I have Ethernet via ADSL. About 12 Megabytes.
I don’t need fast speed to download. My interest is only the sound quality of the local streaming ( from Melco).
I received a proposal to have fiber in my house.
Can it improve sound quality of local streaming?
Here a test of my adsl.
Has anyone gone from adsl to fiber and heard sound quality of the streaming improved?
No, it won’t . These are simply WAN access technologies… both have their place.
There are twisted pair and fibre access technologies of many bandwidths. The max twisted pair on offer in the UK is about 1.3Gbps, fibre can go higher… but this doesn’t affect SQ.
What you do want do be careful of is your NTE/OLT/modem and router. xDSL technology is more susceptible than fibre than noise, so xDSL equipment tends to be very low noise. Fibre can work with higher noise. With audio we want low noise .
So why people wants very often to have fiber?
Some say the image quality is better, because of better speed… Not true?
Not sure they do… unless they want higher bandwidths over longer distances.
Twisted pair is distance sensitive, fibre a lot less so.
Perhaps they are fibbing about fibre…
So I have no reason to go to fiber?
.But yes no reason unless you there are specific reasons in your locality, such that higher bandwidth services are only available in fibre based services as opposed to twisted pair.
With fibre, there is a whole load of variants to, many fibre broadband services use passive optical network technology which tend to be contented access technologies but as a consequence are a cheaper way of providing fibre.
With VDSL, it’s the fibre network from the cabinet that is shared.
They say that bandwidth will be 10x faster, or at least much much faster.
It’s the reason i am tempted. But if it has absolutely no effect on sound quality of the streaming, I have no other reason to have it.
Yep, by all means get if you need the bandwidth, but the access tech will have no bearing on SQ.
Of course different network equipment on your LAN might subtly change the noise on your LAN, but off in the fringes… and is a bit of lottery… could be better or worse… but we will be talking minute changes in sound more than SQ changes if anything.
I agree with Simon:
The higher bandwidth can be useful for many things: high-quality 4K video streams; fast data transfer (from a Windows update to other large SW downloads, …); for sending data into the net (e.g. sharing documents or pictures, …); or these days taking backups towards cloud storage or working from home.
Any of this can add convenience / open new use cases and be worth the money for higher bandwidth. (For individual evaluation…)
But even for (HQ) audio-streams your current line should be sufficient; for in-house streaming in your home network it’s close to irrelevant.
I get about the same results as @frenchrooster. I’ve been told by a major provider that in 3-4 years’ time I won’t have the choice anyway and will have to switch to fiber - the argument being that the traditional wires will be removed.
One thing I’d like to know: I already have cable TV (fiber + a few yards of coax between the box outside and my home) and I can switch to a full TV/telephone/Internet service from the same company. Will those few yards of coax (20?) make a difference or not?
@frenchrooster To me this is a no-brainer and there is simply no excuse to not go fiber when you can. You may be using Orange right now. The cost is practically the same and speed, convenience, reliability is OFF THE CHARTS. I went from Orange ADSL dl speed of about 12 mbps, sufficient but just barely, to a regularly sampled stable rate of 946 mbps by fiber. Same price. Do I need to draw a picture here? Furthermore, in France it has already been announced that the old RTC copper network, that we all had or still have, is being replaced by fiber. This is a government policy. Today we have connected homes, multiple devices connected at any time, IoT objects more and more common, streaming services like Netflix, Molotov, Hulu, etc. are more and more common in French homes. Tidal, Qobuz and so forth means you will require bandwidth and plenty of it either now or in the forseeable future. Try streaming a DSD file or album with your connection…I do not believe there is a SQ differnce, BUT stable, reliable high-speed data rate delivery by fiber is absolutely worth it, especially if it’s essentially the same subscription rate cost. And no, I don’t work for Orange.
Mine is Sfr.
I am tempted and have already an appointment next. But wanted to have advices before.
I feel more convinced now.
My Ethernet for now is not stable, specially for tv , like canal plus or replay. Have to reboot frequently.
But recently I took a last generation of Sfr router and my Wifi is worst vs before.
So I don’t trust completely all these Ethernet companies like Orange or Sfr.
If you have FTTP service for the same price as ADSL then get it.
In the UK ADSL is being phased out slowly, and replaced by fibre to the cabinet services… the cabinet is where the fibre splits out to twisted pair for the final distribution. This uses VDSL technology and is often referred to as fibre,although more a hybrid service. There are alternatives to VDSL such as DOCSIS (Virgin ) using fibre to a cabinet then using coax for the final distribution.
For newer housing developments now, then is often direct passive optical networking to the house, more rural setups also are now using this method where coax, or VDSL would not be economic.
In urban areas there is also increasingly G.Fast services which use xDSL technology, but can deliver around 800Mbps down load sync and 200 Mbps upload sync over twisted pair between your house and distribution point… In a few years time there will be no twisted pair upstream from the cabinets, just fibre, and houses do/will use twisted pair to communicate Ethernet to the cabinets. ADSL uses twisted pair across the telephone distribution network to the exchange, which is why it’s being slowly phased out.
I don’t know how this fares with France.
When I went from ADSL to VDSL in my village my speed went from 3.5Mbps to 47.55Mbps.
Interesting subject. Just so happens that earlier today, I switched internet providers and had a FTTH connection installed whereas before I had FTTN. I was actually asking myself the same question, would streaming from Tidal or Qobuz improve not due to the higher connection speeds but the fact the modem/router was now connected via a fibre optic cable. I cannot A/B seeing the other service has been eliminated but will do some listening.
I would go for fiber anytime, it’s better technology than coaxial & adsl, but I would not expect any improvement on SQ.
In the UK FTTH/FTTP is increasingly being marketed as Full Fibre or equivalent…
The key thing is fibre to a distribution point DP, primary cross connection point PCP cabinet or Optical Line Termination OLT point/cabinet…
From there Full Fibre uses a (contended) Passive Optical Network distribution, Fibre Superfast (VDSL) uses the local twisted pair distribution or DOCSIS uses a cable TV coax distribution.
They all have their pros and cons, but fibre can generally support high max throughputs and is not susceptible to environmental EM conditions.
The alternative is end to end fibre access circuits to a point of presence, however these are not classed as broadband and are a lot more expensive but are non contended and typically used by industrial and larger commercial concerns. Because they are non contended circuits they are delivered using Ethernet speeds (as effectively that is what they are)
If that is happening, that is shockingly sharp practice… I can’t see that being permitted in the UK.
I think one needs to be wary of overly relying on sync speeds or peak throughput to compare services, although the marketeers like to focus on this because you can use numbers without needing to understand anything.
It’s the contention that i would be more interested in, (ie how many customers share backhaul fibre bandwidth and interconnection points) but that is not published and harder to find… this will vary from ISP to ISP and not be necessarily defined by the infrastructure, and generally (though not always) this is where you pay for what you get.
Personally in the UK I can’t understand why Ofcom don’t focus more on this… I think there is much misleading information out there … even mixing wifi performance with broadband performance on advice pages for CV-19 from people who should know better like the BBC, shocking. No wonder the average punter is no doubt completely confused.
I would be curious on your listening. I don’t understand, from other responses, why sound should not improve if the stability of Ethernet is much improved.
However I am not denying anything, just wondering.
I suspect you are confusing internet with ethernet.
It’s a good question to ask why the sound should not improve if the stability of your internet connection is much improved. But in your case I don’t think the internet in unstable as such, it’s just slow (low bandwidth) changing to fibre gives greater bandwidth
We have 2 internet connections. Our main one is Virgin Media which is a 200 mbps service and we have a backup ADSL service which is approximately 6 mbps.
Both services go through our dual WAN Draytek router that will automatically switch between services if the main fibre service goes down.
On either service the sound is identical streaming from QoBuz, albeit that the ADSL struggles to maintain a decent 24/192 stream but on 24/96 it’s fine.
