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Anyone tried fiber into EtherRegen SFP?

Putting a 2nd-hand EtherRegen before my Innuos Zenith Mk3 has probably been the single best upgrade I've made.  Like most others' experiences, the shift away from a digital sound has been palpable.

I'm feeding the ER directly from my Netgear Orbi mesh satellite through a Wireworld Starlight ethernet cable.  I was wondering, however, if anyone has experienced significant gains from feeding the ER with fiber into its SFP port? 

I did assume initially that as the ER is a regenerator the quality of the input shouldn't matter that much.  But as I saw another jump when upgrading the ER's input cable it's set me to wondering about optical.

 

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carlsbad's avatar
carlsbad
1,551 posts
 

I use quality silver plated cable into my etherregen.  

Fiber may be good but I feel like people to ignore the need to convert the signal to optical and back to electrical in order to use fiber.  Generally these two converters are basic IT grade and can introduce more noise than you are saving by going optical.

my 2c.  I'm willing to listen to other viewpoints.

Jerry

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jmarshak
157 posts
 

That is true and an important point. I use optical as my router is 100+ ft from the ER.  I needed to try and consult with people on several different converters prior to settling.  Difference in SQ was obvious. 

yyzsantabarbara
4,883 posts
 

A lot of people are doing this now. Jon Swenson (eR designer) recommended using an FMC in front of the fibre. Which is what the EtherRegen does in reverse order, B > A.

I do this in one of my streamers. Since I do this and fibre I do not care about the crap on the bad side of the eR moat.

Some of the official sound police engineers on A’gon like to say the Swenson is a quake but for me the improvement in sound is real ducky.

BTW - fibre is all I use it it very easy to hear improvements with fibre in my setup. As I said before I have a alot of crap on the bad side of the fibre. The fibre and FMC clean this noise up, so the noise does not get into the DAC. How can I tell? I just replace the fibre for Ethernet and listen.

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