It’s in my biblical texts, quit while you’re ahead I think is the 16th commandment or something.
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What is this Muon filter? Did you do a post about it somewhere? I must search it out now. 
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They’re supposed to work very well according to folks that have implemented them. I would sooo try one but it’s not my weak link at the moment and it’s too much to just throw money at to try.
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This is probably not the right place for this, but I finally got around to watching Rob Watts presentation from CanJam.
While I don’t necessarily agree with everything in here, and he caveats pretty much everything with “On My DAC’s”, he has some interesting ideas on how power cables and other electrical connections contribute to presentation. Anecdotally stating that certain classes of noise > 300dB’s down (which is thousands of times lower than what’s considered audible to the point it’s not measurable) still impact the presentation, specifically depth and separation of instruments.
Worth the watch.
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Some wacky commentary in the presentation indeed. Also of note is that he kept bringing it back to as it works on his DACs which you can’t really make a broad statement and then specify a narrow confine for that broad statement. The most surprising (and wrong) statement was about mobile device used as a source.
I did like everything on the RF in the ground plane noise as a fundamental issue in the pursuit of ultimate sound quality.
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I’m not sure it’s “wrong” per se, it’s an interesting take, the reasoning is inline with what I believe to be the “best” source. No possible ground noise (because no actual circuit), and a low powered processor to minimize switching noise.
I think there are other contributors that make a phone less than ideal that he ignores like the fact it has multiple radios inside it, and modern phones actually have more powerful processors than most dedicated streamers.
USB would obviously also be the only viable connection from a phone, so your down to how good is the clock in the DAC, since his DAC’s always regenerate the clock internally that’s not really an issue.
His take on optical is similarly skewed by the fact he doesn’t use the external clock, except as input to his “digital PLL” (I can guess what it’s doing), so the only relevant metric is electrical isolation, and optical cables are perfect in that regard.
What I thought was interesting was accepting that inaudible noise impacts perception, based on his own listening tests, and trying to quantify how the types of noise impact the way a signal is perceived. Now there are a LOT of hidden assumptions in his reasoning correlation is not causation and he can’t measure the noise at the signal levels he’s talking about, but it’s the best attempt at trying to do that I’ve seen
Some of it also explains why devices like the Ansuz Tesla coils have an effect, they are in effect common mode filters.
His take on SMPS isn’t new, and I’ve seen him state it elsewhere, though I thought the argument that the noise it introduces is easier to filter was interesting, though I think it likely glosses over the magnitude of the noise introduced, the only interesting part to me was his attempts to compare the quality against batteries as a reference.
Like most vocal industry designers, with a lot of experience he’s built his mental model of how it all works and what’s important, espouses it as fact. But that’s pretty normal for any expert in any industry.
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That was my entire rebuttal as you can’t simply state something in the theoretical and ignore the practical. But it’s Audiophilia so all common sense goes out the window. lol He also then further on goes on to claim how lithium batteries create their own issues for noise and what phone today doesn’t have some type of lithium variant battery in it.
I heard a comment the other day that made me laugh in a very engineery way. An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory.
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That would be orders of magnitude lower than the noise present in all recordings.
He’s stating it’s a specific type of random common mode noise. In his case specifically introduced in a DAC.
His argument is he’s adjusted the resolution of his noise shaper, and until he got to -330dB, the changes were perceptible in listening tests, specifically in the way stage, separation and what he calls focus are perceived.
He has a theory as to why the brain can even perceive that.
As I said It’s worth watching.
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That’s the part that’s fascinating and can be mind boggling when you think about it, especially when we’re critically listening.
I always come back to the penguin being able to detect their chick crying in a beach full of 50k other crying baby penguin chicks.
There isn’t a machine on earth today that would be able to do the same thing, we simply couldn’t be able to measure with that level of sensitivity.
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I’d say that about sums it up. A lot of folks reject ideas based on theory but have never heard it (it = differences between servers, anything networking, cabling, DACs, tweaks etc).
In April I’m doing a 3-way comparison of 3 network switches. Still deciding where it’s worth posting the review to minimize flaming by naysayers.
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Which switches are you comparing? There seems to be several options.
The Innuos Phoenix Net is the one I’m most curious of.
My Innuos PhoenixNET is one of the 3. 
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Oh, cool. The other one that looks interesting is the LHY. Soundnews had a favorable review of them.
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I decided to order a holo red and TeraDak FMC to replace my afterdark diretta bridge. Hopefully it’s worth the effort. I decided against the OCXO clock upgrade cause it didn’t really make sense to me.
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Nice, would be curious about your thoughts on the TeraDak FMC vs without. The Red is a really great streamer for the money tbh, all the connectivity and ability to easily change the OS and try new things have made it a component that I plan on keeping in my system long term (unless holo makes a higher end streamer that doesn’t go down the proprietary software route). Oh and it sounds great lol. I hope the Red ends up being a good fit for your system and would be interested in your thoughts on it as well.
Just curious about people are so keen to use fiber in between their network connection.
…still friendly opinion 
My personal logic:
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If your Internet/Uplink Router has a decent SFP port, I can understand going from there directly with Multi-Mode fiber to your fiber-switch, or even better directly to your streamer/dac (without any other media converter in between) - this is for sure the best-way!
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The average non-fiber-to-the-home consumer doesn’t even have an Uplink router (WAN / LAN) with optical connections. So using a fiber/copper media converter (even I see people with x-media converter) in between, WHAT exactly should happen here? Better/faster signal path? Lower “jitter”? …sorry, this will never, ever improve anything on your Ethernet layer.
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I’m not denying high quality Cat7/8 cables with good connectors (like Telegartner MFP8) and an good audio-optimzed switch (I use Paul Pang Duo, Paul Pang Quad und TeraDac OXCO with external linear PSU) MAKE A DIFFERENCE, but NOT <copper> <fiber> <copper> connection!
Even sometimes worse, because many of those “audio-optimised-media-converters” are really bad, always look for datacenter-grade ones!
…not even touched 802.11 or BT 
…this is for sure in my 2way-stereo-audio-journey a NO-GO.
I’ve to be honest, I was working 14y for Telco providers and Carriers as network engineer, therefore I’m for sure biased
EDIT: what makes me furious angry, is when certain vendors of so called “audio optimized ethernet cables”, for even going beyond $5k for a 1m twisted pair cable and people are complete fooled with there statements. I highly recommend anyone in this ethernet-audio-rabbit-hole: be careful, think twice and trust people in this community and NOT any YT-reviews or vendor marketing!
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In my smaller listening room i went with fiber in order to avoid a “long” 20ft++ run of RJ45 and i have ZERO regrets in the money spent to make it happen. I say this because the system performs so very well, i simply have a dead black background that has zero perceptible imperfections or any sort of noise or interference whatsoever. It simply seems cleaner, clearer and just more resolute than when i was running my long RJ45 to feed the streamer. 
It may all be a figment of my imagination, i absolutely do not doubt that it may all be in my mind, and i can see how mixing various exotic material in the signal path could also possibly lead to issues BUT i feel i have been extremely fortunate thus far and have managed to provide what seems to MY amatuer hearing as a very clean and interference free signal.
I understand that it’s all 1’s and 0’s, i get that there should be no perceptible alterations but i cannot deny the depth, clarity and utter noise and seeming interference free resolution of the playback material🤷♂️
It simply wasn’t this good in this system prior to going w/ fiber so i stick with it. The cost was worthwhile to me relative to the resolution and performance i’m getting out of the rest of the equipment. 
Honestly @gerihifi i don’t understand why or how some products seem to add small performance enhancements, i just feel when they are all summed up the whole is greater than the individual and little by little squeezing out every bit of performance for each piece and elemnt has left me satiated and satisfied.
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100% agreed. Since I went fiber everything in my home is better! Not just the music although that is the important one.