optical network

[-Matt-]

I’m trying to do my best to improve what possible.
I’ve upgraded from Blusound NODE. What a night and day huge difference….

Do you mean this in terms of UI and UX or actually in the sound quality? Is the source file the same?

Can you explain the nature of the huge difference?

Bits are supposed to be bits, so it is unlikely that there is actually any audible difference between them. Often if you try to compare the two sounds (properly level matched and without knowing which one you are hearing) all of the differences that you thought were so clear with sighted listening will evaporate.

 

[audio_tony]

My apologies - that en0 with zero errors is my wifi. I hadn't realised i'd got both ethernet and wifi running together.

Here is my wired network (en7) connected as described above: also zero errors, but this time with a few more packets....

Simply put - packet loss on a non broken network - especially a home network - is a non issue.

View attachment 349965

Some errors here at home, but I think I unplugged the LAN cable briefly at some point to reroute cables.

It's sent quite a bit of traffic in the 27 days it's been up....

My NAS:
Uptime: 14:26:48 up 27 days, 3:21
RX packets 94673605 bytes 103688630212 (96.5 GiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 5964 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 98779025 bytes 114884923460 (106.9 GiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

My music player:
Uptime: up 46 days, 21:08
RX packets 30456061 bytes 34827422884 (32.4 GiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 20643651 bytes 8793640976 (8.1 GiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

This is all running on regular CAT5E (not even CAT6 at GB speeds).

I don't think I know the OP has nothing to worry about..

 

[voodooless]

Now with Transparent Audio Digital Coax premium cable. Soon will be replaced with AudioQuest Coffee USB cable 0.75M

Why spend €430 on a freaking USB cable? It will do absolutely nothing different from any cables you already have at home in the discarded cable bin.

Don’t believe the audiophile nonsense!

I’m trying to do my best to improve what possible

Then put the money where it matters: your room and speakers. Do you have a measurement Mic? Then get one and get some real data on what your setup sounds like and what you can do to improve it. Swapping cables is a waste of time and money.

Fiber maybe less noise?

Do you hear noise?

 

[ronorn]

Do you mean this in terms of UI and UX or actually in the sound quality? Is the source file the same?

Can you explain the nature of the huge difference?

Bits are supposed to be bits, so it is unlikely that there is actually any audible difference between them. Often if you try to compare the two sounds (properly level matched and without knowing which one you are hearing) all of the differences that you thought were so clear with sighted listening will evaporate.

Difference: Better image, depth, clarity, cleanliness, separation, and global filling.
bits are bits but ther is more than that. The devices the “send” these bits are quality difference ( environment influence, power supply, and computing.
And if it’s not, the final fact is better sounding to me.

 

[voodooless]

And if it’s not, the final fact is better sounding to me.

That's a lot of money to spend on placebos, isn't it?

 

[-Matt-]

Difference: Better image, depth, clarity, cleanliness, separation, and global filling.
bits are bits but ther is more than that. The devices the “send” these bits are quality difference ( environment influence, power supply, and computing.
And if it’s not, the final fact is better sounding to me.

Ok, I don't at all doubt that this is what you hear. Many of us have been down a similar type of upgrade path in the past. Whatever the most recent change was - it seems to have made a great improvement. But you have to be wary of inherent human confirmation bias, which we all have and can do nothing to avoid. You thought the change would improve things, so that is what you hear. Even if you tell yourself that you don't think it will help, or you don't care if it helps, you will still suffer from this. The only solutions are blind listening tests or just trust a microphone.

The blind listening test is very revealing because we all like to believe that we have good hearing and can clearly hear small differences (perhaps those that others can't - for a little bit of superiority). But when you no longer know which device is playing (and after you've guessed wrong a few times) you often have to admit to yourself that you really can't actually hear a difference.

Having said all that - of course it is possible that one of the devices has a broken implementation. In that case the measurements will be the proof that you need.

Measurement microphones are far more sensitive and consistent than the human ear so it should be easy to measure such huge audible differences. I'd be very interested if you could post a comparison of REW measurements for the Lumin and Blusound devices. Don't move the mic or speakers between measurements.

 

[ronorn]

That's a lot of money to spend on placebos, isn't it?

Love to do it.

 

[JP]

Switch port connected to my firewall since my 10GbE refit.

 

[voodooless]

Love to do it.

Then I don't see the point of you asking questions here... Just believe anything you want and enjoy the illusion!

 

[ronorn]

Then I don't see the point of you asking questions here... Just believe anything you want and enjoy the illusion!

There is measurement / figures and science. But these are only part of the game.
Illusion and filling equals to them. In my opinion

 

[Purité Audio]

Then I don't see the point of you asking questions here... Just believe anything you want and enjoy the illusion!

Quite I can point you to another place where right at this moment three dealer posters ( two of which are undisclosed ) are engaged in a ’everything matters’ conversation.
Keith

 

[JustJones]

There is measurement / figures and science. But these are only part of the game.
Illusion and filling equals to them. In my opinion

I have to agree with @voodooless . I don't understand why you're asking these questions on an Audio Science site if you had no intention of listening to scientific answers and were going to go with personal feelings and illusion. The science answer is in your situation there will be no audible difference between Fibre or copper Cat ethernet cable to your original question. If you want to use Fibre fine, I doubt anyone here cares but there is no benefit. In this scenario that's the entire game not part of it.

 

[ronorn]

I have to agree with @voodooless . I don't understand why you're asking these questions on an Audio Science site if you had no intention of listening to scientific answers and were going to go with personal feelings and illusion. The science answer is in your situation there will be no audible difference between Fibre or copper Cat ethernet cable to your original question. If you want to use Fibre fine, I doubt anyone here cares but there is no benefit. In this scenario that's the entire game not part of it.

I’ve asked here because I trust your judgment and opinions.

At the end of the day, I’ve learned from here and decided to think again what to do.

 

[antcollinet]

Difference: Better image, depth, clarity, cleanliness, separation, and global filling.
bits are bits but ther is more than that. The devices the “send” these bits are quality difference ( environment influence, power supply, and computing.
And if it’s not, the final fact is better sounding to me.

There is no way on earth that is coming from a different streamer. That is not how digital audio works.

My honest and supportive suggestion to you is to stop spending money, stick around here for a while, and learn what can help your sound - and what is snake oil (especially cables) and will only lighten your wallet for no benefit.

 

[-Matt-]

At the end of the day, I’ve learned from here and decided to think again what to do.

This is a refreshing and good attitude to have so kudos to you.

@ronorn What speakers are you using? That is the area that has the greatest impact on sound quality. And also how big is your room etc (speakers need to be appropriate for the space)?

 

[ronorn]

Room : 6 Meters X 7 Meters
Speakers:Focal Sopra N°3

 

[-Matt-]

Nice! They look pretty good according to the sterophile measurements:

Focal Sopra No.3 loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Focal Sopra No.3's frequency response in the farfield, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield responses. (I measured serial number '000325.)

www.stereophile.com

How do your listening impressions match with their comments?

They do note that the impedence drops pretty low which could make them difficult to drive. So what amplification are you using?

 

[ronorn]

Comments familiar to me. I’m with big listening room.
My amplifier:
McIntosh MC255.

 

[radix]

@ronorn I generally approach upgrading my system by picking the weakest link and upgrading that. As others have pointed out, going from gig ethernet to gig optical will not change anything. And even if it did change something (for example optical is less heat), it will be a tiny tiny difference.

What I would suggest is to get a measurement mic and learn to use REW. Get a baseline of how your system actually performs. It may be the best thing you could do is toe-in the speakers or put a throw rug by the couch or add some pillows to the room.

The effects of your room and speaker position is 10's of dB of difference. It's huge. It seems like you have good speakers already, but the speakers are the next biggest effect on the sound quality. Everything after that (amp, preamp, sources) is tiny tiny differences for any competently engineered product.

You might also poke around the forum or ask people about how to conduct a good listening test. You want to have very good level matching (i.e. use a multimeter on the speaker and a test tone to really nail it down), you want to use fairly short samples between the A and B, you want to be in the same listening position. Doing it blind (e.g. having your significant other flip a switch) can help, especially if you want to report the results, and can get around some cognitive biases we all have. But if it's just for your personal information, it is still important to do those other things.

 

[Palladium]

My own optical modem is actively filtering out tens or hundreds of gigabytes per second of other users' data right now on this single fiber coming to my home, and yet I still get steady 4ms ping to Cloudflare's DNS server even on Wi-Fi. So why would network cables even matter at all once it works?