Update on good Ethernet switch

these audiophile switches are not too pricey... ether regens for instance trade used frequently at $500-600, buy one try it, if it doesn’t enhance your sound, post it for sale, it’ll be gone in a few days

otherwise, one can likely find retail sellers of silent angels, english electric or sotm, aqvox, etc who will do trial periods, worst you can lose is shipping, maybe a small restocking fee

too much brain damage and chatter on these threads - there will always be divergent opinions on a forum, anonymous keyboard jockeys spouting their knowledge from on high, no check on their credibility... it is just the nature of the beast -- so you want to know if something works?  go get it, buy smart and learn for yourself, sell it off if it doesn’t perform to expectation

I have bought two standard network switches:

Cisco 2960, and a Cisco SG110D

The Cisco 2960 I added the Audiophool upgrade.

With the Cisco SG110D, I added a Fidelity Audio C4Mk2 clock.

Both under $500.

They have Plixir Elite linear power supplies running them with Statement DC cables, and Mad Scientist power cables.

@soix I’ve worked in Enterprise networks for 30+ years. Fairly confident I have a better understanding of this than most members here. The base product this item is created from is a $40 limited function Ethernet switch. The only thing I could see making an impact would be clock regen on the downlink. But that shouldn’t matter, as the streamer/DAC will regen again, and will be the only clock that actually matters. So $600 for a $40 switch in a pretty aluminum case. Still lol. 

Two questions:

I’m using a mesh network system and the audio system streamer is connected to a satellite router by Ethernet and the satellite router gets its connection from the main router via a 5 GHz “trunk” wireless stream.

1 - is the switch as effective in this situation?  All reviews I’ve read appear to be pure Ethernet networks.

2 - do I put my best Ethernet cable before or after the switch?

TIA!

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.