Yes, Rich, but if you take your Ethernet solution and test it on several other brands of hifi gear it won’t give the same result on all of them.
And if you take your Ethernet cables and switches and use them in a few systems with ND555s, that have different speakers and amps and rooms and psus and electrical environments and supports and ears with different software versions and different music playing, you won’t even get the same results there either.
I think that’s what Mike’s saying in his post above.
Peder, if your cableholic doesn’t know how to use his money, here a more expensive Ethernet cable than Chord Music.
I quoted a recent post from a member.
Bits most definitely are bits! And if anything is happening to the bits in the network then firstly the ethernet protocol is not working properly, extremely unlikely if ethernet specification cables and switches and streamer input are used, and very disturbing if other cables or switches are adding or taking away data as it would mean the digitised music as in the recording is being corrupted/modified before reaching the decoder. And I cannot see how what musically must be random changes by a cable or switch effectively adding or removing bits can in any way be considered to be hi-fi or even musical!
One distinct possibility is that it is the effect of non-digital electrical noise (e.g. RF) being picked up or being suppressed by network components, and thus the modulation of the analog signal or some other interference as it is being reconstructed can vary, with a more or less pleasing effect to the listener: that of course only the unmodulated represents the recording itself.
@Simon-in-Suffolk has referred to timeframe effects in different switches (if I am remembering correctly). That, and SiS will correct me if I am wrong, I would not expect to be of any significance when streaming music from one’s own store on the network to a streamer that loads the entire song into memory before playing, as for example does the ND555, whereas RF still teaching the streamer whilst playing can still reach the DAC and wreak its effect (unless the streamer blocks it effectively - some will block better than others).
So bits are bits, but the network may be a source or collector of other interference that change the sound. My conclysiin is that network components may variously be adding, reducing or passing whatever interference is having an audible effect, and hence what is reported in this thread. The differences heard by different people in their systems then will be due to differences in interference arising from different electrical environments, different networks, different susceptibilities of different streamers, different degrees of resolution and background noise in the analog stages of different systems, and of course different brain sensitivity to whatever the ear picks up.
Bits can only be bits - they cannot be half-bits or bits and a half. Or rather, the voltage representing the bits can be above or below their ideal value, but they will be interpreted either as on or off (1 or 0). There is no other value that they can take. None whatsoever. So if we are using a system where, say 5 volts is on and 0 volts is off (you can use any voltage you like in principle), then you would accept anything above 2.5 volts as on (or some such threshold) and anything less as off. So it doesn’t matter of your voltages at the clock ticks are 0, 0.1, 1, 6,3.8,5.8 for example, this will be interpreted as 0,0,0,1,1,1 - nothing else.
If there is sufficient noise on the system, and the noise is not rejected, then it would be possible, in theory, for some of those voltages to be modified, and the 3.8 become 2, for instance. In this case that string of bits would be 0,0,0,1,0,1 - but then another mechanism comes into force - error checking and error correcting. This detects that the received information is wrong in that particular packet, and the receiver requests a re-send, in which case the data are re-sent, rechecked and if necessary another resend is requested. If this happened a lot then several things could happen. It could be that the connection is, effectively lost - and you get silence. More likely you will get dropped packets, which would result in very audible degradation - and certainly not in the form of loss of bass, or soundstage or anything like that. It would be very obvious, not subtle at all, and (this is important) random. No particular frequency range would be selectively affected.
So the bit-stream arriving at the DAC will be correct - bit-perfect.
Any differences between Ethernet-compliant cables will not be through bad bits - and certainly not through bits that are not bits.
All that is left - if there are differences - is EMF effects on the DAC - presumably introduced in some way by the cable. These will not be affecting the bitstream, but I suppose could affect the output of the DAC in some way. My knowledge here is insufficient to say much.
Ok point taken, bits are bits - but not in the context of being immune from other effects … there is clearly something happening. I do not pretend to know … something is influencing …the bits or the mechanism of transfer. How can you account for a linear power supply on a nas drive … which was working perfectly as standard (with std psu) … altering the resolution - in other words extra detail present sonically. My point is the eco system in which the bits are transferred - has an influence some how. My understanding is that the ethernet protocols have some degree of tollerance. Perhaps noise or RFi has some impact I don’t know … I do know that LPS supplies on both my NUC and NAS made a big difference.
I imagine the power supply is delivering a lower noise floor, therefore more detail is resolved. In other words, bits are bits, but a network will have a relative noise floor, below which, details will not be revealed. Lower the noise floor, less details will be masked.
I would love to watch you install someone’s system, or improve it. I expect that you keep them fully informed on what you are doing - after all, it is their equipment you are modifying. Presumably you tell them what to expect from the changes, otherwise I don’t suppose that they would be particularly happy with changes being made. Do you try to teach them the TuneDem method?
That applies in the analog domain, but not digital, for the reasons expounded by Beachcomer. The voltage representing every ‘1’ is the same and way above even the worst case noise level, and if it weren’t the then no data would get through. But a noisy power supply to a switch (N.B. while some SMPSs are worse than LPSs, I understand that is not inevitably the case) may inject RF noise into the network, so with a streamer/DAC that is sesceptible to that particular frequency range changing to a less noisy power supply less RF might get through.
Probably the reason why Cisco switches with external ps or adding linear ps on switches improve the sound. Noise is injected in the network and we all prefer noisy sound.
There is no such thing as audio “details” transported through Ethernet cables.
Ethernet cables (expensive or cheap) transport numeric data in an very robust and reliable way.
That data is encapsulated into Ethernet frames.
This means, in terms of data, there is no difference between cheap or outrageously expensive cables.
The difference is more in the noise shaping domain. This explains why some can hear a difference between cables, and also explains why those cables are so “system dependant”.
Hi yes that kinda make sense … but ask yourself this those bits that are lost to noise … those that effectively have not been picked up by the dac because they are swamped by the noise floor…have effectively been lost. Therefore the original digital signal has not got through … so you no longer have a perfect signal. The bits are effectively not there at the end where it counts… So here we have potentially a lossless system subject to a lossy environment…take from that what you will…its reality. Now it stands to reason anything you can do to reduce issues - like noise by say using low noise psu’s, possibly noise rejecting ethernet transformers, cables that possibly reject rfi etc, switches with better internal regulation etc … will help. What I was getting originally - if you are marketing a 150k amp … it makes sense to demo that equipment … taking reasonable care of the source…
The expression « bits are not only bits » means that data transfer is not all. And even isolation from noise are not enough. Sophisticated switches are improved nowadays by better ps but also better clocks. Some switches can be improved by external clocks, like Sotm or Ether Regen.
Yes, I feel too. Streaming is finally relatively new, maybe 15 years old. And the first high end streamer was the Linn KDSM from 2004 ( or 2005). With Naim it begun in 2009 (?) with the Hdx.
I remember that at the beginning there were essentially Dacs with usb connection to laptops. In Hifi Shows they were showing big systems, very expensive dacs and ridiculous mini laptops. The Dac was considered as the most important part.
No, this does not happen - at least not unless something very seriously is wrong, in which case the music would be really horrid. If the bits are swamped by the noise floor (it would have to be a huge amount of noise - volts rather than millivolts) then either they will be corrected (error correction) or rejected and a resend requested. The way this works is that a rather clever arithmetic calculation is performed on the values of the words (which are made up of bits) at the transmission end, called a checksum, and this is also sent with the data. The receiver makes the same calculation, and compares its results with the checksum. The sophistication of this varies from application to application (i.e. not just on ethernet - it happens in very many situations in computing). Different checksum calculations will detect different kinds of error, and some will allow error correction at the receiving end - i.e. it will work out where the error(s) occurred and correct the error. Or a resend is requested. It’s actually much more complicated than this with ethernet (and others) with frames, preambles, data lengths, checksum lengths and much more. The thing is that it is really robust. Just look at what is on your screen right now. It has come through a great many different processes - through the broadband, your local ethernet etc., with all sorts of data integrity checks along the way. And what you get is what was sent. There is no difference between what you get as data to display on your screen and audio data. It’s bits all the way down. These days you don’t get characters with changed shapes, or the wrong characters, or the wrong colours unless something is really wrong. In the old days of dial-up modems you did sometimes get strange character substitutions - because the error handling was much cruder. At a simple level, checksums in those days often would cope only with single-bit changes, or maybe 2 or 3-bit changes. The point is, the data transfer is fantastically robust.
Arguably yes it is. That does something very complex (and clever). The first part is very simple - change the data stream into numbers. These represent the voltage over time. But that comes in discrete values, and some maths needs to be applied to change that into an analogue waveform, which is then presented to the pre-amp.
And still is, although to shine it must either be good at rejecting RF or must be protected from RF. Electrical (RF) noise may bring down the sound quality of a good DAC, but no matter how clean the digital audio signal may be, even true zero RF, will not make a poor DAC’s output sound good.
Ok I bow to your knowledge on ethernet protocals… I know that quite allot of extra detail was missing on my system until released by a few tweaks - how do you account for that … something is doing something…and improved psu’s etc make a substantive difference. For me it all started when replacing one ethernet cable… I mean details in my system have been revealed that were never audible before… to my mind that is information. For example an improved psu on my Roon NUC made a significant difference…how can that be…If you are totally right then we should all have perfect sound. It simply is not the case…I am not saying you are wrong … there is just something - or a series of somethings that make a difference. I am not alone…I don’t profess to be an expert … I do not believe in mumbo jumbo … but each step of the journey has been incremental and definately audible…better stereo,bass texture, more information etc etc.
with different software versions and different music playing, you won’t even get the same results there either.
