Now this:
"My music room router was a basic [make name], which, when I bought it, cost $39.99. Undoubtedly, its Ethernet ports were sourced and assembled as cheaply as possible. It seemed reasonable that better conductive materials and superior noise isolation might create a better-sounding network interface. How much that would matter, I had no idea. Only by listening would I discover if the ["audiophile-grade" Ethernet switch] and [external power supply for that switch] made a difference significant enough to justify their cost."
"The first thing I heard after I installed the [switch] was that [artist's] voice grew in size. Colors were more vivid. As silence filled spaces between notes, the soundstage seemed to expand in all directions. All that from a simple switch?"
"When I ditched [the switch's] switch-mode wall wart for the [external linear power supply], a touch of brightness I'd been hearing vanished and all the [switch's] positive effects increased. With more silence came more beauty and detail—and with it, more light and spiritual insight."
In this evaluation, the source was a Roon streamer connected via Ethernet over copper/fiber to a DAC. The Roon stream goes over TCP, which is a reliable layer-3 packet-buffered protocol that makes Ethernet layer-1 timing or even occasional bit errors irrelevant. So a super-precise Ethernet transceiver clock or a low-noise linear power supply have no effect on a stream of samples internally presented to the actual digital-to-analog conversion circuit. Unless, of course, the reviewer's DAC has a deficient design.
"My music room router was a basic [make name], which, when I bought it, cost $39.99. Undoubtedly, its Ethernet ports were sourced and assembled as cheaply as possible. It seemed reasonable that better conductive materials and superior noise isolation might create a better-sounding network interface. How much that would matter, I had no idea. Only by listening would I discover if the ["audiophile-grade" Ethernet switch] and [external power supply for that switch] made a difference significant enough to justify their cost."
"The first thing I heard after I installed the [switch] was that [artist's] voice grew in size. Colors were more vivid. As silence filled spaces between notes, the soundstage seemed to expand in all directions. All that from a simple switch?"
"When I ditched [the switch's] switch-mode wall wart for the [external linear power supply], a touch of brightness I'd been hearing vanished and all the [switch's] positive effects increased. With more silence came more beauty and detail—and with it, more light and spiritual insight."
In this evaluation, the source was a Roon streamer connected via Ethernet over copper/fiber to a DAC. The Roon stream goes over TCP, which is a reliable layer-3 packet-buffered protocol that makes Ethernet layer-1 timing or even occasional bit errors irrelevant. So a super-precise Ethernet transceiver clock or a low-noise linear power supply have no effect on a stream of samples internally presented to the actual digital-to-analog conversion circuit. Unless, of course, the reviewer's DAC has a deficient design.
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