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Ethernet to optical

Frizzy

Liberal anarchist
Has anyone tried one of the widgets that converts a Ethernet cable to optical converter, supposedly banishes noise issues.
I’m currently feeding router to a dell switch and then on to a English Electric switch and into dac. Cabling is audioquest cinnamon . After much tweaking inc getting a little tube distinctions ac filter for switches (surprising level of better) on this site, the sound of streaming is imho properly musical and is no longer digitals poor cousin.
Is going optical worth tinkering with, converters are cheap but don’t want to buy summat that may end up as landfill.
 
I run an Etherregen switch with a very short cable into my DAC/amp. Got a small uptick in quality putting a cisco2960 switch in front of that and running optical cable between the 2. I have a 20m cat 6 cable from my modem to the cisco.
 
Just curious, got some improvement putting Cisco switch between router and EE switch. Considering cost of EE and how good it sounds, wondered if sticking £30 optical converter in between switch and dac is possible backwards step.
If could afford fancied melco switch as had optical outputs, but £2k bit rich for my tastes.
 
After much tweaking inc getting a little tube distinctions ac filter for switches (surprising level of better) on this site, the sound of streaming is imho properly musical and is no longer digitals poor cousin.
Sorry to divert your thread. If you have a moment, could you detail your tweaks and also the improvements brought by the mains filter? Much appreciated.
 
Got the mark grant filter off pfm member, it’s got two sockets, 1 each schuko, uk plugs.
I listen to radio 6 via router a fair bit, tried dab and it was awful, use fm for radio 2,3,4.
On router on radio It’s most apparent improvement was a removal of a slightly hard forward edge, the sound became richer, fuller with good tone and seemed to have better bandwidth, ie deeper cleaner bass and sweeter more explicit treble. The noise floor dropped which prob accounts for lot of other improvements. Speech became more natural removing a sort of mid range glare, radio 4 defo better.
When streaming music it is much better, I seem to be able to appreciate high bit rates and things have become more musical and now quite enjoying streaming late at night, previously before new EE switch and filter sound did not encourage long listening sessions, hard digital edge was tiring.
For cost bargain at s\h price, tbh if I’d known how good it was going to be I’d have bought one new while ago. Generally avoided filters of any sort, but saw cheap and thought what the hell. Makes me think I should give one (mark grant) of his I/c cables a pop as I need a custom one for tuner ie rca to xlr. He gets lots of good press and they cost less than a single schuko plug I fitted to missing link power cord on tuner.
Granted I am a cable fan (kondo) but always willing to keep ears open to other views, kit.
 
I use media converters all the time at work where I need to provide ethernet connectivity more than 90-100m from a switch.

There is no reason why you would use them for any other purpose.
 
There is an amazing and widely available form of converter offering 100% galvanic isolation from router and nas without the need for cabling. I have been using it to supply data to my main source component for the last 15 years. I imagine it may have all kinds of applications outside of audio even. It's called wifi.
 
There is an amazing and widely available form of converter offering 100% galvanic isolation from router and nas without the need for cabling. I have been using it to supply data to my main source component for the last 15 years. I imagine it may have all kinds of applications outside of audio even. It's called wifi.

Oh dear...
 
An Ethernet to S/PDIF converter is actually a computer. It has to receive a packet stream, unpack and buffer it and then output the data at a constant rate. A a minimum you are looking at something like a Pi.
 
I use media converters all the time at work where I need to provide ethernet connectivity more than 90-100m from a switch.

There is no reason why you would use them for any other purpose.

Ha! I spent a lot of my time as a network bod ripping out crappy unmanaged media converters... Horrible things! ;)
 
There is an amazing and widely available form of converter offering 100% galvanic isolation from router and nas without the need for cabling. I have been using it to supply data to my main source component for the last 15 years. I imagine it may have all kinds of applications outside of audio even. It's called wifi.

Ever wondered what the 'Fi' is in wi-fi?

"Way back in 1999 the fledgling wireless industry needed a marketing name for the new products that conformed to the technical specifications called 'IEEE 802.11'. 'IEEE 802.11' didn't have much of a ring to it, and the industry association wanted a catchy name. They came up with wi-fi, and that's what's been used ever since.

"It didn’t hurt that the name rhymes with 'hi-fi,' which was short for 'high fidelity,' a term that, back in the day, referred to high-quality sound systems. Some people even say that wi-fi therefore stands for 'wireless fidelity,' but those who were involved in the industry association's process of selecting a name say it's not really true. They say that the name was always just wi-fi."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...stands-for-other-wireless-questions-answered/
 
Yes, last year I tried fibre between a router Edgerouter X SFP) and switch (Ethergen). I didn't prefer fibre to copper.
Anyway, I now use Wi-fi.
 
I have found that my Auralic Aries G2 sounds better supplying wireless data to my DAC than wired Ethernet. (With the caveat that it’s a good wireless signal).

This was after a full house renovation in 2017 where we had full ethernet in every room!

One of the sockets now supplies a dedicated WiFi router which only supplies music (data) to the Aries G2.

Don’t disregard WiFi and then spend thousands on “fixes” for wired data transfer. Keep an open mind.


.sjb
 
A little thread theft here, apologies in advance.
Inspired by the new advert header for Ewind Ethernet switches after reading this thread....and seeing as there is a "network bod" answering here, paging @paulfromcamden :D

We are about to renew a goodly part of our WiFi system in a 5 floor building, each floor approx. 220m2.
Outgoing are 10 WiFi routers (2 per floor) most of which are very old, 2.4 only. These are fed by a now flakey 10/100 24 port switch, all cabling is Cat5e.
Therefore, we could replace the switch with a modern unmanaged gigabyte switch and change all the old routers for modern 2.4/5g jobbies, 6 units as 4 have been replaced over the last couple of years.
Orrrrrrrrrr...
We could go for broke and revamp with something like the Ubiquiti UniFy system, managed 8 way switch with just 5 routers. (Plus 2 cctv systems, only leaving 1 spare port to feed a private router that feeds Ethernet wired devices)
The floors are made up of various rooms, so plenty of obstructive material in play.

There is a large difference in cost including the Unify system requiring a whole building rewire with Cat6e cabling.

What thinketh the committee?
 
@cj66 ex-network bod in my case :)

The Ubiquiti system looks nice but I've not used it so can't really comment I'm afraid.

Are you sure you would need to replace your existing cat5e structured cabling though? It should be fine to run gigabit up to 100m.
 
Thoroughly recommend the Ubiquiti gear, deploy lots through work and have it at home. Look at the Dream Machine Pro too if you fancy going all in on it. You control everything from a computer or cloud based management portal, it’s very flexible allowing you to split and isolate Wi Fi networks, Guest access, CCTV, Door Locks/Cams, their VOIP system is due to UK soon.
https://www.ui.com/consoles

Loads of other cheaper option based on Mesh Wi Fi, TP Link, Netgear even BT have a decent offering. Amazon carries a lot of them.
 
Ubiquiti... at best Beta firmware but generally Alpha, would never use their equipment in a commercial setting.
 
Hmmm, more research methinks.
As for Cat6e with the Ubiquiti, it's quoted as a requirement to ensure best performance ( by several companies here ).
 


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