Objective-Fi Optical Networking & SFPs

[cjf]

I'd be curious if anyone has done any bench testing using an analyzer of some kind to see if the SFP's generate any more or less noise than a regular eth nic does. It certainly makes me wonder why almost no manufacturer of high quality dacs has gone down the fiber direct route to dac yet. I believe there are a few that have used the fiber direct to dac connection like Meitner and Bel Canto but they are the only ones that come to mind.

 

It seems like a no brainer to a simpleton like me to try and use a fiber direct solution to a dac due to fiber cables baked in electrical isolation but I'm clearly missing why it hasn't caught on yet. I mean in the IT world fiber usage is everywhere and has been for many, many years so there is nothing really untested or new about the technology itself.

 

Short of the electrical isolation part of fiber I see no other reason to use it for home audio purposes unless one stores there computer, nas or streamer in a neighbors house hundreds of feet away or a few km away in the next town over from the listening room. I also see zero reason to use it for speed reasons as 1gb regular nics are already super overkill. And then I've seen some going 10gb for audio which can't be for anything but bragging rights or just out of curiosity as a project in ones spare time, which of course is perfectly fine if that's what interests the person doing it.

 

I would certainly love to see it catch on with dac manufacturers but it seems the industry  just ain't there yet or perhaps ever will be

[cjf]

4 minutes ago, cat6man said:

 

yes, i know.  i'm asking if the isolation of fiber can be measured relative to copper ethernet which is not isolated.

can the isolation aspect specifically be measured?  i'm not talking about sound or PRAT or air or buffers, but simply "can the isolation of fiber" be measured somehow?  objectively, how is that done?

I wouldn't think there would be a need to measure the isolation of fiber as it is absolute by default. In other words, the medium used to transmit the 1's & 0's from point A to B is not conductive and the light traveling thru that medium is also not conductive so isolation would be absolute and total

[cjf]

20 minutes ago, cat6man said:

so what would the 'measurement' procedure be?

Maybe the simplest  test would be to grab your favorite AM/FM clock radio or similar and tune into an AM band without a radio station, turn up the vol a bit and run the antenna near the cat based eth cable first and listen to the hash, noise...etc then do the same to the fiber cable.

 

You would have to be measuring the cables themselves and not the termination points as that is were the elc connection starts for both cable types.

[cjf]

11 hours ago, cat6man said:

simple but useless to evaluating if we might be getting an audible and measurable difference.

I see. So the person asking everyone else how to conduct a test and measure results because "they" dont believe there are isolation benefits to using fiber is now all of a sudden qualified to judge if a proposed test has any value. Interesting.