Cable Modems

Blue58

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Jan 20, 2013
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And here in London we‘re stuck with Virgin’s Superhub3 (350gb) or their new 1gb SH4, both feature dodgy Puma chipsets.
I could switch to BT with 62mb max but there’s no info in chipset used in their router (Sagecom?)
 

nenon

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Interesting. I picked the 8200 because it was deployed by my cable company, Cox, and so would have good support. Not much room inside the case tho for caps. WHich Broadcom based device is best before mods for audio ? I am not sure.

All cable modems are tight in space and difficult to mod in the existing chassis. I had to drill a hole in the plastic case of my Cisco DPC 3008 to fit a better capacitor. BTW, this Cisco sounded pretty good after some mods.

IMG_2656.jpg.54033e7290f1c92b2f916a4cacde75bc.jpg

But even then it is in a cheap plastic case. I ordered one of these aluminum chassis:
185073317_s-l1600(1).jpg.a980554744d8b5bbfe115afc1d0a4228.jpg

The idea is to install a modded cable modem inside (modded power section, and probably an OCXO clock), put a Sean Jacobs DC3 power supply, add some Gaia feet, Furutech NCF IEC inlet with good fuse, and solder the DC wires directly to the board. It's probably a huge overkill... but I will know my cable modem is not a bottleneck in my system.

The only issue is I have been waiting for this chassis to be delivered forever.
 
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nenon

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I believe it has a router and WiFi built-in. I would avoid it if possible and use just a simple cable modem.
An all-in-one device has at least three functions - a cable modem, a router, and a WiFi access points. Most of them are noisy devices, and I would avoid them in my (audio) network, even if you can power them with a good linear power supply. Here is a general formula that has worked quite well for everyone who has tried it:
1. Use a good dedicated cable modem rather than an all-in-one device. I have good experience with Cisco DPC 3008 and Arris SB8200. Power up with a good linear power supply.
2. Use a dedicated router. The Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X (make sure you configure hardware NAT) is a good choice. You can also configure a seperate VLAN for your audio, but that's a little bit more advanced and you need to know what you are doing - there is some benefit in sound quality but not nearly as much as the other items I have listed here. Power up with good linear power supply. I use Sean Jacobs DC3, but there are many good cheaper options.
3. Use a dedicated WiFi access point. There are many good options. The Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD is a good option for example. But that's a noisy device and I prefer to isolate it galvanically from my network. See #4.
4. Use a fiber media converter to isolate your WiFi from the rest of your network. You will need a media convertor, two transceivers, and a fiber cable for that. One of the transceivers goes to the SFP port on the Ubiquiti router, the other one goes to the media converter, and you connect both with a fiber cable. Then you connect the copper RJ45 port of the media convertor to the Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD access point.

Hope that helps!
 
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matthias

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I believe it has a router and WiFi built-in. I would avoid it if possible and use just a simple cable modem.
An all-in-one device has at least three functions - a cable modem, a router, and a WiFi access points. Most of them are noisy devices, and I would avoid them in my (audio) network, even if you can power them with a good linear power supply. Here is a general formula that has worked quite well for everyone who has tried it:
1. Use a good dedicated cable modem rather than an all-in-one device. I have good experience with Cisco DPC 3008 and Arris SB8200. Power up with a good linear power supply.
2. Use a dedicated router. The Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X (make sure you configure hardware NAT) is a good choice. You can also configure a seperate VLAN for your audio, but that's a little bit more advanced and you need to know what you are doing - there is some benefit in sound quality but not nearly as much as the other items I have listed here. Power up with good linear power supply. I use Sean Jacobs DC3, but there are many good cheaper options.
3. Use a dedicated WiFi access point. There are many good options. The Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD is a good option for example. But that's a noisy device and I prefer to isolate it galvanically from my network. See #4.
4. Use a fiber media converter to isolate your WiFi from the rest of your network. You will need a media convertor, two transceivers, and a fiber cable for that. One of the transceivers goes to the SFP port on the Ubiquiti router, the other one goes to the media converter, and you connect both with a fiber cable. Then you connect the copper RJ45 port of the media convertor to the Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD access point.

Hope that helps!

Thanks,
the 8300 is on the list marked NOT to buy because of the Puma chip issue.

Matt
 
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wil

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Jul 22, 2015
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As far as I know, fiber to the home is the very best in jitter and low latency. I do not have experence in testing these devices. I would guess its near ideal.

So, I might be fortunate to have Att fiber. In your opinion, is there any any potential advantage to having faster fiber speed? I'm at the lowest tier, 100mbps.

It looks like Att is coming out with a new Gateway, the BGW 320-505. I don't know anything about other than it has an integrated ONT, which sounds like a bad idea...
 

aLLeARS

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Feb 20, 2020
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For a router I prefer a https://mikrotik.com/product/CCR1036-8G-2SplusEM with a linear supply and lots of caps. This has a brute force to not jitter at all under load. It has s SFP+ ports which makes it easy to feed a clean networking setup.

So as far as modems go,, I am throwing in my experence on this, but, how this relates to audio performance, I do not know.

@Xymox - The CCR1036-8G-2SplusEM has a built in power supply. Is it a linear supply or did you have to modify it to accept an outboard linear supply?

The information you have provided is excellent. Thank you!
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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Nice thread!

Comcast, blah... Had them for years because it's our only choice, but reliability is horrible (TV is out as I type, INternet is on; few weeks ago, it was the opposite). We had to "upgrade" a couple of months ago when they shuffled our channel lineup and dropped one of my wife's favorite (classic) movie channels. I did not notice 'til later the upgrade to get her channel, dropped one of mine, natch. Anyway, it came with a boost in Internet speed, and they said I needed a new DOCIS 3.1 modem. So I dutifully researched and bought an SB8200, installed it, and... nothing. I get the 3.1 light but up and down stream speed is exactly the same as on my ancient 640 or whatever it was I had before. Blah. Our place is a long drop from the pole and we have had a lot of issues with them over the years. Life in the country...
 

Kingrex

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Feb 3, 2019
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In my experience nenon is correct. I use a dedicated modem and dedicated router. I heard quite a difference between separates and combined. I power both with separate dedicated linear PS. I then have a Linear Solution switch that has updated clocks and other parts with another (3rd) linear PS. Files in my Mojo Audio Deja Vu via HQ player are better than streamed via Qobuz. But, the stream is damb good. Spotify is also shockingly good. Better than just a way to find new music. My new JRiver is not set up to run with my nas so not sure how that compares to internal storage. My server is unique in that it has 2 ethernet ports with isolated PS. One for upstream and the other for downstream. In essence, its as close to making nas music as nice as internal.
 

Xymox

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@Xymox - The CCR1036-8G-2SplusEM has a built in power supply. Is it a linear supply or did you have to modify it to accept an outboard linear supply?

Sorta.. If you open it up its a seperate board and you remove. Its 24V out. The original is a standard switcher you can get from mouser or even amazon. It hooks to the board with a molex connector. So its a VERY easy mod. BUT I used the room to stuff it full of Elna Silmic II caps. Its my affordable audiophile cap. I have not modded it further yet.

Here is a photo pre mods. You can see the white 2 pin molex connector. Lots of room inside for mods :)
 

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Xymox

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All cable modems are tight in space and difficult to mod in the existing chassis. I had to drill a hole in the plastic case of my Cisco DPC 3008 to fit a better capacitor. BTW, this Cisco sounded pretty good after some mods.

View attachment 61795

But even then it is in a cheap plastic case. I ordered one of these aluminum chassis:
View attachment 61796

The idea is to install a modded cable modem inside (modded power section, and probably an OCXO clock), put a Sean Jacobs DC3 power supply, add some Gaia feet, Furutech NCF IEC inlet with good fuse, and solder the DC wires directly to the board. It's probably a huge overkill... but I will know my cable modem is not a bottleneck in my system.

The only issue is I have been waiting for this chassis to be delivered forever.

The case is a cool idea to stamp out RF.. Or at least try to. I would locate the modem and router in another room and jump to a switch in the audio system via a SFP optical link. This was you elminate RF with opto-isolation.

Remember modems get HOT these days. So you will need some forced are flow or heat pipes to the heatsinks from the modem chip.

Modems change often. So you would want to make a plan for it to be easily upgradable. Multi-gig modems will deploy in the next 2 years.

With the system im working with, I separate the "dirty" stuff from the clean stuff. The current layout is attached. This is currently my best guess at a optimum layout.. This is hooked up now. The gear is CH Precision. Server is Taiko Extreme. The speakers are YG XV's, The SoTM's are LPS fed and external clocked from the T1. Its currently roon for file playback. There is a Melco handy so its easy to do UPnP as well. Kronos for analog reference, hehe.

The surprizing part was how much better the AppleTV sounded. I need to mod that for 12V LPS.

One change from the attachment, I changed to the non-PoE switches because the 48V PoE seemed like it could maybe induce noise.
 

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Xymox

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3. Use a dedicated WiFi access point. There are many good options.

I think the Aruba is the best access point. Its a expensive solution. However It has the lowest latency and jitter of any device i know of. Its also excellent for normal daily use. You do normally deploy these in clusters all over the house. You need a controller to go with them. The best way is to find a Aruba sales guy to come do it for you, they are not meant for normal DIY projects. https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP550Series.pdf

This is also true for the Mikrotik routers. The CCR1036 does not come out of the box ready to use. It wont work for home use. It requires a bunch of setup for that use.

If your networking savvy, then you could do these systems fairly easy. But if your not networking savvy, then you will need someone to help you. With the wifi setup for a large scale home ( like most of you have ) then you should find a good networking guy who does Mikrotik and Aruba. Don't let them sell you Cisco, its WAY over priced, way too complex AND not cutting edge.
 

Xymox

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matthias

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I think the Aruba is the best access point. Its a expensive solution. However It has the lowest latency and jitter of any device i know of. Its also excellent for normal daily use. You do normally deploy these in clusters all over the house. You need a controller to go with them. The best way is to find a Aruba sales guy to come do it for you, they are not meant for normal DIY projects. https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP550Series.pdf

This is also true for the Mikrotik routers. The CCR1036 does not come out of the box ready to use. It wont work for home use. It requires a bunch of setup for that use.

If your networking savvy, then you could do these systems fairly easy. But if your not networking savvy, then you will need someone to help you. With the wifi setup for a large scale home ( like most of you have ) then you should find a good networking guy who does Mikrotik and Aruba. Don't let them sell you Cisco, its WAY over priced, way too complex AND not cutting edge.

Thanks for the info.
These Arubas are WiFi 6, IIUC you said in post#13 that WiFi 6 is not recommended.
So, what about WiFi 6?

Thanks again

Matt
 

Xymox

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Thanks for the info.
These Arubas are WiFi 6, IIUC you said in post#13 that WiFi 6 is not recommended.
So, what about WiFi 6?

Thanks again

Matt

WELL.. Good question.. So none of the devices hooked to the system are wifi 6, its not in use.. Yet.. Going wifi6 requires a whole infrastructure change to 10Gbps. OVERALL, thats really not very useful and has some good and bad results..

OVERALL using these access points provides lower jitter because of the far faster chips inside when doing normal ( not OFDM Wifi 6 ) wifi.

It may be that if you use Aruba wifi 6 with OFDM and devices that support it wifi 6 this might be better then current wifi for jitter.

I DO NOT recommend wifi 6 from consumer all in one boxes. I DO NOT recommend ANY consumer grade wifi 6 solutions because these are based on low performance chips. Better to stay with normal wifi..

The pre Wifi6 Aruba solutions are AWESOME IMHO. I have ZERO need for speeds like wifi 6. The access points tho are better at jitter for normal wifi.
 

Xymox

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Im going to ponder some here.. This whole network delivered music thing has changes in SQ as dramatic as analog cables. Im not sure anyone can say why yet. People point to RF, well,, ok then how is the RF interference causing audible changes ? What is it effecting ? Ive talked to a lot of people at the highest levels in this industry and everyone says "Its RF" but then can't explain what the RF is effecting. Its like its some mystical boogie man that pollutes your audio spraying unmentionables all over it.. OK,, maybe thats true. But I am a engineer and I need to know if it is RF, what is the RF interferring with that causes such big changes in SQ ?

So if its not RF. WHat is it ? Jitter of the physical layer clock ? Maybe phase noise on the physical layer clock ? We know for sure the bytes are not being effected. Is it jitter with the packets ? Is it layer 1 and 2 ? What exactly is causing such big differences in SQ with these changes in networking gear & interconnects ?

Right now everybody is just grasping at straws and finding random gear and wires that sound better - in their system -. But each system is also more/less susceptible to whatever this is. So each persons experience may, or may not, translate to another system.

Hopefully there are some top audiophile engineers out there investigating, in a scientific discipline manner, what is it we are hearing. This would then lead to development of products that sound best. Its like when the industry discovered digital jitter.

I don't think I believe the RF boogie man is going around defacing our audio. I think maybe its something we have not identified yet. This really is not voodoo, its something we might be able to quantify and address.

Someone needs to get out some hella expensive test equip and have a look. 30Ghz spectrum analyzer, SERIOUS jitter measurement gear and look at layer 1 physical clocks. If it is RF propagating down wires into gear, what is it effecting ? and how ? It could be dealt with on the receiving end too.

We need to seriously investigate.
 
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matthias

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WELL.. Good question.. So none of the devices hooked to the system are wifi 6, its not in use.. Yet.. Going wifi6 requires a whole infrastructure change to 10Gbps. OVERALL, thats really not very useful and has some good and bad results..

OVERALL using these access points provides lower jitter because of the far faster chips inside when doing normal ( not OFDM Wifi 6 ) wifi.

It may be that if you use Aruba wifi 6 with OFDM and devices that support it wifi 6 this might be better then current wifi for jitter.

I DO NOT recommend wifi 6 from consumer all in one boxes. I DO NOT recommend ANY consumer grade wifi 6 solutions because these are based on low performance chips. Better to stay with normal wifi..

The pre Wifi6 Aruba solutions are AWESOME IMHO. I have ZERO need for speeds like wifi 6. The access points tho are better at jitter for normal wifi.

Xymox,
when we buy the best servers like @Taiko Audio Extreme and want to get the best SQ from Qobuz we need also the best cable modems and WiFi solutions like Aruba.
But Arubas are professional products not addressed to the end consumer. Companies in Germany who are Aruba partners do not sell to end consumers. So what to do?

Thanks

Matt
 

Xymox

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Xymox,
when we buy the best servers like @Taiko Audio Extreme and want to get the best SQ from Qobuz we need also the best cable modems and WiFi solutions like Aruba.
But Arubas are professional products not addressed to the end consumer. Companies in Germany who are Aruba partners do not sell to end consumers. So what to do?

Thanks

Matt

They will send to end users. They will want to sell you install and engineering too. Which is a good idea as these need to be deployed and configured correctly... But you can usually find them on ebay and Amazon too, BUT, WARNING,, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME unless you KNOW what your doing. You need a controller for these 550x series and these require software with a license. https://www.amazon.com/Hewlett-Pack...ds=ap-555&qid=1582414041&s=electronics&sr=1-3

The IAP-315 ( Instant - no controller ) are sold on Amazon, ebay and lots of places and if your Savvy you can deploy them. These are great all the way to 1Gbps wifi speeds.. https://www.amazon.com/Instant-IAP-...ap-315-us&qid=1582414304&s=electronics&sr=1-1

That is for a US version, so, its important to find the right version for your country.

They say they wont sell to consumers in order to get away from all the people just wanting one and DIY people. Large homes with a large budget are different. I would contact the Aruba partners and ask. You might have to work them a bit, but, they will work with you. If you have trouble send Aruba a email.

So again. The 550 series is NOT "instant" and so requires a controller and licensed software. The IAP-xxx devices require nothing and you can just plug them in and go. Easy setup if your savvy. You then add more of the same model anywhere in your house and they become a collective.

Lifetime warranty. VERY durable. So I have used ebay a lot and bought used and these work great.
 
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