SA Bonn
English Electric 8
zoom in on the board in the EE where it says Silent Angel
Which company manufactures this Ethernet switch for the other?
I am looking to buy an "audiophile" switch to isolate my audio and video connections from the main switch in my home. One important consideration in my decision is cost; another is that this AV Ethernet switch must have 8 ports to accommodate all my audio and video equipment. I have done as much research online as I can, with the result that I found two products that especially appealing: the English Electric 8Switch and the Silent Angel Bonn N8.
Studying their constructions, features, and components, these two Ethernet switches seem so similar that with the exception of one being 10mm higher than the other (their widths and depths are the same) that these two appear to be identical.
Consequently, I am asking -- does anyone know whether Silent Angel OEMs this product from English Electric or vice versa? OR, is this just an extraordinary coincidence?
28 responses Add your response
Maybe this will help in search. I have read where Silent Angel and the EE use the same boards. https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/good-mid-price-audiophile-switches.32122/ |
I searched and found this: “There is no definitive evidence in the search results to confirm whether Silent Angel OEMs its products from English Electric or vice versa. However, both brands are often discussed together, particularly regarding their audiophile-grade Ethernet switches like the Silent Angel Bonn N8 and English Electric 8, which share similar features such as low-noise designs and clocking technologies. This could be coincidental or indicative of shared design philosophies, but no direct OEM relationship is confirmed”. “The main differences between Silent Angel and English Electric Ethernet switches are: 1. Design and Build Quality: • The English Electric 8Switch features a solid aluminum housing with a black soft-touch finish, offering better mechanical strength and shielding compared to Silent Angel’s Bonn N8, which has a simpler enclosure. 2. Power Supply: • English Electric includes a “medical grade” SMPS power supply, while Silent Angel offers an option to upgrade to an external linear power supply for enhanced performance. 3. Performance Tuning: • Both use TCXO clocks for jitter reduction, but the English Electric adds EMI-absorbing materials for extra noise isolation, claiming up to 90% jitter reduction. Silent Angel emphasizes multi-stage power filtering for lower crosstalk and jitter. 4. Accessories: • English Electric includes a Chord Company C-Stream Ethernet cable, enhancing its value proposition”. “The English Electric 8Switch may offer slightly better sound quality due to its advanced EMI shielding and robust build, but the Silent Angel Bonn N8 is a strong contender, especially with an upgraded power supply”.
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@hgeifman Great post but your information is not correct. From SA. No horse in the race, I have ansuz d3 High-Permeability EMI Absorber high performance emi absorber
Noise-filtering Power Adapter Also this YT Video from Hans points out that SA makes some of the components in the EE SW8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuQSA7sRWfA https://jatstereo.com/products/silent-angel-bonn-n8-audio-network-switch |
Many of these switches are just modified Buffalo boards. I purchased a RenoLabs switch some years ago, this just another modified Buffalo board with integrated LPS. Also tried stock switches, No switch has ever been of any benefit for me, all detrimental to sound quality.
I have a seemingly unique solution that may not be workable for some, others refuse to try. I won't condemn all audiophile switches out of hand, I suspect some like the Telegartner could be worthwhile, still I remain a skeptic. My streaming setup competes very favorably with my vinyl setup, this without any switch. |
Interesting discussion but FWIW, to clarify the photos shown in the first response to this thread:
This Audiophile Style thread provides a further interesting comparison and value discussion about these switches, and pretty good pictures of the insides of two switches (see the third post by MarkusBarkus). Notice the picture of the NuPrime Omnia SW-8 Network Switch shows the machined aluminium enclosure with rounded corners, exactly like the case used for the English Electric 8Switch. Also notice it is the same board used in all three switches. Further down in the thread, Superdad, the owner of UpTone Audio, provides an answer to the original question posted in this thread:
You guys can read the rest of the thread and decide for yourselves, but the gist of it is that this is basically a $30 part, as was used in the Zyxel 8-Port Desktop Gigabit Ethernet Switch" (photos), and that it makes "no audible difference." This article shows no difference in measurements after adding the Bonn N8 switch in the signal chain, and listening tests that correspond with the measurements. To wrap up, these manufacturers make a lot of money on these switches under the guise that "audiophile" switches make a significant improvement in sound quality, even going so far as recommending doubling up on their switches for further improvements. I own two Bonn N8 switches and run both with 5V LPSs. I have heard no reliably significant difference between having them in the signal chain or not, or between the Bonn N8, the Netgear switch I have here, or my TRENDnet 4-Port Gigabit Switch with SFP Slot that SGC sells for $160 but can be had on Amazon for $35. YMMV |
Mitch, what you wrote exacerbates my greatest audio worry — being exploited in my effort to wisely incorporate high value equipment in my audio system. I read various reviews of switches in ASR, which consistently state that all properly functioning Ethernet switches perform exactly the same. For that reason, I made sure that I could return it. All that said, last year I purchased a Shunyata Sigma Ethernet cable to connect my current Luxul switch with my Bricasti M21 DAC. This cable has two embedded noise filters. Without doubt, its replacement of the Audioquest Cinnamon cable i had been using provided a easily discernible improvement in the clarity of the sound. I am hardly going to spend thouands of dollars outfitting seven more connections with additional Shunyata Sigma Ethernet cables. Instead, for these lesser connections, I have purchased the English Electric 8Switch with the hope it will proved some improvement for them. |
@jmeyers, how much are you willing to spend on a dedicated network switch? If price is no object then I’d definitely recommend that you look into the Network Acoustics tempus - Precision Ultra Low Noise Ethernet Switch. Rob Osbourne and Rich Trussell are some of the most considerate and attentive folks in the audio gear biz that I’ve ever dealt with. They both took the time to answer every dumb question and email from me no matter how ponderous. I’m still using their now discontinued 1st gen eno streaming system Ag in my headphone setup, and I can only imagine how great their new stuff sounds. In my experience with the English Eight and the SA Bonn switches, neither one had a better impact on the sound in my system than the Cisco SG 250 switch that I’m presently using in sequence with another readily available D-Link switch which I bought on Amazon. |
Let's see, these Ethernet switches support 100/1000 Base-T gigabit, which means the signal travels point-to-point over twisted pairs at speeds of either 100 million bits per second, or 1000 million bits per second. This is much faster than Redbook Compact Disk needs which is about 1.4 million bits per second. Please note carefully that Ethernet is not slowed down to match the audio rate! Instead the audio stream is chopped into packets up to 12,000 bits long (Gigabit can have non-standard longer packets if both ends agree!). This means there is much more silence on an Ethernet Link than signal, punctuated by very short bursts of signal. Each packet starts with a preamble, then the address of the sender and intended receiver (these are the Media Access Code or MAC addresses and are globally unique). Finally, there is a cyclic redundancy check which allows corrupted packets to be detected. The preamble is 56 bits alternating between 0 and 1 which allows the receiver to match the clock rate of the sender. When the receiver has to turn the packets into an audio signal, it has to assemble the incoming packets into a memory buffer, and then clock them out at a much slower rate which has nothing to do with the clock rate of the Ethernet! Ethernet is essentially a broadcast technology, so all a connection box needs to do is listen to any transmission and broadcast it on all other connections. This is what an Ethernet Repeater does. An Ethernet Switch is slightly smarter - it looks at the MAC addresses in each packet and works out which physical cable connects to each address. Then it only has to forward a packet down one cable (OK there is an exception for a broadcast message where the receiving address stands for all addresses). My conclusion: jitter in an Ethernet switch is inconsequential because the audio stream has to be re-clocked from a memory buffer anyway. Errors in the digital payload are always detectable. If you can hear a difference between switches, be suspicious of the EMI they are generating which affects your other components. |
This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FFTdt51kzA also contends that there is no issue with jitter at the ethernet part of the system, but that there may be noise issues an ethernet switch could address. Another way to do that, as I understand it, is to use devices that convert ethernet to fiber optic and then convert the fiber optic to USB for input to an audio device. |
The video absolutely refutes that jitter is a problem with Ethernet. I tried to show why this is true! Further, why anyone would want to convert Ethernet to USB is beyond me, unless it is the only thing the poor audio device can connect to. There are many versions of USB to confuse matters more. At least Ethernet is designed to be a local area network spanning entire buildings! There is really no merit using fibre-optics instead of twisted pairs for either external electrical noise-rejection or to reduce EMI from the cable. We are talking GHz frequencies! But an Ethernet switch is a switched logic device and just may inject nasty electrical noise into your other components via the power supply.
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@jmeyers ethernet switch will not improve anything. In some cases it will negatively impact other components due to noise it creates on the power line and by being in proximity to audio components and cables. If you isolate it from your system by running it off a completely different circuit and keeping it far away from components and cables, you should be OK. And in this case any $30 switch should suffice. I wouldn’t waste money on the expensive switch. Spend it on room acoustics instead. |
+1 @audphile1 I've tried different switches no difference. My dealer tells me not to waste my $$ either. Even a manufacturer of digital gear says the same thing. Listen yourself but don't be fooled by those with "golden" ears. |
I couldn't disagree more - spending a few bucks to set up a solid network is one of the best things I've done for my system. That included paying an electrician to snake an ethernet line direct from my computer room to my system rack which is on another floor of the house. That lets me keep the potentially noisy cable modem, router, and network switching well away from the audio gear. It is amazing how an experienced electrician (or first rate cable or alarm installer) can fish wire through walls and I think it's worth every penny. Plus it yields a neat 'n' tidy installation. |
@cleeds - Most here seem to believe in having a "solid network". In my case, that was achieved by isolating my server in a separate room with my network gear, powering all of it from LPSs through a dedicated 20A line, and using fiber optical cable from the server to my streamer. While I believe all of that stuff may help with noise reduction, to the point made by @ghdprentice , improving my streamer was the one thing I can point to that made a noticeable improvement in the sound of my digital front end (before the DAC). None of the many other costly add-ons I have tried have made a reliably noticeable improvement. |
IME it doesn’t take much to improve network but the results are very rewarding. To @ghdprentice point…yes better streamer isolates the network better. In case of Aurender the data is processed and cached onto SSD before it is sent to DAC. Which diminishes the effect of network tweaks even further. However, I will admit that I can still hear better sound with my Purist Audio CAT7 Ethernet cable than if I use LinkUp (great cable from Amazon by the way). Sound is just more detailed, resolving and more coherent with the Purist. And Purist Ethernet is not expensive at all! Point is…at least from my experience, isolation by proximity and isolation by electrical circuit is the most effective network tweak. After that a good Ethernet cable is all you need. This is within reason but if we’re talking extreme then you can try Telegartner Optical Isolator. But let’s be real - most of us can upgrade DAC or streamer and get better ROI. To each his own… |
All devices which are fed Ethernet must process the data packets and cache them into a buffer before reconstructing the data stream. The buffer acts like a solid state disk without the added complexity of file systems and disk blocks! You mention using a completely different power circuit. For most dwellings, ’completely different’ circuits are joined together at the main distribution board which is often just a few feet closer to the power station grid. They are not really separate at all. My house is fed three phases, but all the single-phase circuits are joined to the same phase. Strictly, wireless networks are not Ethernet at all. They obviously are more susceptible to interference from the plethora of other wireless transmissions and RFI. Hardwired Ethernet is less susceptible but not immune. The topography particularly when crossing mains is important. Ethernet can be made 100% reliable by detecting and retransmitting faulty or lost packets, but this is not what streaming does! Your Purist Audio Cat7 cable is built as shielded twisted pairs and many other cables are unshielded twisted pairs. The effect might be fewer corrupted packets but why this might translate into ’smooth and clean, just as the artist intended" is beyond me! Not sure what this has to do with Ethernet switches, either ... |
Any of the quality-oriented audio streaming services (Qobuz, Tidal) use TCP/IP. If you’re running ethernet from your router to your streamer, you’re getting a bit perfect signal straight from the server farm to you, @richardbrand. |
Oh dear, you are way off reality here and the key to it all is the word 'streaming'. The Internet can indeed be used to deliver bit-perfect transmission using the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) stack. This guarantees all packets are received and error-free even over unreliable transmission components like Ethernet. Think file transfer and downloads. However, streaming cannot afford the time to request retransmission of faulty packets. It does not use TCP and instead uses the UDP/IP (User Datagram Protocol / Internet Protocol) stack which prioritises delivery timing over accuracy. There is no guarantee that the stream of packets that arrives at your Internet gateway from Qobus or Tidal is perfect, or even complete. (You might call your gateway a modem, or router, or switch, or somesuch but it actually mediates between your Wide-Area Network and your Local Area Network). Finally, your gateway pushes the data packets over WiFi or better, Ethernet. Ethernet on its own guarantees neither delivery nor timing. You need higher level protocols like TCP to detect errors, missing packets and retransmission. UDP does not bother with these niceties. |