News LAN iSilencer Audiophile Ethernet Dongle Claims to 'Quiet Your Network'

[Admin]

Japan’s iFi-Audio has launched a LAN iSilencer dongle to remove noise from your Ethernet music streaming. The firm seems to have missed a trick by charging under $1,000.

LAN iSilencer Audiophile Ethernet Dongle Claims to 'Quiet Your Network' : Read more

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Hahaha. Love the intro

 

[atomicWAR]

I hate snake oil like this. It be one thing if these products actually worked... heck I'd get one even. But testing again and again on similar products show they didn't help things and were more likely to degrade your audio than clean it up.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Nothing but hucksters. Grifters of our age

 

[atomicWAR]

Nothing but hucksters. Grifters of our age

100%

 

[Math Geek]

i'm in the wrong business. seems i just need to go into the "audiophile" business and i could make a killing. i'm sure properly insulating your feet from the negative effects of the floor on audio quality has not been fully exploited errrr explored. bound to be a few million $ to be had there alone with some (enter futuristic insulating fabric name here) infused socks for only $75 a pair or 3 for $250.

i'd even feel bad about it the first few days but then i'm sure as the money rolled in, i'd quickly get over it.

 

[GenericUser]

i'm in the wrong business. seems i just need to go into the "audiophile" business and i could make a killing. i'm sure properly insulating your feet from the negative effects of the floor on audio quality has not been fully exploited errrr explored. bound to be a few million $ to be had there alone with some (enter futuristic insulating fabric name here) infused socks for only $75 a pair or 3 for $250.

i'd even feel bad about it the first few days but then i'm sure as the money rolled in, i'd quickly get over it.

Combine something expensive with something popular. "These audiophile grade RGB LEDs will reduce the electrical interference that comes with running 'normal' LEDs and in turn increases the overall sound quality from your system."

 

[InvalidError]

Galvanic isolation... kind of pointless when most NICs already have an isolation transformer to provide 5-10kV of protection, often built directly into the RJ45 jack in modern equipment to save board space and improve signal integrity. Looks like this dongle basically stacks a 2nd isolation transformer on top of what should already be there.

 

[domih]

A few weeks ago, I discovered that I was getting better results by plugging the Ethernet cables directly into my ears. I furthermore eliminated noise by inserting a cathode in my mouth and an anode in my .

 

[gg83]

Right!?!?! Money better spent on better dac, Amp, pair of cans, or all 3!

 

[SunMaster]

Right!?!?! Money better spent on better dac, Amp, pair of cans, or all 3!

I suggest a couple of beers.

 

[doughillman]

You look up "gullible fool" on Wikipedia it says "Redirected from Audiophile."

 

[Arbie]

Audiophiles are the second most gullible group of people in the US.

 

[bloodypulp]

Fiber optic is the way to avoid EMI.

 

[jasonf2]

Is there seriously no consumer protection related to these products? In virtually any other business area, other than homeopathic supplements, if I create and market a product that doesn't do what it says it does I am open to tort at the very least and potentially consumer protection agency violations. These "audiophile" products are claiming to remove problems that don't exist. Digital interfaces, while they do experience interference, either compensate automatically or are pretty much immune intrinsically. If you want to sell a surge protector or some form of repeater that is great. But unlike analog audio signals, which will pass the distortion on to the speakers, digital signals cannot be "filtered" only repeated and/or electronics protected. Even then the promise of increased audio quality cannot be delivered because the decoding device is entirely responsible for that at it's end post stream. These products bend beyond the funny and into the realm of fraud.

 

[InvalidError]

digital signals cannot be "filtered" only repeated and/or electronics protected. Even then the promise of increased audio quality cannot be delivered because the decoding device is entirely responsible for that at it's end post stream.

In the case of external interfaces, external cables act like antennas and there may be a nugget of merit in using fully isolated transformers to prevent common-mode noise from getting into the motherboard's ground plane through the input signal transformer's center tap which is there to prevent lines from floating to arbitrarily high positive or negative voltages.

 

[Sluggotg]

I remember when Rubes would write in to my Audio and Home Theater Magazines claiming that "De-Magnetizing" CDs will make them sound much better. I met people that believed that! I tried to explain about the Poly Carbonate disk with a very very thin layer of aluminum cannot get "Magnetized". It never matters, they turn it into a belief system rather than a Laws of Physics thing.

 

[Paul Basso]

I imagine that same can be achived using cat7 or cat 8 cable

 

[bit_user]

In the case of external interfaces, external cables act like antennas and there may be a nugget of merit in using fully isolated transformers to prevent common-mode noise from getting into the motherboard's ground plane through the input signal transformer's center tap which is there to prevent lines from floating to arbitrarily high positive or negative voltages.

My solution is to use a digital audio connection between my PC and my audio rack. That way, I don't care how much electrical noise is in my PC, which seems like a fraught quest to try and control.

Currently, the link is Toslink (optical). However, even S/PDif should work, as I believe it's pretty standard practice to have an isolation transformer on those inputs to avoid unnecessary risk of ground loops or other interference.

 

[digitalgriffin]

As an audiophile who built his own amps in college, this kind of @#$@#$ makes me want to puke.

 

[jasonf2]

In the case of external interfaces, external cables act like antennas and there may be a nugget of merit in using fully isolated transformers to prevent common-mode noise from getting into the motherboard's ground plane through the input signal transformer's center tap which is there to prevent lines from floating to arbitrarily high positive or negative voltages.

I don't normally go here but I have to call total bs on that. Ethernet signals on twisted pair are differential signals that cancel the induced noise due to wire twist. Because one wire has to go high and the other goes low an interference signal on the pair doesn't cause a false input. The twist makes the two wires act like one so it just becomes common mode noise. In noisy situations where the induced interference is bad enough the answer is shielded twisted pair instead of UTP. In the worst of cases optically isolated repeaters are used on both ends that isolate the ground entirely. But those devices are not really for signal cleanup, but for transient removal and lightening effects on systems with multiple ground stakes and propagating wave effects. There are also lightening and transient arrestors that use tube technology, but again they don't clean up signal loss, just protect equipment. Any worse than that and you need fiber optics, which had already become economically viable before the repeater installation. But in real world we are talking close proximity arc welder type interference to even need the STP. When you go to STP the ideal is that the shield acts like an antenna and shunts it to ground. Again because the ground shunts the signal any float up is negated as long as you have a good ground. Any ripple on the ground just becomes common mode noise again which doesn't really do anything. If there is measurable voltage flux on ground reference you have a bad ground network. In my past life I not only installed, but fully verified cables in commercial/industrial applications. Cable verification required zero packet loss over gigabytes of data being sent/received and verified. Unless the cable itself was messed up being made, zero packet loss is required for cable certification. Any packet loss on a short ethernet run means you have a bad cable or port. No additional devices should be needed for all effects zero data loss on a wired lan network and something is wrong if you are getting measurable amounts of it at all. The internet or wireless are another discussion entirely, but wired ethernet lan in spec is rock solid. Even if a problem occurs due to some rough solar flair or local EMP blast (that doesn't somehow blow up your computer) the TCP stack takes care of it automatically and any UDP implementations worth their salt will at least run some sort of CRC and dump the packet.

Magnetic isolation transformers aren't a bad idea, but as the are almost always a hardware implementation and usually only in industrial and/or medical devices where some level of EMI Immunity has to be certified.

For all given points, in a normal residential application, that level of EMI is first off not going to be present. If you are worried about it use verified STP cables on your ethernet and make sure that at least one side has a grounded port. Even then in most cases it probably won't improve your audio stream considering the data is buffered on the playing device and any bad packets would have been discarded and resent long before the music is being played.

 

[Oldrkid]

This is clearly a passive device because Ethernet endpoints (as opposed to network switches) never provide power. The photo shows a 24-pin surface mount package with no other components visible. The device is almost certainly a transformer like the Halo TG1G Single Port GigE Transformer series, available in quantity for ~USD 7.00 from Avnet. It MIGHT reduce induced digital noise on, for instance, an unbalanced audio cable with RCA or 3.5mm stereo connectors that runs beside an Ethernet cable for a considerable distance. But a better solution would be to separate the cables.

 

[bit_user]

As an audiophile who built his own amps in college,

I reckon building your own hi-fi amp got a lot easier when integrated OpAmps became a thing.

 

[drivinfast247]

Audiophiles are the second most gullible group of people in the US.

And the first would be?

 

[tgsampaio]

I have an IFI Zen DAC v2 feeding my stereo setup and I love this device, but I just can't have too much sympathy for the brand with it's frequent attempts to sell all kinds of "audiophile" snake oils. I'd appreciate some respect for our intelligence.