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Someone who knows how to do so should do a survey of those believe and those donât.
I suspect that a substantial majority of people who frequent this site are believers.
I have a 2960G-8TCL and a 2960-8TC-L. Currently only the 2960G is in the network (but I will try âdaisy chainingâ the Ciscos), it feeds my Lumin D1 with a 5m long Supra cable. The complete setup is: Xpenology NAS for the music library, NUC8i5 in Akasa Turing case runs R.O.C.K., Cisco 2960G and Lumin D1 with external DACâŚ
I have a similar setup and the explanation why it improves the sound is not hard: fiber stops all electronic noise. The electronic noise that before came from computer, router and also RFI that these cables picked up now gets blocked by the fiber.
Using an opticalModule as the media converter on the streamer side will additional replace the typically noisy media converter with something more quiet. I donât see any benefit of using an opticalModule on the dirty side though (in case you need one on that side).
Unfortunately I compared the SFP out on my very good Cisco 2960L-16-PS-TC to an opticalModule, vs oM to oM, and the oM to oM was better. Not by much, but enough to make me keep both. It was subtle, and certainly starting with one will get you 75% there compared to two.
I think the noise on the receive side can be effectively addressed with an upgraded power supply.
The send side doesnât matter, obviously.
They usually use switched voltage regulators, so even with a good LPS you will still get some noise from the switched electronics. But this is theory, I havenât compared myself. I did however try my TP-Link media converter with a battery and that improved it a little bit.
Thatâs interesting, I know John Swenson talks about phase noise traversing optical, but I figured it was sale-talk. But maybe not 
My personal plan though is to buy a switch with 3-4 ethernet and one optical output, and then use fiber to an opticalModule and then to streamer/DAC. Feels like that would get close to optimal for a fair price.
Sadly most cheap ethernet switches donât have fiber out, the only one I found is Trendnet TEG-S51SFP
Donât get a cheap switch. For $65 shipped picked up a Cisco 2930 48Gbe, 4 10GBe SFP+. The one I received looked new and when I popped the cover, clean.
In spite of myself, this thread has me thinking -
The thing about 2960s is that theyâre managed and that sometimes gives Roon fits.
You have to sometimes watch it with switches that arenât new out of box.
If you have a Cisco switch that has some preconfiguration you need to get into itâs rommon mode and delete the vlan.dat and then normal boot and issue from the config mode âwrite eraseâ and power cycle.
That should take care of most issues.
Youâll need a USB to RS232 adapter and console cable but those are like $10. Other Cisco switches can have a built in USB console port in addition to the RJ45.
Going the whole hog. Getting fiber into the house. This is how you do it in the UK. Still patchy. Not something offered universally across the country by any means. But I imagine it is similar, in all roon countries. Looks like a lot of mud and dirt to me.
But once you are in the house, has anyone got experience of POF (plastic optical fiber)? I can see the point of cabling the house up with fiber whatever side of the audio debate you are on. This gets interesting at about 1.18 when you can see that the cable is small enough to pull through existing conduits without demolishing the house.
Everything with POF looks domestically more compact and simpler than enterprise networking and at reasonable prices without the risks and complexity of going with refurbished enterprise gear that was probably heavily used in a data center. So for example here is a 3 port optical-out switch with a single port copper-in that most would need to get from their ISPâs router:
Itâs all quite doable. DIY, with no special tools needed:
Plastic though. Is that better or worse than copper or glass?
Neither, Just different. As long as the specs are met you are good to go. Each have their strengths.
Thank you Mark. I did some reading, but Iâm still not 100% sure if I understand everything correctly with uplink ports. Please correct me if Iâm wrong with the planned network setup. Iâm planning to connect the 2960G 8TC-L and the 2960 8TC-L through the uplink SFP ports. Both SFP ports can handle a 1000BASE-LX/LH SFP transceiver, so they can communicate without any issue. The ISP router will be connected to one of the RJ45 ports of the 2960G and the Lumin D1 to one of the 2960âs RJ45 port. NAS and R.O.C.K. will be connected to the 2960G as well through RJ45 ports. With this setup the streamer will be âelectrically isolatedâ from other devices. Whether this change will have any impact on SQ or not is a different issue. Thank you in advance.
Since the Lumin only does copper Ethernet you are still going to be electrically connected somewhere* Typically copper Ethernet is truly transformer isolated at both ends. But if using shielded ethernet cabling then all bets are off. Every one using UTP cabling has already electrically isolated their streamer/end point.
We may be speaking to the same thing:
On one 2960 you will connect your ISP, your NAS, your R.O.C.K. You will use the SFP port and create trunk between 2960âs over fiber.
On the 2nd 2960 you will connect your Lumin to try and isolate it best you can.
That should be straight forward with both switches at factory default.
Cisco rolls out of the box with DTP enabled and any switch to switch links will just trunk automagically.
My main one I bought used from a private seller was giving me strange behaviors. I finally hooked up a usb to it and reset it via terminal in my mac. It was pretty easy.
Doesnât the 48 port have a fan in it? Might want to stick to the 8, 12 or 16 port models with no fan if not in a server closet.
It does but its on another floor in my house.
Hi
Recently I made changes to the switch and cables . The new switch is a tplink smart switch and from cat 6 changed to supra cat 8. Definitely there were noticable changes in the image. The katana DAC (roon end point) was much more pleasant.
A thoughtful comment on the Naim forum:
Xanthe
There is no particular reason why any one specific Ethernet cable should sound better or worse in any particular system in any particular location.
The electrical characteristics of the particular cable interact with (filter and âtuneâ) the noise characteristics of local environmental noise, and the inherent noise emitted by the equipment; this reshaped noise then interacts with the noise sensitivity of the Streamer / DAC / analogue preamp circuitry⌠So unless you can predict all that lot, then whether a cable works better or less well is pretty much a lottery.
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