Just had my internet upgraded to fibre broadband, and I am sure my streamer system (ND5 XS2 and Supernait 2) sounds better.
Would you expect an internet upgrade to improve the performance of Tidal streaming or am I just enjoying a nice big placebo?
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The ND5 XS2 also has a 50MB buffer, so it smooths out most connection issues
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No pickup of Electrical noise on top of the data before reaching your home, and so less in your local network to get into the DAC if not effectively filtered out, perhaps? Just a thought - I’ve no idea if realistically anything of significance.
It would be the placebo.
I agree with @jmtennapel that there are no likely differences due to the optical versus electrical traffic coming into your home to your new (fibre) modem/router… I would expand his sentence only for clarification:
Placebo, unless you have your nd5xs2 directly connected by Ethernet cable to the switch built into the new internet router, and the new switch is better (ie lower electrical noise or re-clocked timing jitter) than the previous one.
This is very reasonable especially if your previous modem/router/switch unit was more than a few years old, since many were not very good at all and you are now in a “better performance” category of new consumer devices. Enjoy the happier experience, regardless… maybe you just notice more and like it better because you are paying closer attention… but does it matter?
Regards alan
The modem/router/switch does a signal regeneration … so noise on the intranet signal is largely independent of noise coming in from the extranet. This is true for switches as well, so you can see similar noise reduction on different segments of your home network if a “noisy” switch is replaced or isolated by a “quiet” switch.
So I doubt this mechanism is significant… which is to say that your “effectively filtered” comment really matters! And of course this observation is at the heart of the “bits are bits for digital signal traffic” and the “yes, but noise is noise for the analog circuit elements receiving this stuff” conversation.
It’s really useful to distinguish what would happen with a “digital transmission error” (data correction, re-transmission) - hence “bits are bits” - versus what is happening in the electrical signal processing domain (hf amplitude and timing noise) - hence “input noise rejection is king”.
Hope this was useful and not too simplified to be helpful!!
Regards alan
Thanks for replies everyone. I do have a new BT home hub thing which the ND5 is plugged into direct. And the old one was at least 4 years old.
Maybe some effect from that, maybe placebo. I’m enjoying it in any case!
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Unless you are super lucking its unlikely to have fibre to the house?
About 20% of UK homes can have FTTH from BT now. I don’t think 1 in 5 is super lucky. Lucky yes, but not super lucky…
Going to fibre to the house (virgin) from fibre from the cabinet on the street, then copper to the house (BT) made a noticeable difference to the streaming in my system for the better.
Actually Virgin use coax for the last few hundred yards. But it’s good for 4-5 GBs. However, it’s very asymmetrical as it uses DOCSIS 3.1 It’s much faster though than VDSL. But BT’s fibre to the home can be as fast and more symmetrical, depending on what service you buy.
No coax on mine until it’s in the house and the it’s a short run to the Virgin hub.
I have fibre to the house.
I noticed no improvement in sound quality compared to our old ADSL.
Same here!
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