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Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

RE: "network rendering, streamers, music servers, mini computers"

Noise can be coupled at least three ways, through the air with cables acting as antennas, through the power wiring and through the signal cabling. You can test (and rule out or rule in) the first two possibilities by running the computer after the streamer has been disconnected from the network. (You may have to fake it out so that it thinks it's still playing, details would depend on system and network.) Shielding on the Ethernet cables will definitely help but there are various ways their effectiveness can be reduced.

Getting to the third possibility, different software in the computer or various hardware related noise will affect the speed at which the computer operates and hence the timing of packets sent through the router. If this timing is different then the router will forward packets to the streamer with different timing. The streamer gets a huge pulse of work each time a packet arrives and the required processing will create noise. If the streamer isn't isolated from the DAC then this noise will affect the audio. This is a good theory, and according to John Swensen, a theory that he has proven to apply in practice.

What this amounts to is that the streamer has a computer inside it and that computer has the opportunity to pollute the audio output of the DAC. I can't think of any way to avoid this possibility other than to isolate the DAC from the streamer. The fundamental problem is that computer components that are designed as digital circuitry are in close proximity with sensitive analog components such as the DACs master clock, converter power supply, DAC chip, IV converter and output buffer.


Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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