I am currently running an Electrocompanient EDM MKII ( Streamer DAC) and a Small Green Computer Sonic transporter. Both run off of a Trendnet ( unmanaged) basic switch.
Would an upgraded switch have any sonic impact?
If so what switches in the 500 dollar range would be recommended?
I agree with the above comment, the EE8 is an overpriced piece of shite, and would struggle to be vfm at 20% of rrp. I had one here and ran it for 14 days and couldn’t wait to return it for a refund. It’s effect on my streaming rig at best could be described as a very mild polishing of the sound.
I achieved far better results for <£40 with the purchase of 2 used metal bodied commercial office switches (Zyxel 8 port & Cisco 5 port) which I mildly modded by disabling the LEDs, using gardeners copper slug tape over 100% of the internal of the casework, + some 3M RF/EMI patches and leaving only 2 ports open [1 in & 1 out].
Last week I added a Stack Audio Smooth-LAN passive filter directly behind my ZeniTH mk3 and this gave a pretty significant uplift to the sound. This little unit so impressed me that I’ve gone ahead and ordered their Smooth-LAN Regenerator to see if this will up the ante.
Current Network = Full Fibre to property > 1.5m as supplied lan cable >
Router > 2m cat 5e > Zyxel 8 port > 0.75m cat 5e > Cisco 5 port > 0.75m cat5e > Smooth-LAN > 0.25m cat 8 > ZENith mk3.
The English Electric 8 seems (to me at least) to an overpriced, and mediocre, piece of equipment. The primary selling point appears to be the crystal quartz oscillator that keeps time. This is a two dollar component that appears in a far range of electronics. For a 8 port, gigabit switch, 700 dollars is extraordinarily expensive. If you want to spend good money on a good switch, a rack mounted layer 3 would be a good bet.
I connect my Internet to my Etherregen with a quality Blue Jeans Ethernet Cable. Then I connect the Etherregen to my Aurender N20 Streamer with a DH Labs Ethernet Cable. No need for additional switch. The sound is excellent. I have most of my ripped FLAC CD library stored on an internal drive on the Aurender and I can’t tell the difference between my ripped files and the same streamed from Qobuz. In my experience adding any additional switch or filters between the Etherregen and the streamer took the air out of the sound as if it some way over filtered the highs. The sound without the Etherregen is noticeably inferior.
Let me start by saying that I don't have the strongest understanding of digital audio transmission works and how the information is encoded and decoded at both ends. However, I am in IT and I do have something of it an understanding of how TCP/IP transmission works. Built into the protocol is constant error checking to make sure the data arrives exactly how it was sent. Each packet is verified four times. I don't understand how the quality of the switch will impact the quality of encoded audio being streamed through it any more than it would affect a Microsoft word document that you are transferring from one PC to another.
There are definitely some gaps in my knowledge, so I'm not going to say "snake oil" with 100% certainty, I'm just going to say that I don't understand how a switch would affect the audio quality of a stream.
My issue with switches for anything other than convenience is its simply not accomplishing much. So you have this noisy modem and router upstream of switch, the audiophile switch there to isolate downstream components from that noise. Ok, I get that, the issue is the streaming chain has already been contaminated from the noisy modem and router, you're only treating the symptoms vs the disease with the switch. A much better route is to treat noise at the source, Broadcom chipset vs Intel chipset in modem, disable wifi on router, emi-rfi contamination, power both via lps. Beyond this get rid of router altogether vs something like Dejitter Switch X, this a switch with capability to assign IP address so wifi can be offloaded to second router with wifi enabled to service rest of house. So now you have a 'clean' or audio only network in house, simple and clean setup. And for those who don't believe networks have any sonic impact, you're welcome to your viewpoint, but this not the case.
In any case, the above optimizations come only after first addressing streamer and dac, this for very mature, high resolution streaming chains and audio systems. Many other more important things to address before adding some fancy switch.
If you are new to digital I wouldn’t be messing with expensive switches. Get used to what you have before considering spending significant amounts of money on what amounts to the slivers of walnuts placed on an ice cream sundae.
Yes …. An audiophile grade high-end network switch made an audio performance upgrade ….But …incorporated into a full cradle-to-crave (network switch / cable / upgraded network switch power supply) upgrade approach.
MY EXPERIENCES :
this was a sequential step series as follows before max improvements were achieved.
(1) Choice of Ethernet cables matter …. A lot. Think quality build / upgraded top shielding / too TELEGARTNER connectors. I started out with cheap big-box store cables that were completely trash, and progressively moved up in a hands-on experimentation approach. I now have high-end Ethernet cables, just like analogue IC’s and analogue speaker cables.
(2) I then watched the Hans Beekhuyzen YouTube videos that persuaded me to take the next step to insert a quality build audiophile network switch. ( for me …SILENT ANGEL) .There are other much more expensive options.
(3) The standard included-in-the-box network switch power supply was a better than most wall wart, SO an upgrade was done to an external quality- build linear power supply . Again, it was only when this last step was instituted, did the audiophile network switch insertion audio upgrade flash out to its max .
For reasons beyond my pay grade to explain, now the insertion of an audiophile grade network switch / high-end external power supply improved the audio performance.compared to my system lacking that network switch.feature.
Who knew? Go figger.
(4) A final point that was comparably less in overall impact audio improvement, but still there. …..insert a iFi LAN SILENCER. It added some further taming of that ethereal remaining last bits of digital “ edge “ or “ glare “ …..albeit on a much smaller scale then the other upgrade steps above,
The steps herein for audio digital streaming and network digital file playing upgrades were real, and not insignificant even in isolation. They were distinct and wholly welcomed as a system upgrade in MY system.
my personal opinion based on my personal systems.
Others may have different results .
I have four audio systems in my home ranging from about $3K to $50K. The comments above are drawn from my top “A” system with its top audio resolution capabilities.
Upgraded quality build Ethernet cables upgrades are a must in all, but the cost vs audio performance benefits for adding a high-end network switch + external high-end linear power supply were intuitively increasingly diminished or even largely “meh?’ going farther down thec rigs list .
I have 3 switches ranging from $45 to $450. The $450 is today’s price, I paid MSRP of $150 before it became very popular.
All my switches support fibre optic output. They take RJ45 Ethernet input from my router, I take the bits from the SFP output of the switch into a Sonore OpticalRendu streamer (I have 3 of these). The Rendu then converts to USB and into my DAC. The last part is where the purity of the solution breaks a bit, but it is not the end of the world. Ideally, a Lumin U2 streamer or X1 DAC/Streamer takes the fibre connection direct into the SFP on the U2 or X1 (owned this before).
Bits are just bits is not what this solution is concerned with. It is the analog noise on the wire that someone posted about earlier in the thread. Fibre optic is made of glass and CANNOT carry this analog noise into the DAC.
Saying all of this, I could not tell a sonic difference between my 3 network switches. Most likely because I am using fibre optic and the analog noise of my cheap ROON core computer and other network gremlins cannot get into my DACs because of the fibre moat.
Additionally, if a guy is stuck deep in the weeds/chasing some noise through the ethernet infrastructure... but, if the speaker is some lackluster li’l matchbox and the room is low resolution chaos, all this ’ethernet stuff’ (for instance) wouldn’t matter a whole lot.
[probably 90+ % of tweakers swimming in the neurotic ocean]
You can also pick up an iFi LAN iSilencer on amazon and combine it with a better cable. I wouldn’t waste money on a $500 switch.
If you're worried about "ground plane noise" or other such nonsense made up by people determined to imbue digital audio with analog traits just because they understand analog on account of having been doing it for 70 years, whereas digital frightens and confuses them, the solution is simple and inexpensive.
Use SFP for the last run into your streamer. Voilà! Problem solved.
These modified switches not worthwhile, get all switch mode power supplies out of streaming chain, better cables, network filters, etc, all are better investments.
@rivinylis there a reason why you need a switch at all?
In my opinion, invest in a better ethernet cable first. They make a difference.
You can also pick up an iFi LAN iSilencer on amazon and combine it with a better cable. I wouldn’t waste money on a $500 switch. Unless the switch reclocks the signal and throttles the output at 100mbps and your streamer prefers that speed. But now we’re talking $1000+ for a switch which to me once again makes almost no sense.
@erik_squires, if you have a second, along the lines of this discussion of switches and power sources, can you tell me what you’d recommend i do about power supplies? I have an NAD M33 that serves as integrated amp and streamer & DAC. It is Ethernet cable connected to a basic, unmanaged 5-port switch (ZYXEL) and the switch is Ethernet cable connected to my Roon Nucleus One and my router (Eero 7), the router is ethernet cable connected to the cable modem (Arris surfboard S33). All of the cable modem, the router, the ZYXEL switch and Nucleus One are, at the moment connected to an AudioQuest PowerQuest 505 (outlets in the non-High Current sections) with their manufacturer provided power cords and power adapters/wall warts. (FWIW, the M33 is connected to the High Current section of the same PQ505 via a new Audio Envy “Expanded Ocean” power cable.)
(Speakers are DALI Epicon 6s.)
Would you recommend that I get the network items off the PQ505 and put them on their own conditioner/surge protector (E.g., a PQ303)? (I had been thinking that the PQ505 would do a good enough job of separating and killing any noise or other interference, but now you have me questioning that assumption.)
My advice is that switches upstream don't matter. Bad power supplies do.
Keep your networking power supplies (i.e. wall warts) off your clean power area. Use a separate conditioner if you need to, and consider using iFi power supplies for them if they are near your audio.
you pose a good question and one that tends to bring out those who are passionate about the subject - on both sides.
I first tried the English Electric 8 (EE8) network switch paired with the network acoustics Eno filter. While I believe I perceived a difference, it was modest at best. Nevertheless, I kept both as I was also slowly improving other elements of my system at the time and figured it might help more down the road.
From that initial trial, I have upgraded my speakers, cables, amplifier and DAC - basically everything but the network switch and filter. I still had the EE 8 in system and decided to audition the Reiki super switch along with the linear PS. While I was unsure of any benefit the first time around with the EE8, the improvement the Reiki brought was obvious.
The unfortunate conclusion I draw from this is that quality costs. It’s possible I’d hear more benefit from the EE8 in my current system if I compared without. I didn’t try that and should have. But I suspect the EE8 had limited (if any) affect while the Reiki had very positive affect. I’m not familiar with your system and so can’t say what your experience might be. But I’d try the Etherregen and then consider getting something well designed when ready.
If you had at least made the effort of checking Uptone Audio’s website you’d be aware how churlish and uneducated your question is. It filters and isolates analogue noise, if you need more information you now know where to find it.
Why o why do,we always get self appointed professors to proselytise on first principles when we discuss network issues. Network issues in audio have nothing to do with error correction, lost bits, sum checking and the digital like. Instead the problems arise frm ground level noise travelling ALONG the bits as well as RFI/EMI cable incursions affecting timing and shape of the analogly transmitted signal of the sine wave and thereby affecting the subsequent D/A conversion at the DAC level.
And refrain from commenting on things you have not listened to…
I suggest you spend a bit of time on the analogue transmission of digital data and its problems in time critical audio applications…
Before you spend money, have Grok explain TCP/IP's error correction capabilities at your preferred level. Data transmission is structured to ensure bit-perfect delivery to an endpoint even in the presence of interference. I'm not saying these devices don't provide what they advertise - just what they provide doesn't/can't affect SQ. https://x.com/i/grok/share/PY8Gmk5nxgZuEAeKfbs5gaTAE
You might consider adding an Uptone Etherregen behind the switch. It’s moat provides substantial reduction of both ground level and RFI/EMI noise. Use your best Ethernet cable between Etherregen or switch and streamer
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