And a very short cat 6 cable between a switch and SMS-200. If the issues are potentially to do with the length of the cable (25m), perhaps dividing it up might fix it then? I'll use the 25m comsol cat 6 cable between the router in the living room to the switch that'll go to my bedroom. Not sure if you already have a good LPS to power the SMS200, this probably is more important than the network isolation. For more budget, an audiophile grade switch would make more sense to me as it should have both good isolation and have a good clock to reclock the output signal. Personally I am not convinced by optical isolation (unless for covering a very long distance) as you still need a transceiver to convert the optical signal back to Ethernet and the transceiver usually comes with a noise SMPS which you still have to deal with. If you are to throw money onto audiophile Ethernet cables, I think only the cable between the switch and SMS200 should matter. If you believe in what John Swenson said there, all you need is only a Netgear GS105 or GS108 switch with a grounded SMPS (or even better an LPS) located near the SMS200. You might want to have a read on this thread: tab=comments#comment-736293 . If the SMS-200 is any good with Ethernet, it should be enough. So, introduce the rest of your solution before the fibre converters and see if it is good enough on its own. Just ignore the marketing stuff on the box. The same probably applies to the Audioquest Thunderbolt cables, but at least they should be well made if you are using longer lengths. There is no special "audio" Ethernet standard, the cables aren't directional, and a "faster" cable can't make a difference over anything that is to standard. Don't let me put you off Audioquest Pearl if you want an "audio" Ethernet cable but there will be no advantage from the more expensive types. With decent equipment you can use a bad (as in dropping some packets!) 1.5m cat3 cable for a short length from the switch to the streamer with no audible difference (done this, blind, with my Oppo) - no, I'm not recommending that, but any decent certified cat 5e or better cable will do the job fine over that sort of length. The Audioquest Ethernet cables are in my experience a waste of money. So another option is to switch to something like a Benchmark DAC, which is designed to reject noise over Ethernet to a very high standard. If your streamer is poorly designed, then a low level of unrejected noise can still have an effect. As you have the isolation ahead of the switch, you should get very close to, or the same noise with and without the isolation in practice, believe it or not.Ī cheap switch was enough for me with Ethernet to my Oppo 105.Īny additional components you introduce will have their own noise, including the switch and the fibre to Ethernet adaptor. The problem probably lies with the 25m cable as much as the router.Īssuming the length from the network switch to the DAC/streamer in your diagram is only a couple of metres, the switch should suffice on its own to reduce noise without the optical isolation. I'm planning on buying another pair for a total of 4 ethernet cables in order to achieve the setup similar to this diagram: As well as 1m Cat 5e cable that came with the Telstra Smart Modem which is what I used to stream music over LAN. But I've found this from staticice: įor the ethernet cable, I already have the 25m Comsol Cat 6 cable that's currently being plugged into Telstra Smart Modem that's in living room & SMS-200 that's in my bedroom. So if I want to stream my music that's stored in my Laptop/Mac mini over LAN to my SMS-200, should I be getting the MC200CM or MC210CS?įor the router, I'm using the Telstra Smart Modem.įor the switch, I'm planning on buying the one recommending in the article I've mentioned from Harvey Norman: įor the fiber optic cable, I'm still confused as to which one I'm supposed to get. A guy name petersv recommends using 2x TPLink MC210CS which is a different product from the previous article that was recommending the 2x TP-LINK MC200CM Gigabit Media Converter : I've read this tutorial which pretty much sums up how to setup the ethernet optical isolation: but there's one thing that's puzzling me. I then found out that ethernet optical isolation is the best way to eliminate any noise coming from the router. I have a feeling that the reason why the SQ doesn't sound as good over LAN is probably due to noise coming from the router. Which shouldn't be the case as it was designed to be used over LAN. I've recently started using NAA's and I was strangely finding the SQ from portable HDD directly attached to the SMS-200 to be better sounding than from LAN over MDP & DLNA.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |