a NAS hard drive, but it's in this machine and isn't actually serving anything else at night. The RN3 is directly connected from the PC.
 
It's always a 14.x ms burst of latency, and it's always a while after I sit down and stop messing around on the computer. My best guess is that JRiver likes to do background operations if you aren't using the PC even if you have music playing through it, and when it kicks in, it gives me a momentary dropout.

 
Try going into Tools/Options/Library and Folders/ and under Auto Import uncheck "Run Auto Import in Background"
 
You can then just run auto-import manually when you add music to your drive.

 

[wushuliu]

RN3 arriving this weekend. Hopefully it plays well with the simple coax spdif input I have set up for the soekris dac.

 

[mourip]

  RN3 arriving this weekend. Hopefully it plays well with the simple coax spdif input I have set up for the soekris dac.

 
I am pretty sure you will love it. I find myself listening to an entire album now instead of jumping from track to track. The noise floor is much lower and I am getting many more spacial cues. Instrument position is also more solid so on big orchestral pieces I "see" movement of the music as it is passed between instrument groups.  
 
I bought a second D16 and it comes tomorrow. It will go into my headphone system. Plan A is to remove one of my two music servers and let the remaining one use DVS to send music to both D16's. This will simplify my system and allow me to sell one music server and it's associated LPS. I already sold both of my REGEN Ambers. The only gotcha will be if my LAN has too much latency.
 
BTW. For those contemplating getting an RN 3 or RN D16 Sweetwater is great to deal with. They have demo units and if you ask them for their "best price" will sell for even less that their web price.