I thought I would share a recent tweak I picked  up on from an Audiogon thread.  I had another “Oh My” moment similar to the Snubway results.  It’s the Stack Audio-SmoothLAN Network Filter.  Ships from England with a return guarantee. I have tried several ethernet filters IFi, pink faun, AQ with no improvement.  This one made a noticeable improvement I did not expect.
My set up:  Mesh router-ethernet cable-FMC-optical cable- FMC- ethernet- SmoothLAN-smoothLan ethernet cable- Bricasti streamer

https://the-ear.net/review-hardware/stack-audio-smooth-lan-open-streaming/?fbcli...
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So as of late, I am a big fan of Stack Audio Equipment footers (AUVA EQ) and I’ve had expanded these footers to my DAC, Streamer, and Switch.  

The SmoothLAN was on my radar, but I was pining for the 10x more expensive Muon Pro filter.  Not sure if I want to spend that kind of dough on a Network filter after acquiring the PNET and the Teddy Pardo for my upstream Netgear Switch, so I just decided to pull the trigger on the SmoothLan.  There seems to be a lot of demand for it as the dispatch time is 2-3 days from order date, so that’s a good sign.

It should be here next week.

I am here looking forward to your next post. Thanks

Kamran….we must be on the same wavelength.   I was reading this thread yesterday and was looking for an update from you.   I actually was going to call/text you yesterday, but the day got away from me.  Glad to hear that you had a positive experience with the SmoothLan.  

My 24 port network switch feeds a line to a 5 port POE switch that handles my Raspberry Pi, a laptop housing my Roon core, and a security camera.  There’s no doubt in my mind that the signal feeding my system is not optimal.  Sounds like the SmoothLan is just the ticket.  

Dom

Kamran,

Ah…got it.  Very good to know.  My Unifi switch is a Level 3 fully managed switch, so I would just need to go into the UI and change that port to the 100 Mpbs.  I kinda hate limiting the throughput though…especially since it could negatively impact the security camera that captures my living room….unless I change that camera out to a WiFi camera.  I run an SFP connection from my Unifi firewall to my Switch…so it looks like it may take some fiddling to hone in the place to add the device.  

I’m starting to have my weekends off…so I’m going to give you a shout to work on coordinating a day that you could come over for a listening session.  If your SmoothLan is not permanently mounted, maybe you could bring it with you so we could try it out to see how it impacts my system.  

Cool.  That would be great to see how it impacts my system.

Sure Roger—Josh is awesome and he will sort you out.

As long as only the streamer is seeing 100MBps, it should be fine as that is more than enough for Hi-Res streaming.  The problem arises when the filter is placed upstream of another device, which relies on faster speeds.

For example, I was thinking of potentially (emphasis on potentially) adding a second one before my first switch and then I immedieltely realized that was a bad idea since that switch feeds my Apple TV, TV, and Denon Receiver and Philips Hue lights.  That would negatively impact video streaming.  However, I could insert the second one (after) in to the Netgear ethernet slot that connects exclusively to my Hifi.  

So the path would be Netgear—SmoothLAN—-Phoenix Net—SmoothLan—Streamer.

All the other slots would remain unaffected, capable of up to 1 Gbps.

Thanks for the info Kamran and Hereafter. Makes sense. I'm planning to put it in front of my Cambridge Audio CXN V2 streamer/DAC.

HK

Just ordered a Stack Audio SmoothLAN network filter and set of the AUVA EQ isolators. Should have them in the system in a week or so. Isolators will be going under my modified Cambridge Audio CXN V2 to compare/contrast with my Daedalus isolation devices.

HK