Thanks for the very useful post, Marshman. Interesting read and food for thought.

I just talked with Ralf at Acousense and asked him about optical links in place of LAN cables. He uses some in his commercial installation but said the you only gain an overall advantage with optical over very long cable runs (100m in his case). Crion, Ralf also echoed your comment and said that the optical adapter devices themselves degrade the signal to some extent.

Anyway, the only way to find out is to experience it, so I've ordered a GISO GB from Ralf. I'll fit it at the 808v5 end of the 20m CAT7 LAN cable from the MD600.

I'll keep you posted on what improvement, if any, I get from this. My gut feel is that it'll either amount to little or no change, or a very significant change. Acousense offer a full refund within three weeks if the unit delivers no benefit in your system, so I'm only risking the cost of shipping the unit back to Germany.

Dave

808v5, MD600 & DSP7200.1
Dedicated audio mains supply