The standard local MTU size is 1500. The 9216 value is on the router.
So perhaps the question becomes if a faster uplink speed results in better sound due to a larger default assigned MTU size in the router / modem.
Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
- Start date
The standard local MTU size is 1500. The 9216 value is on the router.
So perhaps the question becomes if a faster uplink speed results in better sound due to a larger default assigned MTU size in the router / modem.
I own a Mosart Audio Rack: Please forgive a long "review" here, but I think my experience may be of wider interest to readers.
Sometimes it takes an entirely new perspective. In the world of audio racks, there isn’t huge variation. The “serious” racks, which start close to $10,000 and rise steeply from there, are usually made of steel, aluminum and/or wood, with various additions in acrylic and a variety of dampers and/or different forms of suspension to isolate the shelves and a multitude of spikes.
Along comes Bruce Schuettinger, a designer of very high-end (and rather striking) furniture at a company called Mosart Fine Art Furniture. This isn’t your average expensive furniture – the company has won all manner of awards for its designs. The relevance here is that Bruce also happens to be an audiophile. After many years, the two parts of his mental world came together in some truly creative thinking about audio support structures. Bruce’s solution turned out to be Richlite Black Diamond. What is this stuff? Well, a simplistic way to put it is “compressed paper.” But more technically: it’s made out of approximately 65% FSC®-certified or recycled paper content and 35% phenolic resin. To quote from the manufacturer:
"The process of creating Richlite is both simple and complex. Rolls of paper are saturated with a thermosetting resin before being cut to length and laid up by hand. Each sheet is carefully stacked, and the direction of the paper alternated, creating the ultimate balance and stability. The stacks are then pressed under even heat and pressure, which bonds the layers of paper together and cures the resin. Slowly cooled, the cured panels produce a solid, stable sheet of material."
So the frame made out of Richlite – but built just as is Mosart’s fine furniture, with the joinery made up of slotted mortice and tenons and lap joints. The shelves, also made of Richlite, are adjustable, with cork foundations (on request), isolated from the frame with E.A.R. Isodamp spacers. The bottom shelves have vented and slotted panels for heat distribution. The legs of the rack are finished with Richlite discs, cork, and Isodamp spacers, all joined together by threaded steel rods, lock nuts and isolated threat brass plates. The whole frame can be finished with varnish and with beautiful wood inlays should the buyer so desire. The resulting racks are very heavy indeed (no, I didn’t put mine on a scale – I just watched two gentleman working very hard to get the empty frame up one flight of stairs). Since the entire rack is built by hand and to order, the dimensions, number of shelves, and the original spacing of the shelves are all agreed in advance.
I have heard the rack in two systems. First, my own (See photo and sorry for the slope! Alsyvox Tintoretto
speakers, Audio Note CD player and Scheu analog das laufwerk No.2 turntable with Tru Glider arm; Viva, Backert Labs and McGary SA-1 Special Edition or NAF 845 SE amps) and the system at Dr. Vinyl’s home (which changes over time but is never less than first-class). Naturally, I heard both systems “before” and “after.” Rather than go through the list of audiophile observations (the highs, the midrange, the bass, the soundstage, the texture... etc), I would ask readers instead: how do you describe a great live musical experience? You don't describe any of these terms. Rather, you describe the performance itself. Listening through my Alysvox Tintoretto speakers with all components on the Mosart rack and the amp on a Mozart amp stand has my wife and I reacting to the sound in exactly the same way - being deeply moved, passionate, bored or even, on rare occasions, annoyed about a particular performance. The transformation was between constant consciousness of the components to the focus on the musical experience. I don’t mean to be naïve here: of course, my system and Dr. Vinyl’s sounded different. But the relative improvements were both very clear: With the Mosart rack you can hear every change in equipment or positioning of speakers. Of course, bad recordings are still bad recordings. The point, rather, is that you relax into the sound: it’s just etched and locked in space in both rooms in a radically more relaxing way than with our respective earlier racks. You can expect to spend from $8500 up to close to $20,000 for a large, highly-finished rack. Not cheap - but it’s an immediately audible, and IMHO major upgrade. Disclaimers – no A/B comparison with super-expensive stands. But I can say this: the Mosart rack's seminal virtue is that is makes a serious and major contribution to removing the system from one's consciousness. I apologize if this all seems gushy - but there is so much over-hype in this hobby, that a courageous and successful new approach deserves attention.
Sometimes it takes an entirely new perspective. In the world of audio racks, there isn’t huge variation. The “serious” racks, which start close to $10,000 and rise steeply from there, are usually made of steel, aluminum and/or wood, with various additions in acrylic and a variety of dampers and/or different forms of suspension to isolate the shelves and a multitude of spikes.
Along comes Bruce Schuettinger, a designer of very high-end (and rather striking) furniture at a company called Mosart Fine Art Furniture. This isn’t your average expensive furniture – the company has won all manner of awards for its designs. The relevance here is that Bruce also happens to be an audiophile. After many years, the two parts of his mental world came together in some truly creative thinking about audio support structures. Bruce’s solution turned out to be Richlite Black Diamond. What is this stuff? Well, a simplistic way to put it is “compressed paper.” But more technically: it’s made out of approximately 65% FSC®-certified or recycled paper content and 35% phenolic resin. To quote from the manufacturer:
"The process of creating Richlite is both simple and complex. Rolls of paper are saturated with a thermosetting resin before being cut to length and laid up by hand. Each sheet is carefully stacked, and the direction of the paper alternated, creating the ultimate balance and stability. The stacks are then pressed under even heat and pressure, which bonds the layers of paper together and cures the resin. Slowly cooled, the cured panels produce a solid, stable sheet of material."
So the frame made out of Richlite – but built just as is Mosart’s fine furniture, with the joinery made up of slotted mortice and tenons and lap joints. The shelves, also made of Richlite, are adjustable, with cork foundations (on request), isolated from the frame with E.A.R. Isodamp spacers. The bottom shelves have vented and slotted panels for heat distribution. The legs of the rack are finished with Richlite discs, cork, and Isodamp spacers, all joined together by threaded steel rods, lock nuts and isolated threat brass plates. The whole frame can be finished with varnish and with beautiful wood inlays should the buyer so desire. The resulting racks are very heavy indeed (no, I didn’t put mine on a scale – I just watched two gentleman working very hard to get the empty frame up one flight of stairs). Since the entire rack is built by hand and to order, the dimensions, number of shelves, and the original spacing of the shelves are all agreed in advance.
I have heard the rack in two systems. First, my own (See photo and sorry for the slope! Alsyvox Tintoretto
speakers, Audio Note CD player and Scheu analog das laufwerk No.2 turntable with Tru Glider arm; Viva, Backert Labs and McGary SA-1 Special Edition or NAF 845 SE amps) and the system at Dr. Vinyl’s home (which changes over time but is never less than first-class). Naturally, I heard both systems “before” and “after.” Rather than go through the list of audiophile observations (the highs, the midrange, the bass, the soundstage, the texture... etc), I would ask readers instead: how do you describe a great live musical experience? You don't describe any of these terms. Rather, you describe the performance itself. Listening through my Alysvox Tintoretto speakers with all components on the Mosart rack and the amp on a Mozart amp stand has my wife and I reacting to the sound in exactly the same way - being deeply moved, passionate, bored or even, on rare occasions, annoyed about a particular performance. The transformation was between constant consciousness of the components to the focus on the musical experience. I don’t mean to be naïve here: of course, my system and Dr. Vinyl’s sounded different. But the relative improvements were both very clear: With the Mosart rack you can hear every change in equipment or positioning of speakers. Of course, bad recordings are still bad recordings. The point, rather, is that you relax into the sound: it’s just etched and locked in space in both rooms in a radically more relaxing way than with our respective earlier racks. You can expect to spend from $8500 up to close to $20,000 for a large, highly-finished rack. Not cheap - but it’s an immediately audible, and IMHO major upgrade. Disclaimers – no A/B comparison with super-expensive stands. But I can say this: the Mosart rack's seminal virtue is that is makes a serious and major contribution to removing the system from one's consciousness. I apologize if this all seems gushy - but there is so much over-hype in this hobby, that a courageous and successful new approach deserves attention.
Must the router and local device have the same value, or us there a negotiation to find a common best value? Does a switch (e.g. the taiko switch) puts its own value for mtu into the mix or does the switch simply pass through the exact packet sizes that the router and local client choose to send? How does flow control work to help avoid fragmentation?
Once again, it seems that EFTM.
Evidence is mounting towards the router having an higher then previously thought influence where switches may just be "Band-Aids". A higher MTU can increase throughput of large data streams with the trade-off of higher latencies, especially for smaller packets. Stacking switches increases latency, so do longer ethernet cable runs. I do think I posted this before but I have experimented with 100 meter spools of cat5e cable, initially just as a functional test for the switch we were developing, but interestingly it produces similar effects as adding switches. Note that I do not actually prefer adding switches or long ethernet cable runs here beyond what is necessary to function, to my ears this all adds various degrees of colouration, in some areas this can admittedly be "pleasant", but there are always trade-offs. I'm currently running more experiments and for sure separating the Wi-Fi access point from the router appears to be beneficial. There may just be an "audiophile" router coming from us in the future to solve this "puzzle" once and for all.
@Taiko Audio Emile, why do you think that different router MTU settings affect the sound of locally played files? Or, are you referring only to streamed music?
It appears to affect both, local to a lesser degree, streamed to a larger degree. MTU settings do affect both bandwidth and latency and they appear to differ between routers. Hopefully we will get consistent results for everybody by addressing this.
Exactly .
This is very clear from my tests.
Even at the smaller speeds with much higher MTU you have a way better sounding system.
Also this is why you noticed so much different sounding systems when you had a global Taiko Extrreme tour.
It is not only accompaning devices.
Again Router looks like is more important then a preamp in streaming.
Also this is why I need more info from the others to narow my testing.
Otherwise I will still do it but it will take months.....
I was investigating this and if Router has the MTU set all devices connnected to it will use that amount.
FLOW CONTROL is not necessarily a good thing from my testing.
In every test I did it was worsening the outcome.
The esy way to check MTU is to ping the web page.
Or to log in your Router
I tested it.
Log into your router and lower the MTU to 1016 .
Or to increase to 2018.
The difference gigantic no metter what router you use.
OK so I am having a hard time seeing how the router and switch settings like MTU, uplink/downlink speeds can have any effect on performance. The network gear's job is to get the file to the Extreme. Once it is in memory this is when the Extreme does it thing. Now I'm assuming the Extreme doesn't play the file until the entire file is loaded in memory. To me this is a major advantage of the Extreme.
Now if a music server (insert name) plays the file without going to memory (buffered), I can see how this can affect the sound.
Kris, in my instance I found the following at the Actiontec support website about changing MTU settings:
Tech Support: "The MTU settings are in the advanced setting page under broadband settings. The reason we asked you to contact CenturyLink to change these setting is because these setting are configured to optimize your connection with the CenturyLink network. If you change them it may effect your internet connection but only CenturyLink can tell you that information and this is why we directed you to contact them.
In my experience issues with MTU settings need to be the same as your ISP because if they are not you will start to have fragmented packets and that will cause you issues."
User: "The MTU value is currently at 1492. Any setting I tried less than 1492 dropped the ISP (CL). A setting like MTU = 1500 also dropped the ISP or lost the internet connection. I have heard that the 1492 setting is so CL can support PPPoE."
So in my instance at least -- Actiontec 1900C DSL modem/router and CenturyLink DSL service -- it doesn't appear that changing MTU is advisable. The range of MTU available to me is only 1-1500 anyway and my current setting is 1492, so there is not much if any range to go higher as you advise.
I have everything working (most days) so I am probably not going to play with MTU anytime soon.
Steve Z
Are there separate MTU on the LAN side (from the router to my home devices) and on the WAN side (back to ISP)?
Edi:. SteveZ's response seems to suggest there is only 1 mtu setting and the network side dictates what can be done locally without fragmentation.
Well, for my particular modem/router I've only found one MTU setting, which would make sense in light of Kris' statement:
Kris said:
I was investigating this and if Router has the MTU set all devices connnected to it will use that amount.
The esy way to check MTU is to ping the web page.
Or to log in your Router
From what research I've done so far on MTU the critical value is that which determines the packet size between ISP and modem/router in the case of a combined modem/router like mine. I would suspect that for a router "contained" within one's own LAN (downstream of the modem), as long as there is no MTU incompatibility between the user's router and their modem causing fragmentation then one can play with MTU to their heart's content (assuming no MTU incompatibility between the router and any of the user's connected devices).
I'm getting onto thin ice here with my hypotheses here -- a little (very little!) knowledge is a dangerous thing.
I defer to those more informed about these issues. A few days ago I had trouble even spelling MTU.
Steve Z
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Only the router is at 9216 here, downstream its all 1500.
Edit: these are default / automatic values btw.
Edit: these are default / automatic values btw.
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