Where should I go from here with my digital front end?


Good morning

My digital front end consists of a recently purchased  Lumin U2 Mini hard wired with Supra ethernet cable from an Eero mesh unit. Modem and Eero router located on 2nd floor. My listening room is in the basement.

My listening is 100% streaming from Tidal and Quboz with a budget of under $1k

should I:

1) upgrade the supra cable

2) add an Etherregen or Eno filter

3) add an audiophile switch such as the English Electric

4) other

Thanks!

 

emil

Here’s the thing with the fibre optic conversion…it’s resilient to the EMI and RFI after the signal is converted into fibre optic, however the converter modules themselves introduce their own garbage into the signal. In my system it manifested itself as glare, glassy and thin sound and that didn’t work out for me. YMMV.
 

You have to find the solution that does the least amount of harm while removing what doesn’t belong in the signal.
That is why ultimately I returned the fibre optic converters and went for the passive Network Acoustics Eno streaming system.

I agree with Amazon return policy it would be a sin not to try this fibre optic stuff. If it works for you, that’s an awesome first step. 

Be sure to try LPS with at least last FMC before passing judgment, lps on both even better. The lps insures the garbage emanating from the FMC will be eliminated, switch mode power supplies injecting the noise.

I also mentioned the Sonore optical products as upgrade to the generic FMC. Better clocks and internal power supplies within these products substantial improvement over generic. Still need quality LPS with this. In the case feeding streamer one would use two Sonore OpticalModule in series.

 

Optimized optical is pretty hard to beat, even the generic with lps very nice.

I tried fiber and it wasn't right for me.  It is a rabbit hole and you wont get to the promised land via Amazon.

I wish I had seen this before trying it.  

I have an ENO AG filter and it is nice.  I like the SOtM Cat7u better, I havent heard the new muon yet.

This is an interesting thread. I’m very curious about what the fiber connect will do to improve your digital signal. I’m generally curious about the whole bits part of the chain and what magnitude of improvements can be made there.  For $163 it’s a no brainer to try.  But if you start to get into $500+ changes, I would personally upgrade with room treatments or a DAC upgrade or an amp upgrade.  I have Belles  Aria monoblocks and they’re great but I know there are better amps out there.  Let us know what you hear.  Thanks.