A novel way to massively improve the SQ of computer audio streaming

[LondonDan]

Anyone experience this with sound change? I live in a series of tall flats that historically only had virgin media cable. Fibre to street then coaxial cable to flats. This last few weeks a fibre provider installed fibre cable to every flat. The whole area is brand new install for them. Mine was installed yesterday and I am one of the first to switch on. Everything in the system remains the same (switches cables etc LPS) except the modem is now a fibre modem before my edge router x instead of cable modem. Even the LPS 12 is the same.

 

the sound with new equipment is more compressed and bass has decreased.

 

anyone ever changes ISP with totally new gear back to the street and suffered a big decrease in SQ?

 

could it just be that the modem and other fibre equipment from the ISP needs breaking in, it’s all brand new not just a switch of an existing ISP that has been running for years.

 

the modem they gave is Adtran the network is called community fibre, area is London.

 

joins go as follows, fibre up wall 10 floors from their splitter cabinet, pigtail splice to wall socket, 5m fibre patch to modem, modem powered by LPS I was using before.

[LondonDan]

thanks everyone for the advice, I appreciate it.

 

I played again this evening familiar streaming tracks - I can tell if it improved, which means if anything its subtle, had TV steaming with sound on all day. Olympics is good for background!

 

I tried wifi streaming over tidal from MacBook, there is no improvement just a slightly different sound vs UPnP as the Laptop connects via usb plus its a laptop and the signature of the Nordorst cable is different but that is as normal (I still need to try the cellular stream over hotspot vs wifi stream) Wifi is into the router prior to Ediscreation Silent Switch Extreme version (network diagram attached).

 

I have run tests offline with Vox (not connected to wifi) Flac files stored on SSD and there is a difference as expected to the streaming but there was a difference before its just a bigger gap now.

 

I disconnected the power to the Modem while playing offline files too, no change so its not an EMI or other interference from the new modem.

 

Powered the Modem back on and played a Vox stored track while it booted up then switched to a steam of the same track via UPnP.  It could be that it improved slightly but I cant be certain and I don't even know that if that was the case why on earth rebooting a modem when the connection seemed fine would change anything. Perception that bass went up slightly but cant be certain it mild if anything. I will do some more side by side tests and plug back in the old virgin modem to check the difference between the two again. Might need to wait until weekend but that's OK.

 

Different modem could be a plan I will get in touch with the ISP, the guy who installed said it was an "Adtran area" but I don't see why another modem wouldn't work they would just need to activate it.

 

who knows where the signals are bouncing from and what could be different to the Virgin Network. I ran the test @seeteeyou suggested over wifi from MacBook just now and the result are attached but I couldn't tell you what is a good result or not. Latency 18ms, jitter 88.4 I can run the same test on the virgin cable when I plug it back in. If packets are arriving with error due to a break in the fibre could it cause packet resend if that makes sense? maybe the tests should be hard wired into the switch to test and then the router torun the latency test again?

 

Settling in is also an option, existing system has a audio level reclocking switch and the whole downstream from the ISP has been worked on a lot and its been great, the switch to provider was obvious not subtle, even my wife tells me she thinks its different.

 

Thanks again for your comments

Dan

[LondonDan]

@MarcelNL the amp has a built in streamer the Mac is more for local files and internet radio. It’s the UPnP streaming via the switch direct to the amp that’s changed. The test in the graphs above was run over wifi though.
 

the line was activated on Wednesday Morning.

[LondonDan]

Frank, after going through this wonderful thread with hours and hours and days and days of great audio lovers investigations into their network streaming (hugely appreciated and helpful thread with lots of fantastic insight) I used the recommendations to take some shortcuts experimenting which is here. Pointing you towards this as the pictures can be helpful which is why I put it together. It’s only testing one brand of network switch so it’s not a comparison but there is loads of suggestions in the wider thread to try others too.