I found an older post on this forum where DCS posted to not use a managed switch. They said “managed switch… tend to break the network protocols that media devices use for discovery and data transfer.” I recently added a DCS Vivaldi (DAC, Clock, Upsampler) to my audio system. I have a network with a Ubiquiti managed switch which I need for a variety of reasons. My DCS works fine, I can stream from Tidal, works with ROON, etc. so the DCS comment about “discovery” is not a problem. But I am wondering about their comment about “data transfer.” If the managed switch is a problem is it a go/no-go problem - it either works or does not? Or could the managed switch slow down packet delivery such that packet retries are required which could influence audio quality?
I run a managed UniFi network at home and have no issues with their switches.
I run a Meraki managed network and also have had no issues with streaming to any device. I used to have a Cisco network (Cisco now owns Meraki too) and it did by default certain protocols where a discovery packet gets broadcast to all the devices on a network. In a corporate network, this can cause problems but not in a residential network. Anyway, it was a simple config change to enable the protocol once I discovered the issue. But I have not experienced anything similar with Meraki.
Just to continue the intent of this thread, I use a Waversa Hub 3.0 which is a managed audiophile switch and I use D-Link managed switch to offload duties from my wifi router. All is working correctly with my dCS Bartók. I now have an extremely stable network with no drop offs when using Roon.