Tweaking with priorities
Contents
We have had most of the connection options and possible tweaks within those connections. Cable remains the most stable, and a good switch with a nice power supply is a first step in making the network a bit more “audiophile”.
Priorities
The next step is to optimize the network in terms of priority. Some routers and switches (managed switches) allow you to prioritize devices. And that can help. Not only does it keep the stream running smoothly if someone decides to download the entire Internet; it can also sound better, we’ve found.
Prioritizing certain devices – or services – is called Quality of Service: QoS. This is not a new technology: it’s been around for years. It’s already incorporated into many routers. Especially the “gaming” routers, since online gaming requires very low latency. For example, those routers can recognize traffic to a gaming server (via DPI – deep packet inspection) and give it priority over other traffic.
QoS can work in many ways. And in a router it often has a different application than in – managed! – switches, but we won’t go into that now, since that’s more of an IT training exercise. And you don’t need that. What we are going to do is give a few examples of settings. First of all, it is important to know that standard switches – unmanaged models – do not allow QoS settings, as these features are only found in managed models; models on which you can log in to adjust things.
As you can see, how easy it is to set priorities per port varies greatly by brand and type. The Zyxel switch we have is pretty easy. The Netgear GS108T is almost impossible to configure for an ordinary person. The new Netgears work very easily though.
In most cases, a priority can be indicated by a number from 0 – 7, with 7 being real time. 0 is default (it is not from 0 (lowest) to 7 (highest), but 0, default, 1 lowest, 2 lower, 3 – 7 increasing in priority). Flow Control – not always available with a switch – is another tweak where we observe a difference. In our case, an improvement. Focus seems a little tighter and more stable. Remarkable, since this really only prevents port overflow. And in audio, there is usually no overflow, as it works with pretty low bandwidths.
What is sound difference between a good and “bad” network?
Calmness, calmness, calmness … and often more space and slightly tighter timing, it seems. The differences are greatest between a standard modem router and a good switch. That’s where you make a big “hit” right away. Fine-tuning the priorities (from lowest priority to high priority) gives a nuance difference in sophistication. You have to know your system very well to notice that, but in our set it gives just that little bit of extra tranquility. Subtle, but audible.
Hello.
Very interesting article.
I tried a different approach for my network connection.
I use Roon, and in the past I tried the double network card strategy you, but also others, suggested, one connected to the router, the other to the streamer; I did it on my ROCK server, it’s very easy to configure and In my opinion it gave very good sound improvement, but it has the “limitation” to require to have the 2 ethernet cards on a different subnet.
That means that the streamer was “isolated” from the home network.
So , investigating further, a guy from the Roon community told me it’s possible to keep the streamer on the router subnet using the “ethernet bridge configuration”, but this can’t be done on ROCK, while Linux supports it.
So I spent some hours (I was not familiar with Linux and also didn’t know how to bridge the 2 ethernet cards, so I had to learn), but at the end I’ve been successful.
I also added another thing: the PCI exp card is an SFP adapter , a very cheap one from Amazon, and also the SFP modules were 2 cheap single-mode .
I used a fiber connection between the Roon server and the streamer, then I had to use a TPLink media converter between fiber and streamer, which has been powered with a homemade linear psu based on a modified board I bought on Audiophonics.
The RJ45 adapter from the motherboard is directly connected with a CAT6 cable to the router.
This gave an incredible sound improvement and allowed me to keep the streamer on the home network and use it to stream film soundtracks from my MacBook via airplay.
Now I’m wondering what I could achieve with a double net card like the JCAT XE and a high quality network cable between server and streamer, obviously using a high quality 5V linear PSU for the card.