ie, loss of SQ (better/audiophile FMC and SFPs may perform better)
this Paul video may explain it…in essence, the FMC and SFPs are weak links, not the fiber cable
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Thanks for the video link. Gives me food for thought with experimenting in my setup. I may use the FO to distance a wifi extender that resides near my gear instead, and quality Ethernet connection b/w switches
If you believe FMC and SFP make a SQ difference (most do not), I suggest Optospan transceiver and their FO cable. I like them over Finisar. To me they are better. Here is the one I use:
I use their yellow SM 10m FO cable too (replacing a 1M).
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I switched from a Finisar to your recommended Optospan. I heard no change.
I doubt you actually hear the differences you think you hear. It’s psychosomatic hearing.
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Am I getting myself into trouble again? Your system may be too good to care about little things from transceivers, so that is not a surprise. Maybe you do not hear any difference from a switch either. 
Some systems are too noisy to hear the difference too. yours on the other extreme side. Like I said, most don’t hear any difference.
Well… we all love Paul, but he didn’t really explain it. It was more of a “trust me” glossy explanation. Then for some reason he jumped to somehow turning it into having to make that a PS Audio only connection if they did it. 
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Okay. A couple of nights ago I got bored with listening. Took two nights off. I once saved a “music added in the last 30 days” playlist in Roon. The fun thing I learned, is once you save it, it is updated daily. This allows you to miss something you added 31 or more days in the past. I think I saved it to shuffle, and shuffling it is. It is so not boring. Nice.
The one option I want them to add to Roon, is so obvious: Pause after current song. How hard could that be?
Anyway, I stream a lot, thanks to Roon. So I have been willing to try this and that. For those of you who haven’t slipped down this slope, some of you who wish to avoid it all together, to you I say at ease. No big deal.
For most, a first and last expenditure in this topic, could be a MUON Pro, without the fancy cable. The second one I bought was $1200. No fancy cable. I did that when I bought the first one. Some people here have spent that same amount on a Stealth Ethernet cable and heard a nice improvement. I haven’t tried that yet, oddly enough.
Chinese products maybe out of reach for awhile. I wonder where the MUON Pro is made?
maybe this is relevant to the FMC/SFP matter
I am told by Finisar that their recommended SFP is stable under 48 khz. However, hi-res streaming is at or above this. And, DSD256 is over 11 megahertz.
Furthermore, the SFPs, which are where the conversion occurs from ethernet to fiber, may disturb clocking or otherwise modify digital quality. (as suggested in Paul’s video)
But, I do not understand fully these matters. So I may be chopping word salad.
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I think it’s made in the UK. With no cable what would you recommend as cables to the Muon Pro and from it?
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The simple answer is a Stealth. @paul172 can tell you the configuration.
I am using the fancy MUON Pro System cable on one, and a decent Inakustik Reference CAT 7.
I really should try the Stealth. It’s not expensive.
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Stealth Black Magic Ethernet is what @straightwire and myself are using.
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I’m not sure about this. In all ways, SM fiber and their associated modules are designed to be significantly more capable than Ethernet - even CAT8. Fiber communication in our context uses the same Ethernet protocol as wired, so if a significantly narrower bandwidth wired interface can pass packets that represent DSD with no issues, why wouldn’t SM fiber (or even MM, for that matter)? Not to suggest there aren’t potential issues with fiber (as there seem to be with everything in audio), but I’m having trouble seeing how this could be an issue.
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Like which version cable co has like v17 to 21?
Also would you put power cords to amps and dac over a muon? If power, dac first then amps or vice versa
I have, and with be receiving today, my second Stealth Black Magic LAN V21 Cat Ultra 8, no tuning ring. I like this one better than the Muon Pro.
Some have good success with other brands like Inakoustic. Some hear no difference in Ethernet cables.
Luca has tried more variations than anyone I know and uses both of the ones mentioned above. My choice was simply that it bettered the Muon Pro by a bit and it kept me in the Stealth camp.
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Like @straightwire said. v21 cat8. This is the identical cable as the top of the line minus the tuning ring. Substantially cheaper.
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Fiber in fiber optic is not the issue. SFP manufacturers tell me that their stable bandwidth does not extend above 48 khz (most less) and certainly not to DSD frequencies, and their clocks are not audiophile quality (compare with clocks in our audiophile streamers/dacs/switches). Ethernet band width is limited as you say, but it extends to gigabits per second. Cat 5 cable can transmit 100 megahertz, Cat8 - 2,000 megahertz. Fiber can do this, but can FMCs and SFPs?
How are fiber modules and FMC’s more capable than good ethernet cables? If they are, why are so few of the Dacs (even the $50,000+ club) that we use are fiber capable? If they are, wouldn’t it be a breakthrough for PSA and DCS (eg Varese) for example to go fiber?
All this remains over my head, but I still want to know. I am seeking a fiber setup that outperforms ethernet for audiophile sound quality. I have seen some say that WiFi will bypass the noise of ethernet cables/boxes, but have not yet tested in my system.
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SFPs are supposed to be designed to do up to 1Gbps, SFP+ up to 10Gbps.
Severing the (potential) path of noise over the transmission length. Sure, copper Ethernet galvanic isolation can do that now, but that’s relatively recent. As to why? Think back about 30 or so years when separate transports and DACs started becoming “the thing” in audio. Very few manufacturers chose to opt for AT&T transceivers and glass fiber (back then primarily for cost and the additional complexity), but for those of us who tried this interface in comparison to the typical options, it was considered superior. Nowadays arguably, it’s easier to make these typical interfaces (USB, copper Ethernet) better than they were, so why introduce another one if you hadn’t to date? (for those $50K plus manufacturers of which you ask) However, it does not make the optical option inferior.
It’s all system dependent, but after 26 years of streaming music over a networks to a variety of devices and using a variety of methods doing it, in my current setup, after testing the options available to me, SM SFPs work best for me and to others who’ve heard the comparisons in my system.
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Adding to that: providing the SFP option is far from difficult! In my Hifi Rose RS130 streamer, the factory provided port was a SFP wired ethernet version. Which I quickly exchanged for an optical one (first from Finisar, now from Optospan).
Optical is presented as a distinctive alternative for wired ethernet by Hifi Rose.
Combining optical with the LHY SW6 (at my router) and SW10 (at my rig) has clear sonic avantages.
It would be great if other manufacturers would also provide that option: it seems a no brainer.
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This is exactly how I had at mine too, and to me there is a clear sonic advantage. The duo is as important as Muon Pro system, if not more, that is in the same chain.
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Has anybody tried DAC cables rather than sfp and fibre? They don’t give you the isolation of a fibre, but many prefer the sound quality.