Ethernet

I run everything via ethernet using powerline adapters into wallplugs. My house was built in the 60's using mostliy aluminum wiring.  My main rig streamer is an NAD C658, paired with a tube pre-amp and a vintage power amp. It all souds great to me. I've never been able to discern noise or any other sound impurities.  Curse these apparently non-audiophile ears o' mine.  

@audphile1 We shall see! My wi-fi connection is solid, my router is in the same room. My ears will be the judge on if the BJ ethernet cable and bypassing the node wi-fi receiver is an improvement.

The digital data rides in an analogy stream that’s prone to picking up audible noise that we can hear.

 

Can you please explain this? What audible noise are you talking about

@grunge1000 I'm assuming kennyc may have been referring to noise floor (hiss through speakers).

I know. I believe it's more audiophile nonsense. I have tried various cables at varying lengths vs WiFi and have not found any sonic difference. I agree with @mggartner. Money is better spent on upgrading equipment (amps, preamps, DAC's, etc..) 

Agree that money can be better spent, but there's nothing wrong with experimenting and finding your own conclusions if money and time permits. In terms of "audiophile nonsense": I agree that bits are bits, but my research also indicated that ethernet cable can act as an antenna in respect to RFI/EMI - essentially riding along the cable as it enters your streamer or DAC and to the analog stages. As Kennyc mentioned, members here have historically expressed that better components help reduce this noise. 

Personally, and unlike many on this forum, I reside next to high-voltage power lines that generate EMI/RFI. Utilizing FMCs within my network helped immensely in respect to lowering the noise floor that was rather high when using a very long ethernet cable from my router to my streamer. Unlike Kennyc, I didn't use a better streamer but instead used a different approach in my network to reduce the noise going to my streamer.

Whether FMC (or any other alternative approaches previously mentioned) would help others? I can't say, but who am I to invalidate other members' experience?  Lots of variables within our audio systems and where we reside. "It depends" has become my motto, especially compared to being a former absolutist that resided in the ASR forum.  

According to ChatGPT: When data is missing in a lossless audio stream, playback pauses, drops out, or briefly goes silent, because the decoder cannot reconstruct audio without exact data—and it will not invent approximations.

So if you have sufficient bandwidth, are streaming files using lossless encoding, your streamer is getting perfect copies of the original files. No “line noise” or other mysterious interference. As long as you’re feeding the streamer fast enough, you’re good- whether you have a wired or wireless connection. 

@mggartner appreciate your 30 years of IT experience. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your post after rereading it. My response was going to say:

I just don’t think anyone is arguing data integrity, though. EMI and RFI aren’t changing the 1s and 0s. EMI/RFI can potentially affect the noise floor of the analog output. It’s not a data problem, but an electrical problem. 

EEs - feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.