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Really need a fiber connection but.....

Bringing a fiber connection to my house is a royal pain in the butt not to mention the cost.  I'm not even sure if I have fiber to the Verizon controller in my garage and I would rather not spend countless hours on the phone dealing with the black hole of that company's bureaucracy.  I've been streaming qobuz hi-resolution files with so-so results (the quality is somewhere between MP3 and CD).  I want to upgrade my Sonore ultrarendu to the opticalrendu but for that I need a fiber connection.  Would it serve any purpose to buy a ethernet to fiber converter?  They can be purchased for cheap $ on Amazon.  I noticed that one audiophile is using it for his Auralic.  I'm convinced optical is the way to go but I'm trying to do it with the least amount of headache. 

The DAC is an MBL corona if that makes any difference.   
russellrcncom
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cleeds
5,644 posts
 
russellrcncom
I’ve been streaming qobuz hi-resolution files with so-so results (the quality is somewhere between MP3 and CD). I want to upgrade my Sonore ultrarendu to the opticalrendu but for that I need a fiber connection.
The file quality on Qobuz is 16/44.1 minimum, so it sounds like something else is wrong with your system. You should be getting much higher quality and I don’t think a fiber connection will make any improvement for you.
jbrrp1
423 posts
 
I think it all depends upon your connection bandwidth.  When my connection went from a DSL line that posted ~3.6 Mbps to a fiber optic one that posts ~250 Mbps I did notice an important sound quality improvement with Tidal streaming.  This surprised me.  And even more importantly, I no longer run into drop outs and tracks stopping spontaneously.

I believe the optical thrust is to get galvanic isolation to remove electrical noise that could be feeding into your DAC.  I guess that might be good, regardless, but I can only guess, since I haven't tried that yet.
russellrcncom OP
305 posts
 
TAS had a recent article on different configurations using optical.  Pretty interesting stuff.  One option was to use an FMC (fiber media converter).  the converters seem relatively inexpensive so I'm interested in giving it a try.  Has anyone tried this?  I should mention that I'm getting my ethernet thru a power outlet.  Just wondering if there would be any added benefit or does going from a power outlet to ethernet to optical sound too "noisy".    
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