Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

Some of the isolation devices/set ups work GREAT and help tremendously. Only a few makers of gear have implemented any of these in their devices as most don’t even offer ethernet connection for the source. Ayre has an optical isolation device right in front of their ethernet input daughter board. It’s a very expensive way to implement ethernet, but it sounds great.

Steve, have you ever heard of this or tried this on your devices?

I use isolation devices, RF and transformers, in my cabling and components, but not optical.

My system has no ground-loops thanks to these.

The concern I would have with optical is maintaining the edge-rates to get low-jitter.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

I can speak for Empirical, as most who have his products do. I wish his interchange was capable of RAAT protocol that ROON uses

Me too.  Maybe some day.  In the meantime, Linn Kinsky sounds better IMO.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

Steve, do you have an explanation why with Ethernet and data sent in packets and check sum for errors, why jitter exists at all? Although USB is far worse, why Ethernet requires same careful implementation?

Like USB, it is unexpected.

I can only speculate that maybe the circuits in the Ethernet receiver react differently to slower edge-rates and poor signal integrity. Maybe the setup timing margins are smaller. This might cause the propagated signals to have more jitter.

Most designers don’t realize that digital logic is not perfect. It will be error-free if designed correctly, but avoiding jitter is a whole different ball of wax. It has taken me literally 25 years of designing and experimenting to discover this behavior.

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

I can only speculate that maybe the circuits in the Ethernet receiver react differently to slower edge-rates and poor signal integrity. Maybe the setup timing margins are smaller. This might cause the propagated signals to have more jitter.