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

Nice and tidy.

Thanks for the info.

Yesterday evening I exchanged the Giso GB enclosed cat6 cable (ca 0,5m) to an Audioquest Diamond RJ45 0,75m. This piece is being used just before the ID41.

Gbit Switch->AQ Vodka 5,0m-> GISO GB-> AQ Diamond 0,75m-> ID41

No jaw hitting the ground (as expected) but the spatial information is better and a more "direct" sound than the good quality cat6a cable it replaced. What I usually find with these solid silvercables is that burn-in/getting_used_to factor is about 2weeks and they open up a bit.

Crion

Do you use SSTP cables?

Russ

Yes, these AQ are cat7 cables (Sooloos/HD621), I also run Furutech cat6a SSTP (frontspeakers) and Meridian SL (surroundspeakers).

But on non-audio equipment I do have UTP and with all this talk about EMI/RFI maybe I'll put some better shielded cables on them as well to keep noise out as much as possible.

I plan on getting the Nighthawk X6 router with two 5GHz and one 2.4GHz band. So there will never be less RFI in domestic environments.

Well worth trying on the UTP cables.

Russ

Just wanted to be clarify what you're saying here......

Are you saying that the use of the Silver cable is somehow influencing the transfer of Ethernet Packetized data at the audio endpoint??

And another question to check Crion if I may...

The new added cable is AFTER the GISO. So, in theory it should be getting clean signal from the GISO.

It's an area we are all interested in here to try and understand what is making the most impact.

In the same way a proper 75Ohm SPDIF cable (Meridian black) with WBT Nextgen 0110 Ag connectors affects the audioquality compared to brass RCA and copperwire. But this is in a lesser degree ofcourse.

The packets are unharmed!

But the GISO GB is the star of the show here, normally I would just have gone with an AQ Vodka (cat7) for this purpose. But there was a deal on the diamond so I took it.

I think the AQ Vodka is the best price/performance for SL/LAN of shorter lengths. On longer lengths the Meridian SL is best price/performance.

On HD621 there was a clear difference between the AQ Vodka and Diamond RJ45 though so I guess I was curious to check it after the Giso GB. The jury is out though if there is any reason to venture beyond the AQ Vodka on Sooloos LAN connections.

Ok fine... and it�s at this point that I need to call COMPLETE BS on this latest particular claim of the Silver cable influencing the sound produced by the v8/ID41 combo.

In thousands of tests around the world, RFI Mitigation has been shown to be influenced by cable Shielding only... and is NOT in any way influenced by the Core material of the cable itself... The cable�s Core material has been shown in many tests to have ZERO influence on the transfer of Packetized Ethernet data... so the use of Copper, Silver, Fibre or many other alloys has ZERO impact on the Integrity of that transfer.

Secondly, as it�s Packetized Data, with built-in error correction and packet re-transmission, that is being carried by the core... again we know the Robustness of those Ethernet transfer protocols due to the numerous Tests, Data Validations and Acceptance at many Super Critical Installations around the world like Banks, Stock Exchanges, Nuclear Power station etc.

Hell, we ourselves rely on its Robustness so that we know what we are reading on this very page is what the poster actually wrote... and not some errors or typos that were introduced as part of the data transfer to our screens.

Thirdly, in your last post, you�re comparing the PCM Transfer over a SPDIF cable to the transfer of Ethernet Packetized data over a CatX cable... this only goes to show a complete naivety on your part about the CRITICAL difference between these 2 completely different data transfer mechanisms.

PCM over SPDIF is Streamed Data with zero Error Correction, no Timing Data and no Data Retransmission... the Receiving device just has to �process� the data as it arrives and assume that all the data is there and in the correct order.

Ethernet Packetized Data has Error Correction, Checksums & Packet Retransmission to ensure that no outside factors can influence the Data itself... leaving the Receiving device certain about the Data and its Timing integrity. And as stated above, its Robustness & Integrity is proven in Trillions of Data transactions around the world every single hour of the day.

ANY comparison of Streamed PCM over SPDIF to Ethernet over CatX is simply a null and void comparison.

For this purpose it's probably more about the construction of the cat7 vs the enclosed cat6a rather than the conductor itself.

There is one more reason that will be become apparent further on why I didn't mind it being the same conductor as the RJ45 cable on my HD621...

But then why write

In what world is that relevant to Ethernet Data Transfers??


And I'll leave it others to decide on how Audibly perceptible the Shielding DIFFERENCES are over a 0.75m long cable (i.e. the Shielding differences between the 0.5m Cat6a cable and the AQ cable).......especially when that short 0.75m cable is located in what you've described previously as a low RFI environment

This is all fine, but it's my understanding that Meridian/Sooloos does not use the eithernet protocol to move music from the core to the endpoint.