Do router and ethernet cables affect sound quality?

I never understood why after a question all kind of people who have no clue nor inversted in a high res system keep fighting back for stuff don’t understand?
I need advise only from people who really understand what means a network integration regarding audio signal and already tried options.

You got a lot of advice from people who REALLY understand network integration. If you would listen you had understood that the ‘regarding audio signal’ aspect is what the snake oil dealers are promoting. It is only data before it arrives at the DAC, not different from this text in the forum and don’t need a different treatment.

Maybe you know the saying, “When you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back to you.”

4 Likes

There is a big difference between “text in the forum” (or Word or similar) and streaming:

Brad…I may have started the s-storm last year when I innocuously reached out for subjective listening impressions from folks who have tried the ENO filter. Quite simply, I was curious to see if any other observations, pro or con, aligned with my personal experience. The shaming from readers of this forum you refer to was fast & furious! Measurements don’t always tell the entire story when it comes to this wonderful hobby. I could care less about the opinions of skeptics who have not personally tried the various products they are so quickly to criticize. Ultimately, it’s how it sounds to the individual. This is why so many companies offer 30, and in some cases, 60 day trial periods. If you like the improvements the ENO has made to your streaming system, give the Network Acoustics MUON filter a try. I found it builds on the attributes of the ENO like a more natural, relaxed presentation that reveals even more of the music especially at lower volume levels.

1 Like

Ok
Time for tempers to cool here as well.
Thank you for your patience and understanding

1 Like

OK guys both this and Power cables are now compromised. Let’s move to hi-rez-foolishnes :face_with_peeking_eye:

1 Like

It was mention many times in this thread: this is right if a protocoll like udp is used, but not with tcp/ip. Jitter is not possible with tcp/ip and packet delay variations are leading to dropouts if big enough and nothing else.
It feels like groundhog day. Same arguments again and again, no matter how many times they have been disproved. Very sad

5 Likes

You mention audio/video streaming again, however, as was discussed yesterday it is only relevant in real-time protocols such as VOIP/UDP. Where streamed audio is concerned, especially Roon which uses RAAT (Roon Advanced Audio Transport) which is TCP/IP based, jitter and packet delay variation are irrelevant. TCP/IP either works or it doesn’t. The data either gets there 100% intact or it doesn’t. There is no in between. If the data doesn’t get there, you get dropouts, pauses, silence. You don’t get reduced sound quality if there are timing issues with TCP/IP.

Audio data is low bandwidth - I can successfully stream hi-res from Qobuz most of the time in the car from my Android smartphone. If the datastrean is too slow, I get silence.

Any competent home network should have no issues with streaming audio. There is no need for any other Snake-Oil products aimed at improving “jitter” or timing or noise or any other invented audiophile voodoo sh!t.

7 Likes

Just to be clear and fair:

  • I am here to learn and document myself, not to impose on others what I believe. I have some knowledge of IT networking, but I am far from an expert.
  • In my audio system, I use an EtherREGEN, but I did not purchase it for sound quality reasons, but to compensate for a technical issue with the network card / software in my DAC.

You wrote that where streamed audio over TCP/IP is concerned, jitter and packet delay variation are irrelevant. Would you please provide me with a link to technical documentation on this topic (if possible, then one for dummies)?

The part with “audio data is low bandwidth” is already clear / familiar to me.

If they were relevant, all digital data transmissions would be affected, not only audio. I think it’s been said enough times already: there is absolutely nothing special about audio data.

1 Like

Hopefully the following simple articles will give some more insight.

TCP/IP is time insensitive. It doesn’t matter in which order packets are received as the protocol ensures that no matter which order packets are received, the receiving device sorts the packets into the correct order. Any missing or damaged packets are resent.

Think of ordering a jigsaw puzzle via the mail - (hopefully) all of the pieces arrive, the picture on the box lets you see what the finished puzzle looks like. It doesn’t matter in which order you assemble them as the finished puzzle will be the same. If any pieces are missing, you contact the supplier and he sends you the missing pieces or a new puzzle.

Provided the data stream doesn’t utilise too great a proportion of the network bandwidth available, there’s plenty of time for missing/damaged packets to be requested and re-sent.

As we discussed earlier, the bandwidth requirement for audio is very small - even DSD512 only utilises just under 50Mbps, so even 100BASE-T should handle it.

https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/ddos/glossary/tcp-ip/

UDP is very different. Think of building a jigsaw puzzle starting at the top left and building it downwards line by line in the way a book is read. Someone is throwing the pieces to you across the room in the order they need to fit the puzzle. You have to catch a piece and fit it to the puzzle before the next piece is thrown. You can only hold one piece at a time. If you’re too slow, either you won’t have time to put a piece in place or you won’t be able to catch the next one. The result will be a finished puzzle with pieces missing.

https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ddos/glossary/user-datagram-protocol-udp/

11 Likes

Could you specify the issue?

You really did watch the video of Hans? There he clearly outlines that jitter etc. doesn’t have any effect on the data transmission (otherwise TCP/IP and the IT industry wouldn’t work), rather then on analog to digital and digital to analog conversion.
The first is done in the studio. The second
(See again in section „Bits are bits“) has an impact when listening to music.

Hopefully this is finally clear to anyone and we can go on from there :relieved:

Thank you for your answer and clarification.
You provided me with exactly the kind of information I needed.

1 Like

Yes, I can: Audio file loading slowly since Devialet RAAT

Yes, I did watch the video, painful as it was. He talked about jitter and he talked about network timing affecting the D/A converter. It doesn’t - the TCP/IP data is buffered and checksummed at the receiving ethernet port on the endpoint. That data is then read from the buffer (think of it at this point as if you were reading the data from a drive) and sent out over USB/SPDIF/TOSLINK/AES/I2S to the DAC.

Jitter can occur from reading from the endpoint data buffer onwards, but none of that is caused by the network. Roon uses TCP/IP, not UDP, so the network timing has no effect on the endpoint/DAC.

This stuff is really very simple - I have no clue as to why people make it seem complicated.

2 Likes

It’s funny to me that such a fuzz is made about (ethernet) network quality and its effect on audio. Apart from the fact that with TCP/IP there isn’t any such effect, I really wonder why the people that THINK there is don’t worry about jitter and other effects on their bank account or transactions.

After all, banks (and everything else) work with TCP/IP. And at a much, very much, higher frequency then our ears can master.

I’m very sure the datacenters of banks don’t use specialized cables.

2 Likes

Perhaps they have larger transactions to worry about :wink:

1 Like

If something looks too simple, there must be a much deeper conspiracy behind it.

4 Likes

Because subjectivist audiophiles seemingly enjoy the proverbial equivalents of wearing hairshirts and flagellating themselves. Extreme faith. For high end audio to be as good as it gets requires suffering through complication and great expense. Anything that is easy to use/implement or is inexpensive must be compromised in sound quality.

AJ

8 Likes