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Help with upgrading wireless roon setup

jonnyt

Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2021
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Hi All, I am looking into whether there are some easy upgrades I could perform to get more out of my system.
I currently run a roon nucleus and stream wirelessly (95% FLAC, 5% hi-res) to a couple of Naim Mu-So Qb 2s and to a Chord Hugo 2/ 2go for headphone listening.

I am not looking to change the Naim or Chord units as I am happy with them but rather wondering if cleaning up my power supply and/ or Ethernet switch would be expected to provide any benefit to my sq.

My living area dictates that I have a single plug socket providing power through a couple of chained multi-extension leads that power about 15 appliances (TV, Wi-Fi Router, games systems, Receiver, sub, roon nucleus, NAS, chargers etc) and so the small space behind my TV cabinet is a jungle of power cables, speaker wires and Ethernet cables.

My router has 4 ports, one of which goes to a standard tp-link Ethernet switch that connects a further 7 units (including the roon nucleus) via cheap Ethernet cables.

My questions are:
1) Would upgrading one, two or all three of my power extenders to ‘audiophile grade’ provide any benefit to me? The only units in my roon audio chain are the nucleus and wi-fi router and they share this socket with multiple other pieces of electronics
2) Would upgrading my Ethernet switch make any difference? Or the Ethernet cables to the roon nucleus?
3) Would adding an EtherREGEN into my chain even work? All the benefits I have read about for this unit seem to be for a wired DAC rather than via wireless

Ultimately, I doubt the sq of the Naim units can be significantly improved and this doesn’t really matter as I am not really ‘critically listening’ to them but if I could get a noticible sq improvement out of the Chord Hugo 2, I would be very happy.

Also, any future hifi I buy will likely be significantly higher end than my current set-up (Lumin or dCS DAC for example) so if I could future-proof the digital front end that would be a worthwhile investment.

Thanks,
 

gfinlays

Active Member
Joined
May 30, 2020
Messages
179
Likes
332
Hi All, I am looking into whether there are some easy upgrades I could perform to get more out of my system.
I currently run a roon nucleus and stream wirelessly (95% FLAC, 5% hi-res) to a couple of Naim Mu-So Qb 2s and to a Chord Hugo 2/ 2go for headphone listening.

I am not looking to change the Naim or Chord units as I am happy with them but rather wondering if cleaning up my power supply and/ or Ethernet switch would be expected to provide any benefit to my sq.

My living area dictates that I have a single plug socket providing power through a couple of chained multi-extension leads that power about 15 appliances (TV, Wi-Fi Router, games systems, Receiver, sub, roon nucleus, NAS, chargers etc) and so the small space behind my TV cabinet is a jungle of power cables, speaker wires and Ethernet cables.

My router has 4 ports, one of which goes to a standard tp-link Ethernet switch that connects a further 7 units (including the roon nucleus) via cheap Ethernet cables.

My questions are:
1) Would upgrading one, two or all three of my power extenders to ‘audiophile grade’ provide any benefit to me? The only units in my roon audio chain are the nucleus and wi-fi router and they share this socket with multiple other pieces of electronics
2) Would upgrading my Ethernet switch make any difference? Or the Ethernet cables to the roon nucleus?
3) Would adding an EtherREGEN into my chain even work? All the benefits I have read about for this unit seem to be for a wired DAC rather than via wireless

Ultimately, I doubt the sq of the Naim units can be significantly improved and this doesn’t really matter as I am not really ‘critically listening’ to them but if I could get a noticible sq improvement out of the Chord Hugo 2, I would be very happy.

Also, any future hifi I buy will likely be significantly higher end than my current set-up (Lumin or dCS DAC for example) so if I could future-proof the digital front end that would be a worthwhile investment.

Thanks,

I'll cut to the chase and save you a lot of wasted effort and money.

1) No. 'Audiophile' extension leads are snake-oil. Buy decent quality, well constructed multi-plugs with decent gauge cable. Brennenstuhl for instance, make a range of very good units.

2) Not to sound quality. The network isn't carrying music, it's carrying data (1s and 0s over TCP/IP). Data is buffered and validated by checksum. It either gets there or it doesn't, no in between. The key performance aspect of a network switch is its switching capacity. E.g. if you have an 8-port Gbit switch, can it simultaneously full-duplex Gbit across all of its ports (16 Gbit switching capacity)? Lots of domestic/consumer grade switches can't. Don't get sucked in by the 'reduction in noise/reduction in jitter/precision clocking' snake-oil marketing touted by 'audiophile' network switch manufacturers. They're selling you a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Amir has conducted scientifically objective measurements on a number of products. At best, they do nothing. Believers will swear blind that products X,Y and Z made audible differences. No one can prove it in properly conducted blind-listening tests, though.

Don't get sucked into all of the ethernet cable nonsense. Stick with Cat6 UTP cabling and patch leads. It's good enough for 10GbE over short distances so it's more than you need for audio data streams. Shielded cables (Cat7, Cat7A, Cat8) are designed for use in fully shielded network installations - high speed switch to switch connections in tightly packed, electrically noisy data centres and server rooms and in industrial environments. Using them in a domestic setup is more likely to cause real problems than solved imaginary/perceived problems.

3) No. Amir tested the EtherREGEN. It does nothing, nada, zilch, zero.

Wi-fi is not ideal for Roon, especially if you are streaming to a number of devices at the same time. It's far better to use cable connections wherever possible. It's not a sound quality issue, it's a matter of network bandwidth. WiFi can't achieve the throughput of cabled installations without the use of multiple access points. Connection speeds are also affected by the distance between components and the other stuff using the network (phones, iPads, laptops, smart home devices etc.) I'm not saying it can't work, but WiFi is likely to cause more issues with Roon than with a cabled setup. I'd spend my money here if I were you. I've already cabled my whole setup.
 
Last edited:
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jonnyt

Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2021
Messages
9
Likes
4
I'll cut to the chase and save you a lot of wasted effort and money.

1) No. 'Audiophile' extension leads are snake-oil. Buy decent quality, well constructed multi-plugs with decent gauge cable. Brennenstuhl for instance, make a range of very good units.

2) Not to sound quality. The network isn't carrying music, it's carrying data (1s and 0s over TCP/IP). Data is buffered and validated by checksum. It either gets there or it doesn't, no in between. The key performance aspect of a network switch is its switching capacity. E.g. if you have an 8-port Gbit switch, can it simultaneously full-duplex Gbit across all of its ports (16 Gbit switching capacity)? Lots of domestic/consumer grade switches can't. Don't get sucked in by the 'reduction in noise/reduction in jitter/precision clocking' snake-oil marketing touted by 'audiophile' network switch manufacturers. They're selling you a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Amir has conducted scientifically objective measurements on a number of products. At best, they do nothing. Believers will swear blind that products X,Y and Z made audible differences. No one can prove it in properly conducted blind-listening tests, though.

Don't get sucked into all of the ethernet cable nonsense. Stick with Cat6 UTP cabling and patch leads. It's good enough for 10GbE over short distances so it's more than you need for audio data streams. Shielded cables (Cat7, Cat7A, Cat8) are designed for use in fully shielded network installations - high speed switch to switch connections in tightly packed, electrically noisy data centres and server rooms and in industrial environments. Using them in a domestic setup is more likely to cause real problems than solved imaginary/perceived problems.

3) No. Amir tested the EtherREGEN. It does nothing, nada, zilch, zero.

Wi-fi is not ideal for Roon, especially if you are streaming to a number of devices at the same time. It's far better to use cable connections wherever possible. It's not a sound quality issue, it's a matter of network bandwidth. WiFi can't achieve the throughput of cabled installations without the use of multiple access points. Connection speeds are also affected by the distance between components and the other stuff using the network (phones, iPads, laptops, smart home devices etc.) I'm not saying it can't work, but WiFi is likely to cause more issues with Roon than with a cabled setup. I'd spend my money here if I were you. I've already cabled my whole setup.
Thanks a bunch for your thorough reply. You have indeed saved me a bunch of time and effort.

In the time since my original post I have actually upgraded as per your advice already, I bought an Orbi mesh system and so my wifi is massively improved throughout the house and I upgraded any old patch cables with CAT 6a.

I also just found a good deal on a dCS Bartok (earlier than I had planned) which is being delivered this afternoon. I have wired standard CAT 5e patch cable 15m round my room to connect it. I was thinking of an upgraded extension lead/ power cable and an etherREGEN to, I dunno, "clean up" the end of the long ethernet cable but I think i'll skip it based on your response thanks. The cable actually has a kink where I can see the core through the plastic but connecting it to my laptop I get 900Mbps so I assume it will deliver music to the Bartok perfectly well?

My Hugo2go will be relegated to my bedroom where it is also easy to have it permanently wired and so I can say goodbye to my many, many connection woes with that unit...
 

gfinlays

Active Member
Joined
May 30, 2020
Messages
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332
If it's physically possible, I would connect each of your Orbi satellites back to the router to provide an ethernet backhaul. This will give overall better stability and greater WiFi throughput.

Ethernet is able to withstand a fair amount of abuse - as long as all the cores are intact, and yours are if you're getting 900Mbps (you need all 4 pairs for Gbit Vs 2 pairs for 100Mbit). Cat5e is OK up to about 55m at Gbit speeds, so you're good with 15m. Ethernet doesn't need cleaning up. Some audiophiles will tell you differently, however, and wax lyrical about sonic improvements using snake-oil products. But the science and engineering around network transmission says otherwise. Amir's tests of the EtherREGEN showed no change in audio performance using his Audio Precision analyser and that is capable of measuring way, way beyond the limits of human hearing.

We're fickle creatures - we buy something new and add it to our system and 'hear' an improvement. But we don't actually hear any improvement - our cognitive and expectation biases lead us up the garden path.

From experience, I can categorically state that human beings make terrible witnesses. Ten people witnessing the same event will give ten different accounts of it and none of them will be particularly accurate, especially when compared to video footage. The advent of CCTV in crime prevention and detection was revolutionary.....
 
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