I always remember a friend coming round to listen to some of his music on my system (he is an accomplished musician) and playing some MQA as it happened to warm our ears up before he was critically listening to his own work, and he cried out “Now that’s a Kick Drum” at one point, he was enthralled.
Thats the kind of validation I look for and appreciated.
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My next setup will also be a all-in-one system, either complete like Genelec The Ones, or an all-in-one amp, dac, streamer and separate passive speakers. There are so many cost savings in those systems that you should get a very high price/performance from them.
Besides, I can still do network tweaks 
I just want Nucleus, DAC, amp, passive speakers. I have the Nucleus and DAC (Oppo). Just need an amp and speakers.
This has got everything to do with ground loops, nothing with the quality of any cable or isolator per se.
That’s a sign of a pretty bad groundloop, well designed PC’s don’t have that problem. Yes an isolator or shielded/unshielded cabling sure will make a difference then but there is absolutely no need to buy a hundreds of dollars expensive one any isolator will cure your groundloop just as good. A better designed PC will make even more of a difference.
Trust me, I don’t have any ground loops. I run everything except power amps on batteries, and the power amps run on a dedicated line/fuse. Besides, how can a LAN isolator solve ground loops?
Trust me, you do have groundloops when you hear clicking sound from your computer induced by processor load, keyboards, mouseclicks etc. Don’t think in boxes with cables in between them, a badly designed PC can have internal grounloops wich can become worse by external pheripherals. Groundloops exists in many forms, low frequency and high frequency. In a badly designed motherboard the LAN transformers are not enough to prevent high frequency leakage currenst. That’s where external isolator can help. The fact that you are running on batteries doesn’t mean a thing. Trust me, your PC has a grounding problem.
A dedicated line/fuse is not a cure for groundloops, it also does not make your power any cleaner either. In some cases it can make things even worse. In many cases it is better to have a very tight ground coupling. When you mix components on different outlets the possibilty of grounding problems becomes only larger, not less.
In the scenario with a direct connected USB I could have some problems, but thats not how I run things normally. It was just to illustrate a point that DACs can’t filter everything.
In my normal setup, there is no electric connection between my PC and dac/streamer, because I have fiber media converters and fiber between streamer and switch, and last media converter as well as DAC and streamer are on batteries (besides, I have removed the ground metallic cover on RJ45). And it was in this setup that I noticed improvements with the LAN isolator. I even have pin1 (ground) on XLR between DAC and amps cut, not much I can do about the signal connection though.
I can’t see your system from a distance but all I know is that everytime I have been confronted with the problems you described it always came down to a proper grounding scheme. I have been trouble shooting many pro audio systems over the years and in 99% of the cases when something is making hum, noises etc the cause was improper grounding. My point is that when an isolator makes a difference it is because you have changed something in the grouding scheme. An isolator does not clean your signal, it doesn’t make it prettier, it does not add fairydust, it is all in the grounding. You asked why an isolator can make a difference in your setup, well that is the answer, nothing more nothing less.
Yury,
in my experience they do. just make sure to use a “shielded” design like CAT 7 & 8 provide. Best bang for the buck is Monoprice Cat 8 although I use Audioquest Cinnamon. If you can hear the difference and like it that’s good for you. If you can’t hear a difference then save your money. I have a high end Lumin and it was very easy to hear more clarity from less noise.
My speakers with paused music is dead silent both with and without the LAN isolator, and the changes the LAN isolator made to the sound is subtle but quite audible, but nowhere near the kind of problems you usually get with ground loops. Besides, as I mentioned, my DAC/streamer isn’t even grounded so a ground-loop feels far-fetched
I think what a well made LAN isolator adds is a better noise rejection due to better galvanic isolation. Nothing magic or fancy, just improving upon the already existing magnetic isolators that ethernet typically uses.
I agree, I also get best sound with shielded cables, but I like to remove shield connection on streamer side (the metallic cover on the RJ45 connector). You are less likely to get ground loops and whatever RFI the shield picks up are drained to the switch-side.
So “The average score was below 65% among the 23 students that took part in this informal test… but note there could be issues with the testing procedure”
And doesn’t need an 1100 page book to acknowledge this, when you decide to chime in with test results 
“There” was perfectly wonderful with my Meridian 218 endpoint and DSP5200SE speakers until I tried an EtherREGEN switch in front of the 218 and added Shunyata power for the speakers. Now “There” is extra super wonderfuller than I knew it could be. Just sayin’
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Jolly good! Is it a holy grail?
You might have a try at fibre optics and maybe another endpoint (what no expensive blobs of metal as speaker feet?)
No, no blobs yet. Maybe when I win the lottery. For now, my speaker spikes stand on metal discs with Herbie’s Big Fat Dots attached because I haven’t sprung for the GAIA feet that some people with my speakers recommend.
I do use optical ahead of the EtherREGEN from my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X SFP. And I love my DigiOne Signature endpoint, but it doesn’t output Meridian’s AES/EBU…
I didn’t add this because it wouldn’t have made any sense. On the contrary, my point was no matter what kind of testing procedures people used in that informal experiment, NOBODY scored better than 65%.
In this particular case, there was no fixed procedure. All participants did the above-mentioned (ABX single blind) test in the way they wanted to. All of them repeated the test multiple times and used several different test methods. That was the whole point of this informal experiment. At the end of the semester, all participants (= 23 Sound Engineering students) wrote a term paper about their test results and how these results may have been influenced by the various test methods they decided to use.
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This is great context to (finally) have…
When you drop a two-liner with the stats of experiments without this context, people will automatically jump to conclusions… especially the crowd that scream for double blind testing but don’t consider (or know) some of the issues that can may come into play because of potential confounding variables involved (related to the brain).
It’s not your fault that people jump to conclusions but we all know it happens.
And this context didn’t need an 1100 page book… when I previously asked for some additional info around your numbers, this is really all that is required for casual discussion purposes.
Seems like an interesting semester assignment.
I’m happy to shake hands on this topic and walk away on a better note than previously…
The most likely cause would be because the difference is imperceptable to ones hearing - and no, if I can’t hear any difference even though science tells me it’s there I would not keep it. I’m pushing 50, I need to do some major retooling to hear any kind of difference nowadays.
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I am 50 
…and there are some things I can tell if there’s a difference and some not…I keep the items that do and send back the others that dont. I have no bias towards anything, it either improves on or it doesn’t
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