jabbr

Well … the heat generated is guaranteed to be <= 7 watts if that’s the consumption. The Intel is 1/2 that. Get one of those LED cooking thermometers and check the chip temps on the running boards …

FWIW I've found the Intel x520 to get less hot. Check out the power consumption of the cards. What goes in comes out as light and heat and electrons. Assume the light and electrons to be the same across boards. Boards that consume more power, generate more heat.

Decluttering is great! Yes, I have my music system sitting behind a balanced isolator (equi-tech Q) so no junk from the external world and no cheap SMPS. The only input is a fiber. I give zero worry about noisy servers because the fiber is terrific isolation.

The fiber itself transmits photons so no electrical noise. The SFP(+) modules should be made in a fashion that they have known measured low noise characteristics. 1Gbe is trivial but 100/200/400 Gbe takes some real engineering . Same lasers and detectors.

If your box is working and sounding great there is a lot to be said for just enjoying the music. The fitlet2 allows fiberoptic ethernet input. Is that better? Not in every circumstance. If you want fiberoptic ethernet input at full 1Gbs its one of only a small number of options (I also have the clearfog). If you want an Intel USB output in a small form factor, its the only option I know (of course you can build a Celeron or Atom micro-ATX etc and use a fiberoptic NIC).

Fitlet2 with SFP board ... available on Amazon but strongly recommend ordering it direct and letting them put together for you.

no, it uses an Intel 1Gbe ASIC and presumably hasn't been tested against the 10Gbe standards. It doesn't do 10Gbe.

I couldn't hear a difference between my ultralow latency/jitter Solarflare NIC sfn6322f/7322f and the Intel but if you want the lowest jitter 10Gbe NICs those are probably it. I couldn't hear an SQ difference with even higher speed, and consequently lower jitter, NICs but YMMV.

I think that there is too much concern about trying to outthink the network hardware designers regarding jitter. Every compliant 10Gbe switch has lower jitter than makes any shred of difference in an Ethernet network. You are best off using any 10Gbe switch with 2 RJ-45 outputs. One to each DAC. The Mikrotik works. Its cheap. Use the Mikrotik 10Gbe RJ-45 SFP+ modules or use the 1Gbe RJ-45 SFP modules. You aren't bridging, you are switching. The fitlet2 is a 1Gbe device and there is no expectation that it meets 10Gbe jitter standards... if that even matters.

He he but handling the shipping through China, to the export port, onto the ship and to America can be, shall we say challenging. I've ordered products, tracked them to have them disappear just before being packed into a container at the port ... and there is no one to call. The business that Amazon is in is entirely logistics and I appreciate what it takes to get many products to me within 24 hours -- its really impressive as much as everyone complains.

I'm not sure why you would want to do this but linux has routing software either builtin or installable via "apt". What protocol does the Ethernet DAC use? Why wouldn't a switch that has fiberoptic and copper ethernet ports e.g the Mikrotik, or the EtherREGEN or even FMCs such as the opticalModule not be a better and cheaper solution? The reason the fitlet2 might be of a benefit would be if you are doing some type of software driven protocol conversion.

To be clear, I am looking at the intro in isolation which is very quiet. floating point then normalized. played at 0 dB. The specific chain I am using: for this testing: @Miska HQPlayer upsampled to DSD256 using sinc-M/ASDM7EC modulator to Proj-ect pre box digital S2 DAC to cavalli tube headphone amp to either AKG712 or Senn HD800 headphones. I can also use @PeterSt XXHE/NOS1a DAC with a PCM/R2R chain but trust me same results regarding the FeralA or not question. On the SACD version at 0 dB, the piano comes in first, followed by the tinkles at 7 seconds which move to

This is nothing about preference. I want low level details in the recording to be in the decode. It is not acceptable to me to remove information. The decodes remove information. Lets put it this way, from my recordings I can decode using da-avx if I want to remove high frequency signal, but with the decode I cannot restore the stripped out HF detail. The decode removes information from the recording. Take the intros and turn up the volume to the point where you can hear what I am talking about. The LP with high levels of surface noise is not a reference. Can you hear w

I hear what you are saying, though first: I don't consider myself a customer rather @John Dyson has postulated a theory that somehow all CDs have been released with FeralA encoding either by incompetence or through a diabolical scheme on the part of the media publishers to give us crappy sound on CDs... So is this true? Many of us first heard CDs with grainy sound back in the old days and that LPs sounded "better" so is the cause Feral A? 1) you among others including @Miska have long maintained the benefits of computer based upsampling and these benefits have been **pr

This continues to beg the question. Is the goal master tape or LP with its higher level of background/surface noise? Who decides when the decoder matches LP? You, but your HF hearing is admittedly off. Begging the question because you are asserting that recordings are FA but the "proof" is in the decoding which you are tuning based on your hearing... This has all gotten way too subjective for me. You insist a recording is FA because you can hear it. There is no objective basis for this -- its your subjective hearing. I'm still losing low level HF details in the decodes which are a