Is optical mostly a waste of time versus Ethernet?

Packet loss sounds a lot like election fraud. Oh no

@yyzsantabarbara here you go again, John Swenson is NOT an audio streaming expert. That is a lie. 100% lie. Again, from UpTone’s website “John Swenson is widely known as a talented engineer, with decades of experience in silicon chip design” .

Stop lying. Please. John Swenson is a silicon chip designer, which is not even remotely close to audio streaming expert.

and your post never make any sense, if you lose a packet, how the hell can you regurgitate that lost packet, and the associated sounds in that packet?

However, the correct use of regurgitate is @yyzsantabarbara regurgitates things he reads on the Internet, meaning you just repeat statements out of context without understanding and comprehension of a topic you have claimed to program….

Regarding the streaming, TCP is incredibly reliable, and some of the topics that come into play are latency, window size, and yes, jitter. QOS has nothing to do with it as you can’t run QOS over the Internet (sure, you can tag your packets, and your internet provider will respectfully give you the finger and remove the tags, unless you pay for this, and then it is still only within that provider’s network and not the next network you need to traverse). It is all TCP.

and finally your comment about the 2k system. That is final sign of defeat, nothing factual backs up your claims, so now the listeners system isn’t resolving enough, spend more money. Well, I have a 45k system that I really enjoy, and I use enterprise grade networking equipment from juniper and extreme, and I certainly couldn’t hear a difference when I tried the Etherregen. Right now I am even running wifi to my NAD M50.2 due to a reno project, and no issues.

In process of more networking experiments, better modem with Broadcom vs Intel chip in old,  outboard power supply, Mikrotic  CCR1036 enterprise grade router.

@fredrik222 You are one cat that has selective comprehension. Who the heck was talking about " QOS over the Internet". I was talking about on the home network as I clearly stated in my reproduceable test of how to make a ROON stream distort the sound 100% of the time.

I certainly couldn’t hear a difference when I tried the Etherregen.

Each of us hears differently and also tests these things differently. When I tried the ER on a $10K streaming Integrated amp it had no sonic benefit to my system. When I tried it in reverse order (B > A) using Swenson’s guidance with fibre optical I was able to easily hear an improvement. That is the fibre setup improved even more. Swenson does not actually state to use a ER, for this use case. He suggested a FMC but I only had the ER handy so I used it B > A.

However, since you did not hear any improvement then no one will. Guys. like you are entertaining. I am bored now with you.

A $45K system is great for the economy. I am sure you made some people happy buying that gear (hopefully yourself too). However, the last thing I would do is to use the price of audio gear as some representation of quality.

Anyways, for the folks that are curious I have provided enough links above for you all to do you own deep dive. One of the reasons, I found some of these issues on ROON is because I listen to just under 200 hours a month on ROON (there is a total on one of the ROON views). You think streaming problems do not crop up during this time.

@yyzsantabarbara  EtherRegen doesn't support QOS, so there is that. Need managed switches for that, and EtherRegen is not managed. And while you can configure a lot, most QOS configuration do not limit or prioritize anything until you hit the defined congestion threshold.  However, EtherRegen, if you have a congested network, by design, can cause issues, since you have "A" ports that are gigabit, and the "B" port that is supposed to go your streamer/dac, which is 100Mbps. If you are pushing over 100Mbps on the "A" side, and for some reason push it to the "B" side, you will introduce packet drops. It is even possible that the EtherRegen will flood the "B" side with everything going on on the "A" side. UpTone does not give any type of specifications for this, or any other specifications at all, only "ultra low jitter" and "ultra low noise" without and numbers. 

What we do know about the UpTone is that they use cheap components according to their own pictures of the circuit board.

Did you ever think about this in a objective manner?

1) Uptone provides 0 specifications

2) There is no measurable improvement to their claims

3) There is no theoretical improvement to their claims 

4) They use cheap components 

5) Some people hear a different, but others do not. 

Maybe there is a confirmation bias involved, maybe?'

You are the one who brought in the money, I get it that you feel stupid when you thought I had a $500 marantz receiver from BestBuy with a Klipsch $300 bookshelf pair, but if you want to argue that Classe Audio for Pre/Power is not good quality, you are in a league of your own, and will really feel stupid.