Popular Post David A Posted March 15, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted March 15, 2020 I'm new to the power and cable experimenting with the ER. Mine has been running for 2 months with the stock power supply and with the WireWorld Starlight Cat 8 ethernet cables I had been using before the ER arrived. I have 2 B side connections to the ER, my Nucleus+ server and a connection to my router in another room which stared with a Wireworld Starlight cable to a wall point after which an in wall and ceiling Cat 6 cable run took the signal the rest of the way to the router. The A side of the ER connects to my Devialet 140 Pro amp via WireWorld Starlight Cat *. 2 days ago I changed the network connection to the router. I connected a TP-Link ethernet to optical converter to the wall point and I ran a StarTech 3 metre SFP+ 10 GB optical cable which came terminated with SFP modules from the TP-Link converter to the optical cage in the ER. Other background detail: soon after moving to my current home 18 years ago I had an electrician install a dedicated power line to the room where my audio system is located, isolating the audio system from the power circuits in the rest of the house. Back then I was using a disc player as my source and there was no galvanic connection between the audio system and anything else in the house. I lost that isolation when I installed the wired ethernet connection between the audio system and my router which is on a separate circuit from my mains power board. One of the reasons for installing the optical link was to restore that isolation between the rest of the house and the audio system. Swapping to the optical network connection produced a significant improvement, even on music streamed from the internal SSD I installed in my Nucleus+ which gets to the Devialet without passing over the optical cable to the router and back. Tidal streaming which does pass over the optical cable was equally improved. What changes am I hearing. First the music seems to come from an even more silent background and I thought it was silent before so things sound cleaner and clearer. The sense of the spaciousness of the soundstage is larger, especially in depth, though the images of musicians seem to be located where they were before. Those images are more precise and solid. I was surprised to notice that bass, while better defined, seems lighter and perhaps a little less deep but at the same time it also feels denser and more solid in some ways. Overall things sound more natural, voices especially, and the music seems to come much more from the space occupied by the soundstage and to have less association with the speakers. Basically though, what all of those impressions amount to is more of what the ER itself delivered. I'm not getting anything new from the optical connection, I just seem to be getting more of what the ER originally delivered. The change in the bass I noticed seems more a shift in the proportions of the characteristics of the bass than a change of characteristic, more like some characteristics changed a little more than others and how i perceived the tonal balance of the bass shifted a bit. I made the swap on Saturday morning. I was surprised to feel on Sunday morning that I thought the sound had improved from where it was when I stopped listening on Saturday night. There seems to be a bit of a change either due to the converter and SFP modules reaching a stable operating temperature or even break in. I might notice more on that when I start listening again today. Definitely a change worth making in my view. Maceear, Superdad and soares 3 Link to comment
Popular Post David A Posted June 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted June 18, 2020 39 minutes ago, Superdad said: When I tell my wife about some of the things we audiophiles do, I think "a loon" is the first word that comes to her mind... The trick is knowing how to deal; with comments like being called a loon. I get asked a lot about why I have my cables raised off the floor, and cables like Shunyata power cables and Kimber Select speaker cables aren't exactly visually retiring even before you stick them on cable raisers. My response tends to depend on the gender of the person asking and the tone and context of the question but it usually ends up being one of two answers. I either say "it makes them easier to vacuum under when I'm doing the housekeeping" or "when you've got cables like these you may as well make a feature out of them". It's often surprising how telling a part of the truth, just not the most important part of it which is that I do hear a difference and prefer the sound with the cables raised, but a part that is totally unexpected as an answer and yet is also self evident can end up stopping what could end up becoming a dispute dead in its tracks because the questioner has no ready response to you. If we're going to be seen as loons, we may as well play at being one as well 🙂 Superdad, PYP, Ultrarunner and 1 other 1 3 Link to comment
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