Noise control

I thought I’d offer my six pence worth some on using Chord’s EE1 in conjunction with the EE8 and Apple AirPort Express across my music network.

My network is divided across the house with the broadband connection and WiFi hub, an Apple Time Capsule 6th Gen, in my study, configured as Chord’s System Type 1;

(Image (c) Chord Co)

where the network switch is the EE8 directly connected to an Atom HE. Adding the EE1 showed an immediate and perceptible improvement in SQ, clearly heard on the Focal Utopia’s. Undoubtedly a positive outcome, supporting the concept of a switch improving SQ with moderate additional gains from noise filtration.

The above is bridged to my primary system using an Apple AirPort Express 2nd Gen configured to extend the WiFi LAN and act as a 2-port network bridge/seitch, again configured as a System Type 1.

(Image (c) Chord Co)

It’s not entirely clear whether the 2 Ethernet ports on the Airport Express are operating in bridge or router mode when the device is used to extend a WiFi LAN in Apple’s parlance, but as it’s the same hardware, I am assuming the contribution to network noise to be the same in either case.

This time adding the EE1 between the AP switch and NSC222 delivered almost the same impact to that described above, perhaps a surprising in that the AirPort Express is a low cost network element, probably with very noisy internal psu and Ethernet components with absolutely no thought given to audio(phile) considerations.

Again a pleasing outcome at a not unreasonable cost, the obvious usual caveat of my system, my network and my ears notwithstanding :innocent:.

ATB, J

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I’ve certainly found very worthwhile gains from an EE8 switch and two EE1’s in my system with Melco source. Further and very worthwhile gains from adding two RJ45 Ground Arrays - one in the BT router and one in the EE8.

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