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Audiophile Network Switches for Streaming ... really ?

booja30 said:
If this was the case, then as I asked earlier, how have none of the high end streamer companies not addressed this by sticking a (redundant) switch inside their products? With such expensive options out there, and with diminishing returns, surely if this was a worthy improvement it would be there. Or else you've stumbled onto something and you need to hire a patent lawyer ASAP!
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Why “(redundant)”?
 
tricky1 said:
Not quite true. TCP/IP packets can and do get corrupted, just unlikely in this scenario. But the protocol takes care of this with retransmissions. Also, I would have thought the buffer you are referring to does not buffer packets but actual data. BTW, I am in the camp that switches cannot make any difference.
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Why “cannot”?
 
sq225917 said:
Flash, maybe adding a switch does reduce noise coming in with the data, but the evidence doesn't back this up.
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Grateful if you could point to this evidence with links and stuff. It would be hugely helpful if I could see details of the experiment which produced such evidence. You won’t be surprised that I can think of all sorts of ways in which an experiment could be almost guaranteed to show no difference at all if that’s what the “enquirer” wanted, but if it is a genuinely agnostic scenario then I might try to replicate it in my system. Thanks
 
sq225917 said:
It's amazing that I've managed to put together an entire digital front end including pc, file storage and dac for less than 2k that is utterly untroubled by noise, yet others struggle to do the same with 16 grands worth of stuff.
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That’s an interesting assertion! How would you know? Serious Q. I didn’t think my switchless system was troubled at all…
 
PS. As you can tell, I am typically working during the day hence batches of posts by the same guy… apologies if I miss something by not reading all new posts/pages before responding to any particular post.
 
sq225917 said:
The teacup analogy is good one. It's widely reported that many people prefer the taste of tea from a nice Bone China cup. Now, as we all know, it doesn't change the composition of the tea one iota, but still people express a preference.

Much like audiophile routers and 25k music servers. They make no difference, yet some people still prefer them.
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This is a great analogy! I am one of those people: tea drunk from a mug doesn’t taste the same as exactly the same tea drunk from a thick mug. Wine tastes different in different glasses. This is why we need to ensure, if we’re going to rely on measurements as a predictor of and substitute for experience, we measure the right things. Try telling all oenophiles and all tea-lovers all around the world that any difference caused by the container is because they’re kidding themselves…
Cheers!
 
TheFlash said:
This is a great analogy! I am one of those people: tea drunk from a mug doesn’t taste the same as exactly the same tea drunk from a thick mug. Wine tastes different in different glasses. This is why we need to ensure, if we’re going to rely on measurements as a predictor of and substitute for experience, we measure the right things. Try telling all oenophiles and all tea-lovers all around the world that any difference caused by the container is because they’re kidding themselves…
Cheers!
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I'd certainly agree that tea is nicer out of a fancy tea-cup, wine is better in a good glass rather than a paper cup, since these affect the whole tactile subjective experience, as well as very likely some complex food chemistry and temperature effects. The appearance of food makes a huge difference to how appealing it is, but is presumably very much tied into expectation bias about the skill with which the food was prepared & how it will taste, as does the whole restaurant ambience.

Not the same as the effect of a switch though, where (presumably you would agree) any subjective differences should still apply whether in plain sight or hidden away, and is not directly part of the "user enjoyment experience".
 
I never tire of posting this graph from Archimago on this thread ... and still they keep coming for more :D

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2016/11/measurements-on-value-for-ethernet.html#more

... tiny noise bump in the inaudible range with ethernet in place ....

Noise%2BCompare%2B-%2BNo%2BEthernet%2B-%2B60Hz%2Bcircled.png


Measured in the ANALOGUE domain !!!

Archimago himself:
"Remember furthermore that I'm looking at the analogue output from an audio daughterboard inside the machine itself within close range of the ethernet chipset! Just how much effect does anyone think there would be if I had an external USB DAC connected to the Raspberry Pi? (Rhetorical question...)"

(emphasis added for the hard of hearing .....)
 
gustavm said:
I'd certainly agree that tea is nicer out of a fancy tea-cup, wine is better in a good glass rather than a paper cup, since these affect the whole tactile subjective experience, as well as very likely some complex food chemistry and temperature effects. The appearance of food makes a huge difference to how appealing it is, but is presumably very much tied into expectation bias about the skill with which the food was prepared & how it will taste, as does the whole restaurant ambience.

Not the same as the effect of a switch though, where (presumably you would agree) any subjective differences should still apply whether in plain sight or hidden away, and is not directly part of the "user enjoyment experience".
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Agreed. My point was merely about the dangers of suggesting/assuming that a chosen set of measurements can tell you whether there is a difference or not. If we choose to measure only the composition of the tea, we must conclude that tea tastes the same regardless of receptacle. Your and my experience is that it does not.
This is why I’m being so persistent in pursuing the actual experiment and actual evidence to which @sq225917 refers. If, for example, only the digital domain was being compared then it should prove there is no audible difference as in that domain there won’t be. If it’s measuring in the analogue domain, there may be - or there may not be. But this is all supposition and guesswork without reference to the actual experiment and the actual data.
 
I've heard arguments that it's not possible to measure "musicality" which explains that added gadgets and stuff doesn't make any measured difference, but add "musicality", which only the chosen are able to hear.
 
miktec said:
I never tire of posting this graph from Archimago on this thread ... and still they keep coming for more :D

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2016/11/measurements-on-value-for-ethernet.html#more

... tiny noise bump in the inaudible range with ethernet in place ....

Noise%2BCompare%2B-%2BNo%2BEthernet%2B-%2B60Hz%2Bcircled.png


Measured in the ANALOGUE domain !!!

Archimago himself:
"Remember furthermore that I'm looking at the analogue output from an audio daughterboard inside the machine itself within close range of the ethernet chipset! Just how much effect does anyone think there would be if I had an external USB DAC connected to the Raspberry Pi? (Rhetorical question...)"

(emphasis added for the hard of hearing .....)
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That, that and that some more...

"Rainbow chasers over there please! Come on shuffle along. Yes Sir, the sky is any colour you want it to be! All the rest over by the bus stop please. The bus back to reality leaves in two minutes."
 
miktec said:
I never tire of posting this graph from Archimago on this thread ... and still they keep coming for more :D

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2016/11/measurements-on-value-for-ethernet.html#more

... tiny noise bump in the inaudible range with ethernet in place ....


Measured in the ANALOGUE domain !!!

Archimago himself:
"Remember furthermore that I'm looking at the analogue output from an audio daughterboard inside the machine itself within close range of the ethernet chipset! Just how much effect does anyone think there would be if I had an external USB DAC connected to the Raspberry Pi? (Rhetorical question...)"

(emphasis added for the hard of hearing .....)
Click to expand...

Don't get too excited about that graph.

Each of us on the other side of the fence to you might have different versions of what we think is happening but from my point of view that graph is not at all relevant to the mechanism I that I think is the cause of the audible differences. My version of possible events is that high frequency noise from the ethernet, possibly even in GHz territory, is causing IM distortion in the analogue stage of the DAC. That graph stops at about 100KHz as far as I can see but the noise is rising steeply from about 50 KHz onwards so who knows what level it reaches further up the frequency scale. I suggest looking up to say 5GHz. RF noise becomes harder to stop because of the ways that it can jump around filters etc put in its path.

Now I do have a spectrum analyzer which I think tops out at about 3GHz but I think a better test than looking for the noise would be to look at the analogue output from the DAC (as others have suggested) and to look for IM distortion with and without the ethernet connected. However this is likely to require some sensitive kit from Audio Precision or the like because even very small levels of IMD can be audible and I do not have access to such measuring devices.

So no, I do not think that graph is as important as you think it is.
 
Zombie said:
I've heard arguments that it's not possible to measure "musicality" which explains that added gadgets and stuff doesn't make any measured difference, but add "musicality", which only the chosen are able to hear.
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You’ve either got it in your soul, or you haven’t!
 
tuga said:
What about phase inversion? Can humans hear it, or only a handful of inhuman audiophiles?
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It's divine intervention. Must be faith. Maybe a space telescope can register the unicorn fart particles that only the believers can hear.
 
Zombie said:
It's divine intervention. Must be faith. Maybe a space telescope can register the unicorn fart particles that only the believers can hear.
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I used to think that might be the case, but now I am more inclined to think that stubborn objectivists are either bad listeners or try hard not to hear anything that they believe might not be audible...or both.
Subjectivists reject blind testing, objectivists refuse to listen.
The world is in balance.
 
I just give examples that refute previous speculations. I have listened, I have put gadgets in. I have written here about the good feeling of using the expectation bias for a couple of days enjoyment. It's fun. Then I make an A-B and the difference is zero.
Does that make me an "objectivist" or a "subjectivist". Neither, I'm just a socialist and atheist.
 
C'mon Fourlegs surely a man with your depth of expertise in tackling signal cable borne rf propagation can throw a few ferrites in a box and sort this out.


Strange you should say you never had noise issues in your setup, isn't that exactly what your Wave cables are meant to deal with? Or are they for fixing the noise you never had?
 
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