Network Switches

So the sonic benefits can only be recognized in areas that no one yet knows how to measure?  Then what's the basis behind the design of such a product?  I now have zero desire to even try this out.  There are many other areas of sound reproduction I'd rather direct my energy and resources towards.  Just one guy's opinion.  

As they say.... if it sounds good and it measures bad, you are measuring the wrong thing...

If you read through the comments you will see that he tested the etherregen switch with a schiit modi  dac as well, it showed no difference either. 

One cannot measure the difference between Duelund 2.0 uf tinned copper foil CAST capacitors vs a $5 Solen 2 uf cap at the output of the same dac. However, they will sound radically different. One cannot measure the difference of many component upgrades, but they impact the sound greatly. Great sound and measurements can and often have nothing to do with other in many situations. What measures well on that site often sounds rather Hifi like or electronic. Units like the Topping Dac he loves so much is one example. Ever listen to it? Sounds artificial. I’m am sorry, but that site makes me laugh out loud because it is often irrelevant to those looking for great sound. 

I agree with Al....I did not find any technical flaws with the review either. Based on the measurements alone, the reviewer makes a very compelling argument about the noise and jitter present or its non-existence in a Ethernet signal.

I try not to ‘condemn’ a component unless I had a first hand experience with it. Those of you found etherREGEN worth some degree of improvement in your setup, continue to enjoy! 

@uberwaltz,

I don’t see any technical flaws in what was said in the review you linked to. But of course the measurements and listening tests the reviewer performed involved one specific DAC, which for example is a very different animal than the Lyngdorf TDAI 3400 used by @discopants with the same switch.

Also, I see that the DAC (which btw is incorrectly referred to in several places in the review as the "Matrix i"; it was correctly referred to in one place near the end of the review as the "Element i") does not provide gigabit Ethernet capability. I’m not sure how many audio components having Ethernet connectivity are capable of operating at gigabit speeds (as opposed to 10/100), but I suppose that any such components might tend to be more susceptible to coupling of very high frequency noise (at hundreds of MHz or more) associated with the risetimes and falltimes of the Ethernet signal, that I referred to a few posts back.

As @atdavid aptly said a few posts back:

The question is, how good were the circuit designers at either end in ensuring noise didn’t get onto or coupled from the Ethernet "signal"?

Best regards,
-- Al

Can anybody comment on this rather damning review?
Not quarrelling with anybody but it seems very at odds with posted results.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/uptone-audio-etherregen-switch-review.102...

Another suggestion is to have all switches,lps, fmc's on a good shelf isolated and even dampening plates on top. Also replace those cheap dc cables that come with them with high quality aftermarket dc cables another big jump in sq.

The switch should always be as close has possible to the servers, the server should also be fed through a great LPS as well has the router and anything in the chain should be fed through an lps. for long runs of cable use fiber optic and run the FMC off a LPS.

Can we allow a fellow time to enjoy the gains he's achieved?  : )

Happy for you, @discopants  

I agree with @three_easy_payments. Subscribing to Tidal HiFi or Qobuz will provide audible benefits vs. Spotify, even if just red book quality. They often do free extended trials for you to try. Currently in US, Qobuz is running a promo $149 annual subscription with one month free trial. Since you already paid $640 for a switch, do the math, the Qobuz sub is no hardship. And not putting down EtherRegen here, as I own one from first batch

@discopants   I'm surprised that your system is only Spotify premium at 320kbps.  Don't you feel you're leaving a ton of meat on the bone by not upgrading to a hi-res service?  Compared to the money you've put into the switch, gear, power conditioners etc....surely you will hear the biggest sonic sea change moving up to at least CD-quality streaming.

I suspect (like many things audio) the relative benefit of things like switches may be dependent on the downstream connections and processing.  

Hello everyone

I got my Uptone audio Etherregen on Friday and put it into the system late in the evening.

As someone else already said, this is a major system upgrade, I thought my system sounded good before but its so much better with the Etherregen in the chain, stunning performance. Like a major system upgrade. The music just sounds so natural and there are significant details that I can hear on tracks I’m very familiar with. My wife even said she never heard it sound so good. She described the sound as crisper (which is a good one word description). Textures on percussion WOW! bass so solid, top end shizzle and everything in between syrupy Mmmmm.

my system is only digital streaming spotify premium but the sound is now jaw droppingly good. The switch is about 6 % of my total system cost but its delivering about 10% better sound. If you have a DAC that takes ethernet and are serious about digital sound quality then an Etherregen or better switch is an absolute must.


My system is router> cat 6> powerline > cat6 > industrial cat5e transformer > Chord C stream ethernet > Etherregen > Chord C stream ethernet > Lyngdorf TDAI3400 > Elsdon Wonfor LS 25 > Proac tablette 10 sig  and AQ greyhound > REL Stentor III subwoofer (70Hz crossover). All music is super MP3 via Spotify. Total system cost me about £10500 (about £18000 of component parts new ) . I run an Isotek sigmas gen 2 power conditioner and about £2500 spent on tweaks and vibration controls (money well spent).

Everything matters in digital audio reproduction, I was sceptical but open minded with much of it but Ive tried stuff and listened. Its not just about the 1s and zeros. Its all joined together in a system and its about noise (electrical for the most part in the case of ethernet switches, but I also have vibrational isolation on the switch and its power supply).

If you want to get noticeable switch SQ improvements but have a low budget then try second hand Cisco 2960 series managed switches (this is what Ive just stepped up from). Cost me £40 on ebay.

Ok, so I optimized the Bonn N8 switch by positioning it very close to my Antipodes DX3 server, using the short Ethernet cable that came with the N8 to connect with the server, using my HD Plex LPS to power the N8, and plugging the LPS into my IsoClean A60 power filter.  Since I moved the LPS to power the N8 switch, I am back to using the stock PS to power the Orbi router.
There seems to be a sonic improvement but certainly not night and day.  I would say smoother and maybe a bit more tonal depth.

@david_ten 
Thanks for the help. I will try the switch close to the server.  To be clear on the PS issue, the HD Plex LPS was a spare I had around so I connected it to power my router rather than the wall wort that came with the router.
My server has a great internal PS so the choice is whether to use the Plex on the router (as it is now) or on the switch instead of the PS that comes with the N8.  However, if I were to put the switch close to the router, instead of close to the server, then I could use the HD Plex LPS to power both the router and the switch.  I will first try the switch close to the server using the PS that comes with the switch but plugged into my IsoClean 60A filter.  Maybe later I will try moving the LPS from the router to the switch.
Thanks again for the help.

Re. the Power Supply applications....always best to optimize on the audio side first. In your situation, if I understand your post correctly, I would use the HDPlex with your server over the Router. If you were to get an additional LPS, then use it with the Router as the next step.

@mitch2   Based on my understanding of your post and questions....I would place the N8 Switch close to your Server. Run the long cable from your Router to the N8 Switch. I believe this will give you the best performance. As always, you will need to work through the options to find out for yourself and your system.

Looking forward to learning about how it works out!

I received the  "Silent Angel" Bonn N8  Ethernet Network Switch yesterday and plan to hook it up today.
My question is whether to connect it close to my router or close to my server?  The router and server are connected by a 35-foot Ethernet cable.
If close to the router I can use my HD Plex LPS that is powering my router to also power the switch, but if close to the server then I would have a very short cable from the switch to the server and would probably use the Bonn N8 PS to power the switch.  If close to the server, I can plug the Bonn's PS into my Isoclean 60A3 II power filter.  Otherwise, if the switch is close to the server, I can use the router's own power supply to power the router, and move the Plex LPS close to my server, plug it into the Isoclean 60A3 II, and use it to power the switch.  Any clear direction or do I need to do some trial and error?  Which option do you guys presume would be best? Thanks

@almarg , absolutely. I got PWM mixed up with PCM. Thank goodness, otherwise we would have needed coax to make this work. 1.76 MHz is still up there, especially when a fourier series is considered to accurately shape the square wave so the decoder can due it's job,  

... losses in sending an actual signal, are quite low, 1-2db, even at 100KHz.

... and I would emphasize that losses are even a good deal less than 1-2 db at 100 MHz, as can be seen in the graphs.

The question is, how good were the circuit designers at either end in ensuring noise didn’t get onto or coupled from the Ethernet "signal"?

+1.

Thanks for providing the link.

Best regards,
-- Al

This is a data sheet from a typical Ethernet pulse transformer for 10/100/1000-T


https://product.tdk.com/info/en/catalog/datasheets/090007/trans_alt_en.pdf?ref_disty=digikey

While common mode rejection can be 30-40db, the insertion loss, i.e. losses in sending an actual signal, are quite low, 1-2db, even at 100KHz. 1 transformer at either end, so 2-4db attenuation at 100Khz, which is not a lot.


The question is, how good were the circuit designers at either end in ensuring noise didn't get onto or coupled from the Ethernet "signal"?

@brotw, thanks for the mention, and for your comments.

However while I of course agree that spectral components at very high frequencies are present in Ethernet signals when audio data is being conveyed, certainly extending up to hundreds of MHz and probably to a significant degree into the GHz region, I would have to disagree with your analysis.

The factor of 2^16 (or 65,536) in your analysis, which of course corresponds to the number of possible signal levels that can be defined by Redbook data, is not being used correctly. What is being conveyed for each sample (for each channel) is simply 16 bits, not 65,536.

So to be precise, given also that the 8b/10b encoding used by Ethernet increases the number of bits by 25%, your equation should be:

16 bits/sample x 44,100 samples per second x 2 channels x 1.25 = 1.764 MHz

The reason spectral components can be present at hundreds of MHz or more can be analyzed approximately as follows:

My understanding is that both 100 mbps and 1000 mbps Ethernet transmit packets of data at clock rates of 125 MHz, which corresponds to a clock interval of 8 ns (nanoseconds). The risetimes and falltimes of the signal must therefore be significantly less than 8 ns. Let’s say 2 ns. If we assume first order rolloff, risetimes and falltimes of 2 ns correspond to 3 db of rolloff at 0.35/2 ns = 175 MHz. First order rolloff corresponds to 20 db/decade, so the spectral content of those risetimes and falltimes would only be down 20 db at 175 MHz x 10 = 1.75 GHz!

Thanks again. Regards,

--Al

I was just doing some back of the envelope math to estimate the narrowest of PWM pulses from redbook.

(2^16) *44KHz~3GHz. Thats a 4 inch wavelength!

If spectral content of the PWM wave exceeds the bandwidth of cable or connectors (impedance and loss stable over bandwidth) then VSWR and loss induced wave distortion is entirely possible.

Thank you @almarg for the RF insight. That kind of thought is entirely appropriate when trying to define potential sound changes due to the handling of analog waveforms representing 1s and 0s. Ethernet switches should have a far more stable source and load connection impedances to handle the advertised bandwidths. Cable loss and bandwidth also needs to be sufficient.

Normally I'd jump on a Sotm Neo or Sonore Ultrarendu but there doesn't seem to be a way to include Dirac Live in the PC since windows treats it like a virtual soundcard. Anyone have any luck with that? Having Dirac in the PC does eliminate an A/D conversion and has always largely improved my sound, whether improvements surpass what a Sotm Neo network player would provide remains to be seen.

Perhaps a USB to I2S converter and a short high speed USB cable will keep me going. Sticking to a DAC with I2S may also be wise.

Brody

If it is anything like my SOTM switch, when you pair your new switch with nice ethernet cables the combo will make you smile big! 

I just purchased the  TCXO Audiophile Ethernet Network Switch - "Silent Angel" Bonn N8.
I haven't seen any others here using it but there are several good international reviews and the price was right compared to other audio playback specific switches I looked at.  I will try in the configurations suggested earlier in this thread by @almarg and let you all know what I think. It should be here before Christmas. 

@mikey8811   You are welcome. Telegärtner manufactures Networking Components for industrial, commercial, and home use...which is reassuring. Pricing on these types of products is high.

You may also want to consider Waversa...their router- switch combo has separation for general internet and the audio side. Cost again is high.

My experience has been different @mikey8811  but of course, that’s just a subjective data point. As with everything, nothing replaces your own experience, in your home, with your own equipment.

@thyname thanks for the feedback. I read other reviews and there are some folk who find the ER causing a loss of body and warmth and sounding too smooth and clean. If that is the case, I don't think it will work for my tastes. That is the impression I have had with other Uptone products in my system. I would put them in the category of "you hear more but may not like what you hear"
@david_ten thanks for the tip on the Japanese switch. That sounds like it will work for me. However, the price is staggering.

@mikey8811  : update 

I tried my EtherRegen with and without opticalModule. No difference that I can discern. Not even sighted 

Japan Telegärtner Ltd.    M12 Switch Magic

...another option for those considering a Network Switch

Review from High Fidelity Poland // Wojciech Pacula:

http://highfidelity.pl/@main-964&lang=en

No. Not yet. I will try this weekend

@thyname have you tried removing your Sonore Optical Module upstream and just running the ER via ethernet?

There is no such thing as an audio network switch. They ALL work on digital mostly ethernet packets. It is LUDICROUS to think otherwise.

PS: I worked for Cisco for 17 years as a software technical lead and I am now at Broadcom as a principal software engineer, who makes the chips for these switches.

It doesn't matter that you work at the ASIC level. It doesn't matter if you understand clock domain boundaries. It doesn't matter that the base clock for Ethernet is 25Mhz (WAAAAY beyond hearing). It doesn't matter that there are PCI-e bus, USB bus, FSB, CPU clocks, paging going on constantly. All that sitting between the Ethernet port and the input on the DAC.
It doesn't matter that 10Gbe that is routinely affordable now can transfer ~ 2 CD's worth of information in a single second and you can pull the cable on many playback computers and appliances and the music will still play.
But go on ahead and keep presenting logic. Could you get one of your PHY guys into the thread?

It will surely work. But you will have to remove your fiber modules completely. In fact, this was how it was meant to be for the majority of applications, where there is no optical/ fiber presence 

@thyname I am unsure if that will work for me as my optical modules are not Gigabit but only 100 Mbps.
From what I have read I believe switches like these and the SOtM one need a Gigabit connection.
The reason I asked is because I was under the impression that switches are used only when you have more than one upstream or downstream connection.

@mikey8811  I was using similar optical isolation with dual opticalModules from Sonore each powered by its own SGC 5V power supply. I replaced the one downstream with the EtherRegen. Kept the opticalModule upstream. This change provided an audible positive SQ difference for me. EtherRegen gives us more than optical isolation. Read the technical details if so inclined:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0660/6121/files/EtherREGEN_User_Guide.pdf?90

Having said this, each system is different. You will need to try for yourself if you really want to know for sure.

If I am using a pair of FMC’s ie. TP Link MC100CM’s at router and then a BJC CAT6 to a single source ie. an Aries streamer, does adding a switch somewhere to the chain make a difference? Or does going fibre with the FMC's already provide enough isolation to cover it.

I only have a single source.

Srajan Ebaen of 6Moons will be reviewing @windowsx  / Keetakawee's Etherstream....

https://6moons.com/audioreview_articles/fidelizer/

 Nice! Please keep us updated. Thank you.

For now:

Router ----> Ethernet cable (copper) ----> opticalModule ---> fiber cable ---> feeding A side SFP module / cage on EtherREGEN ----> Ethernet Cable out of the B-side on EtherREGEN ---> Innuos ZENith MK3 (as Roon Server and endpoint) ---> USB cable out to DAC (MSB Discrete)

Please remind us of your digital front end chain? How is it incorporated in your rig.   Thanks. 

I received my EtherREGEN yesterday. I really did not have much expectations on this (just a bit :-)) but I am already thrilled about what it does. This is one of those purchases that I don't regret making for sure!

@emailists   Thanks for your feedback on the EtherRegen. Looking forward to your 'full' review. 

So I’ve had the EtherRegen in my system for over a day now. I run an Ethernet cable directly from my Mac Pro tower running Jriver to a Directstream dac with bridge2. My point is that I’m not going through a switch. There is switch and the rest of my network on the mac’s second Ethernet port)

I haven’t tested to see if my system (Tad Cr1’s And BHK300 amps- Atmasphere pre) sounds cleaner than running through a switch.

I’ll make a bold (and silly) statement. If you are running an Ethernet based audio system which is of significant fidelity, and you have $650 of disposable income, one would have to suffer from some form of mental illness if they didn’t buy this product (or a competing one which works similarly and as effectively)

After hearing it, I consider this type of isolation
to be mandatory. Not an optional tweek, but mandatory.

No amount of downstream gear upgrade, attention to setup, or expensive cable is going to fix what I now consider the inherently flawed signal timing (and noise possibly) associated with computer based Ethernet audio.

Perhaps I’ll post a proper review compiled from my comments from another message board, but avoid this product at your own peril. 

No description of telling how it benefited my system (which already has a passive medical type Ethernet isolator in line ) is going to replace you hearing what fixing this problem (we never knew we had) will sound like until you hear it preferably in your own system.

With a 30 day evaluation it’s a no brainer. The only downside to this product is the wait time to get one. I now wonder if there might be any benefit for video. It all seems counterintuitive at first in a “bit perfect” world of thinking, but clearly as digital audio evolves we are leaning aspects previously thought irrelevant. I’ve already recommended it to a pro audio guy using Dante based Ethernet audio.

The rear of my old C.E.C CD transport still has an ATT glass fiber output.
Maybe I will get to use it someday soon!
What goes around, comes around...…..

Local Hi Rez rips and downloads played from a SD card sound 7.5% better than Hi-Rez and MQA from Qobuz and Tidal on my Cary DMS 600
Regan coming . Will see if it can close the gap 

Kind of humorous... back 30 years ago the hot setup was ATT Glass Fiber, using  special ATT  connectors .Theta Wadia, I think even Levinson were using it. Now we’ve gone back around. There is a very proven reason to not throw out you old neck ties. LOL silly audiophiles i

 File playback from a RAM Disk is amazing. From an NVME SSD its very good. I can't listen to my stuff on HDD anymore as its not in the same class.

I have also compared and MQA Tidal and 24/96 and up Qobuz sound as good as my ripped CDs using DB Poweramp software and my  Innuos server/streamer. Regular Tidal and Qobuz sound very, very similar.  So very close.  It depends on your digital front end and system.   No one answer is going to fit for all in all circumstances.