I've learned alot thanks to Alpha audio!! My Asus router had to be restarted every 2 weeks or so, I changed the psu to an Sbooster and since never needed to restart my router. POWER MATTERS :-)

Well explained, good job! I'm a network carrier guy as well and never believed it...but, started in my HiFi chain with the Paul Pang Dual OCXO and played with Ferrum Hypsos on my streamer... big difference!! Changed PSU on my AVM fritzbox, another difference... thanks a lot

Great presentation Jaap and I have certainly seen much benefit to my digital front end by upgrading my switch to an English Electric one from Chord and using better network cables. Keep up the good work :-)

Thank you Jaap. Very educational and informative for me. I will certainly upgrade my modem/router and look at sourcing a decent network switch. Kind regards Rob Australia 😎👍

Hi Jaap Thanks again for jet another interesting video👍 I have designed and build networks professionally for over 16years. I have built and used media servers in my HiFi setup for about 10years, only the last 2½years have I optimized my private network at home. Here I also learned that network for HiFi does make a huge difference 👍😊 In your video did you state that Network speed does not matter, because bandwidth requirement for Audio is so low. Yes, bandwidth requirement for Audio is low and like you said maybe around 10Mb/s when it is high. Most switched and NIC's is about 100Mb/s or 1Gb/s, which is 10 or 100 times higher than the audio streams needs. Still speed of the NIC's does matter, if you take a 1Gb/s NIC and lock it till 100Mb/s your sound will change. If you use a managed switch, be sure to set speed and duplex to the same in both ends. I will not say which one is best, because some systems will benefit for using full speed other systems will benefit if using 100Mb/s on a 1Gb/s NIC. If you have tested this too or if you try it, please let me know what you think :) Thanks Br Jacob Land Jensen Denmark

Interesting presentation & I look forward to more findings in this contentious area........ I don't mean to come across as suffering from "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" & "nitpicking" but @ 26:08 you mention "fiberglass" in your overheads, the general convention is "optical fiber" or just "fibre" ( without mentioning, single mode or multimode or real glass versus plastic optical fiber ... ) the term "fiberglass" is reserved for applications such as a "fiberglass boat or surfboard" or fiberglass thermal or high temperature electrical insulation - I like everything you "guys" do & it's refreshing to hear an intelligent conversation on a subject that's dear to me ( sound quality ).....

Great presentation! What is the best way to upgrade the powersupply of the meraki switch?

I found cascading 2 merakis with fiber and startech SFP's worked very well. I replaced the power supplies with LPS and a LC filter. BIG improvements

Hi Jaap, thanks for this very informative video. Very nicely explained. Do you have any experience with the Innuos Phoenix NET switch? If so, what your take on that switch? Best Regards:Kris

Would love to see your review/testsof Audiophool's modified Cisco Meraki switch

Thanks, great presentation. I do have a question though… should all cables leading to relevant audio equipment be connected to the same switch? For example, NAS, Roon Core, Roon endpoint. I have Roon Core and NAS in the switch but the Ethernet cable that leads to the Roon endpoint is plugged directly in the router (a rather cheap one). I do have a galvanic isolator at the end of that cable, in the connection to the endpoint. Thanks!!

Thank you Jaap ! Are you saying that I can greatly improve performance by substituting the isp provided modem/router with a separate modem and separate router ?

@8:30 UTP cabling is CMNR (common mode noise rejection). You don't need shielded in home applications. T.I. has a paper on EMI effects on 10/100 Ethernet PHY's and the conclusion is noise immunity below 30MHz. That's the first thing to understand. On STP cable you need to look at the Siemens paper called the 'Antenna Myth' as you are now, unfortunately, perpetuating those same myths.

That was great, you broke down all of the relevant issues in a very structured way that was easy to follow. I have an engineering background but all of this is foriegn territory to me. Thanks very much.

The double shielding which you suggest improoves sq only on digital connections? Thank you John

Thank you for this interesting Video. You talk about a DAC in your Video. Which one you talk about? THX

Hello Jaap, what do you mean with shielding on both sides? What kind of shielding you used?

Hi Jaap, going trough your presentation Have you ever tried to measure the voltage on the ethernetwire of a mediaconverter to find out its default output noise level ? I would expect that for -110 dB you need to be in the range of 10microvolt ?. Would it be feasible you think ?

The way this information was delivered was top-notch. I salute you 🫡

Opinions differ about whether or not to connect shielding at both ends of the utp cable and some services swear by one or the other, occasionally I am specifically asked to mount shielding at both ends but usually the other way around

GM ☕️..yea, it’s me …again. My biggest issue with my streaming of music ( Amazon Utra HD) is my incredible slow internet speed..in a semi rural area….so once we upgrade from 6MPS to something around 50MPS ..now we can do more around here.

If I put a good power supply to my wifi router, should I get same improvements for both cable and wifi connection to my streamer?

Hi again ..time has passed and we’re now on a very fast and healthy network for our wifi 😎 Now is there a quality streaming unit that uses wifi ..my other half won’t let me pass cable throughout the house ..and that’s probably a good thing 😅

Very interesting video, thank you! I have a Bluesound Node 130 upgraded with PD Creative PSU and fed with ifi Power X Powersupply, a Vodafone Station Router with standard Powersupply. All cables are supra cat 8 cables. Would you recommend a network switch or is it better to not have a switch? If you recommend a switch, which would you buy max 100 Euro? Would you upgrade the Powersupply for the Router or isn't that necessary? Thank you!!

How i shield in two side in a cat 6a cable where already have a ground drain cable??? May the drain cable and shield foil connect together??

are you still using the Meraki ?

Audioquest Pearl, and other Audioquest ethernet cables, have the shield tied to ground at one end only. You can confirm this by connecting a continuity meter between the connectors.

Hello Jaap. Thank you for the excellent presentation. Really like the fact that you stress - from the beggining - what the problem is in networks...Not 0/1 but noise.... Is there any way to link the slides? Would be wonderful to see the measurements diagrams in detail. I think you also publish this on your web. Would details be there? Also I am not exactly clear what power supply you propose as best to use with switch. A good linear or a good switching power supply? Thanks!

Much enjoyed. Wish I could speak Dutch or any other language for that matter even a tenth as well as you can speak English!

Mijn naam is Jaap en dit is mijn spreekbeurt. 😃

The name is.. Jitter where you try is there streaming songs with no jitter in... the sea of jitter No need from hi end wires, big money for switches the data coming from the source and on your streamer converting and..then... . Jitter so get your self a streamer, good network and go for fishing songs there are songs with no jitter.

@ 13:32 "Are there any Electrical Engineers in the ... [ audience ] ... no? Ok, I'm not one as well, but... " ... and it shows. If there were any EE's in the audience, they would have contested these claims easily. In the digital domain, the signal on the cable is being interpreted as a 0 / "zero" if below threshold, and a 1 / "one", if above threshold. TTL logic thresholds are set such that there is a small gap in voltage values between the two states. For example, from 0 volts to 0.8 volts is considered a “low” logic state (zero / 0), and 2 volts to 5 volts is considered a “high” logic state (one / 1). Anything in between 0.8 to 2 volts is not considered a "legal" TTL logic value. What this means is that although network and other data cables (e.g. USB, etc...) can and will be subjected to noise from external sources, generally in a very high percentage of cases this noise falls well below the threshold required to flip a bit on the wire. If that were to happen, you would experience data or packet loss (would be measurable and provable), and the end result (with streaming audio gear) might be some sort of audio drop-out, buffer underrun, or in worst cases playing a corrupted PCM data stream. However, in practice this is _very_ rare to see with well-designed gear (e.g. streaming devices, DACs, audio interfaces, etc...) When packets arrive at the destination, they are processed by the receiving device and eventually translated into analog audio, usually by a DAC. If you were to test this DAC output for noise and compare between pieces of network gear in between, you'd see that most all of the noise floor is the same across tests and the entire frequency range. The only exception is if you hooked up the final DAC, amp and/or speakers in such a configuration as to create a ground loop. That would be considered a wiring error, and would immediately discredit any results of testing the two pieces of networking gear, unless one of the two pieces of gear indeed is somehow contributing to the ground loop in the system (in which case, that piece of gear would be considered faulty & bad design). When you're comparing the two network switches and supposedly "hearing a difference", that is easily the placebo effect. Unless you're doing double-blind statistically interpreted experiments on this, you can easily fool yourself into thinking that you're hearing a difference. In reality, we often can "hear a difference" between two sets of gear or types of interconnections simply because we're focusing on the minutia of hearing something, and our brain and cognitive biases trick us into thinking we hear something as better or worse than the other identical audio when in reality it's the same.

network streamer is nothing but an ordinary PC with a better sound card packed in a branded box and sold at an absurdly high price

So this is why CD's still sound better most of the times?

Play a wave file extracted from a cd sounds better then any streamer . Why buy one its all polluted with wifi signals .

Guys full of it, he's a salesman. Let's see him do a controlled double blind test, he claims he can hear differences in cables 😂 Why is he adding a switch into his setup anyway? Keep the chain simple ffs.