Friendly debate: What do we actually know about networking?

General Discvssions & Theory/Vnderstanding
81

I would agree, my eye were first opened with the Pi2AES and realizing how much we were leaving on the table. I remember connecting a DDC to a Cambridge DacMagic again in my attempsts to get off the PC once I realized how bad they are as a source.

Once you start looking at all of these areas and how much of an impact I saw simply by cleaning up power, signal etc. It’s a natural step to eventually get to networking.

It’s also something that higher end gear will reveal more than mid tier stuff. Most of my ability to see (without having to think about it and go back and forth a bunch of times) what impact changes I made in the chain, came only after I bought my pair of Voxativ.

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82

Sorry, I’m not in the market for one of these, was merely curious what made the utlraregen better than one of these.

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83

Very interesting work by Chris at Dejitterit. His SwitchX measurements are pretty impressive.

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84

So here’s an interesting observation.

I’ve been on and off writing a music server to support uPNP and possibly Squeeze.
Both work in similar ways, while the negotiation for a stream is different, eventually the server just gives the streamer a URL and the streamer plays it.

For UPNP, I had noticed previously that the streamer exhausts the file stream in the first few seconds of playback, actually if you use gapless and play more than one track, that time is actually at the end of the previous track.
Since this is down to the streamers software, I am going to assume for now most Squeeze clients do the same thing, it’s not really surprising, these devices have tons of memory and the tracks are small, so they use large probably multi megabyte buffers. I’d assume if you had a big enough track, you see it read packets as they are consumed though some first part of the track, but for all the stuff I tried I didn’t see that.

What I hadn’t done prior to today was check what roon does, and it must have a very small buffer, I see network activity through out playback.

I know some people hear a quality difference, between Roon and Squeeze, and perhaps this is the mechanism for that. For Squeeze and UPnP playback is in effect out of memory with little to no network activity during playback, with Roon network activity is continuous throughout playback.

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85

You can try unplugging the endpoint briefly to see what happens. I have a vague recollection of reading something like this and it stayed playing the track for a bit. Roon does so much in the background. And optimizing the stream for the specific endpoint.

Edit: I just tried it before posting this and it played for about ten seconds before stopping so it buffers a bit.

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86

This reminded me of an inexplicable experiment that I did with M0N long ago. @NickMimi lurked into the conversation too and I know he wished he didn’t.

I have all of my music locally. I’ve avoided streaming for quite some time. Unfortunately, I still need an ethernet cable to control my server. Sucks. I asked M0N to do the same experiment with me in which I loaded a long playlist and I would unplug my ethernet cable.

It shouldn’t have made a speck of difference, but it did. It sounded better without the ethernet cable. Could I explain it? No. Did I want to try? No. I just know there was a difference and I wish there wasn’t. I would have rather recouped my cable costs and invest it in a different part of my system. I can’t unhear these differences and so, I still have them.

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87

As someone who probably uses local (in-streamer, not NAS) storage >50% of the time, during recent research into various “audiophile” network switches, the idea that such a switch can actually improve local playback has been brought up by an uncomfortably large number of people. I guess the idea that electrical noise can just come into the streamer is quite disturbing (no pun intended). I’m looking at a switch now that completely isolates from the rest of the home network, and it looks like Taiko Audio uses the same approach in their uber switch…

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88

I suspect this is heavily dependent on how good the streamer is at isolating itself from that noise.
I really didn’t hear much of a difference when I optically isolated the NS1 (there was some).

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89

Let me preface by saying I know nothing about networking, software, or computers and technology in general besides the most basic utilitarian knowledge needed to get by daily. Back in the HiFi Guides days, I also documented my growth in the hobby. My Nobsound tiny little hybrid amp, my Darkvoice, and my Sivga 6’s, CAL-1’s, Monoprice retro’s and other very basic equipment went on a journey of growth.

I was unfortunate in that my first good piece of kit was an EXOGAL Comet+ DAC which when paired w/ a proper more updated front end scaled in performance and it was very easy to understand and hear the difference even early on when my ears and equipment were still in the beginner growth state. :hugs:

I absolutely found it ABHORRENT and hated myself for being able to actually hear and justify the difference in the quality of sound character that a good USB cable made, and I’m not talking about $100 or $200 my dealer made sure I understood that quality cost blood :drop_of_blood: money :gem: :triumph:

Again, early on I made the choice to rent my music via streaming services and rather than nit-pik and hem&haw over the cost I went all in on Quoboz and Tidal and finally ROON to tie it all together. I tried do go cheap for a while, I tried to go w/ CD’s, mp3 files taken off you tube, hell I even tried to collect music from folks…All wasted effort, rental streaming works best for me and it has simply become a $50 monthly expense. Add my $80 monthly internet bill and we are talking about $130 monthly, and then $1560 yearly. This is ALLOT for my musical enjoyment…:scream:

@Veritas probably remembers those early years better than me, some of the late evening conversations, forum posts etc. what I DO REMEMBER though is that it just clicked one day in my mind. “Garbage in, equals garbage out!” Just like folks who use Vinyl records look for albums that had a great recording studio set, and pressings that were of good quality then they move onto the cartridge quality, tone-arms, plinths, isolation and so forth. The trick is though that once you have your room, seating position, amplifiers and speakers ready to go, you need to FIND good music that matches the effort you put into the back end and that requires you go all the way to the source. :thinking:

If you are still following along, the source, in the case of streaming starts in the recording studio, then moves along the digital path from there. Thus somehow since the interior makeup of a single capacitor and strands of wire can make a difference in sound character and presentation, in my simple-minded view then the quality of the signal coming into the house makes a difference too. Thus I upgraded the stuff which technically makes no difference to the sound quality or character as stated by half the folks who are masters in the fields of technology. The other half want to sell me all sorts of fancy stuff :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Most of this is wasted breath, my most used system in the house, in my kitchen, is played via YouTube and free Spotify, the speakers, amp and cables all total less than $500 invested new. Plays great, images pretty darned good considering the location of the speakers and actually sounds good :ok_hand:

Does my living room system sound better? Yes it does. :muscle: $50K + better? :thinking: It no longer matters. Once you’re into a hobby deeply, any hobby, only your own experiences, desires, beliefs, and monetary constraints matter any more.

Happy listening to all :hugs:

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90

:rofl::rofl::rofl: well said! “It no longer matters”

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91

Dont say this, i dont need this info bouncing around my brain. It could be the cable is an antenna or just having the cable plugged in makes it “active” and its noise wether traffic is going or not. Did you only try unplug from the streamer side, or did you try network device aude unplugged with cable still in the streamer?

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92

I removed the cable from both ends between my CX/EX, which kept the music playing, but I couldn’t control my server anymore. There was a noticeable difference.

When I change/upgrade ethernet cables, there is a noticeable difference.

Again, I wish there wasn’t, but I’ve been in the everything matters camp for a little while. Some upgrades are worth it, some are not, but everything does something.

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93

Agreed.
In an offline convo with @MaceHindu I was saying that I think there comes a point where changing these things like ethernet cables can become the less painful eg more cost effective way to make an improvement.
This endless gear head pursuit of audio improvements…

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94

Likewise when I went optical with my dCS bridge fed with the EtherRegen. For me at least, I didn’t just go optical isolation, there was power and a upscale Ethenet cable.

There are just too many factors and IMO most of the issues introduced are either noisy hardware or picking up noise via the environment.

I wholeheartedly agree with @Veritas in that EVERYTHING matter to a degree.

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95

I’m relatively new to the cables-do-matter camp because of the Amber 3.

It has been very overwhelming and borderline depressing.

Given my use-cases, not only do i have to think about my DAC, Amp and power…but also the instruments I record with!

It’s allot of factors to think about and allot of money to invest in.

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96

I knew from a studio-case that cables made a difference as i heard it firsthand.
Maybe i was naive/dumb to not consider my main listening setup

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97

I’m very much in this camp too, it’s just that some things matter more than others.
You have to be somewhat pragmatic, it’s easy for those of us with a ton of money in a system to talk about the merits of a $500+ cable. I have probably a 1/2 a dozen Audioquest RCA cables, I don’t frequently use, that probably cost $300 a piece in the 90’s
But for a lot of people that $500 provides more value elsewhere, you should always be thinking maximizing the system for the budget, could that money your about to out into a cable give more value elsewhere?

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98

Absolutely. That’s why it should be left to the tail end of building a chain. A good no nonsense cable is probably just fine for 80% of the journey. It’s simply that people tend to hear so much and so often how cables don’t matter and a lot of people miss out. It’s the only reason I proselytize on their importance but it’s far from primary importance.

But they’re not the main focus or shouldn’t be up front. As long as you’re not using bargain bin or what came in the box.

Networking falls under the tail end of that even!

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99

Had some quiet time this evening to listen to some female vocals. Thought, damn it sounds good, why not try this:

Control: network → TPLink → generic CAT5e → Network Acoustics Eno filter → Innuos PhoenixNet switch → QSA Lanedri Gamma ethernet cable → Streamer.

Tried: network → TPLink → generic CAT5e → Network Acoustics Eno filter → Streamer.

Subtle but definitely noticeable. What I lost was a touch of vocal realism, little nuances in her enunciation and very low level details. Some parts that were probably saturated on the recording sounded a bit more tolerable. But it was subtle, like to the point where I’m not sure I could necessarily pick it out on a blind A/B.

Hmmm. Interesting. The PhoenixNET + QL Gamma, together, is quite a few bucks. What to do. Maybe I’ll try the Muon filter next…

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100

Thankfully I’m running free of Ethernet cable on the components that matter but if I was, I’d seriously have to sit on my hands in order not to try a Muon.

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