Anyone using a LAN isolator? I’m looking for affordable ones but so far they are quite expensive.
http://www.acoustic-revive.com/english/pcaudio/lan_isolator.html
https://www.pinkfaun.com/index.php/products/streaming-audio/pink-faun-lan-isolator-rj45.html
Does this makes a difference in SQ?
Wait, these are the expensive ones?
A good quality unshielded ethernet cable and a really, really nice bottle of whisky will likely have the most positive impact on your enjoyment of your system. Probably cost less than the snake oil you’re looking at too.
Ha Ha that’s a fantastic answer.
No. Neither did the real expensive ones.
Have you seen some of the other things they sell on that Acoustic Revive site?
CD demagnetisers and negative ion generators!
It’s just amazing!
I wonder how many sales they get?
Conclusion:
The use of Ethernet isolators is for life safety and belts and suspenders at that. There is no reason to use them with computer audio or data for that matter.Use that money to buy pizza and ice cream and you will be happier for it.
I love this idea of “audiophile” ethernet cables with gold and kryptonite shielding hand rolled on the thighs of virgins. Meanwhile the maelstrom that is TCP is retransmitting, bandwidth hogging, re-ordering packets, erroring, failing ungracefully in the same way it has been since commercial ethernet was a big yellow cable with vampire taps.
Apparently there’s more than one born every minute
…
Oh man, I remember those days. I thought I had killed those brain cells, but apparently they were quite resilient.
Watch out or pretty soon someone is going to come up with Audiophile Ethernet… It’s going to be a higher-speed resurrection of 10Base5 complete with AUI hubs and everything!
Of course, they’ll have OXCO clocks and linear power supplies.
Imagine the crazy cabling field day you could have with one of these puppies!
Oh yes! Expensive power supplies for things that don’t need them. £500 power supplies for PCs etc.
I still have some of the Ethernet Thick as we call it on a few of the installations I look after!
I actually started on twisted pair Corvus Omninet with little plastic taps on twisted pair. Perhaps we could market this as an audio isolated dedicated system 
Gosh that’s really amazing. I’m sure there are lengths of it buried in amongst the 5ft of other cabling under many a data center floor.
I have that exact kit. Plus an earlier model with only a power light and a later model which is smaller (but less reliable). Still used in mission critical applications!
Why do you think you need one?
I know galvanic isolation applied in SPDIF and USB output to a DAC makes quite a substantial difference in SQ. The impact of noisy routers may find its way to a DAC if the user does not use any form of galvanic isolation.
The other way is to use WiFi connection, this essentially break the ‘ground loop’ or noise injecting from the source.
The Ethernet standard requires transformer coupling at every port so it is, by definition, galvanically isolated.
The above breaks down when shielded cables are used (metal connector housings), hence the reason for recommending an unshielded cable.
No virgins, but still - 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017DH76VS/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A205VE1PUGXUMQ&psc=1
Darn those hifi engineers who never thought of spurious noise and so never took it into account when designing their products…
Not necessary, most routers and streamer/PC don’t use isolating transformers in the LAN connection.
In a LAN connection, there’s are 4 differential wires connections (altogether 8 wires) each phase requires 1 transformer, in total you require 4. In a typical router, there are 4 LAN ports meaning the router needs to have 16 transformers. This is not practical to implement as it will dramatically increase the cost.
Likewise I’ve not come across PC and streamers that use isolating transformers in their LAN connection. I believe these isolating transformers are expensive to make because it needs to handle high bandwidth like 1Gbps (gigabyte LAN)
A typical connection of LAN is direct connection of transceiver chips. See below is per phase.
