You can put a media converter anywhere you want and get a suitable length of fibre to connect it to your streamer. If you want to give it a try just get any switch with an SFP port, the obvious choice being a used Cisco Catalyst that will cost very little and has a decent commercial grade PSU in it. Or you can jump straight in and buy the audiophile stuff if you’re prepared to stick a 0 or two on the price.
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A friend of mine ordered them off the big river, I do not have an account. The modules were the ones recommended in the Lumin online manual.
He said that the cable popped up as compatible when he was ordering them.
I think Peter said multi mode would not work, but they do.
Wouldn’t it be the module that determines what mode it is, not the cable?
This stuff is all new to me.I do have music playing, so I must have it right.
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Check your SFPs, I suspect that they are made for multi mode FO because the singe mode cable is thicker.
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Will do tomorrow, at work right now.
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Thats good advice thank you.
I think i will let the P1 burn in first and for me to get more used to it and have it optimised.
Once thats done i can experiment between copper and fibre network connections to make a comparison of whats better for my basic “network” connection from my modem.
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I posted the question to Peter on audioshark and he confirmed I am using Multi mode cable…he looked here at my photos.
He told me to order the single mode yellow one, and was surprised it even works.
Thanks for the heads up yellow-banana.
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Btw, your picture shows a very long cable? Unless you really need to route the cable from somewhere far away, a 2 meter long cable from the FO media converter to your Lumin streamer is more than good.
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Update;
A relaxing Saturday morning and listening to “Toy” by Yello.
Nice deep bass coming through but very controlled and no booming. The high notes are very crisp. Overall, it is very detailed with good soundstage.
Thoroughly enjoying the new set up and glad that we made the change.
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Excellent idea. The reasons for going optical should be two-fold: 1. It provides galvanic isolation from upstream electrical noise and 2. Lumin claims it sounds better.
The thing is, if the only reason FO sounds better it due to the isolation, then there’s a possibility that wi-fi with an ethernet bridge and copper feed into the Lumin could sound better. Like FO, Wi-fi provides complete galvanic isolation so it then becomes a question of which interface is best implemented on the Lumin, FO or Ethernet. Taiko Extreme users were originally recommended to use FO for best SQ, but that recommendation has recently changed due to HW and SW upgrades on the Extreme.
It would certainly be worth checking both isolation solutions on the Lumin, as you suggest
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Thank you for the further information and advice, i will certainly also look into the ethernet bridge option as well as FO.
All the professional reviews i have read on the Lumin P1 recommend the FO connection due to sound quality improvements during their testing.
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Yes FR, I will be ordering the yellow single mode cable when I get a chance. Not sure if it will sound any better than multi mode, hope so, that would be a nice bonus.
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I would give the entire system a once over to ensure that bit capacity rates and modes are all correct. If you have the possibility I would also compare 1GB with 100mbps ports to see which sounds best with your hardware. 100Mbps is apparently less noisy than the more hectic 1GB. I’ve never measured but I use 100Mbps ports.
Regarding FO on Lumin, it could well be that Lumin has done a lot of excellent engineering to provide a very well resourced FO port and downstream processing, in which case you’ll clearly hear the difference if the ethernet port is less well endowed.
Also don’t ignore the importance of power supplies in all this as they will have a major impact on the final sound.
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You may want to check if your media converter supports both single-mode and multi-mode FO. Some do, some don’t, my Cisco switch supports both.
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Hi, 100 Mbps is only less noisy as it uses less power compared to 1Gbps, that is in each direction it uses only one twisted pair as opposed two twisted pairs.
Other than that 1Gbps is not that much more hectic than 100 Mbps. The modulation encoding method in 1Gbps is more efficient too, which may offset some of the difference.
However Naim only support Fast Ethernet (100/10 Mbps) so connecting a GigE switch to a Naim streamer will result in the link negotiating down to act as a Fast Ethernet link.
Away from the stream / switch segment it is not going to matter what speed you use, as long it can provide the minimum bandwidth.
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Caution, be very careful with single mode … it typically is designed for long links, and a short link could overload it causing errors. Single mode also tends to consume more power / cost to run. If you use single mode you should only use on a managed switch such that you can check for link errors, and you may need an optical attenuator to match light levels so as to eliminate errors if you get them. Single mode terminations are more delicate.
You are better off, in my opinion, using OM rated fibre, and if you use OM 1 or OM2 then the transceivers use LEDs as opposed to lasers so are more suited for home networks, and effectively plug and play.
OM rated fibres are standard Ethernet based multi mode fibres.
I would focus on OM1. (Orange jacket), but OM3/4 will likely be fine as fibres on a MM transceiver.
OM1 can provide 100 Mbps over 2km (10Gbps over 33m), and is possibly the most flexible fibre to use in home networks.
In set up I find fibre more likely have issues compared to twisted pair, so my recommendation is that you use on equipment you can review the link integrity and frame error rate to ensure working optimally. Twisted pair or wifi is a lot more straightforward here. However if using OM fibre once successfully setup it should remain reliable for many years.
It would be ironic if your new fibre link is forcing your streamer to work harder requesting packets to be resent … unless chronic it will still work, but potentially not ‘sounding ‘ as good as it otherwise could.
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I dunno… The marketing team were probably pretty keen on it as a selling point. A bit like XLR over short runs.
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You may find it interesting that the new linn streamer does not work well with 100 mbps, the music would stutter from time to time, also lumin only recommend single-mode FO (see comment from @NO-QUARTER a few posts back).
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The recommendation is actually from the Linn audio engineer(s), Linn marketing have nothing to do with it as far as I know.
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Oh dear that must be embarrassing for Linn… I am sure they are on the case.
For reference 192/24/2 is just under 10 Mbps … so relatively trivial.
Single mode is not recommended for consumer use… more suited for long haul like between towns. Don’t know what LUMIN were thinking of… this does happen with some audiophile companies but hey ho…
Anyway if you do go OS fibre absolutely important to check link integrity errors. Now I would say that is advice from everyone else who uses fibre… and this is not really a consumer plug and play expectation… kind of gets in the way of enjoying the music really
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