Best set-up for servers and ethernet switches?

[Freddiekaberman]

Hello to all,

I am new to the forum, but over the last 18 months or so I have built a very nice streaming system, with a few ups and downs along the way. The UPnP side of things took a great deal of research, and I ended up with a HP Proliant server running windows home server, this enabled me to use ASSET server software which I preferred to the other options. I took the advice to use a netgear gigabit Ethernet switch to connect server to router, and also to hard wire a length of CAT6 to my streamer in a separate room. It works brilliantly for me, but I do wonder whether a bit more tweaking might yield anything.

My question - many of us go to some lengths with cable dressing, support and power supplies for our HiFi systems, but has anyone gone to any lengths on the computer side of things? Any worthwhile results? My server gear is housed in a cabinet along with a PC and all the usual peripherals, cables are a complete mess and the Ethernet switch uses a "wall wart" which I presume might inject noise into the mains and maybe into the signal path as well.

It might sound a bit OCD to those who think "bits are bits", but I am interested to hear if anyone has any interesting findings in this area.

[Markiii]

In this context bits really are bits, unless you taking the view that the wall wart puts noise on the Ethernet that is somehow picked up by the analogue circuitry of your system, but then id be more bothered by your fridge, and microwave

[Freddiekaberman]

In this context bits really are bits, unless you taking the view that the wall wart puts noise on the Ethernet that is somehow picked up by the analogue circuitry of your system, but then id be more bothered by your fridge, and microwave

I am not too technical when it comes to electronics and DSP, and I wonder whether the "bits are bits" argument is that simple. For example it may well be that in the context of UPnP, it is not worth doing anything beyond a nice robust hard wired setup (ie. it either works or it doesn't). On the other hand, in my system I can clearly hear the difference between UPnP and a good CD transport feeding the same DAC section in my streamer. Either way, the DAC is being fed "bits" but they are not equal. Maybe in the latter case, I am hearing the transport to DAC spdif interface, not sure!

[SLS]

Hello to all,

I am new to the forum, but over the last 18 months or so I have built a very nice streaming system, with a few ups and downs along the way. The UPnP side of things took a great deal of research, and I ended up with a HP Proliant server running windows home server, this enabled me to use ASSET server software which I preferred to the other options. I took the advice to use a netgear gigabit Ethernet switch to connect server to router, and also to hard wire a length of CAT6 to my streamer in a separate room. It works brilliantly for me, but I do wonder whether a bit more tweaking might yield anything.

My question - many of us go to some lengths with cable dressing, support and power supplies for our HiFi systems, but has anyone gone to any lengths on the computer side of things? Any worthwhile results? My server gear is housed in a cabinet along with a PC and all the usual peripherals, cables are a complete mess and the Ethernet switch uses a "wall wart" which I presume might inject noise into the mains and maybe into the signal path as well.

It might sound a bit OCD to those who think "bits are bits", but I am interested to hear if anyone has any interesting findings in this area.

You could clean up your power supply with a regenerator or conditioner.

I had problems with Chinese £20 transformers, fixed with an MCRU power supply to my NAS/CD ripper.

The first switch I bought was too slow, but got a very good fast one at Maplin.

[Freddiekaberman]

You could clean up your power supply with a regenerator or conditioner.

I had problems with Chinese £20 transformers, fixed with an MCRU power supply to my NAS/CD ripper.

The first switch I bought was too slow, but got a very good fast one at Maplin.

I have dedicated CU in the HiFi room, so not too worried about polluting the house mains with cheap transformers (they are everywhere in the house anyway!), but I do wonder whether something like an MCRU power supply would do anything directly for SQ of the server or switch in a UPnP context. Maybe I just need to pour another beer and get over it:)

[Markiii]

Tcp over Ethernet has to be bit perfect.

How good the device translating the ip data stream to whatever format it then sends to the dac onboard or off board) is a whole other matter,