Oh bother…was waiting for the invite Caviar and Cocktails on the fair ship the NigelB. With all the forum behind you, it could be well used for us freeloaders😁
I suspect, should the fair ship NigelB become a reality, it would be more cocktails than caviar.
Bring your own Margaritas chaps!
All this swapping of different Ethernet cables and listening within short timescales. Doesn’t Ethernet cables need to burn in like most others ??? Could DBs negative test of the expensive ones be down to not being conditioned enough against the older well run in ones ???
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But bits is bits, bruv.
I found a Cat 5 e 26awgx4p cable patch cord so I thought I would give it a try. It came in a pack of 6 from Amazon, a few pounds the lot. They were in various colours no difference between the colours. To be fair it was not bad, but I preferred the timing and tonality of Melco cat 7… it sounds right to me. Could be my system not revealing enough, position of Cisco on my Fraim beneath 252? Anyway well worth a try as it’s a cheap experiment, no harm done, and an itch scratched for a while.
It may be that the Melco cable is better than the particular CAT5e you tried in your system.
I’ve tried two CAT5e brands and although I initially preferred the second one as it does do deep-bass timing a bit better - after a while I was not liking it and went back to my initial CAT5e and it was a relief as all the fine-detail was back I’d initially subliminally missed.
The CAT5e can initially sound underwhelming in its presentation, but I find it settles-down and everything is there with nothing over-emphasized in my system. But you also get used to certain sonic signatures over time and your own mind will adapt to any peculiarities to extract information - for me this definitely happens to an extent.
I suspect there is more to it than just the specification Category of the cable and other things also add-up to give the end-result heard.
Good to scratch the itch to find-out - it is what I’m doing.
DB.
Hi folks, especially DB. I have been following this post regarding the different ethernet cables etc. and its got me concerned that my current set-up is very suboptimal.
I have a run on of about 50 feet,some of which is outdoors, of tandem I believe cat-5e from my switch or router in the basement to a “bonus room” 2 floors above connected directly to the ND555.Pretty simple. Obviously high end ethernet would be out of the question. Even trying other inexpensive cable would be very difficult.
If you feel this grossly suboptimal, what would you recommend I do?
As always, Thanks
a dedicated switch between, and a shorter cable between this switch and your nd555. Cat 5 e or other 1 m cable. Cisco catalyst 8 port switch for instance.
Try to have a short run of Ethernet between your music data machine and the ND555. It will ‘work’ fine as you have it as you know, but sub-optimal it may well be - only way is to try a way to get things closer - see if it is better or not and then you will know. You spent a lot on the ND555 so a little effort on relatively low-cost items for Ethernet is worth getting right if it improves your implementation.
If you can at least try moving the music database from where the music is pulled to the ND555 close for a test and use a switch near the ND555 to connect everything else back-up to get your network connectivity then that will give you a way to know and decide if the difference is worth it to you or not.
I run mine about 1m so it is very close, but I was going to try the database well-away in another room but the Melco Designer talked me out of that, saying he could get poorer results with 5m or more away. Others have also told me closer gave them best results.
I’ve not personally tried it so do not know. I had an initial option to try the music server close - liked the result and it remained there.
DB.
Are you streaming from a NAS or from an online service such as Tidal?
If you have a NAS, you could, as an experiment, put it in the same room as the streamer. Connect the NAS, streamer and router to a switch, and see if that changes anything.
I stream from my QNAP NAS and Tidal. The NAS is connected to one of the switch ports in the basement and the long run of Cat5 to another switch or directly to a router port. I believe I ran out of switch ports.
So I guess I can bring the NAS to the music room and connect it to the long run of ethernet and then a short run from NAS to ND? Why would I need another switch upstairs?
BTW I have 200 Mbps from ethernet connected to ND
You can’t connect the NAS to the streamer. You need to connect both of them to your network, over which they will ‘find’ each other. A switch will enable you to do this. No guarantee that it will change anything, but there’s nothing to lose by trying it if you’re curious.
Yes - but do this: place a switch - any reasonable one - in the same room as the NAS and ND555 and connect them both to ports on that switch so that the run NAS-switch-ND555 is short …then connect the rest of your home LAN to another port (or ports) of the switch.
This is called segmenting your network - and it will do more than just reduce the cable-run lengths, but also remove a lot of unwanted network traffic from the HiFi digital music part of your network and is just a better way to do it all IMO.
DB.
OK sounds fairly simple. I will try connecting my long run of Cat-5 to a new switch in the music room and then connect the Nas to one port and the ND to another in short 1-2 meter? runs.
Thanks
Yes - then you will know if you will get better performance than you have now or not.
Either way you will know and put mind at ease.
DB.
DB remember a switch won’t reduce unwanted network traffic, unless you are referring to and comparing to old fashioned half duplex hub networks providing a single collision domain of yesteryear which I suspect almost no one in 2019 has anymore. Segmentation does not subdivide a broadcast domain.
A switch will send broadcast traffic to all hosts which then need to be processed and/or discarded.
In a typical home network there is a high level of broadcast traffic from consumer devices and apps… it tends to make them more plug and play and require less manual setup. This traffic will pass to the streamer for processing whether it wants it or not.
Another form of broadcast traffic than can be filtered using a higher spec switch such as a 2960 is multicast group traffic. This traffic is only set to hosts who have opted to join a specific group … this uses something called IGMP snooping. This is used by UPnP’s SSDP for example.
Lesser consumer switches like little Netfear switches don’t have the capability to manage this so simply broadcast multicast data whether you are in the group or not… thereby adding processing noise potentially to your host or streamer.
One of the only effective ways to remove broadcast related chatter from your audio network, is to use a dedicated subnet for audio… and your WiFi control point.
Typically broadcast chatter does not traverse routed subnets.
Be interesting to see what server they use, the Core was not liked by J Honeyball on this forum…he suddenly left after a few arguments with folks.
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can you make photos of the review of nd555 and publish them here? it would be very cool
Is it possible to turn chromecast off on the new streamers?