Lan noise reducer

Soldato
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Every year there is an audio show at Cranage in Holmes Chapel, it's free entry and it's regarded as one of the best shows of the year.

This year just gone, Chord were doing a live demo on cables and mains conditioning. They were switched their products out one by one, and playing the same tracks back, they were then discussing audio differences with the audience. I presume Chord will do the same demo next year.

Did Chord say "well our products make no difference at all, and in fact it sounds worse, electronically the cables are unsafe, and we're ripping you off and laughing about it because they have a 10,000% profit margin"
 
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No, nothing that advanced. It's 4 very small wound coils, one for each pair of wire in the ethernet cable.
Wound around ferrites?

Hmm in the end ethernet has a specific signal specification. What you want is to have isolation to break the current loops, and then the ethernet signal will then have no noise riding on it. Only issue is if the noise on the noisy side changes the signal to the point it has corruption… but then ethernet ensures data transfer (well TCP rather than UDP) so the data should be precisely the same..

Best to use isolation.. and those tou can buy off components supplier like Farnell or Mouser. Add a quiet powet supply and bobafet’s your uncle.
 
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Only issue is if the noise on the noisy side changes the signal to the point it has corruption…

That is a sensible point.

I use a Delock 62619 and my concern it would increase jitter and packet loss, however ran tests for these and noticed no difference in these respects.
 
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Did Chord say "well our products make no difference at all, and in fact it sounds worse, electronically the cables are unsafe, and we're ripping you off and laughing about it because they have a 10,000% profit margin"

You were at the show also, why did you not listen to the demo yourself.]

Why are the cables unsafe?
 
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Soldato
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Have you ever worked or been in an environment where this sort of thing actually matters like a recording studio, where you will not find these products?

I've been in studies and can confirm they don't all use these products. They do use XLR cables, and they normally use professional gear with normally better PSU's inside of them.

However above is not the case for everyone, the BBC uses balanced mains units in it's studies.
 
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mains cable won't make any difference

The snake oil exists about Mains cable I would agree with, actually any cable.. for me it's often a compound problem - capacitive loading, inductive loading (both the cable adds), impedance, shielding and in the case of RF the material.. finally how much current can you get through it. The rest is typically currents caused by ground or really bad routing.. that then couples and causes problems.

Mains - ignore the cable but treat the noise.
I always use an IEC filter on my mods and designs. It may not be much of a change but that change is made before the noise gets into the chassis of the audio gear. You can use a SMPS and hit -160dB.. no noise.. but you need to understand that and not think a simple power supply filter will do the job.. voltage regulators (including the low drop out low noise) noise rejection tops off at a max of 1MHz.. after that you're onto ferrites like mini chokes (even surface mount ones) and getting the right board layout so power being sucked into a chip doesn't then make a massive amount of noise across the entire system.
Proper professional mains conditioning systems (like all the bands use when they tour) take in whatever.. and output very very load noise (and often remodulated 50Hz) power. No matter how bad the local power is.. what goes into the amps and audio systems is cleaner than most audiophiles power.

50% of an amp's ability is it's power supply. 49% is the amp design and then 1% is components.. if you have bad power you have a bad day. If you have a bad amp.. then you have the ability to fix it. Then that last 1% is selection and matching of components.

Digital and Audio have different behaviours.
Same signal.. except that DC return current will follow a direct path of least resistance (also most audio being under 20KHz), whereas once you get about 100Khz and definitely by the time you get to 1MHz or above, the return current follows least impedance which is usually *under* the track even if there's a ground plane. Now one you get loops with cables.. that may then be the path of least impedance.. and you have a noise problem.. even if you have a ground plane or a shield around your cable.
To reduce this - isolate. it breaks the loop and allows the high frequency to terminate and return current to flow back.. the isolator then replicates the onward signal and the return current of that is on the other side of the isolator thus no loop.. and low noise..

Ignore snake oil, find out why the cap sounds better.
I've seen some really funny ridiculous claims. Yet it may be that an expensive cap sounds better than a mainstream £1/100 cap does. However the part I refuse to accept is that claims made without evidence (not being able to say why it sounds different due to hard cold measurements). I'm not saying that because it doesn't have all the measurements a cap is snake oil but I want to see what specifically is causing it to be different (and not because it's new old stock.. is the chemicals, is it the design, is it the resulting harmonics or the impedance spectrum.. it's not for me to guess it's for manufacturers to really provide the cold numbers. Otherwise two identical (cold numbers) that are claimed to sound different is simply hookem.
 
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You're right I definitely don't have a 9.3.4 AV pre power system with flagship speakers, 4500w in subwoofer power and 2300w RMS amplifiers total

20 years ago I use to setup mobile disco's. I ran twin 400w RMS mcgregor amplifiers, I had enough power to cater for at least 300 people in a room.

Your running almost 10 times power than above. Hopefully you don't live in a flat.
 
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20 years ago I use to setup mobile disco's. I ran twin 400w RMS mcgregor amplifiers, I had enough power to cater for at least 300 people in a room.

Your running almost 10 times power than above. Hopefully you don't live in a flat.

that's 13 channels of amplification for the speakers, 5 into 4 ohm load rest are 6/8

1800W x 2 and 500W for the subs
 
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