I run my Melco with a DAC on the USB-port and I saw somewhere on their site it was preferable to connect the Melco to 100Mbps network in that case.
Then I saw on the alphaaudio site some discussion that 100Mbps was lower noise since 1Gbps was not true full duplex and the duplex-switching added noise.
10/100 Ethernet is full duplex, just like USB3 there is a transmit differential pair and a receive pair.
1G and above gets a little wonky. It’s has basically 4 bit 1/4 speed half duplex. Meaning when the device wants to transmit it turns off the receive and sends 4 bit packets (so at 1G it is 4 bits at 250M). Unlike 10/100 which does not have to turnaround the transmit and receive buffers when going from receive to transmit. Much more noise generated.
Anyone know if this is true? Could this be the reason Melco wants me to do a slow walk?
I have my router set to run my whole network at 100mb. That’s more than my internet connection and more than I need for virtually anything I do.
All Naim streamers have 100Mb ports by design. Their servers have Gb ports to facilitate faster file transfers, but even the highest res music streams are well below 100. Naim have said in the past that the 100Mb spec is a design choice for reduced electrical noise and reduced power consumption.
Thanks, interesting. True, I run mostly locally ripped CD:s so no network load at all.
Sound like a good idea to set the hifi-network to 100mbit for everything. not that I have much else, an ifi zen router to get AirPlay and Spotify. Will try anyway.
I use some old switches to network my house. They have a couple of Gb ports which I use for the “backbone” connecting them to each other and to the router. The main ports are all 100Mb so all peripheral devices connect to these, include the 100Mb Naim streamers.
My ISP supplied router has the option to run at 100Mb, and EEE (energy efficient ethernet) both of which I have enabled.
Hi - it depends on what speed has been negotiated for the link.
If the link has negotiated at 1Gbps then yes there is more scope for noise as all 4 pairs are active. If 100 Mbps is negotiated it only uses 2 pairs that are active and energised. A 1 GigE interface can be told to engage at 100 Mbps (aka as Fast Ethernet) , or even 10Mbps such that only 2 pairs are used.
I was trying to read the documentation and use the EtherREGEN.
According to Uptone the device that own the DAC should be connected to the B-port which runs at 100Mbps. The Dac is the sensitive part so that seem logical. So I should connect the streamer to the B-port and not the Player port as Melco suggest.
Now lucky me as I had already discovered you could connect a USB-DAC directly to the Melco without going via the network. And with some USB regeneration boxes it sounds even better to me. As you still control the thing with a UPnP controller there must be a streamer in there. And now the Melco is connected to the B-port.
Ok as long as it sounds good… it’s worth remembering a USB connection is also a network connection, it’s just not Ethernet and uses different protocols. Modern USB effectively uses two pairs. But all the consideration of serialisation clocks and common mode noise equally apply to USB as they do to Ethernet.
Year, but it is left alone relatively well compared to a network. And I have a serious two-box solution that un-USB everything. I first spent a lot of time and effort with I2S. It never felt right. Old AES/EBU with a decent low-cost DH Labs 110 cable is much nicer playing music. Will check-out better cables later.
