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The Ethernet cables, Switches and Network related sound thread. Share your listening experience only.
- Thread starter bluenight
- Start date
I couldn't possibly comment..They make also popular ethernet wire/cable
cpurdy
100+ Head-Fier
I run about 20 different switches across a few different locations. Mix of brands (Cisco SMC Dlink etc.) All gigabit or faster. Some layer 3, but most layer 2. Some managed, but most unmanaged. Some 64-ports, some 32-ports, and a handful of 4- and 8- ports where I don't have enough home runs. Almost all on pure sine wave UPS systems. Cabling varies by age of building or renovation, from CAT-5e, a bunch of CAT-6 and CAT-6e, some 7 and 8. A fair bit of the big black underground stuff as well for building-to-building runs (I forget the spec on that, and I'm not going to go dig up the details, no pun intended, but I assume it's 6 or 6e).
I did a lot of the wire runs and outlets myself, but only because it's been hard to find good electricians for the past few years. (There are good electricians, but they're booked out for months in advance.) I'm currently in the process of adding a POE setup for a security camera system to one location, but the security system is its own separate switch (and will mostly use existing in-wall cabling). So it shares the punch-down block, but the networks don't overlap. Another site (unfortunately, historic, so options are limited) I'm installing dedicated ethernet back-hauls for a wifi mesh system.
Anyhow, the switches are all silent. A few are now 15+ years old (running continuously without any errors that whole time), and some are new, and most in-between. No fans or noise at all except for big TOR switches. Some of the big switches have fans, but they never turn on.
Mesh networking for Wifi, mostly (3 locations) TPLINK DECO units with Ethernet cable backhauls. Most on UPSs as well. One location still uses ancient Apple wifi gear, but it just won't die. Fiber for Internet, where available, otherwise MOCA. The weak link is always the telco-provided router, which is the cheapest possible gear that they can find that doesn't get them immediately sued.
audiobomber
500+ Head-Fier
Why don't you tell us about your network audio system? There's no gear listed in your profile.
Have some of you come this far that switches and dac pairing is a thing, when having more dacs than one?
Not important which switch but one does not work the same on the other.
I am glad I have 2 ports on my Afterdark X1. I will dive deep in this network rabbit hole and pair switch for each dac.
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What is the most dirty/textured switch you have tried @cpurdy `? - switch that kills the high frequencies = LoFi...if it is ever possible
Not important which switch but one does not work the same on the other.
I am glad I have 2 ports on my Afterdark X1. I will dive deep in this network rabbit hole and pair switch for each dac.
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What is the most dirty/textured switch you have tried @cpurdy `? - switch that kills the high frequencies = LoFi...if it is ever possible
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cpurdy
100+ Head-Fier
Plex server running on a 12-core 128GB Mac Pro, pulling media from a 4-bay Synology NAS with RAID 5 (or whatever they call their extension to RAID 5) with 44TB (32TB net), 1TB HA flash cache, and RAM maxed out. I also run Audirvana on a Macbook Pro, pulling from the NAS. With a good NAS and a good network, it's all as good as running off of a local drive. Plex also has some nice client apps including iOS and Android, but I'm still getting that all set up for remote access on the go. I run a few different fixed DACs but I mainly use a Denafrips Ares II (R2R) into a Woo Audio WA5-LE when I'm *not* on the go. I normally listen on a balanced Dan Clark Ether C closed, but if I'm by myself I will sometimes switch to my balanced Grado P1000 open backs. My media room is wired for 13.4.6 but I only run 11.2 (limited by the Marantz networked pre-amp) via a Yamaha 11 channel amp (MX-A5200). Curved audio transparent screen (Elite Screens Lunett 2.35:1) with recessed built-ins for L/R/C, HL, HR, SL, SR, and the 6 Atmos in-ceiling speakers, all Pioneer Elite. The rest of the speakers are floating mounts, and all are Definitives (which are good material/crossover/timbre match for the Pioneer Elites). Subs are matched 800w dual-12" Pinnacles in gloss black. In wall audio insulation on all interior walls and ceilings/floors. Foam in all exterior walls / roof. All 5/8" sheet rock, with everything glued & screwed. Black-out window treatements for everything (including wired skylights) but the cupola. Music sounds impressive enough, but it's honestly a system that I designed primarily for movies. For both music and video, I have over a half dozen networked Apple TVs across 3 locations. One media / family room is a 5.1 surround. One media / family room is a 2.1 surround (the speakers are decent but they're in-ceiling; it came with the house and is definitely *not* my design.) I've got whole house audio (room by room control) in 2 locations, and outside speakers at the other.
All music is FLAC ripped from CDs; my family uses Spotify but I never use music streaming services. I host another 25TB of ripped DVDs and BluRays as well. (All legit purchases, and all media retained.) I also put the FLAC collection on e.g. large-capacity micro-SD cards for portable players (recently switched to this one: https://www.hidizs.net/products/ap80-pro-portable-lossless-music-player-special-edition -- and I'm mostly liking it). Still trying to straighten out the iPhone, since Apple sabotaged iTunes trying to get people to buy Apple Music subscriptions.
audiobomber
500+ Head-Fier
Thanks for the info. Have you ever tried an audiophile ethernet cable, network switch or power supply upgrade?
cpurdy
100+ Head-Fier
No for the cable and switch (because they're digital). Buying higher end equipment doesn't hurt anything, except the pocketbook, and if it makes people happy, they should do it. I just don't like when people with money to make from selling stuff are misleading about what that equipment does that would improve sound (hint: nothing) or conversely what the cheap equipment could do that could make the sound worse (hint: nothing).
And yes for the power supply -- for analog equipment. This one makes total sense, because noise in the power supply becomes (to some extent) noise in the analog signal. Digital processing just ignores the noise; that's why it's digital. All signals below a certain threshold are treated as "off", and above that threshold are treated as "on". So there can be lots of noise in the signal, all without any impact on the digital processing. Electrical engineers are amazing.
All the processing before the DAC is digital, and noise in those stages cannot possibly have any impact on sound -- other than the actual noise that the devices make, and some cheap electronics do make audible noise or fan noise.
On the other hand, the DAC and everything after it? Yeah, I spend a fair bit of time, effort, and money keeping that power as clean as possible, and those signals as clean as possible.
cpurdy
100+ Head-Fier
I was thinking this morning about how to explain the difference between digital processing and analog. Imagine that digital processing is like watching for a certain light to be on. The light needs to be either on, or off. You can imagine someone worrying about the wattage of the light. Someone else worrying about whether it's LED, florescent, or incandescent. Someone else has an opinion about color temperature -- should it be "warm" like 2700k? 3000k? Or the more efficient and cooler 5000k? Someone else points out that 90% CRI is important, and someone else claims to never use any light with a CRI lower than 95%. Some weirdo puts color lenses in front of his lights. Someone insists on buying GE bulbs, while someone else claims that Philips are better. Someone else is cheap and just buys the cheapest bulb they can get from China. But in the end, the only thing that matters is whether you can tell the light is on, or off.
That's how digital works. In fact, if you ever look at the signals, they're a complete mess (from an audiophile's point of view) -- way, way, way worse than "the cheapest bulb from China". The sausage making isn't pretty. But the only thing that comes out of the end of that sausage making process is that the light is on, or off.
The DAC is where that changes. The DAC is watching for the digital "light" being on or off, and it's emitting "light" of its own based solely on whether that digital light is on or off. And the light emitted by the DAC is actually visible to our eyes (i.e. the DAC output is audible to our ears). So it needs to get the wattage just right. And the brightness just right. And the color matters. And the CRI quality of the color matters.
Also, nobody likes florescent.
In the world of turning information (on a CD, on a flash drive, on a NAS, from over the Internet, etc.) into sound that you hear, as long as the data gets to the DAC, then the digital part has done its job. Fortunately, the data rates for audio are so incredibly low that the digital processing is thousands of times too fast for the DAC. On my network, I can move two entire CDs of lossless FLAC content every second. So an hour long CD (60 minutes times 60 seconds) can be copied over the network in 0.5 seconds. In other words, four orders of magnitude too fast. Somewhere during that 0.5 seconds, deep in the digital bowels, lots of mistakes were made while "watching for the light to be on or off". But those mistakes are accounted for, automatically, and corrected, automatically. So that 0.5 seconds includes having to resend dozens or hundreds of network packets, out of order, and fixing up the data (the lights on or off) so that it's all absolutely perfect. And then that data is placed in a memory buffer (a bunch of lights, on or off), and the DAC works off that memory buffer.
So you do want your DAC running on clean power. Not because of "the digital lights being on or off"; that's all working regardless of the dirtiness of the power. But rather, because the DAC now has to "sing" to you, and the dirtiness of the DAC's power can show up in that singing. Most equipment tries to clean up the power itself, using all sorts of tricks. It usually starts with switched-mode power supplies. Then there are these little devices called voltage regulators. And so on. I'm not an expert, and not an electrical engineer. But I'm smart enough to know that the surest way to not have bad power inside my DAC or amplifier is not not put bad power into my DAC or amplifier. So I don't mind paying for good surge protectors, battery back-ups, pure sine wave inverters, power conditioners, etc. My Yamaha A/V amp, for example, runs on a 1540W rack mounted CyberPower pure sine wave UPS (because I'd hate to have a good movie interrupted by a lightning strike
.
That's how digital works. In fact, if you ever look at the signals, they're a complete mess (from an audiophile's point of view) -- way, way, way worse than "the cheapest bulb from China". The sausage making isn't pretty. But the only thing that comes out of the end of that sausage making process is that the light is on, or off.
The DAC is where that changes. The DAC is watching for the digital "light" being on or off, and it's emitting "light" of its own based solely on whether that digital light is on or off. And the light emitted by the DAC is actually visible to our eyes (i.e. the DAC output is audible to our ears). So it needs to get the wattage just right. And the brightness just right. And the color matters. And the CRI quality of the color matters.
Also, nobody likes florescent.
In the world of turning information (on a CD, on a flash drive, on a NAS, from over the Internet, etc.) into sound that you hear, as long as the data gets to the DAC, then the digital part has done its job. Fortunately, the data rates for audio are so incredibly low that the digital processing is thousands of times too fast for the DAC. On my network, I can move two entire CDs of lossless FLAC content every second. So an hour long CD (60 minutes times 60 seconds) can be copied over the network in 0.5 seconds. In other words, four orders of magnitude too fast. Somewhere during that 0.5 seconds, deep in the digital bowels, lots of mistakes were made while "watching for the light to be on or off". But those mistakes are accounted for, automatically, and corrected, automatically. So that 0.5 seconds includes having to resend dozens or hundreds of network packets, out of order, and fixing up the data (the lights on or off) so that it's all absolutely perfect. And then that data is placed in a memory buffer (a bunch of lights, on or off), and the DAC works off that memory buffer.
So you do want your DAC running on clean power. Not because of "the digital lights being on or off"; that's all working regardless of the dirtiness of the power. But rather, because the DAC now has to "sing" to you, and the dirtiness of the DAC's power can show up in that singing. Most equipment tries to clean up the power itself, using all sorts of tricks. It usually starts with switched-mode power supplies. Then there are these little devices called voltage regulators. And so on. I'm not an expert, and not an electrical engineer. But I'm smart enough to know that the surest way to not have bad power inside my DAC or amplifier is not not put bad power into my DAC or amplifier. So I don't mind paying for good surge protectors, battery back-ups, pure sine wave inverters, power conditioners, etc. My Yamaha A/V amp, for example, runs on a 1540W rack mounted CyberPower pure sine wave UPS (because I'd hate to have a good movie interrupted by a lightning strike
.
audiobomber
500+ Head-Fier
I disagree strongly, due to my experiences that clearly demonstrate otherwise. It seems your opinion is simply uninformed.
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audiobomber
500+ Head-Fier
So, getting back to the original thread topic...
I had a couple of long-term audiophile buddies over yesterday. We listened through my gear with a 10GTek SFP instead of the Finisar in the oMD. Anyone using cheap SFP transceivers really should upgrade given the low cost of the Finisars. The sonic gains were large, in soundstage, tonality and musical involvement..
EDIT: I had originally mentioned a couple of shoot-outs in this post regarding the LHY SW-10. I realized yesterday that I may have accidentally connected to the wrong SFP in the comparisons, so I have edited my post to remove this potentially false information.
I had a couple of long-term audiophile buddies over yesterday. We listened through my gear with a 10GTek SFP instead of the Finisar in the oMD. Anyone using cheap SFP transceivers really should upgrade given the low cost of the Finisars. The sonic gains were large, in soundstage, tonality and musical involvement..
EDIT: I had originally mentioned a couple of shoot-outs in this post regarding the LHY SW-10. I realized yesterday that I may have accidentally connected to the wrong SFP in the comparisons, so I have edited my post to remove this potentially false information.
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thanks!Off topic: Dont use to thick wires for Susvara= capacitance. If you want the rolled off highs use low awg/gauge(high capacitance)
My recommendation dont go over board than stock cables. Best performance regarding awg/gauge
AddendumUpdate
Some months have passed and my system has seen some updates. As my system improves with better tonality, lower noise and increased resolution it has made me want to revisit the two ”winners”: Inakustik Cat6 Premium6 and Furutech LAN-6 NCF. And at this point the Furutech is the better fit!
Previously:
Router -> Belden Catsnake -> Switch -> Inakustik Premium -> iMac (Roon) -> USB
Now:
Router -> Inakustik Premium -> Switch -> Furutech LAN-8 -> iMac (Roon) -> USB
The Furutech is very pleasant to listen to without any sense of losing out on details (nice resolution). I’m sure that there are better Ethernet cables out there but this good enough, at least for now.
Today I tried replacing the CAT6 cable connecting router to switch with an additional Furutech LAN-8.
Previously:
Router -> Inakustik Premium CAT6 -> Switch -> Furutech LAN-8 -> iMac -> USB
Test:
Router -> Furutech LAN-8 -> Switch -> Furutech LAN-8 -> iMac -> USB
I couldn’t hear any improvement at all, so I’m back to using the cheaper CAT6 cable between router and switch. Actually I was feeling the music being slightly less ”lively” with the Furutech between router and switch but that could’ve just been my imagination… Surprised by the result.
P.S. The switch I’m using is a Netgear GS105E powered by an Apple 12w charger connected with a Ghent Audio Canare 4S6 USB.
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audiobomber
500+ Head-Fier
In post #1931 of this thread, I reported on a shoot-out with the LHY SW-10. I have edited the post to remove the results of this test, as it has come to my attention that I may have tested the LHY with a 10GTek SFP instead of the Finisar. I apologize to anyone who read the post and to LHY for my carelessness.
Hopefully I will be able to redo these comparisons in the future. My opinion at this time remains what it was when I had the LHY in-house for a week. Either the EtherRegen or SW-10 can sound best, depending on ancillaries (power supply, AC and DC cables, fuse, clock, system synergy and personal preference).
Hopefully I will be able to redo these comparisons in the future. My opinion at this time remains what it was when I had the LHY in-house for a week. Either the EtherRegen or SW-10 can sound best, depending on ancillaries (power supply, AC and DC cables, fuse, clock, system synergy and personal preference).
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Appreciate the honest update and the effort you guys went to in your listening test, so many variables in such an A-B comparison, it's easy enough to overlook one.
Speaking of the effect of ancillaries, in addition to most of those you mention which I've experienced first hand time and time again, I've found the quality of grounding (chassis and/or signal grounds) and vibration damping/dissipation can have a HUGE effect on the performance of network components, in particular my SW-8, which is damped to the gills, including directly on its OCXO. Very easy the hear the delta but not all materials and/or quantities thereof are net positive. Trust one's ears one must. There's many a route to a low noise ethernet chain methinks.
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