Starting from scratch

There’s always a small chance that any cable will get stuck when you’re pulling it. The easiest I’ve found to work with was POF, which is a fibre also commonly used in Toslink optical cables, because DIY terminatons are easy, so you can pull the very thin cable through with no plug on the end. Suitable media converters are not that easy to find, though. 

If you use a ready terminated cable, you’ll have an RJ45 plug (Ethernet) or LC connector (multimode fibre) to contend with. Taping up any square edges on the plug that might otherwise get caught is crucial. The good thing about all these cables is that they are very cheap, so if they get stuck or have to be yanked back out, you haven’t lost too much. 

Ultimately, unless you really want to use fibre, the safest bet is probably to use unterminated Cat5e UTP. Just make sure you can get the termination done properly afterwards. 

Yes, for some reason I have a toslink cable in my box of audio cables, and I was just holding it in my hands, thinking how easy that would be to use in this particular case. I have no clue about media converters, but I’m willing to read up on them, should the need arise.

Fibre or UTP, it will have to be unterminated in any case. Apart from the fact that a standard RJ45 plug (or even the one on the toslink I mentioned) doesn’t fit  (I tried), I shudder to think what would happen if one of those things broke of en got stuck halfway.

So, either way: unterminated. I’ll look into fibre a bit more, but I fear that’s a bit to ambitious with my limited technical savvy. Perhaps I can find a thin and supple enough Ethernet cable with enough shielding to ease my mind. If not: Cat5 it is.

thanks again, you’ve been really helpful

What’s in a Naim posted:

So, after my first few encounters with mp3’s (early Napster) I decided to ignore the whole “music from the web” thing, and happily enjoyed my LP’s and CD’s offline. The thing is, the world did not stand still in the meantime and, where I live, it’s getting progressively harder to buy the music I want.

So I was sort of forced to turn to the interweb after all. The things is, a friend who is into streaming showed me that it can sound pretty good too! Long story short: I’ve decided I want in.

So here I am, a complete n00b, asking for advice what to buy.

WHAT I HAVE:

CD-player: CD5 XS

Pre-amp: NAC-122X

Pwr-amp: NAP-150X

Flatcap 2X (for amp & CD)

Phono Pre-amp: STAGELINE (Denon DP-67L turntable)

Speakers: B&W 804 Diamond

WHAT I WANT:

Obviously the best sound possible for my money (I have about € 3000,- to spend (that’s euro’s, not $$, I’m from the Netherlands).  Now, most streaming devices I looked in to so far are either integrated with their own amp, or consist of a (rather bewildering) collection of separates. Since I’m still very happy with my Naim kit, integrated solutions are probably not for me.  Why pay for an amp I’m not going to use? But please do correct me if I’m wrong. That leaves me with separate “boxes”. And this is where I could use your help.

Before I go any further: any solution will have to with WiFi! I know this sucks, but it’s really not possible to run a cable through my house. So should I stop here and just forget about it, or are there good sounding WiFi solutions you know of? I’ve been reading a few reviews of the Cambridge CXN and I could find only ONE reviewer who used it on Wifi. He was just as enthusiastic as the other reviewers, so that gave me a bit of hope, but I don’t consider a sample size of one solid footing.

Since I can watch Netflix in HD on my PS4 that’s in the same audio rack, I’m assuming the bandwidth is enough for audio streaming. I don’t necessarily need a NAS right away, so if I understood correctly I’ll need a WiFi streaming device and/with a DAC, with an option to hook up a NAS later. Or something like that CXN, whichever is “better”

Sorry for the long read, but I wanted to be as complete as possible. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

If you are not interested playing the same piece of music simultaneously in different rooms there is absolutely no need for a wired solution. Just get a good DAC (Chord, second hand Naim DAC, T+A, Mytek, Schiit, ...) and feed it from an Allo DigiOne Signature or USBridge, depending on the DAC's inputs. The data are stored on a USB drive connected to the source. Control is via apps like Linn Kazoo, Bubble UPnP, mConnect, etc. You also do not need any NAS or streaming device but you can use one if you fancy to do so.

ChrisSU posted:

I certainly found fibre easier to run than Cat5/6, although that wasn’t my main reason for choosing it. Of course, you will need some sort of converter at each end - I find switches with SFPs work well. 

Wow, that’s counter convention.. the bend radius on Cat5e is almost always a lot tighter than fibre.. and therefore usually Cat5e is a lot easier to  lay than fibre or often separate send and receive fibres. Certainly if you were putting fibre through a tightish bend, I would check the frame stats on each end of the link... anything more than a handful of errors per many million I would throw away and start again...

What’s in a Naim posted:

Yes, for some reason I have a toslink cable in my box of audio cables, and I was just holding it in my hands, thinking how easy that would be to use in this particular case. I have no clue about media converters, but I’m willing to read up on them, should the need arise.

Fibre or UTP, it will have to be unterminated in any case. Apart from the fact that a standard RJ45 plug (or even the one on the toslink I mentioned) doesn’t fit  (I tried), I shudder to think what would happen if one of those things broke of en got stuck halfway.

So, either way: unterminated. I’ll look into fibre a bit more, but I fear that’s a bit to ambitious with my limited technical savvy. Perhaps I can find a thin and supple enough Ethernet cable with enough shielding to ease my mind. If not: Cat5 it is.

thanks again, you’ve been really helpful

If the cable has to be pulled unterminated, regular fibre cannot easily be terminated as a DIY job. POF on the other hand is extremely easy to terminate. It’s not that widely used, although it is possible to buy switches or media converters that accept it. 

Using Cat5e unterminated might be the simplest way to go, just make sure you can terminate it properly. 

Simon makes a good point above re. minimum bend radius, but you will not know how tight any bends are in your buried pipe! For POF it’s 25mm, which is comparable to the figures for Cat5e, although other forms of fibre will be different. 

Well worth trying a google chromecast. Optical out into a DacV1 with "enhanced mode" in settings is very good here. Its only  a £30 gamble