ADOT MC03 PLIXIR, £999

The home network has received a huge amount of attention over the past few years. It was the subject of my detailed article from November 2020 when we looked at the reasons why improving ones home network can bring about such huge sonic dividends.

“The home network has such a profound effect on sound quality that it should be viewed as another discrete component of the Hifi system, no different from say a preamplifier, a set of speaker cables or a phono stage. It should be considered and thought about, optimised and upgraded in step with the rest of the system. Most people generally like to buy amplifiers more than any other component but your network will likely give a bigger sonic upgrade for a fraction of the expenditure”, Lotus Hifi

Optimising the network is important even if you just play computer wav files stored locally but as you might expect, it’s even more pertinent if you are using music streaming services such as Tidal and Qobuz. We now advise customers who use streaming services a lot to optimise the incoming feed into the DAC as much as budget will allow and give priority to these upgrades over almost every other part of the system. Remember the system is only as good as the actual feed of music going into the DAC so ignoring this area is like spending tens of thousands on a record deck, cartridge, phonostage, amp and speakeras but never buying a simply record cleaning machine for a relatively small outlay. If you have never used one they make an enormous difference.

ADOT’s optical fibre uprade kit is the latest addition to our arsenal of network optimisation weaponary. The brains of this new company (‘Audiophile Digital Optical Technology’) are the same people behind Melco. We already have many customers using our excellent Shunyata ethernet cables and audiophile switches from Melco and Entreq but the Adot kit is arguably even more cost effective than those upgrades and should definitely be layered on top for maximum performance.

The ADOT fibre kit converts the incoming signal to optical for a short run before it get’s fed back into your router or DAC. This in effect breaks the electrical chain and isolates the hifi system from any conducted interference and noise. An even cleaner signal means greater naturalness, better dynamics, clarity and purity. First customer reports here at Lotus have been overwhelmingly positive. It’s a no brainer upgrade at small money relative to what it brings to the party.

There are various configurations of the kit but we generally advise the flagship £999 MC03 kit bundled with the high quality Plixir linear power supply to power the ethernet to optical converter. If you already employ a high quality switch like the Melco S100 then the optical feed can be connected straight into the switch, if not you can purchase a second MC01 to convert back to ethernet.

ADOT MC03 + PLIXIR LPS, £999

optimum solution with high quality Plixir BDC2A linear power supply, MC01, ADOT SFP x2, 1.5m Fibre, longer fibre lengths available up to 50m

MC ACCESSORY, £199

includes additional MC01 converter to convert back to ethernet, RJ45 cables and power lead to use with non SFP dataswitches

The kits are based around ADOT’s MC01 media converter, which converts the (copper) RJ45 Ethernet cable from the router, to a high-quality SFP fibre connection. Streaming devices already equipped with an SFP input, such as the Melco Audio S100 data switch, can readily accept the fibre connection, however, other devices can also benefit, simply by adding a second MC01 media convertor linked via optical fibre cable.

The fibre has to match the design parameters of the SFP adapters, so the supplied Duplex fibre is paired with the SFP adapters. Connectivity of the fibre adapters is critical and so the terminations are all factory-made in clean-room conditions and 1.5 m lengths mean that the devices can be tucked out of the way, behind the HiFi.
The fibre is less than 3 mm in diameter and is ideally suited for making the connection between routers and HiFi systems, even in the largest homes or even between buildings (there is a limit of several hundred metres for the fibre link). ADOT can supply standard lengths of optical fibre up to 50 m, or supply custom cables up to 200 m; all are clean-room-assembled and supplied with individual performance tables. The MC01 media convertor is constructed to Enterprise Standards, extending to the massive Ethernet magnetics that couple to the copper part of the network.

Read the recent review on Hifi Plus magazine.

ADOT’s engineers recognise that analogue audio is delicate, but digital audio is equally as delicate and data needs to be treated with great respect to deliver the full potential of today’s high-resolution digital music. Here the explain the benefits of fibre further:
“Behind the 1’s and 0’s, the electrical signals are still analogue and are susceptible to influence from noise and interference. Additionally, noise damages the integrity of pulse edges: the uncertain transition point of a noisy pulse edge results in timing errors and jitter. Audio designers go to great lengths to minimise noise problems within hardware, but external influences are a different matter. Network-connected components are at risk from noise and interference, as well as malformed data. Using a high-performance audiophile data switch, such as the Melco S100, ensures that the data is as pristine as possible and switch management ensures that errant data packets are not presented to the HiFi system. But, the Ethernet cabling is still a risk, being connected to noisy IT-type devices in the home, plus the cable is also an effective antenna, capturing EMC from the environment. Copper wire, used for Ethernet cables, is effective at conducting data, but is equally effective at conducting all manner of interference as well. The solution is to break the conducted signal, including any interference and isolate the HiFi system. By using fibre optics, the data can still be communicated to the digital components, but without the risk of introducing any conducted interference and noise”.