A Confused streaming system - Mutec / SOtM Ultra

[Confused]

@yabaVR Optimising Windows can reduce unwanted noise in the system, I have friends who swear by it. I asked both the developer of HQPlayer and SOtM what optimisation they recommend. Both said that they don't think it will make a difference in this network streaming that we are doing with the SMS-200ulta + HQplayer NAA. They themselves don't use any such optimisation. The network isolates this noise ideally, but you have to be careful with that. The SMS-200ultra is not galvanically isolated and neither are D-Link switches, so certain Ethernet cables are not suitable to use (mostly audiophile cables actually). Also, the power supply on the switch makes a difference. For me, full optical isolation between the SOtM modified switch and the SMS-200ultra gave the best result so far, somewhat better than my Acoustic Revive RLI-1 isolators. Soon I will have a chance to test these against a Pink Faun isolator which is also said to be good. Inherent in the optical isolation, noise cannot pass through, so I didn't hear any difference when I put the switching power supply back on the switch but it is important to use a good LPS on the second optical converter (which converts it back to Ethernet). It seems that new SOtM switch will have optical ports too, so that can be very useful.

@zdenes 
As I discribed in a post before it's not about noise leaving the PC over ethernet but what 'noise' is doing to the audio signal before leaving the PC over ethernet. This noise generates jitter after the bit perfect stream left Roon (or any player) which then is inherent in the audio signal and can not be removed. It's like the jitter produced during a recording. It's 'bound' to the signal since then and cannot be removed either.
Sometimes makes me wonder what developer 'think'. Just a hint why you may achieve better sound with a optimized PC is the fact that many users of Audiophile Optimizer use a Dual PC Setup with a Control PC and a Steaming PC. All over ethernet and both fully optimized by software. Maybe worth a try. You can actually try it a short and free way with 'Fidelizer'. You can install it boot your PC with Fidelizer Optimizations and you can hear if it makes a difference to your sound over ethernet. You see in my signature that I've gone that way and I must say the difference in sound is 'Night and Day' in my USB driven system.
It gives such an amount of precision and transparency to my system that I can not listen without it. Actually the optimized PC is so good that it shows clearly how much better USB performs compared to ethernet. The musik over USB is more real, more involving, more of everything (think of your Ref10).

gui

There is some interesting information here in terms of jitter and audio clock hierarchy when using Roon RAAT via Ethernet. 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/raat-an...rship/6915