I’m not commenting with respect to sound quality, but for anyone who experiences the bother of a router or modem dropping connection once in a while (from Amazon reviews this seems to apply to a fair number of people):
I thought network equipment might be sensitive to occasional surges or dips in power, so I plugged my modem and one of my routers into a UPS with AVR (automatic voltage regulation). Only a single home network outage in two months since then, and it was a second router not connected to UPS. So of course I bought another UPS with AVR for the second router. No outages since, though the second UPS hasn’t been installed for long.
My guess is that it depends a lot on the hardware indeed. My ISP supplied modem/router has a tendency to drop its wifi for short periods quite often. However my own ASUS router, which handles all the network traffic, doesn’t have this issue.
I’m not using UPS devices here in my apartment. And the cable modem dropping wifi isn’t an issue for, as its only job is forwarding the incoming Internet connection data to my Ethernet connected ASUS router.
Do you or did you, regularly have power sags and outages in your Utility feed? If not, this would allude to power-circuit conditions that would precipitate the anomalies… Such as having devices connected on the same power circuit that demand amperage and/or create noise on the power-signal.
It would be interesting for you to describe the topology of your computer and network strategy and your power/ground/earthing circuit topology related to your playback scheme… I know you are using fiber-optic in parts of your audio distribution scheme.
A UPS may mitigate some conditional power anomalies, however, depending on how and where they are deployed, utilizing multiple UPS systems may set-up some serious ground/earthing related conditional scenarios, that could potentially be life-threatening.
Not outages. I think there may be momentary sags, which the AVR would alleviate. It seems to have worked, as behavior of the network equipment since installation of a UPS at the main router has been much improved.
More on this at the end. First I want to begin with how power to the audio system is set up, which I think is relevant to what you have mentioned below.
Thank you, it’s always possible when dealing with audio system electronics that people will neglect basic electrical safety. I have been very careful to adhere to good practices.
When the house was built, I had the audio system put on a separate circuit fed by an isolation transformer. This made it what is referred to as a “separately derived system,” so I asked the electrical subcontractor to wire in accordance with the practices outlined in the following document (see particularly page 21):
Now, with regard to how the network for the audio system is set up, I don’t know how good I’ll be at describing this, so if you have questions please ask.
Garage (not on audio system power circuit):
Power:
UPS plugged into garage outlet
Modem, main mesh router, and switch plugged into UPS
Network:
Copper Ethernet from modem to main mesh router
Copper Ethernet from main mesh router to switch
Two optical Ethernet fiber optic cables output from switch
(Note there is no electrical connection from the UPS in the garage to the separate audio system circuit.)
Computer:
Computer plugged into outlet in office, not on audio system circuit
Optical Ethernet #1 from garage plugged into audio computer
(Note there is no electrical connection from the computer in the office to the separate audio system circuit.)
Audio system:
Power:
Second UPS plugged into separate audio system circuit
Slave mesh router and switch plugged into UPS
Network:
Optical Ethernet #2 from garage plugged into switch
Copper Ethernet from switch to slave mesh router
Optical Ethernet fiber optic cable from switch to Fitlet3 (UPnP endpoint)
Do you have other computers or devices on the network not on optical?
This is key… What is on the audio computer power circuit?
I don’t see how a second UPS will help in this scenario except in support of your computer system…
Note:
The modem ground path is connected to the service drop ground… Unless this is all fiber optical, I suggest putting an isolator on the coaxial feed of your modem.
such as this Jensen isolation transformer:
Personally, my strategy here would be to derive all audio related components which includes the computer, from the dedicated audio circuit emanating from a UPS… The optical links would be utilized to eliminate ground-loop potentials where ground differentials are in question… these might be due to outlet ground path distances on the audio circuit.
If you examine further, perhaps you’ll see there’s nothing in the system to prevent a momentary voltage sag at the slave router if it’s not plugged into a UPS with AVR.
And perhaps you’ll see that there’s nothing electrical from the modem that will affect the audio system on its separately derived transformer fed circuit.
Or perhaps not - whatever.
Since the computer is totally electrically isolated from the audio system, I’m not terribly worried about its power supply beyond ensuring it operates properly, and it does that - no errors.
The modem is connected to your main router on the UPS… Yes? There is a significant ground differential there, especially if the UPS is using an isolation transformer to decouple its output-voltage from the mains power.
Both are plugged into the UPS in the garage, yep. But…see further below.
The UPS isn’t connected to the isolation transformer at all. The isolation transformer is on the separate audio system circuit only. The only connection from the modem to the audio system is through fiber optic Ethernet from a switch (modem>main router>switch). Totally isolated on both power and network sides. Same with the main audio computer in the office. Totally isolated from the audio system on both power and network sides.
The modem is grounded to the service drop and is powered by the UPS which, if it is providing isolated power to those components it is serving, means the modem is grounded at two-points, one referenced to the UPS circuit and the other referenced to the service drop earth… The same ground differential scenario exists if the UPS does not isolate the output circuit to the components, because the power/ground circuit to which the UPS is connected, presents a ground differential potential between the modems’ coaxial service drop earth-point connection and the mains power distribution box for the circuit that services your garage.
I’m just looking at this from a ground differential noise standpoint that may be precipitating interrupts at your main router distribution point not related to power sags… The other point regarding the circuit your computer is connected on was about power sags due to refrigerators, heaters, microwaves, etc, that draw-down power intermittently when in use… I presume now you are observing the voltage/amperage conditions of your power distribution generally… I see about 124volts constant in my environment and have no large power draws on my audio power island…
Thanks for the insights, the only thing that you could possible improve-on beyond addressing the modem potential for your audio power distribution, would be to go to a completely balanced power circuit referenced to its own earthing potential. like these that I have used in studio designs:
Yes, interested in balanced power. One of these days…
The router stopped going offline after I added the UPS, so something else was the precipitating factor in my case. Since the UPS with AVR was helpful, I’m assuming it was power sags from another source.
Keep us informed about the longer-term performance… It will be interesting, if the number of interrupts is diminished or stays the same, and/or the intervals of these interrupts are grouped or not, and/or relative to seasonal conditions… Since you offered this potential solution, the more information that can be correlated to your short-term observations, will certainly be valuable for those considering such a mitigation in their own playback system scenario.
You got me thinking a bit more about isolating my network from my broadband modem… I’m going to remove the galvanic isolator from the broadband coax feed to my modem and put this iFi SilentPower LAN Silencer dongle on the router WAN input and another on my computer Ethernet port.
This optical interface may be an elegant solution for some networked audio scenarios, providing more assets than a standard media converter,
Thanks again for getting the wheels turning in my head…
That type of money for optical isolation seems a little steep, though if you have no optical Ethernet in your setup currently, by the time you bought two switches with SFP+ you could get close to that.
