The BIG fight against noise in the audio setup

Format is ok but it did cost a lot :slightly_smiling_face:

That is absolutely true, they are not cheap (you know that I know all about that :rofl:) and arguably the flatcap was OTT. Though we had that discussion a lot on the Naim forum and I see it ā€œholisticallyā€ - itā€™s not only about the parts one buys, but the price includes the research, design, and overall keeping a small specialist company alive where people can dedicate themselves to these things.

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Thereā€™s another on Stereonet with multiple cascaded switches and Ā£1500 Vertere ethernet cables.

Swears blind he hears massive improvements, only, like most of his kind he eschews blind comparisons. Wonā€™t entertain offers of blind testing because after disconnecting anything his system take DAYS to ā€œsettleā€ again afterwards.

As good as sent me veiled threats via PM that my participation in discussions around ethernet wouldnā€™t end well for me.

Strangely, heā€™s the one who packed up his toys and went homeā€¦

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I find the charge of Ā£500 for a mains lead a bit much let alone the PSUā€™s.

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Pre takeover by Focal, Naim said there is no benefit from using anything than the basic supplied mains lead. After the takeover, hey but this Ā£Ā£Ā£Ā£ mains lead itā€™s amazing.

Similarly with relatively cheap, but stiff as f+ck, NAC A5 speaker cable.
ā€œWhat the hell is this bl++dy stuff?ā€ as poetically expressed by Mrs H.

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I find Naimā€™s hand-waving justifications hard to swallow. Benchmark Media produced the AHB2 power amp with vanishingly low noise and distortion levels with a built-in switcher.

The AHB2 has now been dethroned as the lowest noise, lowest distortion amp on the planet by the new Topping LA90 which employs an external SMPS. Furthermore, the Topping is a Class AB design. Fully balanced too, with hybrid XLR/TRS sockets.

Who says SMPS have to be noisy?

Nowhere near the power output of my bridged mono AHB2s, so I wonā€™t be ditching them any time soon. Nonetheless, spectacular performance for the money. A pair in bridged mono will give 90W/channel/8 ohm or 192 W/channel/4 ohms for $1600/Ā£1800.

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Vielen Dank fĆ¼r die Ɯbersetzung. Ich habe mehr Deutsch vergessen, als ich mich erinnern kann!

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Thatā€™s what I call user burn-in. Itā€™s real. Itā€™s the user deciding, days later after adjusting to anything unpleasant, that its pleasant now.

This I actually believe but there is an easier solution. Stop letting the ISP supplied garbage do any L2 switching. Isolate to traffic that only goes to / from the Internet. Donā€™t even let it see broadcast traffic from your private network.

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I donā€™t know about the builtin switch but the Fritzbox is actually not ISP supplied garbage, my 6920 6690 is pretty great for what I need at least

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I have been suggesting this for years, not for SQ reasons though.

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Yup, thatā€™s been my fight with ISPs over the ages. Comcast makes it annoyingly hard to replace their rental all-in-one modem/routers by the simple modems that they are legally required to accept since they meet the DOCSIS standards. Spent days of frustration on that just before Christmas at our East Coast place. Finally Iā€™m where I want to be, the most basic cable/fiber modems connected to routers I select and manage to do NAT and everything else needed in ways I understand.

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I buy a good amp that has itā€™s stable power source (ring-core transformer) built in and well-isolated. Then I feed it optical digital input. Thatā€™ll be enough for me.

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Iā€™ve been using my own modems for years now with Comcast (Iā€™m currently at the second one) and havenā€™t had any issues. As long as they support DOCSIS, they should work.

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Fwiw, Iā€™ve found it to be quite easy to replace mine with xfinity. Iā€™ve done it twice with netgear cm700ā€™s. They have a place you can activate your own with the app. If it has sucked for you Iā€™m sorryā€¦ one is urban New England, one is rural New England. Let me know if I can help, but below is basically what I did. Had to call in one but once I got to L2 tech support it was over in five minutes.

Iā€™ve solved the issue, thanks. The Xfinity app is super-buggy, and in particular it got very confused because we have accounts in multiple locations, different states. Their chat help people were nice but mostly clueless. Eventually I had a cable modem that would reboot every few hours, which I finally fixed by going on the app and pretending it wasnā€™t yet installed. It went through the process and then crashed, but somehow the modem stayed on after that.

ā€œShouldā€ but depending on the state of their cable, it wonā€™t. On 3 different locations, 3 different states, 3 different problems, including having to replace a whole cable drop after months of flaky service ā€œbecause I didnā€™t use their modem.ā€

I would take a different approach. Make sure you have identified where the noise source is first. Without any signal crank up the volume until you hear noise ( I assume you are hearing noise thru speakers).
Then I would shut off amp and remove a piece of gear ( last in the chain ) and then power up until you hone in on source . Then try a fix. My greatest improvement was going balanced And separating signal interconnects from power lines

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Like physically to put them in order and try to separate as much as you can? or something else?

Typo in fiscally, physically?

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yes sorry, typo