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

Yep, pretty much what I said!

Today this to me is empirical. I trust it can in the future be backed up by "sound" theory.

Hector

Lordy, my head is fried reading through all 27 pages of discussion!

The subject is of interest now that I'm using an ID40 in an 861v4. So can anyone offer me sage advice on this set up, and how to optimise it?

iMac holding music library in Apple Lossless, with Roon > 2m CAT7 cable to Apple time capsule (broadcasting 2.4 and 5.0 wifi networks) > 10m CAT7 cable to ID40. (I previously had the time capsule connected to a Netgear Gigabit switch, then out to the ID40 and CAT5 UTP cabling was used throughout)

I'm inclined to try a GISO beside the ID40, but am I missing a trick (or several tricks!) in the layout of the rest of the kit?

Comments welcome!

Cheers

George

I cannot comment on what other measures can be used to improve your particular environment but I hope my experience with a GISO will help you make a decision.

I placed a GISO between my switch and my ID41 and the improvement was immediately noticeable.

The noise floor dropped and the sound became clearer. I was so impressed that I took my GISO to my dealer who tried it in the equivalent position on some Non Meridian gear and the result was similar.

As the ID41 is supposed to be more noise resistant than the ID40, the effect of the GISO should be more pronounced as all the GISO can do is remove noise on the Ethernet.

I know that the bits are bits people will come out and say it should make no difference but in my experience it just does!

I have noticed quite a difference in playing Tidal on the ID41 using a MD600 and my PC using Roon.
The difference is similar between those combinations and Soolooos with a GISO and without.

Colin, presumably your preference was for the MD600?

George

I trust your comments on on SQ. Can I ask if you heard a difference in going Netgear Gigabit switch to Apple Time Capsule? If anything, it may have been a retrograde step.

I don't know what switch you had, but if it was one of the Netgear units that have the metal earthing lug on the back, did you ground the switch?

Personally, I would try connecting iMac direct into ID40 and using iMac (does it have) wireless to Time Capsule. If iMac has a GB connection, you would probably get away with a standard network patch cable otherwise you would need to use a non standard crossover cable. You would then need to set up a static IP connection on both iMac Ethernet and ID40, on a different subnet to wireless and with no gateway configured. So iMac would use wireless for internet and time capsule and dedicated ethernet for audio.

Ian, are you saying that connecting an ID41 to a gigabit switch is better than direct into the router? Is it due to the RFI or EM from the wifi signal?

I currently connect my ID41 to an old Linksys WRT54g router (wifi disabled) used as a switch. It's only 10/100 and I'm think of replacing it with a gigabit port switch. Do you reckon any improvement?

I have a GISO in front of my ID41 also. When I installed it I did a lot of swapping in and out. I cannot say that I really heard any difference. It is still installed but that is largely just me being lazy.

I don't doubt that in some setups the effect may be different.

Best practice is Sooloos connected to a switch, then switch to the router. This less about AQ reasons, but for reliability.

For transparency in my views, for me, state of health/ears/brain/stress and environment/time of day/background noise have far more impact on AQ than any cabling - I have yet to hear any worthwhile difference in AQ on Meridian kit via digital cable since my 200 series - a very positive benefit to the bank balance and sanity.

The best type of switch, is NO switch (which is what I suggested to George/MrMeridian), the second best type of switch is a basic unmanaged 10/100 switch, i.e. not a gigabit switch and certainly not a managed or smart switch (unless you know what you are going). The reason for 10/100 is that all dedicated Meridian audio endpoints are 100Mbs - the understanding is that Meridian decided that 100Ms was better than 1GB - it makes sense but I have no proof. However, in some scenarios, typically backing up discs, 100Mbs *may* be a limitation for some, at least on initial backup, although, IMHO, probably not for further increments. This is why Sooloos kit with disks are Gigabit networked - I guess convenience outweighed AQ purity.

Thanks for sharing, Ian!

Definitely!

Hi Ian

Thanks very much for your comments, and raising an interesting point re switch>ID40 vs Time capsule>ID40.

When I originally replaced the 10m CAT 5 UTP cable between the Netgear switch and the ID40 with this CAT 7 S-STP cable, the gains were immediate. More body and colour to the sound, if you will. The CAT 5 UTP was flat sounding by comparison.

I then ordered additional shorter runs for Mac>time capsule>switch, but having read here previously that it may be best to have no switch (!) I wired the 10m CAT 7 run directly to the Time Capsule as described in my earlier post. Based on the experience of replacing the initial long run, I had high expectations, but actually found the sound to be quite 'Meh". Flat again.

Based on your comments here, I've put the long CAT 7 run back into the switch, and have another shorter CAT 7 cable between the Time Capsule and switch. And guess what? It sounds better again, like it did with the first cable swap.

I hadn't even noticed that the Netgear switch has a grounding lug until you mentioned, so I'll explore that further. I'll also look at the fixed IP arrangement to run the ID40 from the Mac directly. In the meantime, thanks for the immediate boost to sound quality!

Cheers

George