Ethernet to optical isolation converter questions. Help please
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| Posted on April 24, 2017 at 16:44:32 | ||
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Posts: 30
Location: Michigan Joined: January 10, 2012 |
I've just returned from the Axpona show. At the show I spoke with the Roon guys. I told them I was considering a passive in line device to reduce noise on my Ethernet cable signal coming from my Synology NAS. They were firmly against the whole concept telling me"no, you need to optically isolate the electrical noise in your ethernet signal path ". I was told further to get several gigabit fiber optic media converters, one being the sender and the other being the receiver. Ok, so much of this makes sense and some of it does not. I've alway found optical toslink or even glass links sound poor. One old audio adage is that if you loose detail or data on the beginning side you can't reclaim on the other side. With this concept in mind won't an optical cable become the new weakest link? If I'm wrong, then why not use one long optical cable between converters and two short Ethernet cables? With this arrangement I would be isolating the NAS noise and the first sending optical converter noise but am I not introducing a new switching power supplie's noise with second converter after the optical isolation? Should I seek out a certain optical cable? Is there a certain desired max length for optical match up to the converter? The Roon guys said a $49 converter should be fine but see many variants and wonder what specs are adequate? Any help on this topic would really be appreciated.
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| RE: Ethernet to optical isolation converter questions. Help please, posted on April 26, 2017 at 23:28:22 | |
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Posts: 821
Joined: January 18, 2002 |
Vangelis, Are you actually hearing a problem from your ethernet system without said optical isolation? IMO, there is no evidence that this makes any difference. And if there is, I wish someone would post some demonstration of this noise! Noise, especially if loud enough to disrupt digital communications and coming out of one's DAC should be quite measurable. Measurements of my own ethernet system at the level of a DAC output through my home gigabit with numerous computers on the network only demonstrates a very small 60Hz hum (see link below). Notice the test was even done on a Pi 3 / HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro HAT board with no special further distance between the ethernet hardware and the DAC (instead of down a USB cable to a fancy DAC). Also, until someone measures the noise output from an optical isolator device, I would not assume that they're any quieter. As you say, they could very well be the "new weakest link".
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| RE: Ethernet to optical isolation converter questions. Help please, posted on April 27, 2017 at 01:53:39 | |
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Posts: 2426
Joined: July 11, 2007 |
Hi. The easiest and best way for all this IMO is to 1. buy a cheap wireless bridge/repeater - best isolation is air, isn't it !?!? That'll be it. That's usually much cheaper and much less hassle than any optical solution and from a performance perspective IMO at least as good as anything else out there.
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| RE: Ethernet to optical isolation converter questions. Help please, posted on April 30, 2017 at 10:42:42 | |
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Posts: 821
Joined: January 18, 2002 |
Great gear Vangelis. Personally I doubt there is much gain to be had with an optical isolator. As you say, the switching PS may be "probably noisy" but we do not know if this is true. I guess you could order some off Amazon and return if it doesn't work out. Better to measure pre and post noise levels to be sure! And to make sure it doesn't get worse! ------- Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.
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