Thank you for that very informative post. I have a question that I want to confirm my answer to. I have Virgin fibre into my house, and I’m then taking a LAN feed straight from the Virgin modem into an EE8, then direct to my NDX2 and NAS. I’m using a Puritan PSM156 which is powering the NAS and the NDX2. I’ve currently got an Ifi x powering the Virgin Modem and an Ifi micro power 2 powering the EE8.
Using your point I should be upgrading the EE8 significantly so it is above the quality of the power supply for the modem? I’m thinking the Ifi Ipower elite for both, but with the EE8 coming from the Puritan? Unfortunately I only have one spare outlet on the Puritan.
Does that sound about right to you?
Edit: I’m guessing the same applies to the power supply for my NAS?
Both ps are important, in the current configuration you should probably try to upgrade EE power first. You can also try to put NAS further away from streamer, to the incoming router via wifi if it works like this.
Likewise, with the caveat that the supplied smps is not connected on the same circuit. I initially plugged it in to the Isol-8 Powerline Axis with the rest of the kit.
it looks like your old PSU might have been causing a high degree of common mode noise which was flowing into your streamer - sounds like be replacing your power supply for a better designed one - possibly one that is earthed ? has helped things.
Common mode noise is really best avoided - and in my experience non earthed type devices can be notorious, but not all.
At least you know it has nothing to do with the network or anything else like - but good old fashioned common mode. This is the same reason why some use Toslink connections to connect their smart TVs to DACs as opposed to use coax. To mitigate common mode noise.
You should be fine, the Puritan is star/radial wired and each outlet is independently conditioned so it won’t pollute the streamer or anything else, in theory.
I’ll try moving mine (standard ps) to my radial wired block later … hadn’t occurred to me
I might just try Wi-Fi too, see what that’s like on the new streamer.
I started my streaming experience by buying an AQVox SE switch. The switch was supplied with AQVox’s purpose built SMPS and a note stating that the switch was designed specifically for the switch and even AQVox’s far more expensive LPS wouldn’t sound better, so don’t waste time and money trying replacements.
Being the curious type I ordered a Sean Jacobs DC2 LPS to try, which generated my very first jaw dropping moment. To say that it was way better would be a serious understatement. I was so impressed I sent the DC2 straight back and replaced it with a DC3 with Mundorf Caps, which generated my second jaw dropping moment. Its was as big an improvement over the DC2 as the DC2 had been over AQVox’s SMPS.
A further upgrade from DC 3 to DC4 delivered the same huge jump in performance, as did the upgrade to DC4-ARC6
The improvements started out with much better imaging, more 3 dimensionality, a purer tone, improved frequency extremes, greater timbral information, greater PR&T and greater listener involvement. But as things improved further, the upgrades were harder to describe in purely hi-fi terms and became far easier to describe in terms of the listener. Far greater joy and involvement, much stronger feelings and emotions, a greater sense of rhythmic drive and of musicians enjoying themselves and a feeling of actually participating in the creation of the music. Tears of joy at the sheer beauty, spontaneous applause at the end of a piece as a way to release the intense emotions, whoops joy, feelings of amazement at the systems ability to transcend the listening room to create a recording specific venue with walls, reflections and other acoustic clues.
Improved power supplies produce less noise but also offer a lower impedance, faster square wave response so more accurate polarity switching and contribute to produce an altogether higher quality physical layer that has a major impact on sound quality.
Just FYI, another jaw dropping moment was the addition of Mundorf Silver/Gold JSSG360 DC cables between LPSs and network components
Sure - I started my steaming experience in the late 90s … and subsequent conversations with Denis Morecroft, a true pioneer of consumer hifi and my own expires with ethernet Rif proved educational. . and believe I was one of the first to announce on the inter web the results of my experiments of rfi on resultant steamed audio. This seemed to spawn a whole cottage industry of audiophille home network switches.
What I discovered, in discussion with senior Naim engineers was that RFI could affect the sonic attributes of the resultant audio … and that digital noise was a fact of life and it was the frequency you steered it to that changed the resultant audio.
So what does this mean, it means that digital noise is always present… its the shaping of that noise that has a key part on the resultant audio,
Therefore there are many variables that effect the reluctant audio - and many don’t require much out lay to experiment with.
Over time - I have found the best performance is achieved with speakers with low phase distortion/smearing in your listening environment and an amplifier to suite.
Am I understanding you correctly here that you think that once there are no major issues with one’s router etc. that the differences that Power supplies and cables etc. make are relatively nuanced ones to compared to amp and speakers?
Yes, I do, assuming there is no major common mode issue on the cabling etc. but I would say speaker/listening space/amp/source are the key focus in that order.
I must say that @Blackmorec 's lengthy writings regarding this are incredibly appreciated by me.
If you test and evaluate practically what he writes about,.it would be very strange if you do not come to similar conclusions.
Theory is one thing,.practice is another…!!
Based on what Blackmorec has written before,.I did some experiments with different linear powersupplies to the incoming fiber-box and router.
This ended up investing in Sean Jacobs DC3 linear powersupply for my incoming fiber-box and router…
The image below is from the evaluation stage.
BUT,.Sean Jacobs DC3 linear power supply that drives my incoming fiber-box and router has completely transformed my music-system,just as Blackmorec writes.
As Blackmorec himself writes,.he has spent 5 years optimizing this,so he should have some practical experience and knowledge on the subject .
So, almost all of my network gear (two routers, one Aruba gigabit switch, Synology NAS x2) sits in a rack in a separate room and is powered from an APC UPS. Cat6 network cables then carry Ethernet to several rooms, including my listening room. Additionally, I have an upstairs ceiling mounted POE Aruba AP providing 5GHz and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi.
Unfortunately, the fibre modem itself, with its power supply, is in my listening room.
My system sounds good to my ears, so how can I tell if I have any mains or Ethernet ‘noise’ that I should be worried about? To this layman, there appear to be a myriad of solutions that purport to improve SQ, but if I don’t have a problem in the first place (or do I?) would they do any good? And where best to start? Wholesale experimentation is not a rabbit hole I want to explore!
Start with a ‘last mile’ - put better psu to the device which is closest to your streamer (router or switch) and upgrade last meter of the ethernet cable.
I must say that 
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