The Mu-so has landed

I've got a couple of Media PCs, a Dune B1 and a PCH A400 all playing 'archived' BluRays (OK - generally not all at the same time) as well as my housemates' kids PC, PS3 and xBox 360 doing gaming and my mu-so and Qute and don't hit any bandwidth issues on the network itself ...

Phil

Sounds to me like its more likely to be an issue with the way your network handles all those packets of data, rather than a straight capacity problem. Maybe not enough switches in the right places? I dare say someone else will pitch in with a more technically informed view than I'm capable of......

I should make clear that I'm talking about peak usage, most of the time things are fine. As I indicated earlier network backups have a big effect on those peaks as there are 2 clients and one OS X Server running bonded gigabit connections. 

From a topology and hardware perspective things are quite well sorted. We moved from Apple Airport Extremes and Cisco SMB managed switches to a 100% Ubiquity stack i.e. Edge Router, Edge Switches, Unifi access points and finally an Amazon S3 hosted Unify Controller to keep it all together. It's what I also use in the office and with the exception of the AC access points it works very well on what is mostly a CAT 6A network with some fibre backhauls.

Fundamentally our issue at home is that past about 70m Cat 5e doesn't perform well with gigabit traffic. We will be ok for a while yet, but in the next 12-24 months the decision will be to upgrade either the whole house to Cat 7 or a mix of Cat 7 and fibre. What I'll probably do first is to backhaul the switches on the long cable runs with fibre. Over short runs CAT 5E should be fine.

I didn't particularly want to get in to the ins and outs of my home network, but rather to make the point that with the proliferation of network devices; even my running watch and bike computer use wifi, that if you were building a house today you'd consider fibre as part of your network infrastructure. This is in contrast to my builder 10 years ago telling me that everything was going wireless, when I insisted on cable. My mistake was not insisting on at least CAT 6.

Originally Posted by GregW:

Greg, indeed, although fibre for the consumer market is very very rare. What is more appropriate is to consider EtherChannel or 802,3ad/AX aggregation,  that is you bond multiple Cat 5e connections between participating switches/routers. You would do this mostly on trunk or internal infrastructure connections between switches or routers or high bandwidth devices like NASes. I note some high spec consumer NASes  are supporting EtherChannel or 802.3ad/AX aggregation now. 802.3ad/AX / EtherChannel is the industry standard way of increasing twisted copper throughput.

So if I was planning infrastructure I would use trunking with a bundle of two, three or four Cat 5e cables (or Cat 6a if you are wanting to run one or more 10GBase lines). I really see little if any advantage of using regular Cat 6 over 5e in the typical home environment.
Simon

I parked outside my dealer today (HiFi Center, Helsingborg Sweden), to go to a lunch meeting. When I came back, there was a piece of paper on the windshield reading  "The Mu-So has arrived!" 

So I went in and saw it for the first time "in the flesh". I must say it is a beauty. Listened to a couple of tracks and was very impressed, really nice. I think naim have produced a winner

Just have to figure out where I can put such a device in my apartment 

...the toilet ? :-)

I was in Sheffield(UK) today so I thought I would pop into John Lewis for a look-see.

There was no sign of the Mu-So. Asked two assistants where it was displayed and they both looked blank and hadn't heard of it. When I gave one of them the name ( no pun intended) of the product and spelling he tapped it into a store terminal. He said there's 2 in stock downstairs, by which I believe he meant the store room.

Unbelievable!

p.s. Sonos and B&W were on full display with dedicated stands.

Fishy....

Fishy...2

Use the room postion mode also to select best sound balance, try loudness off and near to the wall.

On a switched duplex network you don't get collisions, no matter how busy the network is. If you are really getting collisions you are for some reason only running half duplex and / or using hubs instead of switches. Half duplex is inefficient in terms of network capacity. Ensure all your devices and switches are in full duplex. If some links won't accept full duplex, you might have faulty ethernet wiring.

Cat 5e is good to 1Gbps line speed  upto 100 metres. If you have some busy links between switches, then a common method is to use aggregation which bonds multiple 5e links together, assuming your switches support it.. Most non consumer devices do.

So in summary, if you have collisions there is a link or device not running optimally or is faulty.

Simon

That works but only up to a point. But much more control is needed. See my previous emails to Trevor on this subject. 

Finally managed to hear the Mu-So for myself before the weekend and was impressed enough to purchase one. Definitely a great all round package.

One strange thing did happen this evening though. My library is stored on my NAS (QNap HS-210) and offered up using Minimserver to transcode ALAC to WAV. Worked flawlessly for months using my UQ2. However, I started listening to some internet radio and switched back to my library, chose a track and hit play, then nothing 'No Track Playing'. Tried again with something different, nothing. So I picked a native WAV file and it started to play. Tried another ALAC track, albeit transcoded, nothing.

Once I'd powered off the unit from the mains and tried again it worked fine. Just wondered if anybody had come across playback oddities. I know it might be a little to early to tell but I thought I'd ask.

I've made some progress on this during the week.

Firstly you are right, there was a hardware issue with one of the Edge switches. First hardware issue I've had with Ubiquiti.

We are already using link aggregation on 2 Mac Pro's; my wife edits 4K video, and a Synology Rackstation, but as I indicated previously that wasn't going to work for the longest; about 90m, run because there is no room in the conduit for another Cat 5e cable. To make things worse about 80m of that run is shared with a 3 x 2.5mm solid core mains cable.

The electrical company we use were coming to connect up a separate circuit for the hi-fi so I got the data guys to come along and long story short we now have fibre between the 3; one on each floor, switches. There are a couple of smaller switches, but they are fine as they are.

Greg, glad you are getting it sorted.

Simon

Unfortunately there is no headphone socket!

It is possible to connect my Grada RA headphone amp via chinch-3,5mm cable into the Muso?

Should work?

Thanks!

No Headphone sorry, the thinking was that the device you are using for control has the h/phone socket.

can i get a "naim black" classic one?

would you pay a premium?

If it came with a black finish and a green backlit logo, absolutely (if it fits the long-term design profile). Looks as if you have a winner on your hands!

Yes!

I'd even change my avatar!