kevin1969

Sorry but this is completely untrue. An Ethernet NIC knows nothing about the quality of data that is being received by the NIC on the other side of the cable. It does not work harder to transmit data better. What people seem to be missing completely in this discussion is that you are transmitting digital data which are ones and zeros represented by electrical signaling. Those ones and zeros represent packetized data. When the music that is transmitted inside of the packet data is lost due to signal errors buffering issues or any number of possible combinations of problems that could happen on a network they are retransmitted by the TCP protocol. Packet loss happens all the time at very low levels along the internet and you would never even notice it when you're listening to music. The idea that replacing one meter of cable make such a huge difference is completely ridiculous due to the reliability mechanisms built into upper layer transport protocols like TCP. Your musical ones and zeros go across your home network no differently on an expensive table than they do on a cheap cable. This is Science!

I think where you're getting confused about this is that Ethernet is not like USB in that you don't typically push data down the wire and the receiving device just recognizes the music stream and plays it. Now you could get a crossover cable to hook up directly between the CD player and MacBook but there really wouldn't be any purpose since you would still need to open an SMB file share on the Mac or some sort of DLNA media server so the CD player could access the file system. But there's really no advantage over appoint appoint cable then there is connecting it through your router over a longer distance. If a longer cable run is your issue just get some Netgear Powerline adapters and utilize your homes electrical wiring to extend your network from your router to the CD player.

My Bluesound Pulse Mini's are connected to my home network using Netgear Powerline 500's and I have never had a single drop out while playing music from my NAS. In fact my Bluesound Node 2 actually goes through a Powerline and MOCA connection to access the NAS drive and it never drops out. I'm using the Netgear MOCA adapters. I was using Actionteck but there was some sort of weird sync issue on the RF side with the Actiontek boxes so I replaced them with Netgear MoCA adapters that have never had a problem.

When you get the NAS just copy over all of your files initially using a small gigabit Ethernet hub. Then for incremental file syncing you can do it over Powerline. I have a program called file sync Pro which syncs my iTunes library files with another folder on my NAS drive. And this is done over Powerline and I don't really notice how long it takes since it just happens in the background. And if you ever need to copy a large amount of data quickly just move the NAS temporarily over to a Gigabit Hub next to your computer to do it manually.

The listener's ears we're not calibrated.

After reading this whole thread it is so obviously apparent that none of this so-called test follows any sort of scientific principles. It simply begins with a conclusion and then backs up that conclusion with nothing but subjective evaluations. It is nothing but a joke.

I have some Corning optical cables which I wrap around my china in the china cabinet. After all it's better to look good than to sound good

Yes and if you have one of those noise is not a problem. Well until the cable manufacturers convince everyone that Optical cables carry light pollution which ruins your music.

What exactly do you think an Ethernet renderer is?

Well nobody has really explained how they can prove the noise exists in the first place nor how the noise effects the musical integrity over the network so I figured I would propose a very simple solution that isolates the Gigabit Ethernet copper network with a simple Electrical to Optical transceiver. This way none of that electromagnetic interference on your copper Ethernet network can possibly seep into the optical path. ***** 1000-BaseTX -------- 1000-BaseX +++++ RCA cables to amp ControlPoint = Server, Blue sound, other music streaming client NAS*******Switch/Router******ControlPoint******Transceiver--------DAC++++AMP

Do you want to know a real simple solution to all these Ethernet noise problems? Instead of wasting all this money upgrading your entire in-house network to optical just buy a 1000T to 1000X bridge. They are not expensive at all. Here ya go! Problem solved http://www.transition.com/TransitionNetworks/Products2/Family.aspx?Name=SBFFG10xx-1xx

I love the argument here that because a bunch of individual components are hooked together that nobody can possibly understand the system as a whole therefore we must trust our ears to guide our monetary expenditures. I happen to work in the Internet community and I can tell you without any doubt that there is no mystery how the entire internet works together as a whole. There is nobody at any large Internet companies like Google, Level3, Apple or the like that buys into this crap that somehow the quality of a service can magically be improved but not measured. Someone once referred to the high end audio community as deaf and blind ham radio operators. But at least ham radio operators utilize qualitative measurements as a yardstick of performance.

Imagine telling a police officer that you don't care what the breathalyzer reads You aren't drunk!!!

Call me still confused but how exactly is this noise affecting the sound quality? Noise is nothing other than unexpected frequencies traveling along the same medium. Are you suggesting that these frequencies are altering the digital bit stream on the wire or that these frequencies are somehow being picked up by equipment and then transfer through the equipment into the speakers or somehow confusing equipment from doing its job? I would just like to know where exactly in the interconnect component path that this noise is causing a problem. How does one measure this noise to prove its even there in the first place?

I would think something night and day would be easy to measure using external recording devices. A $300 Sony PCM 50 audio recorder it's far superior to the human ear in recording sound so I would think that utilizing a device like this in an A/B comparison and then running the results through Audacity or Audition slideshow quantifiable visible differences. Seems sort of strange that cable manufacturers don't perform these types of tests.