We’re going to be making a few changes to how our FAQs are hosted. Currently, our FAQs are available in two separate places - on the dCS Community and on the main dCS Support website. This means we have two separate places to update if we change any FAQs.
While having the FAQs hosted on the forum is handy - we do see users quoting or linking to FAQs - maintaining them and categorising them is not ideal. Discourse isn’t really set up for easily managing content in this way, so making it simple to find the information you need isn’t possible in the same way as it is on the Support site.
As such, we are going to move to only having the FAQs available on the Support website. This will come as part of a project where many of the FAQs will be refreshed for 2025. We’re also collating some of the collective knowledge of the forum that exists in various posts over the years into general guides on a few topics - initially these will be on streaming music, and using preamplifiers with dCS. I’ll let you all know as soon as I have these live.
All of this to say, don’t be alarmed if you don’t see the FAQs on the forum going forwards, they can be found on the Support site, and we have some refreshed FAQs coming there very soon.
These are slightly longer pieces. The former is aimed at helping folks new to streaming get into it with some general best practices and myth debunking, and the latter is aimed at informing folks who are considering whether a preamp is right for them or not. Mostly this content came from forum posts over the years, just collected together into a single guide on each topic.
I too have had a brief read. I am very impressed and suggest that we all take a little time to investigate them as I would expect most may find a fresh insight into various aspects.
I don’t want to stir the pot… but I do have one question about the streaming paper. I appreciate that dCS recommends a straight unshielded Cat 5e wire into our DACs (posted elsewhere in the form) but I don’t see it explicitly stated in the WP.
You mention PSU for fibre SFP media converters could inject noise into the line. Wondering if the PSUs for these devices are any different than say the PSU for an inexpensive unmanaged switch. Mine all seem to be 5V and I use an inexpensive iFi PSU over the stock for the converter at the DAC end.
Reading between the lines - are you saying… “stay away from shielded ethernet cables for the last leg because noise (if present on the line) maybe transferred to the DAC”?
The kind of SMPSU you’ll find for a switch or a media converter are pretty standard devices - not much special going on in either. In my experience, what a SMPSU is powering isn’t as much of a consideration as where the power supply itself is. A huge benefit of having things running over a network is that you can keep any noisy stuff, including power supplies, far away from the audio equipment and just run a decent length Ethernet cable in. There’s no need (outside of practical space constraint reasons) to have networking kit near the audio kit. Using an optical converter for ‘isolation’ - when any noise is already dealt with by coupling transformers - by adding a noisy SMPSU near the audio kit is counterintuitive.
Having a SMPSU physically well separated by having it elsewhere on the mains will help make sure it is not degrading the performance of anything else. If it is close, having a decent low noise power supply makes sense.
For the Ethernet cables, using a shielded cable means that the ground planes (the chassis) of the network device and the ground plane (the chassis) of the endpoint such as the DAC are connected. This path bypasses the coupling transformers in the switch and endpoint, so provides a direct path for any noise in the network kit to be transferred to the DAC.
So yes, exactly this. Do whatever you want with the network as long as it works (within reason), but use an unshielded cable for the final run and keep any noisy power supplies away from the audio kit.
