Rossini DAC Ethernet Speed

Does anyone know if there is a way to determine or confirm the link speed the Rossini DAC ethernet port is connected as? Doing some experimentation and have a suspicion that one of the switches I am testing which has fixed 100Mbps ports is leaving the Rossini thinking it is still 1Gbps.

You can confirm yourself what speeds the Rossini DAC network ports are, by looking at its backplate:

Rossini-network-ports

1 Like

Thanks for reply but I want to know what physical speed the connection is when connected to a specific switch. ie 10 or 100 or 1000.

I want to confirm what speed the DAC believes the active connection is to the switch in other words.

I was able to find this by connecting to the HTTP interface of the Rossini and downloading the system logs.

After unzipping them the “messages” log in the var/log directory has entries each time the cable is plugged in - an example from that log below:

Mar 22 12:52:20 dcs-rossini user.info kernel: [ 28.098784] cpsw 4a100000.ethernet eth0: Link is Up - 1Gbps/Full - flow control off

Many switches will report what speed it is using on a particular port with lights around the port.

I have checked this and this is what I found (some info came from members here on this forum, I forget who):
1- Both MAIN and LOOP ports are equivalent to use - they are bridged together.
2- The ethernet chip for MAIN is 1Gbps speed, the one for LOOP is 100Mbps speed.
3- You can force the speed to be at 100Mbps simply by connecting to the LOOP port, there is no drawback here - I do this actually.

FWIW, my network connection to the Rossini is:

[1G wired network] → [10GTek Eth-SFP bridge] → [fiber] → [ROBOFiber SFP-Eth bridge] → LOOP port on Rossini

my rossini connect uPnP server via Loop port
it is ok at download but very slow /unstable at upload

Hello Miguel
Wondering why you “force” the ethernet speed to 100Mbps…have heard some discussion about this but uncertain the merits. Is this a sonic choice/improvement?
Cheers

All of the “audiophile” switches I have seen around use a 100 mbps “audiophile” port for connecting to the DAC. The theory as I have seen it is that gigabit connections have a higher density of transitions (10x essentially).

I doubt that a transition, if it produces high frequency noise, is any sharper or duller in either scheme, but the density in principle matters.

Having said all this, I just tried it because I could. Did I do A/B testing? No, I don’t really care. Do I think I hear a difference? No, I don’t hear any difference. Does it matter? Not one bit (pun intended).

This is not to say I am convinced by my principles that a difference cannot exist. No I am not convinced that way. At some point I will try an audiophile network thingamabob just for fun. If I hear a difference then, maybe I will try to understand why. Every difference has a real source, it is not the little green aliens in the box.

1 Like

Given I feel the Network Acoustics muon pro ethernet filter (the one that supports gigabit ethernet) makes a positive difference, I don’t think gigabit ethernet can be inherently bad.

I’m not sure I’d be concerned whether the connection was gigabit or not :slight_smile:

1 Like

Thanks for your reply……agree with your skepticism and am also curious about some of the later gen switches…Nordost has one of interest. Would enjoy having one in house to compare.
My current wiring:
Wired from a Eero mesh wifi to the 1000 M input of the Bartok and a Shunyata Alpha with an Acoustic Revive thingy (100M) to my ROON Rock.
Works but wonder about the possible noise from the Eero.

I would think an optical bridge between the DAC and wired network cannot have a negative impact. I would def connect your Roon ROCK with gigabit ethernet to the network.

1 Like