DAC Advice Needed

[NBPK402]

Orange is OM1...
You probably want Aqua OM3 which is spec higher... With such a short length the price should not be much more...

I found one that is OM3 LC to LC but it is for 10gig...will that fit with a 1gig?

 

[ddude003]

OM3 should be compatible with an OM1 transceiver... Which transceiver(s) are you using... No habla espanol...

 

[NBPK402]

OM3 should be compatible with an OM1 transceiver... Which transceiver(s) are you using... No habla espanol...

This is the cable i was thinking of getting....

https://www.amazon.com/FLYPROFiber-Fiber-Patch-Length-Options/dp/B093GV4N5K?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1

 

[ddude003]

Should be compatible... And if you are worried it won't, then go with those OM1s... If all your light-pipes are 1Gig and your switch has 8 1Gig ports, what does this get you? Are you trying to isolate your U1 Mini from the rest of your wired ethernet with glass?

 

[NBPK402]

Should be compatible... And if you are worried it won't, then go with those OM1s... If all your light-pipes are 1Gig and your switch has 8 1Gig ports, what does this get you? Are you trying to isolate your U1 Mini from the rest of your wired ethernet with glass?

For now that is the plan... I am also going to see if I can do the same with my UNRAID NAS. I would like to eventually have all my AV devices on fiber. I will order a OM3 too, to see if it will fit.

Question does every transceiver have to be identical...like 10 devices hooked up to the same SFP switch (all with identical transceivers), or does just the ends of each cable have identical transceivers.

 

[ddude003]

"does every transceiver have to be identical"... No, they just have to adhere to the same spec... Much like all the other ethernet transceivers that do wired... I am sure a lot of folks just use the same/identical transceivers in their LANs because its just easy to buy a bunch from the same vendor... Also like your favorite car manufacturer... Some folks like Ford, read Cisco and some like Chevy, read Netgear... They all take the same gas and drive down the same highways...

 

[dsnyder0cnn]

the future is fiber

Not sure that I would agree with that. Fiber has been around for a long time (decades). It's essential when you're dealing with distances of hundreds of feet to miles. However, I don't see it replacing copper network interconnects for shorter runs in home and office environments.

Some folks consider fiber better because of galvanic isolation, but you get that for free with copper Ethernet too; the standards require magnetic coupling of all switch ports. Nothing wrong with using fiber at home if you just want to. I just don't think it's the future. It's just a tool for a different job.

 

[NBPK402]

Not sure that I would agree with that. Fiber has been around for a long time (decades). It's essential when you're dealing with distances of hundreds of feet to miles. However, I don't see it replacing copper network interconnects for shorter runs in home and office environments.

Some folks consider fiber better because of galvanic isolation, but you get that for free with copper Ethernet too; the standards require magnetic coupling of all switch ports. Nothing wrong with using fiber at home if you just want to. I just don't think it's the future. It's just a tool for a different job.

It was time to replace my Cisco managed switch...so might as well run a couple of fiber connections for now and also dress up my wiring with new cables. It might be nothing, but just the way I would like to try out.

 

[ddude003]

Optical fiber is immune to EMI and RFI... Uses less power and has lower latencies... And on the higher end is capable of more bandwidth...

It is not that difficult to put together a multi-media server and/or gaming system(s) with multi-terabyte SSDs in striped array(s)... Next steps will be above 4k HD A/V needing next level network feeds/speeds...

Fiber in the home is really not much more expensive than copper (routers, bridges, switches, transceivers & cables) for your LAN... And if you happen to have fiber to the curb then what the heck...

Don't get me wrong... I am not advocating everyone deploy fiber... Only high end and forward thinking A/V folks need apply...

 

[NBPK402]

Optical fiber is immune to EMI and RFI... Uses less power and has lower latencies... And on the higher end is capable of more bandwidth...

It is not that difficult to put together a multi-media server and/or gaming system(s) with multi-terabyte SSDs in striped array(s)... Next steps will be above 4k HD A/V needing next level network feeds/speeds...

Fiber in the home is really not much more expensive than copper (routers, bridges, switches, transceivers & cables) for your LAN... And if you happen to have fiber to the curb then what the heck...

Don't get me wrong... I am not advocating everyone deploy fiber... Only high end and forward thinking A/V folks need apply...

100% agree. Pricing out equipment needed the Switches are about the same in price and the fiber is just a bit more expensive (nothing like Audiophile equipment prices).

 

[ddude003]

I find it interesting that in north-east Mo, even in small towns of ~5,000 people, there is residential gigabit fiber to the home... And most of this networking stuff is pretty simple, plug and play... I can remember back to the late 70s early 80s when ethernet cable was a thick as my thumb and lengths had to be measured precisely because wave reflections...

 

[NBPK402]

I find it interesting that in north-east Mo, even in small towns of ~5000 people, there is residential gigabit fiber to the home...

They ran fiber down our street last week... I hope to have 100-200MBit this week or next week. Our community is about a kilometer out of town and we have maybe 500 homes in our community. San Miguel de Allende has 80k+ people in the county and there are still people in town that cannot get fiber. I guess living in an Xpat community has some benefits.

 

[NBPK402]

Now I am not one to believe that a Audiophile network switch sounds any better than a normal switch, but... I have done some testing and I was wrong. As I said above I had a 10 second gap between tracks (same playlist in my signature) after hooking up the Lumin U1 mini. I tried using Samsung 2TB SSDs and it did not noticeably improve matters. I then checked with the Lumin expert in the link earlier...he said others have had good luck with using fiber. I then started reading about how fiber is not affected by EMI or EMF, and looked around and saw it was not expensive to give a try. I purchased a one fiber convertor set of modules (and some cables which I did not see in the video, but I saw some interesting reviews on them on Amazon ) that I saw were used on a Youtube video. Now on some YouTube videos and in some forums I also saw that they claimed a lower noise floor was also an advantage of fiber. Now since it was not expensive to try and I had nothing to lose... I went for it.

When I received the 2 convertor boxes, some short cat6 cables, and some OM3 Corning fiber cables... I gave it a try. I plugged everything in and it all worked, perfectly. I then went and played my Playlist, and was listening for a while and I was like what happened to the 10 second delays between track! Ithen went and played it again and this time I made sure to track the gaps (without using pause, FF or skip). Well my gaps were down to less than 2 seconds on all tracks and some were just a quick pause! Next I decided to see if my Cisco Micro ports would accept my fiber cable and transceiver...it did do I then went and tried it again and now I have no more than a second of gap on the tracks. I also have noticed on my NSA when accessing from Windows 10 a speed increase on access. In the past if I clicked on my NAS I would see a spinning wheel or slow progress on the bar, but now it is instantaneous.

Now as far as the sound I think there was improvements in clarity, but it could be from suggestive comments I have read about. Now it is possible that when I get the noise in the room down I might see an improvement in the noise floor, but I cannot saw currently with a live semi treated room. I can say that my setup sounds great and is def revealing to changes.

I def am happy with the results, and it was less than $100 for the fiber, and network convertor including the transceivers.

Now that I have had better results than I had expected... I purchased a Linksys 24 port switch with 4 SFP cages... I am going to use all 4 for various items in my system and then use the fiber modules for the rest. I am hoping that by going fiber on all my AV devices it will give me more of the same, but if it doesnt...it is fine as it was time for an update to my network.

 

[ddude003]

@NBPK402 a very nice summary of your journey into the fiber domain... Your only as good as your slowest component... AKA the bottleneck... And when it comes to speed and bandwidth... Some is good, more is better and too much is just right...