Good sound quality with streaming is not possible without using optical fiber

I happily use my CRS305-1G-4S+IN, in fact I will now share it with you all so you too can enjoy it while streaming

 

I was referring to your ability to moderate what is and isn't acceptable conversation, but that's great. I've only been on this earth for 26 years and yet I seem to have more emotional and spiritual maturity than you have demonstrated here with your rudeness and unconscious assumptions about people who have their own thoughts and motivations about how the world works.

In 3 posts you managed to call someone a 'poser' for no real justifiable reason, demand technical explanations which meet your satisfaction criteria while simultaneously claiming you 'don't care' about his sources (ORFAS posters in your words), and then finally appeal to authority by saying everyone should listen to atomicbob instead (except he is no where near as arrogant and absolute as you are).

Your behaviour is embarrassing for a grown man with a family and children and you should reassess your approach to social interactions. Until then you go on the ignore list and the site becomes 5% more readable.

 

While we are sharing:



Sounds like crap but I have to save up for hideously expensive Focal pads

Says the guy who issued a karmic fatwa on Pancakes for factually stating how basic networking works and why econauts explications did not add up. Are you in the gold plated dog shit cable riser business k4rstar?....I take that back, too direct and "mean"....you are 26 k4star, but God willing you have another 40-60 years to work it out.

 

Take a look, you might like the guy. I have to admit that I lost touch, but great blogs of his include the optical link to exclude the Buzz That Really Was, his test of various USB cables, and his comparison of network streaming sound --- international!

The guy is not just measurements. Heck, he plays vinyl

 

I'm feeling left out! Count me in there. I never called anyone a poser, but I totally agree about the sources, etc.

And I'm offended that this didn't make it to HTFAIP! lol.

Given that no one is obliged to prove anything to anyone (although if we spout here we also stand to be called out), my view is...

If someone claims something I consider likely to be impossible, I'd like...

1. Confirmation from those I accept as authorities, which may in itself be moot, as to the impossibility or not. Chances are that I'm wrong.

2. Some sort of blind test as to the personal hearing of a difference.

And as I said, "...those who claim to hear, rightly or wrongly..." The claims may be perfectly genuine. Corroborated by others, even. Demonstrated in a blind test. It doesn't necessarily mean the explanation is right. That's life.

 

I think there are a few issues with these Optical Ethernet streaming if the device doesn't have it and you must run 2 more boxes.

I would like to try a Linn klimax-dsm, Lumin X1, SGC opticalRendu, Wadax reference, or even the taboo msb optical usb input

It all just seems like a departure from the glory of ST optical cd transports. But I say what the heck try it.
I just wish we had a pi hat with the option of an SFP cage, I had suggested it in the past, but I must have not been very influential... TO me it is just cool as heck to fire lasers for data. Makes me feel like I am planning a mission to mars

 

I confess I ignored your suggestion, but that pic of the hand holding that giant knob attached to a golden (or is it just yellow/green, I'm colorblind)...well, let's just say I'm ready be strapped in and blasted off...

 

I’m about as tweak-y as they come with respect to computer audio and it fascinates me that people can’t read the room here sometimes. I don’t come to SBAF for endless amounts of nervosa, and I understand the community doesn’t really want to hear about it outside of maybe some measured conversation about relatively easy and cheap options (see Marv’s thread about a breakout USB 3.1 card and Unison or @rlow’s thread reviewing transports). The RPi thread is another example. That is okay by me - I can discuss (what I can admit is ultimately a little nuts hence “nervosa”!) these topics on plenty of other forums.

SBAF’s value to me is not in its discussing the sound of boutique caps in LPS’es but in its skepticism of uber expensive audiophile jewelery for what is ultimately a set of diminishing returns, and especially its unparalleled attempts to build a common vocabulary around what DAC’s, amps, and transducers sound like.

The place has always been surly, too, and is more tolerant and less surly now than anytime I’ve lurked, so moaning about tone and reminding people that that is the reason you don’t post here anymore just seems like pissing in the wind, to me.

 

You're still at it today so apparently I'm no more bored than you. Your post is an opinion and no matter how much you would like it to be fact, it cannot be, as it contradicts the independent experiences of thousands of individuals. I can say the same thing. Now what?

Anyone living in a world of multiple realities is in need of help.

I did. I shared the experience of not wasting my money. People usually consider not wasting money to be helpful.

I don't give af about karma - please choose other threat vector.

Never did I mention whether or not people spending their money on whatever is/was morally wrong or not. If you go back to one of my posts, I specifically said "you be you. Cheers".

Anyway, you be you. Cheers

For the record, I am not an objectivist nazi. I have heard differences in analog cables, I regularly hear differences in equal measuring equipment (amps, DACs), and if someone tells me they can hear a difference in connector material, I will not be suspicious even if I myself don't believe I can hear such a thing. The differentiator is that in all these cases we're dealing with an analog signal. An analog signal has no error checking and redos. It can be augmented and passed onto the next device. A digital signal can not. While jitter and noise are indeed present in a digital signal, they're usually so low in level that you need the hearing apparatus of a bat to detect it. And we don't have bat hearing apparatuses. If you believe differences between -120db and -126db are audible and/or matter, ASR is probably more aligned with your belief system.

 

Re: audiophile network switches, optical connections, etc.

This kind of nervosa does not, personally, interest me, but I have heard digital chains I think are markedly better than my own (Lumin U1 Mini -- Yggdrasil A2 or Matrix X-Sabre Pro, either USB or AES in, Roon with no upsampling). However, I can't say what in those chains made them better. Whether a different DAC, a different resolution, upsampling, playback software, or, indeed, a different way of handling the stream. I have messed around with the "cheap" way of supposedly isolating electrical noise via optical (two ether-optical converter boxes with an LPS on the back end), and I found that I couldn't detect a difference between just going straight in with ether. But, then again, I wasn't too methodical with any of it.

I have heard differences (very subtle ones) between streamers, and I take the stance (perhaps unpopular on this forum) that the Lumin U1 Mini is superior to the Pi2AES. I AB'd directly in my own system with a few different power supplies and connection methods, including the i2S output (into a Holo Audio May, which I was borrowing at the time), and I found the Lumin slightly more resolving. (FWIW, the Pi2AES maybe somewhat better than a BlueSound Node 2i.) To me, very small differences, and the Lumin ended up only just worth the extra expense.

This is mostly to say that I find tweaking and comparing digital delivery options (including DACs) kind of ambiguous and not terrifically much fun. But I don't fault anyone for trying to figure it out. It just doesn't excite me. Maybe one day I'll venture back down the rabbit hole.


Re: different audio forums, including SBAF and ORFAS-y forums

I come to SBAF for headphone stuff and some 2-channel. I like the emphasis on stuff that delivers high value and the skepticism about too much nervosa. The surliness I could take or leave. I go to Steve Hoffman for info on various LP pressings. And I look at What's Best Forum for high-end. The latter is 100% the home of older guys with a ton of money and often a taste for bling that I don't share (Rockport, MBL, Taiko Extreme servers, etc.). But there's also another strand of vintage-leaning guys who are into big horns, SPUs, SME tonearms, etc. That interests me, and I wade past the posts about super high-end towers I could never afford anyhow to get to other content.

That said... I was surprised to find recently, going to demo speakers on back to back days, that I much preferred a mega-buck solid-state system going into a pair of $100k+ Alysvox panel speakers to a $40k in total vintage tube and Altec horns system. The Alysvox blew me away, in fact, and is maybe the best system I've ever heard. Frankly, I wasn't considering either set of speakers--way past my budget--but I had fun hearing them. And the experience sort of turned on its head what I think is superior. The Altec system was absolutely the vintage aesthetic that appeals to me, and yet I wasn't wowed sonically.

So, to me, there's something to be learned from most camps and most forums, and you can be led astray or to aural glory in many ways.

 

I should add that I was impressed that the Pi2AES got as close as it did to the Lumin. It was equivalent, in my system, to more expensive Rendu set-ups and a bit better than the Bluesound. This testing was done semi-methodically, as I have only so much patience/appetite for comparing digital sources.

And I guess, if I haven't really heard differences between various inputs on various DACs, then I'm unlikely to hear the difference in various network switches. But maybe it's a cumulative thing? Little tweaks that add up a generally smoother sound? Anyway, that's what I've heard in some pricy digital chains: smoothness. Whether that's what I'm, personally, seeking I'm not sure.

 

I used to think that network gear was immaterial, and I still think it mostly is. But I was surprised recently when someone I trust (a former network gear designer now working in audio) replaced the Netgear GS105 switch that my Linn Klimax connected to with a refurb Cisco WS-C2960CG-8TC-L. My wife who wasn't privy to the change (and is my independent audio test subject) noticed the improvement right away. Her words: "more expansive, more limpid." No great theories on what caused the improvement, maybe some subtle EM coupling between switch power supply and Klimax innards that carries electrical noise. The Cisco switch has optical ports, and so does the Klimax, so we also ran fiber afterwards. Maybe a slight improvement, but nothing as clear as replacing the switch. Good news is that the refurb Cisco switch is way cheaper than "audio grade" switches.

 

@earnmyturns

Probably power supply. I have used HP Procurve switches that were several hundred dollars each (under $60 ea. used off lease) and added a ferrite to the power lead. Winding the power lead as many times as I could thru the ferrite resulted in a change in sound quality that was noticeable. Did the same thing on my wallwart fed router to same effect.

The best thing I did was placing the switch right at the target computer. For a while I ran a switch right after the router and another at the target but when I did critical listening tests it confirmed only one was necessary.

 

Right, the Cisco switches I'm using are right next to the streamers and they have built-in PS rather than cheap SMPS bricks. They are relatively old, but since they have 2 SFP ports, I could then replace the cat 6 patch cable by optical into the streamers, which is nice and neat, but TBH may not have made much difference beyond what the switch had already done.

 

If I may ask, how much that switch does for you sound wise? Does it change anything?

 

It's not a huge difference, but my wife who was not aware of the change from a Netgear GS105 noticed improved clarity and soundstage. Replacing cat 6 by SFP/multimode fiber did not make as much of an additional difference. This is the new switch. Also, I have no reason to believe this will be a benefit for other streamers besides the Linn Klimax.

 

Thanks for your feedback. Many people say that network switches in-between routers and streamers can make a noticeable difference, which is why I've asked, just to know more on the subject. Thanks again!

 

That is where we started.

 

link to the switch is busted

 

Thanks for catching this, fixed.