What's the best router?

:small_blue_diamond:TiberioMagadino,…We really have different experiences of this.

We only use our ears when we testing.
We do not need technical explanations,.what we hear is what matters.
From a Unitiqute2-system,…up to active Naim and Linn Top-system,.so has AQ Vodka been better than Blue Jeans cable when we tested.

So we really have different experiences.

/Peder🙂

In the US one of the best routers is one of these

image https://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwjY9faokNjiAhUblLIKHfJiDVoYABABGgJscg&sig=AOD64_0BTTe2GI4mRWy8hiU8seFiSy06iw&adurl&ctype=5&ved=2ahUKEwiVz-yokNjiAhVRXxoKHY7MBGMQwg96BAgBEGQ

Can’t say it makes your music sound any better…

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… & why I make a point of calling a broadband wireless hub a hub, plus they are a hell of lot quieter than a router

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I would have to contend that a fridge is going to make more difference to sound in your house, all a router can do is add noise to the mains via its power, nothing else.

Still fill your boots its your money and no doubt some company somewhere will gladly take your money for the X1audioRouter10000

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I think you’re getting confused between a rooter and a rowter :wink:

I get really miffed when I get english speakers on the phone that keep on saying rowter… it’s NOT rowter it’s rooter. A router (pronounced rowter) is from the military term to route the enermy or to remove, get rid of. A router (pronounced rooter) is to channel or direct as in traffic or, in this case, ethernet traffic.

Darn yanks! :wink:

And to be fair not all yanks say ‘rowter’ when referring to a layer 3 network device… but yes many do…
Perhaps we should use the original term used in early data networks… ie ‘gateway’, I think that is said the same in English and American :grinning:

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I’ll try that next time on the phone :slight_smile: That’ll really confuse the punter :wink:

Are you based in the UK using TalkTalk and connecting using a phoneline?

You have a few options here and it depends in part how many boxes you are happy living with and how much setup you are comfortable with.

You can separate out the various functions into individual hardware.

xDSL Modem
Router
Switch
Wi-Fi Access Point
Wi-Fi Extender

You could also split out just some of those functions, many forum members use a specific Ethernet Switch like one of the Cisco ones for example but may well use an integrated modem/router/Wi-Fi Access point.

I personally split out all of the functions and manage each in dedicated hardware. I’m in the UK and connect using Virgin Media, I can’t replace the modem function in my case so configure my Virgin router to be a simple Bridge/Modem and then hard wire over Ethernet to a dedicated enterprise grade Router then on to an enterprise grade switch which fans out to various kit including a dedicated Wi-Fi access point.

As you seem to connect using TalkTalk that gives you more flexibility as you can replace their stock router/modem with one of your own choice.

If you want something equivalent to the Talktalk hardware and more integrated then Draytek Vigor or Netgear Nighthawk usually rate highly.

I don’t make any claims that my setup improves sound quality but it did make the network more stable and easier to manage and using Wi-Fi extenders made the Wi-Fi perform
much better across the whole house which covers 3 floors.

Hope that helps.

Bits are bits, so the saying goes. But what does a stream of bits look like when its travelling down a wire?
Voltages.
But aren’t voltages analog?
Obviously
So what’s special about a bit stream?
Format. Digital is voltage set to a fixed time base
And what disturbs voltages?
Noise
What’s noise?
Voltages
So what does noise do to a digital stream?
It changes the voltage and therefore the time base. So called jitter
And what does changing the time base do?
Changes the frequency. So called phase noise, when deviations from perfect periodicity cause changes to the recovered frequency.
So how do routers and cables change SQ? By generating EMI (SMPSs), picking up EMI by acting as an antenna and by using cheap and nasty oscillators, thereby generating jitter in the time domain, phase noise in the frequency domain and by sending EMI and RFI along cables to be picked up by downstream components like DACs.
But can you actually hear jitter and phase noise? That very much depends
Take a windscreen that hasn’t been cleaned for a month and drive along a road on a summer evening. Notice anything? Nope. Now clean the windscreen and take the same drive. Notice all the squashed bugs? Of course you do…each and every one. And its exactly the same with hi-fi. The more otherwise perfect your signal, the more impact you’ll hear from imperfect digital timing.

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@Blackmorec Nicely explained and noise is the enemy of all, it’s why Naim make power supplies that cost more than a Caribbean holiday.
Question being, what replacement router/setup would we recommend to the OP?
It seems cost is also a factor so there may be a balance between managing noise and ease of use/functionality.
Unless he has a dedicated “Audio Internet” the kit will have to do duty for all purposes including keeping the kids happy on YouTube, surfing the net, using Skype and so on.

I answer to the OP, I’d recommend Draytek equipment as good, business grade, yet affordable (in the context of a Naim system) solid and reliable.
In one of my systems, I had BT ADSL connected to a Draytek modem/router with two Draytek wi-fi access points wired to two of the ethernet ports, to give me wi-fi around the house. Another ethernet port connected to my switch which in turn connected all other equipment.
I now have Virgin Fibre and have connected the Virgin modem to the same Draytek router via the WAN port. This gives me a fallback to BT ADSL should the Virgin connection go down.
I’ll run it like this until such time as I am happy that the Virgin connection is stable (I had issues initially and don’t yet fully trust it).
However, the routing and wi-fi part all handled by by Draytek has been faultless.

Back in the old days (days of the old forum!) I tested 2 ‘audiophile’ cables (1 Cat6 UTP, 1 ‘Cat7’ SSTP) against 2 ‘ordinary’ Cat6 Ethernet cables (1 UTP, 1 SSTP).

The winner was the ‘ordinary’ Cat6 UTP (by a very small margain over the MeiCord which is a certified Cat6 cable but is very stiff).

Cutting a long story short, I’ve tied (bought/begged/borrowed) few of the forum favourites, AQ & Chord & some of the lower priced from www stores. TBH although I did hear differences in cables, the changes were subtle at best, nothing justified the price of the expensive ones.
During this I read up on BJC & also picked up on MeiCord Cat-6 who like BJC test cables in the same way & issue a test cert with each of them. I decided on MeiCord, a few things made me choose them over BJC; the design of the RJ45 plug cable guides that control the cable twist orientation thereby optimising performance. The other is the plug cable exit bend protection & the locking tab design.
Happy with the purchase & no thoughts about trying anything else

And of course, a ‘bit stream’ in terms of our audio is a conceptual illustration for the layperson rather than actual reality… our sampled audio is constructed in blocks of bytes each of which is made up of 8 bits…
So our audio is made up of a sequence of bytes. For transmission, these bytes are encapsulated within transport and link protocol data units and then serialised. (Remember a twisted pair Ethernet link is effectively a serial link). This serialised combination of encapsulation and transport protocols as well as dismembered audio sample bytes is transmitted as frames of bits… and indeed as you say these bits can be represented by combinations of different voltages, phases, as well as representation relative to the proceeding voltage or phase … ie at the physical level it all becomes very analogue… and it is very far removed from an actual ‘stream’ of audio.

I am fairly convinced that when peeps hear the differences from different serial Ethernet leads, what they are hearing are the effects of noise shaping from the connected audio equipment, due to RF loading and other effects.

So there is some science behind it :slight_smile:

That all said, if wires are introducing noise and interference, is there any merit in saying that using Wi-Fi instead of wired connections might be less susceptible to all of what you describe? I’m asking because if I ever do decide to invest in a ND5XS2 it is almost 100% certain I’ll have to use a Wi-Fi connection given the layout of the listening room and location of the router.

Wifi will also brings it effects of noise shaping… there is another thread where I am discussing this…

In short my answer has been decoupling, and that is why I decouple my DAC from my network streamer… and for the most part these issues tend to disappear or are significantly reduced.

Naim are aware of this any why in the new streamers they have gone to great effort to decouple… and it is quite impressive the extent they have gone in the ND555… but it’s not perfect… to improve this I believe Naim would need a separate transport and DAC…and we might see that with a Statement streamer at some point…

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I’ve been using two TP-Link media converters with fiber link between the music-server (you can call it NAS, it’s o.k.) and the streamer. I have a dual-LAN motherboard on the music server and the streamer now has a dedicated output which is bridged/firewalled by a sweet little linux-component it took me two evenings to learn (you can call it a poor-mans Melco, it’s o.k.).

So the last weeks I have chopped off some data noise and hopefully some electric noise and when I at last got back to music it was more analog, more relaxing. And I did not like it at all when I tried to remove that setup and run as in the old days.

It was a bit surprising as I already had a low-noise SMPS in the server and a quiet industrial motherboard. I originally thought that would be enough.

Am I the only member struggling to understand 95% of what’s been written on this thread? There are either quite a few exceedingly well informed people (who struggle with putting their highly specialised knowledge into vocabulary the average layman (moi!) can understand), or there are a significant number of bollox speakers amongst us.

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Analogous to what I think is the deal with many of the “magic” cables on the analog side.

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I have lost count of the number of routers I have used over the years, all ISP supplied. I have never heard a difference in sound quality. I wouldn’t expect to, but that’s not an accurate predictor.