Anybody want a laugh?

I assume you must have heard it and decided it didn’t make your system sound better.

SG110D-08 is a Cisco small business model, £56 on Amazon so not an audiophile model. just a bit of enterprise on E bay.

It's just a Cisco switch modified to do... well nothing as far as audio goes. 

You must have it cryo-ed for even better SQ. LOL!

HO HO!!

’Fidelizer Etherstream Network Switch - RRP - £395

NEW

EtherStream Network Switch is a modified Cisco SG110D-08 network switch with the following modification:

-Input capacitor upgraded higher capacitance and ultra low ESR tuned for optimal performance
-Safety resistors upgraded on DC input stage, power regulation stage, LAN transformer isolation stage
-Re-energize capacitors upgrade with special type of tantalum capacitor to effectively reduce noise and interference in main processor
-Crystal clock is upgraded with high quality clock from Japan with noise reduction tweaks
-Components are upgraded with very high quality solder providing solid bass and dynamics

It’s the most affordable and most effective network switch upgrade enough for clients to prefer EtherStream over some highend audiophile switch or 10G premium network switch models too. I can guarantee that you will find very satisfying improvements on streaming media for both audio/video.

Please contact us through eBay for more information.’

--------

Probably the best bit of a rather vague sales pitch is this line. 

’I can guarantee that you will find very satisfying improvements on streaming media for both audio/video.’

Typically whilst nothing concrete is stated, the implications are presented subtly.

There’s also more than a touch of humour around the name too - eliteaudioltd.

Seriously, I wonder how easy it would be to dupe gullible audiophiles? Exactly how big is this unsuspecting market?

Just as an harmless fun experiment perhaps one of us could buy a dozen fuses and then sell them online at a huge premium claiming some quasi magnetic /cryogenic /dark space enhancements?

The only foreseeable problem, moral considerations aside, would be just how to explain the scam to your customers afterwards.

Even worse, what if they then refuse to believe you?

What’s that I hear you say?
Sell them some more??

Can you imagine how designers of genuinely effective products (with tested and measured enhancements) must feel when they such practices?

When do I start laughing?

We can only wonder. Did anyone bother to read the ad? Caps, resistors, etc this is all the same quality parts upgrades as are standard and known to work in all sorts of components. The laugh is you guys apparently are unaware of this. Which if this was on any other site it would be funny. Ho ho, the ignorant rubes don’t get that sound quality matters. That you are laughing about audiophiles on a site specifically meant for audiophiles is sad to borderline tragic.

The purpose of this post was argument baiting.

Has anyone heard this switch from Melco?

https://www.melco-audio-masters.com/uploads/1/0/1/5/101505220/mel_2073_s100_a4_2pp_info_sheet_v3.pdf

The argument among those like the OP is always that we are simply transmitting 0’s and 1’s within a square (-ish) wave. But there is never any attention paid to how that square wave gets from point A to point B - it’s as if it is conveyed by magic with no outside forces (i.e voltage). The nearly square transitions are still sharp and sudden and these waves contain not only the 0’s and 1’s but also its odd harmonics. There is absolutely room for noise so it’s really just a matter of whether your gear is capable of highlighting the noise and whether your ear is capable of hearing it. I personally haven’t been able to hear the difference between ethernet switches and cables yet I’m not ready to dismiss the differences in the name of science - but I also don’t feel like this is a worthwhile area to spend my audio dollars when there is much lower hanging sonic fruit for my musical priorities.

That’s not my argument. My argument is that the other equipment that will connect on either end of something like this switch, and indeed the internal solder points inside this switch are not capable of producing an improvement, so dropping this “link” in the middle of a dirty chain won’t do anything. 
Weakest link anybody? Super old principle that still holds up quite well. 
The mods deleted my original reply, which contained no profanity or anything else that would normally warrant removal from a forum, so I guess the AudioGon leaderships MO is defending the fragile state of mind of its membership. 

Yes we read the ad, yes we know caps,  resistors etc..are standard upgrades, yes we're aware of all this. What's ho ho funny is the ignorant rubes who think doing this to an ethernet switch is going to affect anything you'll hear. 

Then you don’t know anywhere near as much as you think you do.

This argument is chock full of flaws.

My argument is that the other equipment that will connect on either end of something like this switch, and indeed the internal solder points inside this switch are not capable of producing an improvement, so dropping this “link” in the middle of a dirty chain won’t do anything.

The biggest flaw is its a false understanding of what components do. They do not improve anything. The best a perfect component can do is perfectly pass the signal. Any departure from the signal is by definition distortion. Therefore as a matter of simple logic no component ever can make anything better. The very best components merely do the least harm.

The next flaw is in thinking that it can’t matter because all the other components are flawed. Well, of course they are flawed! A high end audio system is like looking through a window of a thousand panes of glass. Each component is a pane of glass. Some are clear, some tinted green, some flat some distorted, some clean, some dirty, some tinted scratched up curved and smeared with gook. No matter how many or how bad still if you can remove any one of those panes and replace it with one that’s nice and clear and clean, well for sure that is an improvement.

This also shows why the "weakest link" argument is faulty. The weakest link is a great way of looking at what to do next, to get the most bang for your audiophile buck. But the fact of the matter is you could replace your strongest link and get just as much improvement. (But it will cost more, which is why this is not a great idea.) Because it is just like the window panes, and instead of replacing the dirtiest most scratched up one you replace the cleanest clearest one. But as long as its replaced with one even cleaner and clearer it will still be an improvement.

Improvement, to be clear, in the sense of being not as bad. The fundamental error is in thinking these things actually make things better, when in truth all they are doing is making things less bad.

Miller, I generally enjoy your posts, but you just wrote a book explaining something completely obvious that ignores the fact that nobody is ever going to have access to an “audiophile” cable or dsl modem. Even if they did, this is one of the purest examples of it just being 1’s & 0’s. 
The firehose of information coming out of a broadband connection has to be decoded and converted in so many ways before it ever reaches your device that thinking a fancy switch, or fancy Cat6 cables will do anything is complete hogwash. 
To make the point stick, I’d be willing to bet my house and both vehicles that nobody on this forum could reliably identify network components like these in a double blind test. 
That’s just the breaks man, like it or not. 

That’s cute Steakster, but you’re high if you think that true. 

This switch isn’t produced by Cisco any longer, they probably bought a few hundred of these for about $40 changed a few caps and sell it to audiophiles for $450. It’s a layer 2 unmanaged switch that simply forwards to the mac address in the header of the packet. 

I think you’re wasting your breath man, admitting that this, or any switch, does nothing would for a lot of AudioGon folks be opening a Pandora’s box, they’d have e to reevaluate how many other things they’ve set money on fire for. 

I think what fascinates me most about this particular phenomenon, which is exhibited by some (not all) members of this community, is that in order to really be into this world you have to have some dough. And generally speaking, unless you’re a chinless wonder who inherited your money it takes a baseline level of intelligence to accumulate said money. 
Where it all falls apart for me, is how obviously bright people can somehow shut off or disable their critical thinking skills and allow themselves to be taken on a magic carpet ride when I know they know better. 

You think that switch is funny get a load of this thing.

https://www.kevalinaudio.com/product-page/waversa-wrouter

😆😆😆

Maybe you should look the term up before assuming, it’s a very specific call out. Or to put it your way, avail yourself of the wealth of knowledge available to you on the internet. 
I sold HiFi for a long time and am still active in that community, I have a great appreciation for esoteric methods and gadgets that actually work.. Networking equipment doesn’t make the cut. 

So I agree its not intuitive that a network switch can make a difference in sound quality when streaming.

But I have seen an extensive whitepaper on one such product whose name escapes me that goes into detail to make the case that noise on the network wire can make its way into the signal path between streamer attached to network and DAC adding jitter, in which case it might possibly make a difference.

That’s a plausible scenario I would say and some who I know to have very good and honest ears say to hear a difference at least in their case, so this is one of those things that at least has some plausible theory behind it.

Does it work? Don’t know but if the theory holds then I can see where it might at least in some cases.

Personally, I only use wireless network connections so not applicable in my case. Many modern DACs are also highly jitter resistant so that is another factor that helps these days compared to past.

I’d be interested to read the white paper that you refer to above. If we were discussing a network appliance that plugged in directly prior to the streamer and claimed to clean up noise, that’d be worthy of discussion, though I’d still be skeptical. 
The lol-worthiness of my OP is that it’s a $450 switch, and as djones noted, switches don’t really do anything, nor does the manufacturer make any claims to that effect. 

Works great. Reduces noise. Others on the market as well. Similar in concept to the devices that came around a few years ago for cleaning up USB signal. Not magic. It’s what the circuitry is designed to do. Flat-earthers can’t wrap their head around this.

If you’re referring to the USB “cleaners” like the iFi iPurifier, those have been analyzed by ASR and found to not only NOT do any cleaning, but actually added noise. 
So, just saying “works great”, without providing any evidence isn’t going to work for me. 

The notion of these things is they clean EMI and RF noise that can leak in and carry on the wires. They don't really do anything to the digital signal. The wires after the switch to the streamer might pick up more noise which this thing isn't going to help. From there to the DAC which might be USB or coax or optical again nothing the switch can do about that.then I guess if you have a really really bad DAC some might hear a difference. Save your money and buy a decent DAC instead of this switch. 

I have seen  much more expensive Audiophile switches 

After seeing $40 k Loudspeaker cables  this is a steal Z,!

The whole thread was started to tee up a statement like this:

Where it all falls apart for me, is how obviously bright people can somehow shut off or disable their critical thinking skills and allow themselves to be taken on a magic carpet ride when I know they know better.

Again - it was bait.

And by the way, I'd never buy an audiophile switch or audiophile ethernet cable but I think it's pathetic that you need to come on here with an agenda to dress people down and try to make them feel stupid.  I hope you feel like a bigger man now.

I found the link to the whitepaper

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0660/6121/files/UpTone-J.Swenson_EtherREGEN_white_paper.pdf?v=1583...

@three_easy_payments,

Your last post was spot on 😊

@three easy payments 

Who knows, maybe they’ll be so ashamed that they’ll spend the money on useful upgrades, their wife/kids or.. idk, charity?

" I think you’re wasting your breath man, admitting that this, or any switch, does nothing would for a lot of AudioGon folks be opening a Pandora’s box, they’d have e to reevaluate how many other things they’ve set money on fire for. "

You Sir have just dropped an Atomic Bomb of truth.

They seem to come in waves, oblivious to what happened to the ones that preceded them, thinking themselves the tip of the spear.

Old news.

All the best,
Nonoise

Nah, believe it or not, I’ve been reading AudioGon for over a decade and just never posted. Definitely don’t see myself, or this post as making any kind of headway. 
If you noticed above, Steakster not so subtly attempted to shame my peasant level Classe + JBL Synthesis 2-ch setup 😆. The vibe around here is very “Private County Club”, with a very defined pecking order based on the worst kind of implicit biases. 
I imagine international readers routinely shake their heads in disbelief at just how thick the bubble is around the Gon. 
I still enjoy it enough most days to keep coming back, so take the critique with a grain of salt.

According to Ebay, two have sold. So, there is that......

dougeyjones,

You aimed your sarcasm at the wrong group.  You won't find a bigger bunch of voodoo snake oil lovers than right here at Audiogon.  Their fascination with multicolored fuses and quantum this and nanoparticle that is a source of endless entertainment.  As for millercarbons comment about resistors and capacitors, if he knew anything he'd know that they affect audio frequencies and anomalies, not those of a network switch.  OK boys, now let's hear about how I never tried it or my system sucks and I'd never hear the difference or I'm not an educated listener.

I’ve found those switcher boxes lousy for selecting multiple turntables into my phono preamp.

Lousy for signal level switching too. Worthless. Not any use for audio at all. 

Ha ha
It probably sounds better than what you have.
Ha ha ha.

LOL. İt is a joke selling a $100 switch to be audiphool modified.
So many gullible people around it is simply amazing. 

Fuzztone ...  wolfie62 is joking.  I guess u did not get that LOL. 

Actually if you use it in the arctic in a vertical orientation with two polar bears looking at it, the sound is phenomenal. 

Do some research and see the changes made. There may even be a video. It looked almost completely random and did not show any evidence of any engineering practice and certainly no testing to see if it worked other than the usual.


Than said, ... I thought I was cranky. I tip my hat :-)

In a double-blind test, it would be much more difficult to determine any improvement with an upgraded network switch with a system that was not optimized. Comparing a network switch is considerably different than comparing another component - such as a power conditioner.

And I’m asserting that no system, at any price, will make that $500 switch a worthwhile purchase.