Considering Purchase of DSJ-Question for Owners

Hello,

I am considering upgrading my existing streamer/dac to the DSJ. Since the DSJ can not connect wirelessly, I would like to ask current owners of the DSJ on whether you can connect to your network thru an indirect ethernet connection.

I currently have an Eero network at home and can connect an ethernet cable from one of the Eero units to the DSJ. Alternatively, can use one of those solutions that use the electrical wires in the house for an ethernet connection, although the Eero is a much faster and better connection.

I spoke to Kevin in the sales department and he mentioned that these solutions are hit or miss, sometimes they work and sometimes not. So was wondering whether any in the owners community has had experience with this that they can share.

I am also considering the Simaudio Moon Streamer/Dac as well as the Auralic. I had asked Kevin for a competitive analysis of the DSJ against these competitive models and he outlined the strengths of the DSJ without really directly comparing them (which I thought was super professional and classy). Perhaps some of you that ended up purchasing the DSJ can share the results of your research and what ultimately brought you to select the DSJ.

Very much appreciate your help with this. I am new to forums, so please forgive any breach in etiquette –as it is certainly not done intentionally.

Thanks

Welcome!

Yes, welcome Richard! I don’t have the DSJ (I have the DMP and DSD and P10 and enough of their power cords and outlets to trip over) so can’t be of specific help but will say that I have used PS Audio products since the P300 Power Plant was introduced some time ago and your interest is warranted, they are very good products backed by a great group of professional engineers and other staff.

This is not a question, but many. I’ll try to tackle a few. Not from an authoritative position, but from experience.

The first layer of your line of inquiry should not be about the DSJ, per se, but about whether a network endpoint can reliably - and with sufficient quality - have digital music piped to it over a network that is not all hard wired. As apparently stated by sales, it can be hit-or-miss. True. But so can hard wired be, though certainly much less so.

Guarantees of reliable delivery fade away when you start talking about moving your data over radio waves. But that does not necessarily mean it will be unreliable. I’m personally a big fan of hard wiring networks. But life events forced me to abandon my hard wired music delivery system for a largely WiFi based delivery system a few years ago. And OMG what a nightmare it has been. No matter how much money I threw at it, and I’m a network guy by profession. Different kind of networks… but I speak the language, understand the concepts. But my WiFi was a non-stop PITA nonetheless. That said, my music was never impacted by it. That’s why the Gods-of-Digital-Streaming invented buffers. Granted, every digital endpoint will not use buffers, and not all can/will use buffers well. For myself, the only digital streams that come into my DSJ’s Bridge II are from Roon. And Roon’s RAAT protocol takes care of that, and takes care of that very well, IMO. I have zero complaints, relatively speaking. That leads to a discussion of 802.11, aka the IEEE WiFi protocol.

IMO the topology of 802.11 is flawed, and only now the marketplace is seeing what IEEE should have seen 20+ years ago. Specifically, that it was fine when you had a single access point, with sufficient signal strength, without radio interference. But let any one of those three things slip, and it all start to fall apart. That’s where mesh comes in. Not all mesh, mind you… mesh is a topological concept, not a defined standard. So…

You bought Eero. Good for you! Recently I made the jump to three 2nd Gen Eero’s myself, and have never been happier. What USED to work sending music from either my NAS - or the Internet - very reliably, now is just rock solid. Stupid solid. Same government laws regulating how strong my network radio signals could be. But Eero’s mesh implementation kicks butt on what could be achieved under 802.11.

And lest I be unclear… it’s the protocols moving the music that matter. And Roon’s RAAT is good. Those can pick up the slack for momentary radio connectivity problems. I had very, very few of those. Where typical WiFi falls down is not the quick hiccups - those get taken care of by buffers. It’s the problems where it just DOES NOT WORK, for seconds or minutes at a time. And - my friend - IMO that’s were you are going to be just fine for investing in Eero’s. Well done. I’m personally delighted. Zero issues moving music to my DSJ.

Good luck in you decision process. Hope that helped.

Hello,

Although I do not have the DSJ or DS I did go through a similar exercise for connecting my Sonore SSR to the home LAN (the SSR has only 100 mbps ethernet input). I used for quite a while Moca 1.0 (the little devices by Actiontec) and later even Moca 2.0 Bonded at another house. This approach uses the existing RG6 coaxial cabling of the house for distributing LAN. As long as the coaxial wiring in the house is not too old and it is RG6, my experience is that it is very reliable with not a single hiccup. I did initially few years back try powerline for ethernet but it caused some audible garbage spikes somewhere in the audio chain and took it out. Since then I have installed CAT6 throughout the house for other reasons, but Moca is extremely reliable and even Moca 1.0 has enough bandwidth for high res playback if you do not want to load your wifi system. For all intents its as good as a hardwired CAT6 solution. The good thing in my mind was that I didnt mess at all with injecting stuff into the ac power grid. I still use Moca 2.0 for some areas where there is no CAT6 wiring and its pretty much set and forget. As long as you have coaxial outlet close to your router and server and one close to the DSJ you should be fine.

Good luck.

Elk--Thanks for the welcome

Lonson--Thanks for the comments and endorsement of PS products in general

Scolley-- Appreciate your reply and explanation about the wireless protocols, especially from a professional "network guy". I was always planning to use Roon to stream Tidal and to pull music from my NAS drive (which is also connected to my network by ethernet thru my Eero. There have been times even with the Eero that my current streamers/dacs (Oppo Sonica and Cambridge CXN) lose the signal temporarily, but this has been caused by other network issues. But overall has been 99% reliable. Thanks again for the detailed explanation, it was very helpful

Odysseas---Thanks for advising your experience connecting your Sonore with Moca. Wish I could run ethernet, but with this house--would be too costly

Appreciate all the replies and help with this matter

Thanks

Richard

Richard,

You mentioned Auralic, are you looking at their streaming DAC or just the Aries?

Quite a few use just the Aries for wireless streaming to their DAC, which I believe would work with the DSJ.