Actually, Sonore offers streamers that accept optical input, so you don’t necessarily have to give back any of your noise reduction gains. Not sure if there are others.
are NET Switches worth considering?
I have an Innuos Pulsar Streamer that gives me everything I need - incredible detail, imaging and PRAT. I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with NET switches? I'm particularly interested in the Innuos Phoenix NET and I'm wondering if adding this switch is worth the money. So for those of you who have great streamers is a net switch a must?
I should mention that my only source for music is streaming.
My Innuos Pulsar feeds my Accuphase DC-37 Processor/DAC and my other components include an Accuphase C2300 preamplifier and an Accuphase A-48S Class-A amplifier.
Thanks in advance!
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It is all pretty counterintuitive. As the thinking goes, this is not about packets and the ethernet protocol, which is "perfect" by design. Instead it is about noise elimination. In my experience, a change like a better network switch, fiber isolation, reclocking, master clock, etc, each contribute to removing noise. With each step things can improve ... and you don't know the noise was there until its gone. I started with Etherregen. Then LPS for the Etherregen. Then added master clock. Each made a really big difference, the clock most of all, which just doesn't make sense to me, but here we are. Fiber in theory should be best, but I found ethernet to have more life and more bite and on most music think it is better. But currently I'm trying out the Gustard NP18 as media converter, then fiber to the NP18 Pro that is connected to the same master clock as my Etherregen. This is very nice! The LHY mentioned above does some of this in a single box, but without the external clock. There are many permutations. Way too many. Ethernet cables sound different too. Supra is hard to beat for the money. I've come to believe that all of the upstream system for streaming matters more than the dac. But maybe I'll end up where @grannyring is now and revert back to a raw feed from my router. What I do know right now is that if I remove the external clock, everything collapses. Turn it back on and it's holographic again. |
@kstirman Yup, that is what I have found as well. I haven't done the clock upgrade on the Etherregen yet, because I know some who have replaced the ER, power supply, fancy dc cable, clock, and fancy power cables on all of them with a NA Tempus and they claim it is better, so I'll hold out for that. I have no problem with how the system sounds right now, could live with it forever, but always more to do.
a few weeks ago Roon wasn't cooperating; not sure if it was Qobuz or Roon (still is not working well, had some issues on Squeeze as well...) but I unplugged the ER with power supply, the SoTM ethernet cable and Smoothlan that goes into the streamer, and used the generic 30 foot ethernet cable direct from the router to the streamer to see if the connectivity issues improved. It didn't and I gave up for the day. A few days later I was listening and something sounded very wrong- grainy, etched, sibillant, very digital sounding, and then I realized I forgot to plug them all back in, I did and what a huge improvement. My raw feed from the router/gateway is significantly inferior. |
It's a long thread, but lots of interesting discussion in the original etherregen design thread. The designer doesn't think many of these things should matter (master clock, LPS, fiber, etc). I think we are still learning. The Tempus looks great. Just pricey. Many say the Grimm MU1 is immune to many of the issues these changes try to address. So we might all end up there, also pretty pricey. And a new Etherregen is coming, also in that thread.
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/38968-etherregen-the-long-development-thread-some-gen2-dev-pics-and-update-starting-on-page-92/page/15/#comments |
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