network streaming tweaks

Obsydian posted:

I also found the same as you but with the Vodka.

Me too, after enough vodka they all sound great 

james n posted:

Is the Nova a stop gap to something else. £3800 for a Chord Music streaming cable seems a tad excessive just to listen to Tidal ?

Just curious.

That is tge new plan, but the I got back into Naim to stick with a Muso and vowed only one box streamer with Tidal.

Recall last time 15yrs ago I said a Midi HiFi system, about 5 yrs later and 8 or so boxes and many £10k's the sold It all as too consuming time wise.

JAMES N - well I paid circa £2k to go from an Atoms to Nova and the Indigo and fibre bridge did FAR more.

Well it looks like the network tweaking is keeping you amused. I'm surprised you get such a big difference as I thought the Nova platform was designed to minimise the effects of the network ?

Indigo:                £4200 streamer, £1200 Ethernet cable.....    OK, if that works for you.....  But interesting priorities!

Chord Music:     £4200 streamer, £3800 Ethernet cable.....    

The thing is, once you've heard ChordMusic - in any guise - in your system, it really is incredibly difficult to forget it.  It's not really the equivalent of a "black box upgrade" as it does things that black boxes, at least the one's I'm familiar with, simply don't do.

Huge posted:

Indigo:                £4200 streamer, £1200 Ethernet cable.....    OK, if that works for you.....  But interesting priorities!

Chord Music:     £4200 streamer, £3800 Ethernet cable.....    

Indeed... Admittedly I haven't listed to a £3,800 Ethernet cable, but I would be most surprised if there weren't better upgrade paths from the Nova... Are you serious -- you bought a £3,8000 Ethernet cable for a Nova?! Or maybe just a bit of attention seeking? 

Timo posted:

Huge posted:

Indigo:                £4200 streamer, £1200 Ethernet cable.....    OK, if that works for you.....  But interesting priorities!

Chord Music:     £4200 streamer, £3800 Ethernet cable.....    

Indeed... Admittedly I haven't listed to a £3,800 Ethernet cable, but I would be most surprised if there weren't better upgrade paths from the Nova... Are you serious -- you bought a £3,8000 Ethernet cable for a Nova?! Or maybe just a bit of attention seeking? 

Cheapskates! At this level, a full loom is essential, so call it another £8000 for speaker cables.

I think anyone spending nearly 4k on a network cable needs therapy. I would want empirical evidence it makes any difference at all not the expectation bias spending that much money can create. 

I'm in this camp and so are all the incredibly clever research and tech people I work with. 

"Bits are bits; Ethernet transports error-checked IP packets from one point to another. There’s no such thing as a good bit or bad bit or “better-sounding” bit — you either receive the packet of data (the FLAC stream in this case), or you don’t."

SimonPeterArnold posted:

I'm in this camp and so are all the incredibly clever research and tech people I work with. 

"Bits are bits; Ethernet transports error-checked IP packets from one point to another. There’s no such thing as a good bit or bad bit or “better-sounding” bit — you either receive the packet of data (the FLAC stream in this case), or you don’t."

It's a few years since I designed real time services over data networks, but when I were lad jitter and lattency had a fairly major impact. 

But bits are an abstraction of reality - a mathematical invention - a number system of base 2.

What you actually have are changes in voltage level travelling along a metal wire. These changes have finite rise times, and the time between successive voltage changes is not exactly the same. The bits is bits brigade seem to want to ignore fundamental physics.

SimonPeterArnold posted:

I'm in this camp and so are all the incredibly clever research and tech people I work with. 

"Bits are bits; Ethernet transports error-checked IP packets from one point to another. There’s no such thing as a good bit or bad bit or “better-sounding” bit — you either receive the packet of data (the FLAC stream in this case), or you don’t."

if you are so clever and open minded, try first a good lan in a 1k /meter range , just to experiment. You will be surprised !

DAVEJ - Agree did you demo or still have the Chord Music : )

Like I said earlier the box brigade, when Naim release ethernet will be all over it with reasons why and forget all said here, even bolder to claim no other cable is worthy.

First time round with Naim i was box mad, much later I turned attention to stands, but would vehemently deny anything other than Naim cables - even those they were in comparison to other speaker and interconnect options very cheap. Closest I came was for a few months a micromega fronted my Naim system, after much trialing I ended up with a Chord solid.

I always said if I started again (did not intend to) was to keep an open mind and test myself and decide. I disliked the Naim sheep mentality.

Also to ensure I extract the maximum by optimising the setup.

Also recall the old Mana flame war days, so many denying any benefit, then the Fraim came and all the sheep just followed and even bought the matching Chips.

SimonPeterArnold posted:

I'm in this camp and so are all the incredibly clever research and tech people I work with. 

"Bits are bits; Ethernet transports error-checked IP packets from one point to another. There’s no such thing as a good bit or bad bit or “better-sounding” bit — you either receive the packet of data (the FLAC stream in this case), or you don’t."

Yes bits are bits, but they're carried along by an analogue signal in two pieces of wire (by using Manchester encoding) .

Along with the analogue carrier for the digital data there is, inevitably, comes analogue noise (variance in the amplitude domain) and jitter (variance in the time domain).  These effects can both then get electromagnetically (and, in the case of jitter mathematically) coupled into the sensitive analogue electronics of your system.

The bits may be bits, but that far from the complete story of digital transmission in a mixed mode system such as a DAC!

French Rooster posted:

SimonPeterArnold posted:

I'm in this camp and so are all the incredibly clever research and tech people I work with. 

"Bits are bits; Ethernet transports error-checked IP packets from one point to another. There’s no such thing as a good bit or bad bit or “better-sounding” bit — you either receive the packet of data (the FLAC stream in this case), or you don’t."

if you are so clever and open minded, try first a good lan in a 1k /meter range , just to experiment. You will be surprised !

2nd that advice, actually I'll advance on that to physically demo in your system to rebuke it.

We've been around this merry-go-round before as I led the bits-is-bits march a few weeks ago on another thread.

I think to save the discussion from going on again, we had agreed 1) we're talking about ground noise on the cable inducing noise in the analog domain, which is certainly possible and 2) the bits-is-bits brigade really needs to do a listening a/b test before continuing with an otherwise theoretical textbook argument.  

Hope that helps this from being further rehashed !

Huge posted:

The bits may be bits, but that far from the complete story of digital transmission in a mixed mode system such as a DAC!

And that's what normally gets forgotten in these (often repeated) threads.  

Huge posted:

SimonPeterArnold posted:

I'm in this camp and so are all the incredibly clever research and tech people I work with. 

"Bits are bits; Ethernet transports error-checked IP packets from one point to another. There’s no such thing as a good bit or bad bit or “better-sounding” bit — you either receive the packet of data (the FLAC stream in this case), or you don’t."

Yes bits are bits, but they're carried along by an analogue signal in two pieces of wire (by using Manchester encoding) .

Along with the analogue carrier for the digital data there is, inevitably, comes analogue noise (variance in the amplitude domain) and jitter (variance in the time domain).  These effects can both then get electromagnetically (and, in the case of jitter mathematically) coupled into the sensitive analogue electronics of your system.

The bits may be bits, but that far from the complete story of digital transmission in a mixed mode system such as a DAC!

you are perhaps the first who could explain technically that bits are not only bits and lan cable is not only lan cable( in hifi). I should memorize your response. Thanks for the clarification.

Huge posted:

Indigo:                £4200 streamer, £1200 Ethernet cable.....    OK, if that works for you.....  But interesting priorities!

Chord Music:     £4200 streamer, £3800 Ethernet cable.....    

Yeah it looks that way, but maybe box count trumps all? I've gone from 7 boxes to a Nova. I don't know of a better one box streamer system that does all that the Nova does but If one appears I will check it out. I have a full fat Powerline on my Nova and am considering trying a better ethernet cable as I would like to max it out but I would need some serious rethinking to contemplate spending >£100. It's not the money, it's thought of the sickening mark up and the inevitable ridiculous packaging at that level. It's also not wife acceptance - my beloved would allow me as many boxes as I want. That number happens to be one.

1200 lan cable to maximize 4200 one box integrated amp / streamer, why not?  it is certainly a better sounding option than buying a one shelf fraim for around the same money.

But 3800 lan for the nova, i would say it is ridiculous. If one box system is the wish and money is not a problem at all, i would better bought the best one box integrated / streamer on the market : dagostino c stream integrated ( 50k), jeff rowland daemon or mark levinson latest integrated...

French Rooster posted:

SimonPeterArnold posted:

I'm in this camp and so are all the incredibly clever research and tech people I work with. 

"Bits are bits; Ethernet transports error-checked IP packets from one point to another. There’s no such thing as a good bit or bad bit or “better-sounding” bit — you either receive the packet of data (the FLAC stream in this case), or you don’t."

if you are so clever and open minded, try first a good lan in a 1k /meter range , just to experiment. You will be surprised !

No way on earth I am spending 1k on cable either. I will try out some cat7 network cables to see if I can hear any difference between my standard cat5 but it will be considerably less than that. 

Obsydian posted:

DAVEJ - Agree did you demo or still have the Chord Music : )

Like I said earlier the box brigade, when Naim release ethernet will be all over it with reasons why and forget all said here, even bolder to claim no other cable is worthy.

First time round with Naim i was box mad, much later I turned attention to stands, but would vehemently deny anything other than Naim cables - even those they were in comparison to other speaker and interconnect options very cheap. Closest I came was for a few months a micromega fronted my Naim system, after much trialing I ended up with a Chord solid.

I always said if I started again (did not intend to) was to keep an open mind and test myself and decide. I disliked the Naim sheep mentality.

Also to ensure I extract the maximum by optimising the setup.

Also recall the old Mana flame war days, so many denying any benefit, then the Fraim came and all the sheep just followed and even bought the matching Chips.

A few years ago now, I went to have a listen to see if there was anything in all the nonsense that was being claimed by some about cables making a difference and found that they did, so I've kept an open mind ever since.

That was a Chord Solstice i/c (subsequently re-named Sarum), which got upgraded and traded-in to become Super Sarum. Naturally, when Music first appeared, I was keen to hear them, vowing that there was no way I'd spend "that sort of money". Heard them, compared them, bought them.

SimonPeterArnold posted:

French Rooster posted:

SimonPeterArnold posted:

I'm in this camp and so are all the incredibly clever research and tech people I work with. 

"Bits are bits; Ethernet transports error-checked IP packets from one point to another. There’s no such thing as a good bit or bad bit or “better-sounding” bit — you either receive the packet of data (the FLAC stream in this case), or you don’t."

if you are so clever and open minded, try first a good lan in a 1k /meter range , just to experiment. You will be surprised !

No way on earth I am spending 1k on cable either. I will try out some cat7 network cables to see if I can hear any difference between my standard cat5 but it will be considerably less than that. 

try is not spend....borrow from a dealer or buy and return to experiment....or stay with your skepticism....

DAVEJ - Trade in : )  now you have me seriously thinking about it.

MR ROOSTER - Sorry I am a Naim sheep ; ) although someone with a streaming system I never ever heard of suggested the Chord Indigo (but Naim have no streaming cable so that doesn't count). Oh he is in the process of going chord music but his system is circa £50k.

The way I see it all these add ons are working to outtanding effect, but in reality they are just showing how damn good the Nova is (app excluded).

I have unplugged my USB I regard that as inferior now, as the Indigo is resolving so much unheard detail, but most of all its so musical.

Obsydian posted:

DAVEJ - Trade in : )  now you have me seriously thinking about it.

MR ROOSTER - Sorry I am a Naim sheep ; ) although someone with a streaming system I never ever heard of suggested the Chord Indigo (but Naim have no streaming cable so that doesn't count). Oh he is in the process of going chord music but his system is circa £50k.

The way I see it all these add ons are working to outtanding effect, but in reality they are just showing how damn good the Nova is (app excluded).

I have unplugged my USB I regard that as inferior now, as the Indigo is resolving so much unheard detail, but most of all its so musical.

i have perhaps not been clear:  i think that your choice for chord indigo ethernet is good, if you want to maximize your nova and not add boxes. You have, with the fiber bridge and cisco and indigo, a full optimized nova.   

I just pointed that chord music would be too much.....

You said you unplugged your usb, so how you listen to hirez now?