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"DHCP sounds worse than a fixed IP address"

tw99

tw99

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According to the good people at Lejonklou, setting a fixed IP address for their Kalla streamer will lead to "higher musical performance".


Obviously using a fixed address can help with network stability, but the idea that it could affect sound quality is utterly laughable.

What's next ? Recommending IPv6 as a network transport because the longer addresses provide "more stability" ?
 
bumblebee657 said:
DHCP or fixed IP has no effect on network stability. You use a fixed IP address for other reasons. The whole claim is just nonsense.
Click to expand...
I agree the sound quality part is nonsense and that is the reason I made the original post.

(As you say there are legitimate reasons for using a fixed IP sometimes. In my network I use this on a couple of devices to avoid race conditions with DHCP after power failures, that can cause connectivity issues, and this is what I meant by "stability".)
 
Makes perfect sense.

What you are all missing is the DHCP lease time.

With a fixed IP, the computer doesn't need to keep a energy sapping timer running.

With DHCP, the computer now needs to run said energy sapping timer so it knows when to renew the connection.

So it's obvious that the energy sapping timer causes issues with the temporal flow of co-located packets within the ethernet frame stream which reduces top end sparkle, muddies the mid range and gives you bloated bass.

My system has never sounded better since I installed a $5k 10GB network switch with $3k external reclocker, started using expensive CAT 8 cables capable of 40GB/s and fronted these all with $7K of LPS's.

I have also spent $4k on special footers for the switch, reclocker and lps's which really help reduce packet flow congestion.

Of course I need the headroom of this setup, which is capable of 5000 MBytes/second, to avoid contention/packet retries when playing back my 200 KiloByte/second FLAC tracks. You gotta have head room, just in case!!!!.

But I plan to convert my 60,000 FLAC tracks to WAV cause I am told that the time and energy needed to convert FLAC to raw PCM corrupts my sound and that WAV is the way to go.

I can also see moving to fixed IP addresses will lift my sound to a new level. I will report back soon!!!!

Peter
 
Last edited:
One wonders if these IP / networking-related audio quality "tweaks" are all just a practical joke.

Of course, if an ethernet cable can affect sound quality, anything can, but I guess they're serious about "anything".

BTW did you know that you should disable amber and red LEDs on your cable modem because the lower frequency photons introduce more audible noise? It's true, just ask these people, probably.

edit: having read the page linked, I think they're exploiting the credulity of their customers as a work-around instead of fixing some problem with the network stack of their streamer. I'd bet you they have issues with DHCP, and get a lot of customer support inquiries about it.
 
tw99 said:
Obviously using a fixed address can help with network stability
Click to expand...
Not any more than a dynamic address. Dynamic addressed can stay the same for months :)
Struggle as we may, there is nothing to explain the claims from those who perceive that network systems really matter, unless it actually drops out.

Personally I run a £9 DAC, and it's everything I could wish for. It's almost as if the music, doesn't know if's cheap. :D
What tends to make the most difference in sound is if I'm tired, or alert, if my ears are clean, where the speakers are, where the furniture is, what P-EQ I've twiddled with that day, what songs I play, what mood I'm in. I think people over-think small details - perhaps because salesmen have 'cable markup' to sell :D

But the human mind.. well, easily programmable, as we saw in 2020.
Beliefs morph into religions - from Global Warming to cables, but there was one guy I read about, who sold sticky paper discs to imprive the sound. At least he didn't attempt to explain how this mental prop changed the sound :D

Perhaps 'HiFi People' should spend more time listening to Madison Beer's 'I Wonder Why' :D
 
fatoldgit said:
Makes perfect sense.

What you are all missing is the DHCP lease time.

With a fixed IP, the computer doesn't need to keep a energy sapping timer running.

With DHCP, the computer now needs to run said energy sapping timer so it knows when to renew the connection.

So it's obvious that the energy sapping timer causes issues with the temporal flow of co-located packets within the ethernet frame stream which reduces top end sparkle, muddies the mid range and gives you bloated bass.

My system has never sounded better since I installed a $5k 10GB network switch with $3k external reclocker, started using expensive CAT 8 cables capable of 40GB/s and fronted these all with $7K of LPS's.

I have also spent $4k on special footers for the switch, reclocker and lps's which really help reduce packet flow congestion.

Of course I need the headroom of this setup, which is capable of 5000 MBytes/second, to avoid contention/packet retries when playing back my 200 KiloByte/second FLAC tracks. You gotta have head room, just in case!!!!.

But I plan to convert my 60,000 FLAC tracks to WAV cause I am told that the time and energy needed to convert FLAC to raw PCM corrupts my sound and that WAV is the way to go.

I can also see moving to fixed IP addresses will lift my sound to a new level. I will report back soon!!!!

Peter
Click to expand...

Glad to see so many network savvy people in here.
:)

DHCP works perfectly unless the IP network stack implementation is very poor - which has been the case in audio devices at times, I have encountered that a few times. Problem with fixed IP addresses is that when you get a new router or other network changes... things can get whacky very quickly. I only have one device on my network with a fixed address, which is an address I shall always remember. It is at the center of everything (file storage, music server ...), so it is useful to have it fixed so I don't have to track the (potentially) momentary IP address as I add new "clients".

I haven't had to deal with devices that have issues with DHCP for many years, though. Of course, YMMV.

I work in the networking industry. I work on routers that cost as much as $10M a pop (we offer good financing terms if someone's interested :-D). But my home networking is perfectly happy running on 2.5GE and Wifi6. Would be perfectly fine with 1GE and Wifi5, too. :-D
 
CuteStudio said:
Beliefs morph into religions - from Global Warming to cables, but there was one guy I read about, who sold sticky paper discs to imprive the sound. At least he didn't attempt to explain how this mental prop changed the sound :D

Perhaps 'HiFi People' should spend more time listening to Madison Beer's 'I Wonder Why' :D
Click to expand...
Do you mean this guy? https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina17.htm

He actually goes into very in-depth explanations as to how taping little bags of rocks to your cables could work. What I find interesting is he mixes more-or-less accurate science with total snake oil nonsense about audio. I am not sure if he ever sold pieces of paper but he's sold everything else.

Or maybe these goofballs?

https://www.synergisticresearch.com/isolation/accessories/carbon-tuning-disks/ - little stickers you put on your cables that are supposed to improve the sound. In this case the attempt at explanation is thinner:

Based on our patented UEF technology, each disc gets treated with a unique UEF compound that interacts with EM fields wherever you place them in your system or on cables to improve sound quality. The conductive carbon fiber material of the disc enhances the interaction between the UEF compound and the surrounding EM fields where it is placed.
Click to expand...

It "interacts with EM fields... to improve sound quality", you see.
 
fatoldgit said:
My system has never sounded better since I installed a $5k 10GB network switch with $3k external reclocker, started using expensive CAT 8 cables capable of 40GB/s and fronted these all with $7K of LPS's.
Click to expand...
Server 2025 Datacenter Edition running on at least 60 CPU cores for the true high-fidelity experience.
 
To be fair, if your device's DPCP lease expired, and was assigned a different IP address, might this interrupt a stream in progress?
 
Fixed IP is fixing the original file sampling rate while DHCP is forcing the file input sampling rate to its IP .... so fixed IP is better ... hmm or is it the other way around :p
 
From a decade ago, when I worked with networks in an industrial automation environment, a host configured with a static IP address generally would not send DHCP discovery packets. The root cause of this check, performed with Wireshark, was the need for an absolutely minimal switchover delay between 2 separate physical redundant networks.

But I still find it hard to believe that the above (true/not true) would make any difference to audio quality.
 
tw99 said:
According to the good people at Lejonklou, setting a fixed IP address for their Kalla streamer will lead to "higher musical performance".


Obviously using a fixed address can help with network stability, but the idea that it could affect sound quality is utterly laughable.

What's next ? Recommending IPv6 as a network transport because the longer addresses provide "more stability" ?
Click to expand...
A brand to avoid then , never seen a site so devoid of any actual information about the products and a lot of audiophile nonsense ?
 
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