News $2,500 Ethernet Switch Effectively Isolates Audiophiles From Cash

[NotThatToddInTampa]

TLDR - This thing is nonsense, and you know it.

 

[castl3bravo]

Ethernet doesn't care about the power so long as the power supply continues to supply power. If one is worried about the sound then get a good UPS that conditions the power for the audio equipment. Wasting money on a switch that conditions the electrical signal is such a waste of cash. If one is really concerned about the switch then spend a bit more cash on a managed switch with a good chipset and larger packet buffers. This is so silly and proves what PT Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

 

[N7QNM]

I going to start with, I am no sound expert, not even by a long shot. However, music from streaming services is encoded digitally, transmitted digitally and then decoded into analog signals once it reaches its final destination device (phone, tablet, AV unit, TV, etc.). So how exactly does this do anything for that digital signal in transport? Seems like it would have little effect me based on what I know, but maybe someone can enlighten me.

I think they call it the "placebo effect" (or, someone had to justify it to their significant other

 

[atmapuri]

For a.) to work it would have to have the certificate to decode TLS traffic before it got to the host device (All the streaming services I'm aware of these days are not steaming over "plan text" protocols) . If it can do that, you don't want this thing in your house as it becomes the perfect place to steal anything you want from the devices connected to it 😉

All you need for that is go to alibaba and buy yourself a treat. Obviously you need that feature for advanced firewalls as well. They are checking everything that is moving around.

Atmapuri

 

[hyperreal]

Listening to streaming services on that kind of setup seems a bit backwards.. lol. Every streaming platform slaps a limiter on every track to somewhat normalize volume, flattening the dynamics in general. You can often here a distinct difference in depth comparing a quality file on your hard drive to the streamed version, assuming the master wasn't already sausaged. Unless you have more money than you know what to do with this seems like a pointless way to spend it.

i don't know about other platforms but Spotify gives you the option to turn off normalization. In addition, their normalization system is designed to preserve dynamics on a release as long as LUFS and true peak are maintained as instructed. Every track is not forcibly maximized but rather an album, for example, is treated as a single object with its own dynamic characteristics. I think it's actually a reasonable approach as far as normalization goes. Better than loudness wars anyways.

That being said, most "audiophile" equipment is snake oil for rich music listeners who sadly know way less than they think they do and they are being exploited.

 

[Wildcat445]

Anyone who knows networking and the OSI model knows how Ethernet delivers packets, which makes this audiophile switch dubious at best. Functionally, this switch operates no different from the $20 TP-Link switches we use on our network here. Packets either arrive or they don't. That's how Ethernet works. There is no magical "delivery of bits and bytes" that happens in a $2,500 switch vs. what we use here with standard switches. One complaint audiophiles have about digital audio is jitter, but that's not applicable to Ethernet either.

The only advantage some audiophile networking components have is the isolation of electrical noise (EMI/RFI) that could travel along the wire. Granted, Ethernet cable operates in twisted pair configurations that offer common-mode rejection of noise (and higher categories of cable use tighter twisting to improve the common-mode rejection), so it shouldn't carry too much noise. But there have been a few studies on how noise can enter an audiophile component from an Ethernet interface, and those manufacturers provide means in their components to help minimalize it. (Think of the EMI/RFI traveling along the copper and making its way to the circuit board inside the component, entering the chassis ground--that's the only way I can describe it. It's outside the digital signal, in other words.)

Better yet, some use optical Ethernet adapters (convert the wired Ethernet to a fiber optic connection) just to break that connection. It's also not inexpensive, but I'd see it as a better option.

So my only thought here is the $2,500 switch might clean up some of that noise, but the packets still flow exactly the same way, and are reassembled into a data stream in the receiving component. I'm sure there are other ways of cleaning up EMI/RFI from Ethernet that don't cost anywhere near as much. And again, the better manufacturers minimize it inside the components anyway, so... 🤷‍♂️

 

[steppaZA]

this sounds like that audio cd edge scraper that improves the lazer effectivenes for audio cds