ASI mentioned before I didnot want to say the brand until I heard the Ethernet switch not only after 300 hours which was recommended having a OX over controlled clock ,
and with what myself always do the weak link on any audio component starts with the stock power cord , for minimal monies the Pangea using Cardas grade 1 copper 6-9s. Awg14 sig,Mk2 , and getting rid of the 50 cent bottle neck fuse I put in a 1.25amp 20mm L ,slow blow synergistic purple fuse these increase fidelity at least 5-7% the switch itself At least 5% if you know the name Jays audio for transports ,his other company LHY Audio the SW8 Ethernet switch for $595 nothing has all this in a nice machined aluminum case , even the uptone ether regen or Sonore deluxe using a with fiber optic which btw lessens the realism imo both were used witha Sbooster2 LPS , ,theSW8 Ethernet switch is a great buy ,and if you add a decent power cord and upgrade the fuse you will be rewarded further , 7 of us reviewed this and 6 out of 7 thought it was a noticeable improvement vs the others there were2 other brands which were more ,that were not even that good and had switch mode pS
@tonywinga@carlsbad2 Thanks for the information. I apparently wasn’t clear in my question. ALL of my audio system connections are hard-wired. The network dedicated backbone, i.e., router to router only, is a 5 GHz high bandwidth wireless connection. The audio streamer/server is connected by Ethernet to a router.
I can’t use Ethernet for the router to router connection due to the house design without incurring an unacceptable cost.
I have a separate home theater system with an Apple TV 4K. I’ve tried both Ethernet and wireless connections and prefer Ethernet because I get zero dropouts on 4K Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos sound movies.
‘I’ve never had a dropout or glitch in the separate audio system music streaming. I’m just looking for best sound possible.
OK, how about this solution then? Get rid of your switch altogether. Get the best Cat 8 cable you can afford, and hook it up directly between your ISP gateway and your streamer. If it matters to you, hire an electrician to move your gateway as close as possible to your streamer device. Don’t forget to create a Faraday cage around all of your equipment and cables. An aluminum faraday cage hat atop your head will also work wonders by intercepting communications from Planet Audio Malarkey.
It's really disappointing to see how some members treat others. There are members with vast technical knowledge who post beneficial and accurate information to help us efficiently improve our audio systems and they are attacked and dismissed. It reminds me of people who believe the earth is flat - no amount of proof, technical knowledge, or patient explanation is sufficient.
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.
"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."
You are completely missing the point, or you simply do not understand the difference between analog error propagation and digital error correction. NOBODY is arguing that the digital data stream is unaffected by noise. The point is that the numerous layers of error correction all along the digital signal pathway, which includes dozens of commercial switches between the music streaming service and your home ISP gateway, detect and reject damaged data packets, and request that such packets be resent.
it is interesting, when ’one trick pony’ trolls like this come on forums and denounce the value of certain hifi gear based on their 'experience' elsewhere, argue endlessly and defensively, i believe the net result is actually more interest is developed in the thing they are putting down by those whom are evaluating the product...
what happens, as we see here is more actual hifi enthusiasts feel compelled to openly state that they have tried xx and have gained positive value from it
funny how folks don’t think through the consequences of their statements and chosen foodfights... or maybe they live in their own world, only feel the need to spout what they (believe they) know and it is pretty much as myopic as that...
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.
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.
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.
For everyone saying that network professionals can’t provide value, do you realize what you are saying is that when you are sick (network issues), go the doctor (network professionals), but when you need a specialist (audio applications), go to your plumber (anonymous people on a random Internet forum).
commercial audio applications never use these products, simply because they don’t make a difference.
@soixso if network professionals have 0 credibility, than would land you and the rest at negative at least a million, meaning run, do not walk, run the exact opposite way of what you recommend.
@rjmcinnisI've found that IT professionals can be the last ones to understand digital audio because it is so different that the stuff they have done their entire career and they contribute a lot to the slowness of adiophiles to figure it out. I recommend keeping an open mind.
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.
@rjmcinnisEnterprise networks have nothing to do with sound quality and give you exactly zero credibility here. In addition to the aluminum case this unit has an upgraded clock and dumps the crap SMPS for a LPS. These are not small upgrades, and if you don’t understand this you’re completely out of your depth here. Look up Jay’s Audio for transports — they know a lot more than you do when it comes to audio. Period. Stick to enterprise networks where you’re clearly more qualified but has little to do with high-end audio. Or are we gonna just get into the “bits are bits” BS conversation here?
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’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?
@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.
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
To Sioux ad anyone else ,unless you have actually spent time comparing them
then you speak out of No credible knowledge ,and nothing to add that’s meaningful
the common switch is crap $30 with nothing but noise ,where is the SW8 switch has low noise regulators,linesr power supplies, many filter capacitirs, and a OCXO
oven clock , which for $595 and in a machined aluminum case is a true bargain imo.to make it at least another added 5-6% put a decent power cord on it like the Pangea awg14 sig mk2 , and Synergistic purple 1.25 amp Slow blow fuse , or Hifi tuning Supreme gold fuse a easy upgrade , also put a 12v LPS on your modem-router combo vs the $5 crappy 💩 wall wart , little green computer 12v up to 8 amp
Speaking of the innuos Ethernet switch around $3k with discounts it’s on another level Everything sounds judt much more real and refined my brother owns one and I put it in my system for a day outstanding and inside build quality Exceptional
I may buy one but first the GreaT T+A 200 dac thsts next in my shopping list.
@tonywinga+1 and we’ll said. It’s amazing what you can learn when you trust your ears rather than just spouting dogma. The “bits are bits” crowd will never get out of their own way and certainly will never just trust their own ears, so arguing with them is pointless. Be glad you can more enjoy what you have now because you dared to have an open mind and open ears and just let the others wallow around in their ignorance.
I run a Silent Angel Bonn N8 Pro with 10mhz clock input and powered by an Uptone JS-2 linear power supply. The sound is gloriously improved—so tight, refined and focused.
Everything matters to a certain degree. It’s up to the listener to prioritize what the degree in which each thing matters.
FLAC is a lossless protocol. Decompressed FLAC files are bit-perfect in comparison to the source WAV files. Bits are bits. Fred is correct. Routers and other hardware that operate in the digital domain have built-in error correction. Analog signal chains suffer from error propagation.
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.
@clearthinkyou are wrong. I have tried Etherregen and various “audiophile” Ethernet cables.
and you are also wrong about cut and paste, I have practiced networking on a daily basis since 1999, and I have worked on some really interesting commercial audio projects. Needless to say, no commercial audio applications use these products, but they only care about what actually improves sound quality.
It is a simple to understand what is happening here and I think some credit should be allowed to those who argue and insist that an ethernet switch can make absolutely no audible, sonic, detectable difference and for that matter even a measureable difference can not result and that is because of the TCP/IP protocol which they love to cite and being the explanation for their convictions. These people are the same who have argued about "Perfect Sound Forever" and the source and origin of that claim are place such as as consumer audio magazines and consumer magazines such as Consumer Reports in yoru country and also now things like Wikipedia and they combine that with a basic understanding of how computers work.
I say we should allow these people some credit because they have read and consumed enormous amounts of written content as evidenced by they're liberal use of "cut and paste" to support their arguments with graphs, charts, and "data" to appear "scientific" and then many of them also watch the 'experts" who post You Tube videos and so it is a club like a religion.
What they share has been pointed out bu others here and that is that they have not tried such devices and when they do their expectation bias revs to "high gear" and they are driven to post here sometimes claiming as one has in this thread that they are laughing at us which is "ironic".
So what these people should but won't do is set aside their religion and bible texts and actually conduct some kind of experiment which may or may not reveal and expose their narrow, confined, limited "thinking" which is more simple repetition of hat they have consumed and the rest of the users here can continue to report their experiences having already overcome the "bar" of "digital sound is perfect forever".
@cleedsyes, we do know that the technical aspects of Ethernet is beyond your comprehension. Why do you keep coming back to discussions that include the technical is beyond my comprehension.
regarding your experiment, see the first paragraph in this post. You refuse to listen to what Qobuz says about their own service.
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