The Ethernet cables, Switches and Network related sound thread. Share your listening experience only.

[MattSPL]

LHY SW10 Pro

https://www.vinshine.audio/vinshine-x-sw-10pro

It looks impressive

 

[TheR0v3r]

In another thread I wrote:



Now I’ve spent some time comparing Ethernet cables and, lo and behold, they sound different from each other. Or at least my system sounds different depending on which cable I use.

Does anyone know who is rumoured to have the highest quality manufacturing process in the business? What I’m looking for is manufacturing consistency with minimal variances from ANTI/TIA-568.C2 in day-to-day production.

I’ve been evaluating a ”Kramer C-UNIKATCAT6A U/FTP Video & LAN Cable” in my system for the last couple of days. This is a very reasonably priced Ethernet cable with a quality construction and easy to find specifications.

These are early days but really pleased with the Kramer this far. Hopefully it will prove to be good enough to replace a more expensive Ethernet cable and free up some funds.

 

[Deleeh]

Hello,
are there actually good quality Lan sockets, similar to power sockets with gold contacts, etc.?
The flat we are moving into was a former office in the past.
It has been modernised about 10 years ago, electricity as well as Lan cable has been laid.
I wanted to ask if there are certain things I should be aware of, as it is a former office, are there perhaps more problems there than in a normal household?
The flat also has floor tanks installed and Lan and power sockets have been laid towards the wall side, which are covered with thick steel plates.
No idea whether this will cause problems or not.

I am looking for tips and open suggestions in this regard.
Lan cable to extend from Pc to socket is planned, but I haven't decided on anything yet.
My electrician said that a Cat 6 cable would be sufficient, while I prefer a Cat 7, he said that these are more problematic.

 

[danbmellow123]

Hi Tholt;
I knew I had read somewhere in this growing thread of someone else using wifi. On further listening/examination the bandwidth does not seem to be suffering much. I seems to take just slightly longer for the Stylus player to load a song into memory (I would guess 1.3 or so vs 1 second, but it could be my imagination). Local files on my external hard drive load into memory almost instantaneously. After letting everything run in for about 24 hours the grain I had noticed earlier seems to have gone. I played the same song from the local hard drive and from Tidal and I couldn't notice a difference. Will still build a linear supply for the TP-Link AC750. Maybe for a future upgrade I might look at the Nexus Link you mentioned.

 

[tholt]

I seems to take just slightly longer for the Stylus player to load a song into memory (I would guess 1.3 or so vs 1 second, but it could be my imagination). Local files on my external hard drive load into memory almost instantaneously.

Yes, it might take a bit longer to load with wifi. I notice this from time to time. I assume it's due to wifi, but TBH I don't know

I played the same song from the local hard drive and from Tidal and I couldn't notice a difference.

Agreed. Local files and streamed files via wifi sound the same to me as well.

Maybe for a future upgrade I might look at the Nexus Link you mentioned.

I like the concept at least of the Nexus Links. You don't share the common 5G wifi with other traffic in the house. They make their own dedicated connection. Whether or not that translates into better performance can be debated. Certainly things don't sound worse. And for around $100, a dedicated private network makes me sleep better at night lol.

Glad things are working out for you.

 

[theveterans]

Hello,
are there actually good quality Lan sockets, similar to power sockets with gold contacts, etc.?
The flat we are moving into was a former office in the past.
It has been modernised about 10 years ago, electricity as well as Lan cable has been laid.
I wanted to ask if there are certain things I should be aware of, as it is a former office, are there perhaps more problems there than in a normal household?
The flat also has floor tanks installed and Lan and power sockets have been laid towards the wall side, which are covered with thick steel plates.
No idea whether this will cause problems or not.

I am looking for tips and open suggestions in this regard.
Lan cable to extend from Pc to socket is planned, but I haven't decided on anything yet.
My electrician said that a Cat 6 cable would be sufficient, while I prefer a Cat 7, he said that these are more problematic.

I haven't really looked into audiophile Ethernet female connectors myself. Why not fiber in the walls instead and use a SFP switch to convert Fiber back Ethernet

 

[Deleeh]

I haven't really looked into audiophile Ethernet female connectors myself. Why not fiber in the walls instead and use a SFP switch to convert Fiber back Ethernet

yes I'm using this on my old pc right now, where I have Dietpi installed with Roon on it, so the pc acts as a Roon core that is currently connected to Fmc boxes from Amazon.
The input Lan cable goes directly from the router to the Fmc box in the current flat.
I can probably continue to use this in the new flat in the same way.
The only difference is that I will no longer be able to use the FMC Box directly from the router, but instead connect it via a longer Lan cable that is permanently installed, because the router will most likely have to be permanently installed in the technical room in order to connect to the laid Lan sockets without the need for a switch.
It will be galvanically isolated in any case.
But I can't yet say whether the quality will suffer as a result.
I would not be able to lay a fibre optic cable, if only an open one.

 

[TheR0v3r]

I’ve been evaluating a ”Kramer C-UNIKATCAT6A U/FTP Video & LAN Cable” in my system for the last couple of days. This is a very reasonably priced Ethernet cable with a quality construction and easy to find specifications.

These are early days but really pleased with the Kramer this far. Hopefully it will prove to be good enough to replace a more expensive Ethernet cable and free up some funds.

Happy with the Kramer C-UNIKAT CAT6A. It is a bit stiff so not the easiest to route, otherwise a great cable. It won’t be used on the last leg into the iMac because of this.

I’ve continued to experiment and decided to roll back my network setup from this:

FTTH -> IFi LAN iSilencer -> Router -> C2G Ethernet Cat6 1.5m -> iPP w/iFi Elite 5v -> Shunyata Omega Ethernet 1.5m -> Netgear ProSafe GS105 w/iFi Elite 12v -> C2G Ethernet Cat6 1.5m

To this:

FTTH -> IFi LAN iSilencer -> Router -> Kramer C-UNIKAT CAT6A -> SilentPower LAN iPurifier Pro (iPP) w/iFi Elite 5v -> Kramer C-UNIKAT CAT6A -> TP-Link TL-1005D w/SMPS -> C2G Ethernet Cat6 1.5m

Comparing the two setups the impression is that using 100 Mbps vs 1 Gbps has lowered the noise floor even further. On ”Rie’s Wagon” by Gomez I heard a some sounds in the intro that I haven’t picked up before. On ”Roadhouses and Automobiles” by Chris Jones the crickets(?) where easily heard in the background. ”Badman’s song” by Tears for Fears was really (a)live sounding with great dynamics, no harshness, and the different instruments easily heard despite the busy arrangement. And ”Upstairs” by Psapp was pure fun!

All in all very happy with my network setup. And it will free up some funds.

 

[ascaso]

LHY SW10 Pro

https://www.vinshine.audio/vinshine-x-sw-10pro

Extremely interesting!
If the SW10-PRO had the same clock as the LHY OCK-2S, it would be excellent and very cost-effective.

 

[TheR0v3r]

Happy with the Kramer C-UNIKAT CAT6A. It is a bit stiff so not the easiest to route, otherwise a great cable. It won’t be used on the last leg into the iMac because of this.

I’ve continued to experiment and decided to roll back my network setup from this:

FTTH -> IFi LAN iSilencer -> Router -> C2G Ethernet Cat6 1.5m -> iPP w/iFi Elite 5v -> Shunyata Omega Ethernet 1.5m -> Netgear ProSafe GS105 w/iFi Elite 12v -> C2G Ethernet Cat6 1.5m

To this:

FTTH -> IFi LAN iSilencer -> Router -> Kramer C-UNIKAT CAT6A -> SilentPower LAN iPurifier Pro (iPP) w/iFi Elite 5v -> Kramer C-UNIKAT CAT6A -> TP-Link TL-1005D w/SMPS -> C2G Ethernet Cat6 1.5m

Comparing the two setups the impression is that using 100 Mbps vs 1 Gbps has lowered the noise floor even further. On ”Rie’s Wagon” by Gomez I heard a some sounds in the intro that I haven’t picked up before. On ”Roadhouses and Automobiles” by Chris Jones the crickets(?) where easily heard in the background. ”Badman’s song” by Tears for Fears was really (a)live sounding with great dynamics, no harshness, and the different instruments easily heard despite the busy arrangement. And ”Upstairs” by Psapp was pure fun!

All in all very happy with my network setup. And it will free up some funds.

Jodie Brooke Wilson does a beautiful cover of ”Promise Me”, written by Beverley Craven, on the album ”Halfway to Paradise”. I heard that song on a megabuck loudspeaker system several years ago and it sounded great - as in amazingly great!

It’s a simple arrangement with a guitar intro, followed by her vocals and then the song builds from there. You can clearly hear some tasteful reverb (space) as soon as the guitar starts playing and in the megabuck system that same sense of space exists around the singer. The issue is that it has actually proven really hard to recreate that sense of space around the singer. In many systems, including several configurations of my own setup, it instead ends up sounding like an added vocal effect.

So now that I’ve optimized my Ethernet setup thru high quality Ethernet cables, upgraded power cords, low noise switches and isolation devices I’m finally able to recreate some of the experience from that megabuck loudspeaker system. Everything should be fine and dandy but for one small thing… WiFi sounded even better!

I haven’t used WiFi for a long time on my headphone system and at first it was active by mistake. I got tired of waiting for Audirvana to reload after switching Ethernet cables so I reconnected the computer I’m using as streamer (an iMac) to the WiFi network. At one point I forgot to deactive WiFi when I was done switching (pun intended!) between setups. As the music started playing it sounded great with that lovely sense of space. At first I didn’t register that I was actually using WiFi it was only when I was going to A/B with the earlier configuration that I noticed that WiFi had been active during that entire listening session.

So I’m taking a step back from trying to optimize my Ethernet setup any further and instead I’ll focus on understanding what is actually going on. Any thoughts?

Update
The issue with Ethernet may actually be the power cord I’m using for the iFi Elite. Details, details, details.

It’ll take about two weeks before I have a new cord in place then we’ll see.

 

[theveterans]

WiFi sounded even better!

If WiFi is really done right, it can practically sound better and even be most transparent for networking. The main issue with WiFi aside of the stability of the signal is the WiFi module leaking CMI RFI/EMI through the streamer circuit which will affect the sound. However, if those issues are mitigated, you're getting the sheer transparency benefits of WiFi as opposed to trying to gain the transparency back with Ethernet.

 

[jacupmakeup]

I have the LHY AS-6 and LHY FMC on order. I just hooked up my Eversolo A6 to ethernet (have always used wifi) and have the Netgear gs108 switch and a Pink Faun LAN isolator. This configuration alone has brought a nice little boost in sound quality. I'll probably keep them in the chain, adding the FMC and AS-6 to run in serial.
I found that with USB regeneration, running decrapifiers in serial brought pretty substantial improvements to SQ.

Does anyone else run a similar setup? Should I keep the Netgear in place or would it possibly be detrimental to SQ once the LHYs are doing their thing?

 

[MattSPL]

I have the LHY AS-6 and LHY FMC on order. I just hooked up my Eversolo A6 to ethernet (have always used wifi) and have the Netgear gs108 switch and a Pink Faun LAN isolator. This configuration alone has brought a nice little boost in sound quality. I'll probably keep them in the chain, adding the FMC and AS-6 to run in serial.
I found that with USB regeneration, running decrapifiers in serial brought pretty substantial improvements to SQ.

Does anyone else run a similar setup? Should I keep the Netgear in place or would it possibly be detrimental to SQ once the LHYs are doing their thing?

Do you have other things like smart tv or PC connected on the network? Are these plugged into the Netgear?

My setup since adding switches to the network has been:

WiFi router - powered by a linear power supply and only 1 Ethernet port used to feed switch number 1, which is a Cisco. This switch is used on the same linear power supply as the router.

Switch number 1 feeds the Smart Tv, sky box etc. All the non Hifi related things.

Switch number 2 used to be a Cisco, but was recently replaced by an AS6.
The AS6 is fed via DAC cable from switch number 1.
The AS6 only supplies my streamer.
This was a significant upgrade from the Cisco.

 

[LWR999]

I'm running a Cisco CBS220 "dirty" switch plugged into home ethernet copper. The dirty switch has a linux server running Roon and a Mac Studio Ultra connected to it via copper ethernet. The dirty switch connects via Finisar 1318 SFPs/fibre cable to a "clean" Cisco CBS220. The clean switch has copper ethernet (Linkup Cat8) connecting to IFI Audio Ethernet Silencer then Wattson Emerson Digital streamer connecting Telerium SPDIF/Coax to Hugo MScaler/TT2 combo. The second SFP on the clean switch drives a Hifi Rose RS130B streamer via Finisar 1318 SFPs/fibre cable. The Wattson Emerson streamer is powered by an SBooster BOTW and the CBS220 switches by IFI iPowerX. Hifi equipment is plugged into a Russ Andrews power conditioner

Is this as good as it gets? Questions I ask...
1/ Given the clean CBS220 is electrically isolated via fibre, is that as good as an "audiophile" switch?
2/ Some say LPSUs are the better answers for powering the switches - others say the IFI iPowerX is better for a switch? Thoughts?
3/ What's my next upgrade? I don't really want to get into external clocks

Bonus question, but appreciate not really this forum - I still run my Chord Hugo TT2/MScaler on the factory SMPS. Is that my next upgrade? Anyone heard the difference?

 

[Jake2]

@LWR999 Acknowledging your #3 and fair enough we’ve each gotta draw the line somewhere, my answer to your #1 is, and my apologies to your wallet, no it’s probably not, there’s more gains to be had. In my experience oscillator quality - or at least performance - matters rather a lot for asynchronous packet based digital audio data streams, both ethernet & USB. My SW-8 with its modest internal OCXO (everything is built to a price) was remarkably sensitive to vibration damping materials like tungsten cubes and fo.Q polymer strips placed directly on the inverted oven exterior, especially when the two were used in combination in a constrained layer damping setup. Totally impractical and mad scientist like in appearance with WAF approaching zero, but super illuminating, educational.