Stephen, if you are set on going wireless then you must ionise the in room atmosphere to maximise wireless wave purity. I’m sure this deserves another mania thread to test for the best ionising machine, please be sure to test x2 machines running in opposed polarity.
I bought one yesterday and waiting for it to be shipped. I wasn’t in any hurry and wanted to find a new unused switch that was in my price range. That said, my current CG/PD combo sounds really good. Every day I listen I’m gobsmacked at how good it sounds. The Cisco/BJC combo is the real revelation for me from this thread. The SU/QNAP(Minim/Bubble/Asset) on the Cisco/BJC network is producing some serious fidelity. It’s hard to envision it getting better with POE but maybe it will.
are you referring to synchronisation bits at the start of fames? If so then Manchester Encoding - or variants there of - are used to detect the bit value at a point in time - but this can affect the timing gate at a transition boundary - and this switching gate can occur/be triggered due to jitter at ever so slightly different periods of times - and thus you create your sidebands proportional to this timing variation - kind of like FM
Jim
I currently use
Roon/NAS -> Switch 2960 -> Twin Ether Channel -> Switch 3560 -> NDX2
Good for you - but remember on wireless for optimum flows (in the same way as we are talking about ethernet optimum flows) one needs to use WMM - and that is its whole new ball game as well/ Naim does not currently support WMM.
Same thing has happened in my system - BJC and 2 or 3 Ciscos has made it sound very good.
Am finding it hard to drag myself away from listening to more ECM LPs on Tidal.
Can you say which switch you bought it the end?
Do you think Twin Ether Channel would have a better effect on SQ than PoE in my 272/555DR based-system?
Or should I do both?
How many hours of faffing around is required to set up PoE roughly?
Is this just a case of finding some instrcutions online and then locating the switches on a bit of software or a site on my PC or iPad and then reconfiguring them to etherchannel?
Or do I need a console cable to plug the laptop in to each switch?
id be inclined to do both - each one is providing a separate potential benefit.
PoE is plug and play by default - so about 5 seconds
Etherchannel requires the use of the console port - or loop back IP address if you have configured one to log into your switches and configure.
My config on one of my switches to setup the Ether Channel
Virtual interface EtherChannel Port-Channel 1 is mapped to interface Fa0/1 and Fa0/2
I use ‘vlan 5’ for my house family network traffic - you can leave this out
‘switchport mode dynamic desirable’ and ‘channel-group 1 mode desirable’ simply means it will try and build a Cisco EtherChannel if it can with the other switch.
Here is the show power command that shows two standard IEEE PD devices being powered - and their power budget
I went with the WS-C2960CPD-8PT-L. $80 USD shipped. I’m told it can send POE to my 2960CPD-8TT-L. I’m hoping there are some benefits to be had from the switch closest to my streamer and NAS not being plugged into the mains and the first switch having an external auxiliary PS instead of internal PS. We shall see.
I hooked up my 2960CPD-8PT-L yesterday, being fed by my main 2960PS-16. You will have to go into it to manage It to accept two or more cables for power I believe. I couldn’t get mine with one poE uplink to power on the office 2960PD. I need the other 1000mb uplink to go to the opticalModule which only accepts 1000mb. All BJC Cat6a except a Melco Opal between the two Ciscos. NUC Roon ROCK server plugged into the CPD switch now.
So far so good. Wasn’t sure cold at first. Might try a BJC Cat6a between the two switches. I needed more bass but the Melco always seems a bit too much. But sounding very natural, maybe not quite as detailed and etched as going through the main Cisco, but my true to the instrument. But my ears are messed up at the moment (fell off the dairy and sugar wagon over the holidays) so hard to really judge. Bigger bass and presence for sure with the two switches. Right now no desire to remove or change anything. Will post a picture later of the octopus on my server shelf!
No - by default, PoE is on by default. There is no configuration to set - unless you want to disable PoE. See my above post. All plug and play…
Looking forward to hearing your results.
From my tests with 2 PoE switches, I expect you will be pleased.
Both mine had to go back for a refund as they both made a dangerous buzzing sound.
So I’m trying to gather the strength for a 3rd go at it.
Although the 2 nonPoE Ciscos I’ve already got sound v good anyway.
Great, thanks. So I will connect the uplink ports of the 8PT-L and 8TT-L and that is all I need to do, right?
you simply connect one of your power source ports to the PD device power port - which is typically one or two of its uplink ports.
If you have hard disabled (admin down) a port - then there will be no power - or the port has been error - disabled by the switch - a key error was detected and the switch shut the port to protect the switch or the network … but both of these unlikely if default.
The command
show interface status err-disabled will show any critical errors that required the switch to close the port
I think you just connect any of the yellow PoE marked output ports to the solus uplink port on the receiving PD switch.
Thanks, gents, will do.
General question:
Does anyone have experiences - e.g. home tests - to share on whether Ciscos of different model numbers and/or different ages work together well or badly in hifi settings as regards SQ?
catalyst switches if different ages work well - I have a Cat 3560 and Cat 2960 of different ages.
The area that is more relevant is the software builds - and I keep all mine at the latest version available for the device
My PD is a 2018 model and my CG is a 2016 model (i think) and they’ve worked flawlessly together in default/unconfigured mode. I haven’t tried using the older blue 8TC L in my current configuration.
They’re not still stacked directly on top of one another are they?
(Was that in a pic you posted a few eons ago?)
Are you going to sell on via t’bay the ones you don’t end up using?


