Hi tobias, I must try out the Muon to get an idea myself, but first I will do some more experiments with the ferrite and I will dive in the Muon as well. I think we at least need a powersupply for a switch and a router, maybe a better power supply will lower the noise already for a starting point and less filtering is needed.

Do you mean additional clocking or replacing a clock by a more silent clock? I have done the latter, but I can't use it because of the effects I get after several hours. I think these clocks can help in building a better signal, because a standard crystal has a pretty high phase noise level.

Just for the record. My relation with audio products is DIY only 😉

Better DAC clocks makes a lot of sense. Additional clocking in switches and streamers make no sense, from a clocking perspective. They might help lower the noise floor towards the DAC though, as a biproduct.

Power supplies are needed yes. But in a WiFi extender situation, you only need one power supply, in the network path.

In a non WiFi situation you have a multitude of electronics and power supplies interconnected that needs to be cleaned up prior to the DAC.

I see your point and still I almost try everything. Networks have surprised me too many times. I thought about this structure as well and for this purpose I have put a fiber converter several times next to my DAC. Still the copper connection Router -> Streamer -> Dac had the clear preference. I have tried 4 different fiber converter single mode and multi mode and fed them with different power supplies as well. This way there was only 1 powersupply at the side of the DAC, but the powersupplie on the other side had almost as much impact. Actually every ethernet connection has a galvanic isolation to the next device except for the shield. I guess with Wifi it will work better (I can imagine). I haven't tried that, but the fun is that I have asked a friend of mine to try a powersupply at his transmitter side of the Wifi. It did make a difference and he was very skeptical 🙂
I just built a new ferrite cable with 9 windings. It's between the Jcat and my Dac. At least until now It really does more than I thought. It's on another level than what a powersupplie brings, but together they are great 🙂

Hi Wijnand and Tobias

I'm still not sure how to describe it properly. Instruments sounded less impactful indeed, all harshness was gone but this was probably due to the lower noise floor. They also sounded a bit more natural. In the end everything sounded softer as if I turned down the volume but I didn't. That felt strange. I didn't want even less impact: a while back I changed my DAC and one of the things I noticed was less speed, less impact when music demands, clearly audible one test tracks such as enter sandman from metallica.  Personally, I think this has to do with the power supply: the old DAC had a switch mode and the new one a linear one.

A good power supply gives you speed attack etc but no harshness like the Ferrum hypsos that is now on my switch. It's a hybrid. That's why I think that the Network acoustics Tempus switch will be a good one: it has a hybrid power supply. So I partially agree with Tobias, better no power supply at all but the good ones give you dynamics and impact but no stress.

Sorry for my confusing words, I find it very hard to explain what I hear.

Pieter

Yes, fibre is not ideal since the signal needs to be the type of signal that the DAC handles. It means that it needs to be converted from fibre to "ethernet" signal, inside or close to the streamer, which causes noise, which is what needs to be avoided, at all cost.

Amazing to hear that you are happy with the ferrit core throttle!