Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming LAN isolator anyone?

Hi Ken,

Good point. This is really what I wanted to check opinions on. Reading the info on the Acousense website, I think their GISO is primarily about reducing noise transferred from the end of a cable to a device - i.e. it should deliver benefit wherever it is able to remove noise entering a component.

So my humble thinking is that the GISO may do just this on the input to the ID41 and the subsequent benefits of the reduced noise will be apparent, whether the output from the 808v5 is analogue or digital. Once the noise is in the 808v5, it's in and on it's way to the speakers in one form or another.

Then again, I may have the wrong end of the stick ...

Cheers
Dave

Noise doesn't care if it's a digital system or an analogue system, it will affect both IMHO.

I think longer runs to an audio endpoint like MS200/MS600/ID4x is an excellent candidate for the Giso.

I also think that after you put that first Giso on the audio endpoint there might come a lingering thought. What if it could improve the performance a bit by having an additional Giso on a store or core which to their PC nature should be noisy. The only problem with this is cost or price/performance, could it be worth it? Have anyone tried it in a related setup?

Funny - it's almost a case of not wanting to hear a big improvement, as you'd definitely then have to look at adding GISOs to other parts of the chain.

Waiting for email from Acousense re cost - will go from there and try out a GISO in front of the ID41 first.

Has anyone tried as an experiment, making a minimal 10/100 cable? ie removing all but orange and green twisted pairs from the RJ45 plugged into the audio endpoint. This wont work with gigabit though but as Meridian audio endpoints are 10/100, it may work. I suspect that this is what part of the non GB GISO is also doing with the other 2 pairs isolated by transformer.

This would theoretically prevent the unused wires in the cable from being used as an RF antenna.

Ian,do you think the other Network pairs are still transmit signals and can so disturb or the blue and brown pairs acts as antenna/receivers and transmit/emit that then in the Sooloos endpoint ?
Robert

Sorry Robert I am not fully understanding your question, but if I understand you correctly, you are asking whether the other blue and brown pairs are in operation?

If so, as far as I am aware, blue and brown pairs are unused in a 10/100 network, but are in most gigabit networks - the original gigabit standard used a higher quality cat6 cable and still relied on the green and orange pairs but some bright spark worked out that by doubling up on the unused pairs, you could get gigabit over lesser cat5e spec cable which is what most gigabit networks use today.

As dedicated Sooloos audio endpoints are 10/100, I don't think that removing the blue/brown pairs from the endpoints RG45 will have any negative effect. You then rely on the internal screening from preventing crosstalk within the cable.

To reduce the effects of shield and screen acting as an antenna, a further experiment would be to disconnect the drain wire and/or common shield from the audio endpoint end of the cable. This assumes though that the router/switch end remains grounded.

All this of course is difficult to achieve without re-terminating the cable, which can have its own issues.

So a bit of playing devils advocate (ie by achieving xx% of what the GISO achieves simply by utilizing what one has - assume that this will not be carried out on anything more than a cheap but well built CAT 5e/6 S/FTP cable) and a bit of promoting experimentation.

So a dedicated Sooloos LAN (without external broadband connection) constructed from components limited to 10/100, including the ethernet cabling, should speculatively deliver improved SQ?

Its an experiment and only for the link into a dedicated Sooloos audio endpoint, not the rest of the LAN which would benefit from GB connectivity.

I'm not convinced that there should be any differences with a well engineered appropriately specified LAN cable installed in a best practice manner (ie not as part of a birds nest at the back of an audio cabinet) and I believe that in a slightly intoxicated state so may be mistaken, I also heard that Meridian had also tried a number of tests with different LAN cables and, unlike their speakerlink testing, found no audible differences when using different cables - not the same as using a LAN isolator or defacing a LAN cable.

Thanks Ian for all that interesting info about that the Sooloos audio endpoints are dedicated 10/100 ?***
Is that the official M info ?
So the connection between a core to a switch/router could be different ?
I will try out removing the blue and brown pair and see/hear whats coming out with my ensemble and ID40.
For a technical point of view, a termination(for the ID40) in the plug that sitting at the audioendpoint is the correct way to make that.
The same have to be made also on the switch/router to determinate
that outputs correct.

***
So for the audio endpoints the cheaper GISO-DS instead of the
GISO-GB can be used- but i like your idea about "removing unnecessary things"

Remember your Ensemble will (probably) benefit from GB network, but its the link into ID40 that may or may not benefit from preventing the unnecessary 'potential EMI antennas' from penetrating into the ID40/8xx quiet environment.

I'm personally relieved that I cannot hear the differences that others say they can so have no desire to experiment.

Just a note, it might be a good idea to futureproof by ordering the Giso-GB otherwise you are limited to 10/100 which might be a "bummer" further down the road if you wish to use it with something else that uses GBit like MC200, MD600 or a videostreamer etc.

+1 to hort thinking as iam "only" on audio interested..