Ethernet Switch- what's the point?

@thyname  yeah, you are right. I thought he was the founder for some reason. 

However, doesn't change anything, search for John Swenson and leakage current (made up term) on audiophilstyles (can't post links to that site or your post are removed)

If a surge is of concern to you adding a fmc ( fiber media converted) will eliminate

I use this on the incoming cable TV to Wifi router bridge which are about 4' apart but I don't have the funds to run 50' of fiber.  Also, the power adapters of the media converters themselves are additional sources of noise and surge paths.

However, doesn't change anything, search for John Swenson and leakage current (made up term) on audiophilstyles (can't post links to that site or your post are removed)

Freddy @fredrik222 :  trying to avoid any responsibility for the lies you post. Let's see if my LINK to Audiophile Style is removed....

@cleeds you mean like you did when you entered this thread? Question still remains, why do you fill up the forums with easily verifiable false statements?

@fredrik222. The difficulty here is that a lot of people's experience contradicts the basic "facts".

As has happened throughout the history of science, in these situations advances happen when the apparent contradiction between "facts" and experience is probed and understood.

And yes there is the danger of snake oil, confirmation bias, and placebo effects, but effort needs to be made to rule those out rather than simply dismissing the empirical evidence out of hand.

BTW - that is a general rather than ad hominem comment.

@zavato   Proceed with caution - there is a lot of wrong info in this thread.

@carlsbad2 You don't understand the technology.

@fredrik222 I admire your perseverance, but you will never change their positions.  No reason to continue.  It reminds me of my grandmother.  No amount of kind explaining or reputable news articles was enough to convince her that a microwave was not putting nuclear radiation in her food.  

I hope you all have a great weekend. My second Rythmik F12 is arriving today and I can't wait.  It is going to be a wonderful and loud weekend.  

@12many Indeed! The clarity of the information I’m getting was reminiscent of the New York sky earlier this week- obscured!   Enjoy the new sub!! 
 

@12many i know, that is not the point, the point is to counter all these people are telling people to spends thousands on dollars on things that doesn’t work. So hopefully people don’t go wasting their money. 

Freddy Freddy. Saving a poor soul. One poor soul at a time.

@yoyoyaya and we are back to bias.

the facts of how a switch works doesn’t change. It is not an intelligent device that can make decisions based on what is transported via the switch. 

@thyname yeah, that’s the plan

@fredrik222 no one is saying spend thousands of dollars, fiber is cheap. Only person spreading false information is you. Also your grammar is atrocious, and why should you care how anyone spends their hard earned cash? 

@12many I would hardly call it persistence, more like trolling as this is the only subject matter he contributes to. And reading through his archives he is consistently chirping off on it. One trick pony. 

•  i know, that is not the point, the point is to counter all these people are telling people to spends thousands on dollars on things that doesn’t work. So hopefully people don’t go wasting their money. 

It's all freddy has ever done. He's stated many times that until someone smarter than him comes forward, what he says can't be refuted. What does that tell you about the man? 

Back when I argued with him, he stated that he tried it and couldn't hear a difference. He couldn't hear a difference or thought it didn't warrant the cost or bother. That's all I need to know.

All the best,
Nonoise

@nonoise you are misrepresenting what happened. You made a bunch of claims and linked to a guy building his own RF detection device and claimed this guy was a genius and knows everything about RF. I pointed out to you that EMI/RF devices cost $20 on Amazon, and this guy didn’t know anything more than average Joe. 
then you went on to post a bunch of links that contradicted your claims, a while stating that they support your claims, and finally you admitted you actually have no knowledge of the subject at hand. For which I give you kudos, no one else has admitted in the face of facts that they actually don’t know anything.

but you are correct in that I have tried a few Ethernet cables, I still have one in my box of cables, and I have tired the etherregen. I also said why I tried, which was there is no way these should work, what am I missing? 

@recklesskelly  people are literally saying to spend thousands of dollars in the thread…

thanks for your comment on my grammar, it matters a lot. 

@fredrik222 I have seen a range of $1349.00 (recommendation on LHY SW10) and $89.00 on an isolator switch. You should change your moniker to Chicken Little. Again why should you care if I spend $20K on a switch? It is our money not yours. 

You made a bunch of claims and linked to a guy building his own RF detection device and claimed this guy was a genius and knows everything about RF. I pointed out to you that EMI/RF devices cost $20 on Amazon, and this guy didn’t know anything more than average Joe.

I think you’re confusing me with someone else as I don’t recall stating that. What I did talk about was how TV signals show that it’s not such a clean and sure thing and you shot me down by saying it was a different medium so it didn’t apply.

I also linked to someone who spoke of the issue that nothing really performs at the levels intended at a consistent rate and that IT companies intentionally throttle down to compensate for traffic resulting in less than perfect transmission, which you also dismissed.

All the best,
Nonoise

@fredrik222

Question is very simple. If you are using a very unefficient protocol like https, which relies on heavy buffering, all is reduced to the quality of client (the webplayer most likely). So, which switch/router/cable to use is no sense question.

If you are changing router/switch/cable and you hear big differences, logic says you are using a UDP like protocol, or the https client is extremely poor.

My 2 eurocents.

ladies and gents, why are we entertaining this unpleasant and useless banter?  

@tonix HTTPS is used for most, if not all, streaming services over the internet. That is all that matters. I showed that Qobuz uses https, proving your “logic” invalid.

switches and cables don’t make a difference (after a certain point). 

@recklesskelly i dont care about you, that is correct. I care about the op and future people who want to learn. And being told that a $3k Innuos switch is the way to go is not helpful to anyone. 

That's what's called dog paddling.

Again @fredrik222 you are misrepresenting the facts in this thread. Be careful jumping up and down on that soapbox.

Judging the OP’s system he has a system that is revealing enough if he had an Innuos product. SW-8 will more than likely do it for him or Fiber, then again maybe not.

my brother spent over $3k on his innuous Ethernet switch and it’s much better sound then mine. If you have a expensive setup the innuos is a must hear,

All I can say is that I just love the way my Eero wireless mesh network sounds. I do have a switch of some kind, which is also a modem, which feeds ethernet to the Eero unit and a has a few more outlets that are unused, so I guess I'm listening to that switch too. It sounds great. 

@recklesskelly so no one told op to spend money huh? No one? 
 

If you have a decent system, try the audiophile switch and hear what it does.

In my system both the LHY Sw 10 and the Sotm incl oxco and Keces, with audiophile fuse and powercord, works wonder.

The Lan cable just before the streaming device is also very importaint.

My next move will be to try the kaskade fiber trick between the switches.

Melco advokates to use the 100 Mb so that must be expiriensed as well.

@fredrik222  Cheers, stay on that soapbox buddy. 

Solely based on @fredrik222’s courage and ability to keep his "emotions" at bay with many members here, I’d score his performance mid 90 percentile.

Now that is rich. He's kept nothing at bay by being haughty, condescending and insulting, twisting the results of past conversations (at least with me), displaying his usual arrogance. He may be your cup of tea but not others.

All the best,
Nonoise

@erik_squires I think you nailed it.  Converting to digital and back may add more noise than the fiber prevents.  

We just had to splice a fiber line accidentally cut at our plant, and what a pain.  We had $100k worth of special equipment mounted on  it's own truck and 8 technicians.  It was important and time sensitive but wow, what a production.

Jerry

I've been accused of starting a riot and walking off into the darkness....

@zavato 

Apologies for the bickering.

Freddy22, panzerwaggin, cakhole, and others (12 many joins) continually try to ruin open discussions by spouting their 'networking' knowledge. Side with them at your peril.

The winners in this? Those who have researched, discussed, and tried network switches; made their mind up from there.

I have two. Well worthwhile in my system.

You're not the easiest to follow or discern. Something's missing. Must be me.

Puzzling, maybe for you.

But I would without hesitation join nonoise for a cup of tea.

You just pass on by. 

  I started this thread. It's degraded to dibble. Thanks everyone- let's just forget about it. 

FWIW after all these replies, the most knowledgeable answer I got privately on this question was from an IT guy who is also an audiophile. He wrote to me:

“Being an IT guy, I fall into the camp where I don't see how the switch can make much, if any, of a difference. TCP/IP packets are not guaranteed to arrive in order, the receiving device has to sort them out and then feed them to whatever interface is doing the work. Meaning the idea of jitter is not plausible, since there is no possible timing on out of order packets. All Ethernet switches have galvanic isolation, it's part of the spec, they use transformers on the interfaces. Of course using WiFi exacerbates this, since multiple devices are contending for the same interface, but any streamer that doesn't drop out when playing is buffering the data, which is needed so it can re-assemble the packets, again, tossing out jitter and phase noise since there is no digital audio data stream, just data the computer has to put back together.

Of course I could be wrong, but it's really hard for me to buy into. As an aside, I added a 2.5Gbit switch to my network a couple of weeks ago and my NAS, which is also the Roon server, is connected to that, I noticed no difference, other than I can push data to and from the NAS faster, which was the goal.

As long as all the data arrives in sufficient time for it to be reassembled and fed to buffer, all is well. I have 40mbps download speed on my internet, on a good day that is, it's usually closer to 30, and I stream lossless stuff on qubuz daily, at this very moment in fact and it's rare that it has to stop."

What the archives are for. @nonoise warned you this thread would grow legs. 

@zavato You asked a good question and got good answers.  Unfortunately it is up to you to sort the good answers from the misinformation....which is the key to success on the internet.

It’s not just about the bits, it’s about the timing of the bits. Everything has a clock in it that supports perfect timing. Even if you have an expensive DAC, someone is going to offer a reclocker to more refine the signal speed. I believe all switches have clocks in them and some people can hear the difference and some people can’t.

My brother is perfectly happy listening to tunes from his phone.  Who am I to tell him he’s wrong and should get a better rig?

Some questions are better asked on other forums where the trolls are kept a bay or are afraid to weigh in for being made fools of. 

Actually it is not the case as the Ethernet run is less than 8 inches. Also signal in fiber into my house (frontier) and the 50 feet from the termination in my On Q to my listening room is all fiber. I have 8 inches of ethernet my listening space. 

Also find it interesting that the folks a WBF find this is very beneficial also. Different audience and more receptive. 

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/sotm-snh-10g-switch-mods-tweaks.31092/

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/sotm-snh-10g-network-switches-x2-the-new-king-of-usb-network-gadget-setup.27758/

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/ethernet-tweak.36727/#post-885460

I think you nailed it.  Converting to digital and back may add more noise than the fiber prevents.  

Or perhaps just shove off?

This is the Q&A I sent to Bluesound, answered by a ’Technical Analyst - Level 3" Scroll down to the end but it seems streaming audio is sent over TCP which I THINK means bit checked packets which if true, is CONTRARY to what I "learned" on this forum.

Question:

I have the Node 130 and mostly stream using Qobuz.

I’m reviewing my modem, router equipment and have a question about streaming protocols.

Does audio data transport to the Node via HTTPS/TCP (so bit checked packets) or a continuous stream using some other protocol?

Answer:

The ports used with the Bluesound Players are as follows;
Required TCP/IP:
· 80 (HTTP)
· 135 (SMB)
· 139 (SMB)
· 1025 (SMB)
· 445 (CIFS)
· 3400 (UPnP incoming events)
· 443 (Rhapsody, Napster, and SIRIUS Internet Radio)
· 4070 (Spotify incoming events)
· 3689 (DAAP for iTunes Sharing and AirPlay)
· 5353 (mDNS connection to mDNS responder)
Required UDP:
· 136-139 (NetBIOS)
· 2000 (BluOS® Proprietary)
· 1900 (UPnP advertisements / device discovery)
· 1901 (UPnP m-search responses)
· 2869 (UPnP connection to Windows Media Player 11 Network Sharing Service)
· 6969 (Getting Started process)
· 10243 (UPnP connection to Windows Media Player 11 Network Sharing Service)
· 10280-10284 (UPnP connection to Windows Media Player 11 Network Sharing Service)
· 11000 (BluOS® Proprietary)
· 11430 (BluOS® Proprietary)
· 5354 (mDNS connection to Bonjour)

Most times, in fact almost all the time, you won’t have to open or forward any ports for our products.

The only exception is enterprise installation, but Bluesound is strictly designed for commercial installs and most routers can handle our product’s required protocols.

The only issue that we see often are routers not supporting Multicast/Unicast which is how our app "locates" players, as without this... you can’t see or use the device.

Streaming on our players operates the same as when streaming from an app, as the stream is sent over TCP for our players to receive the stream.