Stretching out

[John Gallup]

My listening room is a 12.5' x 15' former bedroom upstairs. Cable, telephone and thus internet all come into a closet in the front hall downstairs—what would be a coat closet if we didn't live in San Diego and have little need of the coats, hats, & etc that were needed in IL, CO, MO and DC where I used to live. Anyway when my wife designed the house in '02 or so she had Cat 5e ethernet (as well as POTS and coax) run to every room, two locations in most, and that's been great for music. I had the cable modem, NAS, backup drive, and Roon ROCK server on a rack in that closet. At various times I'd add a linear power supply that wasn't being used elsewhere, and eventually an Uptone Audio EtherRegen switch. And there's an CISCO 24-port switch and a printer too, as well as the house alarm system box and some other stuff I won't bore you with.

My wife's an artist and recently got interested in digital art, so we added another printer that would do larger format stuff, and I decided there might be some sound quality benefits to getting the audio stuff out of that closet. I didn't want it all in the listening room, but was able to negotiate some space in an upstairs hallway. I had an old Sanus rack that wasn't being used, and decided to put it there. While I was at it (and because I like to fool around with this stuff), I got an external clock for the EtherRegen from AliExpress, and a fiber-media converter to splice into the chain. Now I had a bunch of gizmos that wanted low-voltage DC, so the obvious next step was an HDPlex linear power supply, which isn't cheap but is a great device, 300 watts with fixed outputs at 19vDC for the Roon ROCK server, 12vDC for the clock, NAS and USB backup, and two switchable outputs that let me supply 7.5vDC to the EtherRegen and 5vDC to the FMC. It came with enough cables that I only had to build one to feed the three 12v devices.

There were phone jack and Ethernet jacks on the wall above the location, but I really needed two Ethernets to make all the hookups I needed. Fortunately the electrician who wired the house used Cat 5e wire for the phone jacks as well, so I only had to switch out the wall jack to get what I needed.

So here you see the finished effect. It's not pretty, but it's at the end of the hall outside the guest bedroom. I tell guests that it's the Visitor Behavior Monitor Module and will report any inappropriate activity. Since taking the picture I removed the rubber feet on the rack and added spiked ones on little saucers.

Overkill? Sure, but I have fun with this stuff, and it really does make the digital stuff sound better to have it away from irrelevant equipment, wall warts and the like.

[Steve Edwards]

8 hours ago, John Gallup said:

I tell guests that it's the Visitor Behavior Monitor Module

Classic John!  That'll keep 'em in line!

Very nice work

[GdnrBob]

Unrelated questions: 

Did you notice much difference using the EtherRegen? I know John Rutan recommends getting the Innuos Phoenix for ethernet, but it costs $3K. 

Did you need the Clock?

Bob

[John Gallup]

4 minutes ago, GdnrBob said:

Unrelated questions: 

Did you notice much difference using the EtherRegen? I know John Rutan recommends getting the Innuos Phoenix for ethernet, but it costs $3K. 

Did you need the Clock?

Bob

The clock is a cheapie from China and may or not be better than the one in the EtherRegen; there're are long forum discussions about this over at Audiophile Style. I didn't notice a huge improvement from either device, or the fiber conversion either. I guess if I were a magazine writer I'd do rigorous testing of one tweak at a time, but I'm not so I don't. I am happy with the sound, I must say. Here's Hans Beekhuysen on the EtherRegen. He's a believer. 

[TomicTime]

Banish the switch mode wall warts is my mantra or at least TRY to get them on a power conditioning unit and if possible on a different circuit than dedicated to audio circuits 

Great work John !

[GdnrBob]

@TomicTime, I do have a LPS I bought, but haven't used yet. I hear that routers benefit from them. Have you had the same experience?

B

[TomicTime]

@GdnrBob Hi Bob - In short yes ! i like the Teddy Pardo LPS out of Israel but i suspect any competent designed / executed and importantly sized for load LPS will run circles around a high pollution SMPS….. 

Top 2 are for music server, ROON core and bottom is for a Netgear high performance switch…

Best to you in music !

Jim

[ctsooner]

I"ve noticed major differences using fiber optic conversion. Bob also knows I own an LPS unit that has 4 outlets that are all adjustable.  I run all my digital from this LPS (router and modem plus another digital device) and all are plugged into the extra dedicated line I have in the room.  It's made a really nice difference in my digital playback from an 1800 headphone amp/dac to the rest of the system.  I plug the Brinkmann into the AQ Niagara 3000.