Stuck a Linear Power Supply on My Switch - Blimey! 😱

[NigelB]

OK, how much am I bid for my unique BT Smart Hub 2 DC power plug adapter.

The only one in the world and in excellent condition. Will bring a ‘night and day’ SQ improvement when plugged into a LPS - guaranteed!

Start me at £1k.

[anon9602469]

@Simon-in-Suffolk

But so called ‘night and day’ is significant and not the same as minor or subtle - and therefore to be valid has to be applied to an individual’s preference rather than the difference itself.

The qualitative assessment is whether you prefer it or not - and you many marginally prefer a subtle difference - or you may significantly prefer a subtle difference. The difference itself has to be quantitive, that is measurable, the preference is qualitative and is entirely subjective.

Without these principles this just all becomes gobbledygook, in my opinion.

Don’t quite know what you’re getting at Simon - I thought that this is essentially what I said.

Whilst the difference is indeed quantitive and theoretically measurable - if we know what to measure - in practice, in a normal domestic situation, this just isn’t possible. In general most of us do not have sophisticated measuring gear to hand - although I rather suspect that you do!

So in the end it’s all just a totally subjective opinion. Meaningless gobbledygook as you say. If I describe a Chord Ground Aray as increasing the sense of musical involvement, what does that actually mean? How does that relate to anything objective that we may care to measure and thus quanify? As far as I can see it doesn’t relate to anything. It’s just my personal reaction to what I hear. And someone else may not hear it, or may hear exactly the same thing and describe it completely differently.

I think you are possibly trying to relate people’s experiences to objective reality in some precise way.

What we each hear is nothing but a personal emotional reaction. It can never be measured, it can never relate to ‘reality’ in any consistent defined way. It will very from time to time and from person to person. Yes, ‘gobbledygook’ sums it up nicely.

[frenchrooster]

Then wait and buy a Chord Hugo TT?
I know that usb quality cables matter, but don’t use any . Why not borrow or buy online with a 14 days try and return policy ?

[Geko]

It appears not to have a centre pin but it does look like a lot of computers use this connection…

[Dave]

@anon9602469

My USB cable is a Chord C USB, so inexpensive. I was considering upgrading to a cable higher up in the Chord range, or indeed elsewhere, but the reviews of the C USB are excellent and seem to suggest that it betters the £1K Chord Signature USB for musical coherence. So not sure if it’s a good idea to change. More expensive doesn’t always equal better.

I’d say don’t just go by some reviews in this case. You’ve found some/all of the Chord additions (M6, Ground Aray etc.) to be real worthwhile improvements so why not just see what a “more expensive” cable does or doesn’t do? No harm in at least trying them

[bunter]

I took another look at this set of adaptor tips I bought previously. The green one does fit the BT Smart Hub 2 and works with the ifi PowerX. I’ve just upgraded to NC 222 and NC250 (which has a very noisy transformer and will have to be returned), so not really the best time to evaluate a change to a router power supply, but at least I can try it…

[DiggyGun]

@anon9602469

The testing has now been completed.

The testing was done with the GroundARAY in four locations;

• First Switch (Netgear GS105)
• Final Switch (Chord EE8)
• Linn Selekt DSM (Exact Link No. 1 Socket)
• Linn Selekt DSM (Exact Link No. 2 Socket)
• Not plugged in

The following tracks were used;

• Women in Blue; Wynton Marsellis
• Unsquare Dance; Dave Brubeck
• The Big Bad Wolf; Daniel Pemberton
• Black and White (As Simple As); Joe Sample
• Kalimba; Taj Mahal
• Paranoimia; Art of Noise

And to avoid any external, environmental influences, I used my Focal Elear Headphones and all the settings were the same.

After spending all morning doing this, based on my system and my ears, I could hear no significant improvement over not having it plugged in at all.

It was worth investigating and testing the GroundARAY to see if this tweak did make any improvement, as it’s not that expensive in the Linn / Naim world.

I like Chord products and use their;

• EE8 Network Switch
• EE1 Network Noise Isolator
• Clearway Streaming Cables (x3)
• Epic Streaming Cable
• Clearway HDMI Cable
• SignatureX Power Cable

However, on this occasion, this particular Chord product wasn’t for me, even for picking it up for £395 instead of £550

The dealer has a 14 day Returns Policy, so I shall be sending back under that process.

Finally, it was fun doing the testing, so for me it wasn’t any wasted time or effort but part of the process of evaluating the system and various Hi-Fi products.

Now back to the Jazz

DG…

[anon9602469]

@frenchrooster

Then wait and buy a Chord Hugo TT?

I wish! I have the Qutest and that will have to do. It’s very good though. Must curtail spending now - we are both retired! Will give some thought to USB cable though. Network Acoustics do several that have good reviews and are supposedly very good at getting rid of digital nasties.

[anon9602469]

[quote=“DiggyGun, post:413, topic:34026”]
The testing has now been completed.
[/quote

Thanks for getting back DG and for the detailed description.

I guess it just goes to show how these things are subjective and can vary between systems. Worth a try anyway as you say - at least you know now and have saved yourself £395 (buy some more music- or wine!). Happy listening!

[Simon-in-Suffolk]

@anon9602469

Don’t quite know what you’re getting at Simon - I thought that this is essentially what I said.

Whilst the difference is indeed quantitive and theoretically measurable - if we know what to measure - in practice, in a normal domestic situation, this just isn’t possible.

Yes on reflection I am not quite sure what I was getting at.
It all seems a bit puerile this sort of discussion, and I guess I prefer objectivity.
I think I get irritated by fanciful cause and effect justifications by some, but that is probably more an issue with me - anyway as long as no one takes any of this stuff seriously and treat it all as a bit of a joke, game or amusing past time, no harm done.

I think the best thing is for me to just ignore these sort of threads - as they really do tend to wind me up particularly when some reckon they have some how lowered the ‘noise floor’ on the basis of listening to their favourite tracks on their hifi and subjectively preferring how it all now sounds after applying some remote tweak, it tends to look ridiculous… all in my opinion of course.

[NigelB]

Damn, OK my adapter is now reduced to £500, bargain!

[Geko]

I fully understand your frustrations with measurements. I’ve been using data driven measurement in manufacturing for most of my life! I still remember the quote from Dr Edward’s Demming “ in God we trust, all others must supply the data”! Then a mate reminded me that fundamental particles in physics can’t really be measured. You can know their location but not their direction or direction but not location! I then think about the ‘macro’ scale of our discussions and the fact that we know nothing of what’s going on at the ‘micro’ of quantum level.

I say lock em’ all in box where they can be both dead and alive at the same time! Our hifi world has always been slightly barmy!

[anon9602469]

@Geko

Our hifi world has always been slightly barmy!

You can say that again!

[anon9602469]

@Simon-in-Suffolk

I guess I prefer objectivity.

I get that - and I think that comes across quite strongly in your various posts, not only on this thread. Nothing wrong with that - it’s your way of looking at things and that’s fair enough.

Although I have scientific training I must admit I have only a fleeting interest in the actual science behind hi-fi. I sometimes try to relate changes that I hear to a possible physical cause, but only casually, not in any serious way, and usually just to try to help myself in deciding possible further improvements to make. A sort of ‘working hypothesis’ that’s all.

Take the Chord Ground Arays that I’ve put in my router and switch. I hear significant improvements. That’s all that matters to me! Chord claim that they remove noise from the signal ground and lower the noise floor of the system. That seems reasonable to me, but I have no interest in delving into it in any way. Maybe the noise floor is lower - maybe it isn’t. I don’t know - or care! But it does sound better to me so worth the money.

As an ‘engineering type’, if you don’t mind me saying that, you clearly seek firm answers and explanations for observed effects. And you are unhappy with people jumping to unwarranted and spurious conclusions about the the effects they hear. I can understand that.

Remember though that most of us here are lay people in engineering terms. Lay people are prone to all sorts of wrong thinking and conclusions. That’s just the way it is!

[frenchrooster]

Following your questioning of ignoring or not that kind of threads, I am wondering myself how many people do really understand your posts?
Maybe we should make a poll

[Simon-in-Suffolk]

@frenchrooster

wondering myself how many people do really understand your posts?
Maybe we should make a poll

Yes that would be interesting

[NigelB]

There is of course room for objective and subjective assessments. Often, however, it is impossible to objectively quantify (measure) the effects of local network tweaks, and we are left with human audio receptors to judge.

I do agree that sometimes ‘different’ can be seen (heard) as ‘better’. I may have been guilty of this in the past.

[frenchrooster]

You can count me as « don’t understand « . Not always but often

[marcusman]

Please continue to chime in when you are free. I for one value your comments and learning a new word ‘puerile’ today. lol

[Blackmorec]

Just my musings on a few of the topics above.

Firstly measurements:

If you take a typical remote streaming hi-fi system that’s based on moving a data file over a network, there are several conversions involved.

Data comes into the house via either coaxial or twisted pair copper or fibre optic cable. This may remain as light pulses in an optical fibre or be immediately converted to either voltage-based ethernet parcels in a wire or radio waves in free air. The light pulses and radio waves may be converted back to ethernet parcels, which may be filtered for noise and retimed then converted to USB or some other digital format. In the DAC the file is converted to a continuous analog voltage, which is amplified prior to conversion to sound pressure waves. Those waves are converted to fluid pressure waves in the ear which are in turn converted to nerve impulses, which are finally converted to a conscious awareness of what the brain interprets as music. So what would you like to measure? If you’d like to measure the total affect of the chain, you have a few problems. 1 You don’t know what the chain started out as and 2. You can’t measure the last 3 conversions, so by definition, measurements of the entire process is going to be subjective. But there is one measurement that is very easy to make, requires very little specialised equipment and does correlate to sound quality and that is the concept of bit-perfect. This is nothing more than the confirmation that a bit stream transmitted over a network has remained unaltered. All it takes to make this measurement is knowledge of the original bit stream structure and software that is able to compare the original structure to the final bit-stream after transmission.
Many pieces of hardware, ripping and music streaming software incorporate some flavour of this concept as a means of confirming data integrity.

Given the difficulties associated with making meaningful objective measurements of the whole streaming process, let’s move on to non-scientific explanations as they relate to network improvements. Many here have reported that making various changes to their network has an effect on the sound quality of the music produced. IT ‘theory’ would indicate that in order to change the music, there has to be changes to the bits. But here’s where problems arise in audio. Listen to a file transmitted over a network that has been ‘qualified’ at the DAC as being bit-perfect. Substitute a different server upstream of the DAC and re-qualify the network. Still bit-perfect. Now listen to the same bit-perfect file with the new server and what you’ll usually observe is that the music produced by the DAC is different. If both data streams were bit-perfect, the bit structure hasn’t changed, so what has changed? The only logical explanation is that the server has changed the sound quality without altering the bit structure. But for sound quality to change, something must be different, so what else can change? We could use measurements to find out, but what to measure? And before we measure anything, we should also consider that changing the server is not the only thing that changes the sound. There is broad empirical evidence that power supplies, network cables, EMI shielding measures, accurate oscillators, improved router chip-sets, resonance control and every conversion from one medium to another can have an effect on sound quality without changing the bit structure. In my mind, the only area I can identify that can explain how so many different things can affect the sound without changing the bits is the network’s underlying physical layer i.e the structure on which the data stream is built. So my hypothesis is that changes to the physical layer affect the way the DAC processes the data stream that in turn affect the last 3 processes that turn sound pressure waves into conscious music. Experiments I have conducted using this hypothesis have shown that improvements to the physical layer have resulted in clear and sometimes jaw dropping differences to the resulting music. These experiments were conducted without the benefit of measurements so the only way I could ensure actual improvements was to standardise various component categories on single manufacturer product ranges and use their measurements and product topologies. For example, I used Sean Jacobs power supplies and moved from DC2 to DC3 to DC4 to DC4 ARC6. For network cables I used Synergistic Research, moving from Active SE, to Atmosphere X Ref to Galileo SX. For vibration control I used Atacama bases and Isoacoustics footers for the upstream components and Finite Elemente Pagode Master Reference and Cerabase footers for downstream. The assumption I made was that the increasingly superior products yielded a superior sound based on the superior physical layer they produced…(larger, better screened transformers, greater levels of filtration, better quality capacitors, better oscillators, improved screening, greater levels of isolation, lower noise chipsets, etc. etc.)
As a result of these experiments I can make a few observations:

1. For best results, a network should form a cascade of improvements to the physical layer such that the data stream is improved as the file passes along the network.
2. The better the physical layer becomes, the more profound the improvements become.
3. In 5 years of improving the network, I never found a law of diminishing returns. Of course the improvements gradually increased in price but the improvements also gained in magnitude
4. When it comes to the network, we can very much trust our ears. An improvement is only that if it a. Very clearly sounds better and b. Is very easy to identify as a fundamental musical improvement rather than simply a change. What does that mean? If an improvement sounds different but doesn’t make the music considerably more involving, enjoyable and emotional it’s either not the right product, not the right change or is not in the right place in the network.
5. Network upgrades are beautifully scalable