Any advice on how to eliminate noise from NAS?

[RichardT]

This morning I've had chance to try a cheap (£10) switch that I had lying around powered by the Shanti LPS rather than sending everything via the router.

The improvement is already significant.

Even using the original SMPS supply with the switch is an improvement over not having the switch at all, but the LPS on the switch makes the biggest difference.

Thanks everyone so far for all your pointers - it's very helpful as this is a minefield.

I'll hopefully get chance to do some more listening over the next few days.

[RichardT]

For the benefit of anyone else following a similar path...

 

Today I had the opportunity to see if adding the iFi power adaptor to the Pi3 NAS improved the sound so it could compete with my 8 year old laptop with standard power brick as the NAS (not a fancy machine and storing the music on the same external HDD I used on the pi).

 

In short, no, it still fell well below par. The laptop sounds sweeter, warmer, more detailed, more open and most significantly has much better dynamics. I remain staggered that the NAS can have this much effect. The rest of my system isn't massively high end either ( amp, DAC and speakers are all worth less than £1k each).

 

As a result, I shall look into getting a second hand NUC and trying that with a linear power supply. I wonder if the pi 4 would have been more acceptable as I understand that it no longer shares the same bus between the usb and ethernet connections.