Ethernet Switch- what's the point?

@carlsbad2 nope. Not how it works.

sure, there are some legacy business applications that still use ftp internally to an organization, however 99.99% use HTTPS for everything. And Qobuz, Tidal and others also use HTTPS. We go through this every time….

A quick primer on HTTPS, it is build on top of TCP, which delivers error free transmissions, and it is encrypted, which means that if you lost one packet, which TCP prevents, you wouldn’t be able to decrypt.

@yoyoyaya yeah, people waste money to satisfy their confirmation bias.

@carlsbad2

Exactly. Most audio/video protocols are based on UDP. More they are real-time, more they use fast protocols which cannot permit to make any check.

TCP/IP controls correctness of every packet and the order in which packets are received. Every x packets, an "OK" packets is sent back to the origin, stating trasmission is ok, delete old packets in buffers and to go on with new packets. Otherwise a "request" to retransmit is sent back is a packet is faulty or missing. All this is expensive and heavily compromizing for the quality requested to a simply phone call. This dialog is between the origin and the end point, crossing all intermediate routers/switches and any communication equipment.

UDP instead does not control any packet, does not control any flow. If a packet is missing or faulty, it's simply gone. It's better to skip it instead of requesting it again.

Every commercial transaction, every printer dialog, any USB disk uses the TCP/IP protocols.
The most of audio/video quality communications use UDP protocols.

Just to make it more clear, a packet coming from a whatever source (TIDAL, qobuz, etc) needs at least 25 ms in the best situation, and more than 100ms in a normal situation. So what you are playing is something sent to you a lot of milliseconds before. Using UDP, you receive a constant stream, with a very regular flow. Using TCP/IP you will freeze the sound every X packets, and also when ask to resend a packet. This latter situation is totally unnoticeable in a commercial transaction, but would be a disaster feeding a DAC. Of course you may use very large buffers, but starts to be a file transfer more than a streaming.

@fredrik222 You seem to disagree with everything I say.  I don't recommend that path.  Best of luck, Jerry

If you have a fiber connection (rx/tx) before your source, a switch really doesn’t matter that much.