advertisement


Does connecting a streamer to Ethernet make much difference compared to wifi?

Fergus said:
Unless you’ve tried it you’re a fool!
Click to expand...

I have tried it at home and have also performed testing at work of how noise affects analogue signals after the conversion to digital and back to analogue.

I can play around with switches to my hearts content at home as I have a lab with this plus more

Cisco Nexus 7k
Cisco 9300 switches
Cisco 3850 switches
Cisco 2960x switches
Cisco FTD & ASA firewalls
Cisco 8xx routers
Cisco 4331 router
Cisco 927 router
Juniper EX switches
Juniper SRX firewall
Palo Alto firewalls
HP Procurve switches
3com switches

Is that enough stuff to say "I've tried it"?
 
vacuum_tubes said:
I have tried it at home and have also performed testing at work of how noise affects analogue signals after the conversion to digital and back to analogue.

I can play around with switches to my hearts content at home as I have a lab with this plus more

Cisco Nexus 7k
Cisco 9300 switches
Cisco 3850 switches
Cisco 2960x switches
Cisco FTD & ASA firewalls
Cisco 8xx routers
Cisco 4331 router
Cisco 927 router
Juniper EX switches
Juniper SRX firewall
Palo Alto firewalls
HP Procurve switches
3com switches

Is that enough stuff to say "I've tried it"?
Click to expand...
You obviously need a more revealing system. Or new ears.

My home lab way back in the mists of time was three 2501s. You win : )
 
John Phillips said:
I think it's not a good idea to throw insults towards people who don't enjoy the hobby in the same way that you do.

I claim your insult. I am a fool. A fool because I use my equipment to listen to music rather than using music to listen to my equipment.
Click to expand...
Apologies, insult was not intended I was just playing with his word “foo”. I listen to music too.
 
John Phillips said:
I think it's not a good idea to throw insults towards people who don't enjoy the hobby in the same way that you do.

I claim your insult. I am a fool. A fool because I use my equipment to listen to music rather than using music to listen to my equipment.
Click to expand...

This could be an insult too. ;)
 
John Phillips said:
I think it's not a good idea to throw insults towards people who don't enjoy the hobby in the same way that you do.

I claim your insult. I am a fool. A fool because I use my equipment to listen to music rather than using music to listen to my equipment.
Click to expand...

Water off a ducks back.

Oh I use my equipment to listen to music, I have B&Q speaker cable :eek: with my horns and valve amp as it does the job, my selection of stuff is purely subjective and I rarely look at measurements of things I'm trying.

I just get annoyed when people/companies hijack or twist facts (or physics) to defend their products or tweaks.

The conversation normally goes along the lines of

..so there's no technical reason why that makes a difference
..have you tried it yourself
..yes, I heard no difference
..your system clearly isn't revealing enough then
..yes it is
..your hearing isn't good enough then
..yes it is, is there a possibility that the differences you hear are psychosomatic i.e you want it to be better?
..HOW DARE YOU TELL ME WHAT I HEAR, I HAVE GOLDEN EARS :mad::mad::mad:
 
Once more, a circular thread that goes nowhere. I really don't know why people bother? Some seem to have saviour complexes and are on a mission to save us all from what they perceive as audiophoolery. Others try to justify their position, one way or the other, often very aggresively.

Should we not just leave it for people to try for themselves? If they think 'X" is worthwhile, can the usual suspects just keep quiet, without feeling the need to imply that such posters are foolish based upon tneir own technical 'knowledge'?

Can we not just have a pleasant discussion?
 
meDBD98.jpeg
 
vacuum_tubes said:
Water off a ducks back.

Oh I use my equipment to listen to music, I have B&Q speaker cable :eek: with my horns and valve amp as it does the job, my selection of stuff is purely subjective and I rarely look at measurements of things I'm trying.

I just get annoyed when people/companies hijack or twist facts (or physics) to defend their products or tweaks.

The conversation normally goes along the lines of

..so there's no technical reason why that makes a difference
..have you tried it yourself
..yes, I heard no difference
..your system clearly isn't revealing enough then
..yes it is
..your hearing isn't good enough then
..yes it is, is there a possibility that the differences you hear are psychosomatic i.e you want it to be better?
..HOW DARE YOU TELL ME WHAT I HEAR, I HAVE GOLDEN EARS :mad::mad::mad:
Click to expand...
Most amusing!

Great that you have hifi for listening to music and that it suits you. Is it “revealing” enough to demonstrate the small differences to sound quality that noise can make? No idea, but I doubt that my BAT valve setup I used to use would show any difference in that its “flavour” would mask the effect of removing small amounts of noise. To take it to its logical conclusion if we reproduced our music through a cheap TV speaker would we hear the effects of the methods discussed here to ameliorate noise. Of course not!

As for hearing, of course it matters how good our hearing is. If someone has, for example, ossicular fixation then they are highly unlikely to discern small differences in sound quality. It would be foolish to state something is foo based on one’s inability to hear something, at least until one has had one’s hearing thoroughly checked out, and not just for frequency response. I doubt anyone here has perfect hearing and given age and exposure to loud music, live and or reproduced, most are are probably pretty poor.

Of course, psychological factors can come into play, but that doesn’t mean that everything is foo and certainly doesn’t give one an excuse for dismissing equipment as foo.

So, hearing ability is relevant, quality of hifi is relevant, psychological factors are relevant. Isn’t that obvious?
 
Alex S said:
I suggest that is a Chord marketing decision. Anyway, at least your cables don't seem to make things worse.

You may think I go on the attack with your contributions and, yes I do, and here's the reason. I disagree with most of your posts, but that's hardly unique, I write bollocks myself most of the time, but here's the real reason: almost every post you make is a subtle, or unsubtle, soft sell. I believe trade members such as yourself should be paying Tony £1000 pa not £50. You will deny this but I find it unsavoury and would contrast with other trade members who have strong views, GT for example. I don't think Graham has ever tried to sell any Tron products in the Audio room. You will also see this as a personal attack, it isn't, I respond to the contents and style of your posts. You may well be one of the nicest people on earth.
Click to expand...
Generally speaking, I too am uncomfortable with trade members posting in discussion threads. However, when they or their products are subject to troll like attack such as “Beyond selling foo cables he thinks that Rob Watts invented the DAC” then I think they are entitled to defend both themselves and their products.
 
Jubal said:
I am not your target market. But I’d be delighted if someone else on the thread with a decent streamer/DAC and a dose of scepticism took up your offer and reported back.
Click to expand...
Because you don’t want to hear your system at is best? Or couldn’t afford to buy one? As @tuga says, you can get a lot of benefit from installing an enterprise switch and UTP cable just before your streamer.

Why a dose of scepticism? Is there something wrong with an open mind?
 
TheFlash said:
Because you don’t want to hear your system at is best? Or couldn’t afford to buy one? As @tuga says, you can get a lot of benefit from installing an enterprise switch and UTP cable just before your streamer.

Why a dose of scepticism? Is there something wrong with an open mind?
Click to expand...
Bit aggressive sales patter. Let it go, I don’t own a streamer with any local files on it. Hence not relevant right now. I am considering one however having just unearthed a cd drive for ripping duties. I am curious about this whole area is all. And yes, I think the cables and switches you lot are touting are a touch pricey to say the least.
 
Hearing loss tends to be in the upper frequency as we age, most music is located in the midband. I really think we exaggerate small differences to justify expenditure.

I’d be interested if these noise differences can be measured, probably not?
 
Woodface said:
I’d be interested if these noise differences can be measured, probably not?
Click to expand...

Yes and it has been done.

One of the test methods we use is called POLQA and measure/test up to Super Wideband (14 Khz) so is comparable to the frequency range most of us can hear for music.

The sample file is a PCM 16/28 looping frequency sweep but I also created my own in audacity using Blondie's "hanging on the telephone" :D

The inputs to the algorithm are two waveforms represented by two data vectors containing 16 bit PCM samples. The first vector contains the samples of the (undistorted) reference signal, whereas the second vector contains the samples of the degraded signal.
Click to expand...

The tests include taking the sample file converting it from analogue to digital sending it over a WAN and converting it back to analogue at the far end and then capturing that as a file. The software then compares the source file to the captured file and determines how much the original has been degraded.

That again is a similar method to how music is streamed over the internet to your home and converted to analogue via your DAC.
 
Woodface said:
Hearing loss tends to be in the upper frequency as we age, most music is located in the midband. I really think we exaggerate small differences to justify expenditure.

I’d be interested if these noise differences can be measured, probably not?
Click to expand...
Yes, I think some of the small differences are overstated, but that is with reference to how my hearing was a couple of years ago. Sadly my hearing now isn’t up to discerning even very obvious differences, and that is my point, we are often talking not so much about equipment differences so much as our hearing ability. Now I could, but wouldn’t be so arrogant, dismiss things just because I couldn’t hear them now! I could, but wouldn’t be so super arrogant, accuse people of selling foo (as has happened to posters in this thread) just because I can’t discern what it does now. That doesn’t mean that their aren’t charlatans in the industry selling outrageous foo but if we personally don’t have the hearing to assess things then we are down to the measurement brigade and are at the mercy of their methodology, not to mention ideology. Sometimes one just has to accept that one doesn’t know, one way or the other.

Typically hearing loss due to age is, as you say, a ski slope in the upper frequencies, perhaps iirc with a notch at around 1.5 kHz due to exposure to damaging loud sound, well within the region that affects our listening to music, particularly if you consider harmonics. Hearing loss might not affect each ear equally and that is before you get into the esoteric world of reverse slope hearing loss. It is of course much more complex than just frequency response; I mentioned ossicular fixation as just one possible problem. If those tiny bones in the middle ear aren’t transmitting vibrations to the inner ear properly then it will likely affect our ability to discern the effects of noise under discussion.

All I’m saying is that just because we, individually, can’t hear something it doesn’t necessarily mean that others can’t.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top