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

Hi Shaun,

Sorry, I should have spotted this earlier. I think you might not get a good result the EMsafe isolator, as it looks like it's designed purely with safety and equipment protection in mind.

The principle of galvanic isolation is about breaking physical electrical connections, while still allowing the signal to pass through using transformer induction. In a safety and equipment protection scenario, the benefit is that the signal gets through un-scathed, but the receiving equipment is isolated from voltage surges and spikes.

Having shared a few emails with Ralf at Acousense, I now understand that his isolator does some clever things with the transformers, effectively tuning the windings to allow the wanted signal frequencies through transparently, while rejecting the un-wanted high frequency noise.

Yes, the earth gets isolated and effectively re-based in the receiving device via Galvanic isolation, but this is a minor part of the overall story in the audio application. The big gain comes from filtering out the very damaging high frequency noise and I'm guessing this isn't being done in the EMsafe.

I could be completely wrong, but I can see no reference to selective filtering of unwanted frequencies on the EMO Systems site.

You'll get a little bit of benefit from isolating the earth, as the balanced pair signals on the Ethernet cable are all reference earth and there will certainly be noise there. But noise is also induced on the positive and negative-going signal lines of each balanced pair and I'd guess the EMsafe won't address that.

If you get a big improvement in sound, then great, as we'll have found a cheaper alternative to the GISO. If not, I hope you might be able to get a refund.

Dave