Update on good Ethernet switch

Then why does a page fail to load sometimes and I have to refresh the screen?

Nosce te lpsum

Hey Fred, why don’t you post your stereo system.  Let’s see whatcha got.

Sir Isaac Newton made some observations about falling objects and developed a few basic equations to describe the motion of bodies.  It took some time for people to accept his equations.  Then Einstein came along and showed that Newton’s equations were not entirely accurate.  Still, the observations never changed.

Many of us have experienced and observed that audiophile grade ethernet switches improve the sound of streaming music.  I have even observed it dramatically improve the picture quality on my TV while streaming.  Therefore, it is an exercise in futility to insist that an ethernet switch can do nothing.  Try to be more like Einstein. 

My experience is a high quality network switch is better than no switch and that seems to be the consensus of a lot of listeners.  

My simplified view as a Mechanical Engineer is that unlike the Analog realm where less is more, the digital realm seems to work differently.  As I understand it, the digital signal is a square wave propagated through wiring.  The “ones and zeros” are created by these square wave pulses.  The 16 bit or 24 bit word length is made up of these ones and zeros as pulses which must be timed perfectly as they leave the originator and are captured by the receiver.  I think of it as a Morse Code operator.  If he misses one “dot” or “dash” thereby getting out of sync with the sender, the message becomes garbled.

I think the D/A converter needs as clean a square wave as possible with exact timing in order to produce a good analog signal.  The less well defined square wave causes the D/A converter to underperform or interpolate, ie guess at what the analog waveform should look like at that moment.  At this point the music is compromised.  

Therefore, the cleaner the square wave the better the chance for the music to get through a D/A converter.  Electrical wiring has some level of capacitance, resistance and inductance which can round off the edges of the square wave.  Electrical noise can be introduced into the wiring through EMI that can make it harder for the D/A converter to interpret the signal.  The network bridge, if my analogy is correct, redraws that square wave and sets the timing by its own internal clock passing on a sharp, clean square wave to the D/A converter.  

It’s like reading for us.  If the print is too small or too large, or the contrast is too low, our reading slows down and we might misread a few words, or have to go back and reread a sentence because it did not make sense.  We might even misread the sentence and end up completely misinterpreting it.  Newspapers and book publishers probably spent a lot of effort into researching in the past century the best print font, size and contrast for readers.   Now we are doing the same thing for music D/A converters.

Sophomoric trolls with nothing to contribute…

I guess I hit a nerve. 

Well Fred, the facts are you have not heard or experienced true hifi.  You lack an open mind to the possibility that digital is more than 1’s and 0’s and packets of data.  And apparently, you find history irrelevant which is sure to lead to repeating of past mistakes.

A preacher in the late 19th Century said that God would not ever allow man to fly like a bird.  That man was Wilbur and Orville Wright’s father.  Try to have a more open mind.

Here’s the thing. Generalizations do not work. I do agree that while on some stereo systems a quality network switch makes no difference in the sound but on other systems the quality network switch makes a very apparent difference. To make a blanket statement that quality network switches do nothing, ie. telling me that I do not hear what I am hearing then that is a problem. These posts are supposed to be a free exchange of ideas, experiences and opinions. We can all respect everyone’s experiences and ideas. But one persons experiences does not negate another’s.

The thing to understand is that this stereo hobby is a deep, seemingly bottomless hole. What I mean is- as I upgraded my system and it became more resolving small changes become audible. What might have been imperceptible before becomes quite apparent. It’s like draining the swamp. As we make things better new problems arise. I get a preamp and now I can more plainly hear a difference in power cords or interconnects. At some point most of us rue the day we ever got caught up in this hobby. A couple of years ago I would have laughed at the idea of audio grade network switches. I’m not laughing now. I even had to buy better ethernet cables to go between the modem, router and network switch. The difference in sound was that apparent.

When I started streaming music two years ago, I found the the music was clearly inferior to playing CDs. Even playing the FLAC files loaded into my music server did not quite match the sound of spinning CDs. So I upgraded the power supply and USB cable on my music server. Much better- local FLAC files now were very close to the sound of the CD. Still, streaming wasn’t close to the sound of local files. I tried a cheap network switch and found it helped a little. Then I tried putting fiber optic in and that was a big improvement. Cheap network switch had to go. It was now detrimental to the sound. So now streaming was very close to playing CDs but not quite there. So I bought an audio grade network switch and added it to the chain. Bass got better, imaging got tighter and improved clarity. I don’t think I could tell the difference now between streaming and playing the CD. I can stream all day or night long now and enjoy the music immensely.

Now, will everyone have that same experience? Perhaps not. But that does not make it right or wrong.

The most robust and best sounding setup will be hard wire ethernet cable from router to music streamer.  A wireless link is a compromise.  However, when I did some experimenting streaming television programming, I had the wireless mesh router near the TV connected by ethernet cable back to my audio grade network bridge.  The picture was just slightly less clear using wireless to the Apple TV box vs the ethernet cable plugged directly into the Apple TV box.  So based on my experience, a wifi link may be just fine or you may hear a difference depending on your system and all other factors- like RFI levels in your home.  You will have to try it both ways- put the audio grade network switch before the wireless link and then try it close to your music streamer.  The latter is likely to give the best results for streaming music.  The best ethernet cable should be at the music server.

I know all this because I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last week.  Yes, I really did and it was crazy expensive.  My first hotel stay since Covid.  Wow!  Prices have gone up a lot.

I have to wonder why these “IT Professionals” who obviously are not into audio peruse and troll these pages. I doubt any of them have actually designed and spec’d networking components. More likely they sit in windowless rooms building PCs for employees, push software updates to company PCs, route ethernet cables across the plant and office and install new data servers. The closest they get to an audio application is plugging in new network phones. (Which sound awful).

None of them have yet to rationally explain using math or measurement data why digital transmission of music is not affected by the gear or cabling whereas measurement data can show faults in the data stream due to power supply issues, EMI and affects of wire capacitance, etc. (They will deny the facts as quickly as they deny we hear a difference). Instead they always take the agnostic approach claiming we cannot hear what we are hearing and it’s impossible to alter the sound of digital. They can beat that drum all they want but this audio hobby will continue to press forward with new ideas and new discoveries. I’m reminded of the derision people faced for buying “fancy” speaker cables in the 1980s.

Maybe we should all pitch in a buy them a window.

Good.  You’re finally getting it.  But let me help you understand the meaning of arrogance.  Babe Ruth was a baseball player.  Perhaps you have heard of him.  When he stepped up to the batting plate he would point his bat at the stands indicating where he was going to hit the ball.  More often than not he would put the ball right where he pointed.  That is confidence.  Other ball players would step up to the plate and point their bat at the stands too.  Only they had very little chance of hitting the ball let alone putting it into the stands.  That is arrogance.

From my point of view you are arrogant because you have neither shown us your stereo system or demonstrated any knowledge of audio or acknowledged that someone can hear a difference in streaming audio.

Fred, unless you have built stereo systems for yourself or others or worked in the audio industry your IT related comments are not relevant. 
it is like me asking my plumber which power cord to buy for my amp. 

Unless, of course, my plumber is into audio. I’m sure he can afford it.

I heard the flat earthers have members all around the globe.

You are missing the point that DACs and music streamers are affected by electrical noise carried in on the network wiring.  It is not just about the 1’s and 0’s.  There is an analog component to the ethernet.

No one said unshielded.  

I think dalek is mocking us audio hobbyists.  I'm not sure.  Still looking in the galactic registry for a planet called Audio Malarkey.

Oh, another sun starved worker from the IT Crowd here to mock us.  

Do you guys ever do work or just entertain yourselves with these forums all day?

I recall an IT worker around 1990 at work who liked to play DOOM.  With a keystroke his screen would jump back to DOS.

You know, I was an Engineering Manager for many years. The four letters that caused me the most headaches were HR and IT. HR, well I won’t go there but IT had two favorite phrases: "We can’t" and "You can’t". They have developed a culture of oppression in the corporate world and so it should be no surprise that they would migrate to these forums to spread their oppressive culture.

I retired and still can't get away from them.  

PS.  My home network is great and reliable.  What was all the fuss about at work?

Arafiq, you are right.  I know I shouldn’t but I do it in jest- except for my tirade about my work days it’s fun banter but I guess I need to stop.