I have a Vivaldi stack and have found from numerous testings that a light high quality power cable makes a huge difference. Expensive “heavy” ones are a no no. I have settled on Crystal power cables
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@NordicBob Congrats on your recent Rossini purchase and welcome to the forum. You’re absolutely correct noting that the DCS forum has respectful members. It’s such a pleasure to ask questions and share our thoughts on this forum.
One thing you might want to consider is to add a fiber optic segment to reduce any EMI noise that can be carried across copper Ethernet cables. I recently did this and noticed a slight improvement in clarity and it only cost $170.
Enjoy your new toys,
Brian …
Hello All,
I am a true newbie here. I am a proud Bartok owner of a few months. This forum has been invaluable in terms the information available on dCS products and the various tweaks and nuances.
I wanted to chime in on cables discussion, especially the power cord discussion. Like some of you, I was inherently skeptical about the value of power cables. Such concerns were laid to rest when I started trying “high end” power cables. My best power cable, for the dCS Bartok, is the Stealth Audio V16, UNI - the " Digital" version. I tried the Shunyata Sigma NR V1, then the V2, and a few Cardas power cables. I kept going back to the Stealth. It was as though my mind/logical brain was fighting with my ears- in the end my ears won; I sold the Shunyata cables on Audiogon ( they were excellent though, they just didn’t win the race for me).
I would love to understand how “Ethernet” can be “converted” to fiber - or whether I am even getting that right. Essentially the question is how “purified” can we make the signal ( i.e. song from say Tidal Hi Fi) ?
Thank you all for letting me share.
Best
Ritwick
Here is a link to an article by on how to do it by one of the first people I knew who did it:
I have to say that I have no stance upon whether or not it is a good idea. I am merely trying to be helpful given your question. There are some highly qualified network engineers here who will no doubt say that it makes no difference whether the data is carried by copper, fibre or (maybe) carrier pigeon it is all the same as the data at one end of the network is the same as the data that arrives at the other. Anticipate such comments.
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Thank you. Very intriguing.
About that fiber, I use it whenever possible in my home network, though strictly on account of the cool factor… and also to free up regular RJ45 ports on my switches.
I like how Lumin X-1 has SFP in addition to RJ45 so the user is free to choose their transport media. Given a choice, I’d probably try fiber, with the big caveat that fiber connects into a media adapter. That adapter is chock-full of electronic components, and will be electrically coupled with the host device. In plain English, I’d have to trust that the benefits of going with a fiber run outweigh any potential RF interference generated right inside the unit by the media adapter. Granted, its enclosure is shielded and should be bonded to ground, but still.
In the case of dCS, since it lacks an SFP port, you have to ingest Ethernet via copper. Presumably an external media converter will give you full electric isolation from the upstream, so in theory, for those paranoid about carried line noise (as opposed to actual stream data alteration which is impossible by design) it should offer an additional layer of peace of mind by going fiber to just outside the dCS and then converting to a short copper patch cable.
Edit: fiber cables are fragile. They, and their connectors, don’t take a beating like copper cables can.