I’ll reply later, @Anupc. I need a proper keyboard not a phone. I agree with/acknowledge/accept a good chunk of your assertions. You misunderstand or misrepresent my views in a couple of areas. Oh, and while I’m sure you broadly understand what you’re talking about, I have to say I find the tone in which you communicate rather patronising and angry in parts. Danger of keyboard comms, perception being reality and all that.
Later…
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Nice post @PaleRider, very balanced.
Will reply properly later when at an actual keyboard rather than on a virtual one, just wanted to acknowledge receipt!
Later.
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I tend to put things plainly as a matter of fact, especially when it comes to all things Ethernet (as I work in the industry). That may put some people off, especially when their strong views are based on audiophile myth and conjecture than fact. 
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And still differences are easy to hear when changing out power supplies on my switch, I would almost invite you to come and listen to my system.
Sighted differences are always easy to “hear”. Time and time again folks who claim “night & day difference” fail embarrassingly blind. 
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An open mind is clearly not one of your virtues
if an “open mind” means blinding believing audiophile myths without factually and measurably validating and testing it out for myself through objective means, then yes. I don’t have an “open mind”. 
Correct you don’t have an open mind
This dispute is about faith against facts (or about snakeoil against the truth).
IMHO faith is for the church and has no place in an area based upon technological facts.
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Maybe we measure wrong things that are irrelevant SQ wise…
I don’t disagree there is that possibility. For example, we (humans) can detect patterns in the noise-floor that measurements are mostly unable to distinguish from random noise - many of the improvement in things like Power cables can be attributed to such within the analog domain, but Ethernet and that part of the digital domain is a whole different ball-game, but audiophiles keep trying to associate traditional analog problem to it.
It also that doesn’t explain why people fail blind test when they apparently hear “huge” difference when sighted ← that’s usually a clear sign of “acoustic imagination” more than actual objective differences
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Replying to your post starting ‘Well Nigel, the reason for "period"…’ (not sure how conversations track).
You say it’s not just some random opinion, it’s measured fact. Is measured fact somehow better than fact? I did remember to tell my wife I loved her 8.5 this morning which I think she was pretty pleased with.
I see that others have entered into the discussion about measurement. I’m most definitely not in the “if it can’t be measured then you’re kidding yourself” camp and don’t worship at the shrine of Amir. But neither do I preach that subjective is king and if you’ve never tried smearing yoghurt on your mid-bass drivers or shaking your cables to align the electrons then you can’t possibly comment. If the only facts that count for you are, well, countable then there is no conversation to be had here.
“So, to suggest that a Media Convert/SFP generates more EMI/RFI than an Audiophile Ethernet switch is, frankly, just the usual ignorant audiophile B.S.” That is a misunderstanding ot a misrepresentation; I neither said nor implied this. I am not ignorant and don’t talk B.S, either usually or unusually.
If you refer back to where we came in, I said that IF one has an audiophile ethernet switch, one will get a bigger bang for one’s buck with this just before the streamer than at the router end. I was referring to ethernet (copper) wired connections, but I would say the same for an optical connection. If you have one and need to decide where to install it, I’d still recommend this position in the topology. I did NOT say or imply that every system should have one.
My own switch makes a clearly audible difference installed before my Bluesound Node 2i into Mutec MC-3+USB into dCS Puccini. That’s an actual fact though not a measurable one.
@PaleRider
Good post, Greg.
I don’t doubt that there are some systems including yours which benefit less or not at all from the installation of a switch. Please put my mind at rest and tell me where you installed the switch ie. was it immediately before your streamer?. A switch installed in the wrong place simply isn’t going to have the opportunity to contribute as much. I don’t doubt what you heard - or rather didn’t hear. Can you share the measurements though, just so we can all be sure? 
Sorry, couldn’t resist!
My own dCS Puccini benefits from the feeder Node 2i having an audiophile switch before it. In fact it surprised me when, thinking that digital is digital, I humoured the switch enthusiasts by installing a cheap consumer switch in the same place and was amazed to heat a difference. I bought a preowned audiophile switch after that.
However I’ve heard several reports which would suggest that Linn kit benefits less than others, perhaps because it’s designed to be as RFI/EMI-proof as you suggest dCS kit might be.
I’m not going to measure what I hear. I don’t need to. I’m not going to conform my actual evidence to your narrower definition of actual evidence. If you weren’t a very big pond away, I’d offer to put the kettle on. You’d quite clearly hear the same difference I hear and then we could try to figure out what the mechanisms are which lie behind that.
All the best,
Nigel
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When changing your switch, did you also change out the power supply ?
Sigh. Nigel, appreciate the thoughtful post. But your unwillingness to actually test what you think you hear during a sighted comparison, with at least a blind or even double-blind test, strikes me as the “narrow” viewpoint here. It doesn’t all have to be measurements. But one should at least be willing to test one’s perceptions if one is going to take up this challenge (as you have), but even if you were next door, I wouldn’t engage in a sighted comparison; those are pointless and prove nothing.
Ralf accused Anup of being closed-minded. But to my mind, the closed-minded are those unwilling to test their sighted impressions with a comparison that at least minimizes the possibility of cognitive bias. If it’s really there to be heard as you claim, even if it cannot be measured, then it is there to be heard in a double-blind test.
As I said earlier, your perceptions belong to you. What your ears and brain hear are yours; as long as you’re happy, that’s great, that’s truly all that matters. But if you’re going to sell the concept of audiophile switches, there should be something more than just what you think you heard. There ought to be some null hypothesis, against which outcomes are tested. Otherwise, designers and manufacturers are also flying blind. How do you improve an EtherREGEN or a Wavera if you don’t know what it’s doing, and you can’t demonstrate it’s doing it, with some evidence? As I said, I’m not asking for definitive proof, just some evidence other than sighted, subjective listening which is known to be subject to human cognitive bias. [That link takes you to the 31:01 mark where he discusses that what changes during a sighted comparison is you.]
This was why I referred to “heavy lifting” in my original reply above, because the distance of a few meters just isn’t going to matter; if moving a switch a few meters up or downstream makes a difference, someone has other problems in their system. But I agree that a very long unshielded Ethernet run can indeed pick up RF/EMI. So, since you asked, here’s how I have tried them out on both my Vivaldi Upsampler and my MSB Select II DAC; I actually did this because one of the owners of Uptone (from whom I have bought several items) reached out to me, and we had a very enjoyable hour-long conversation, so I agreed to go back and listen again like so:
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EtherREGEN (and SOtM, I forget which model I tried) placed below the rack (MSB) or two compartments over (dCS), and connected to the respective device by a 1m Ethernet cable (unshielded per dCS recommendation). Each switch was connected to the rest of my busy home network with multiple Cisco switches via fiber. In the case of the MSB, the fiber run is a 20m cable; in the case of the Upsampler, it is a 10m cable. Both are longer than necessary.
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I also tried listening with the respective devices and switches connected to the rest of the network via Ethernet 6 cable, to see if that cable induced some noise that the switch helped to remove. (This was the test that convinced I either don’t have a noise problem, or both dCS and MSB use components that effectively reject it.)
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And just to be clear, I listened also with my gear connected directly to the rest of the network over Cat 6 unshielded cables of approx 6m in length. Again, no difference.
DISCLAIMER: these were all sighted comparisons, with one exception. I finally asked my wife to help me out with a blind test. What’s cool is that, if you can swap Ethernet cables quickly enough, you can have an uninterrupted flow of music, though that’s not always reliable. You’ll still likely hear the clicking of the cable, unless it is done in the next room with the doors closed. Which is what we did. For this, used the MSB, which was easier to configure. I pulled it out of the headphone rack, so my wife could easily access the Network Renderer port, and set her up with two cables: one coming directly from the main switch (approx 6m) and one coming from the EtherREGEN (1m). I set up my Stax 009s with the long cord, put a chair in the hallway with my back to the headphone room and closed the doors. We decided to play some nice DAD256 on the MSB of piano music ther I know reasonably well. I asked her to start swapping the cables after about 90 seconds, and thereafter every 30 seconds. I let her decide which one to start with. We did this long enough where later than night I took her out to a nice dinner at one of our few open restaurants. 
Again, I could discern no difference, which is the way network playback is supposed to work. EDIT: Ooops, almost forgot the best part of the story. I was supposed to raise my hand when I heard the changes in cable. After listening for a while, I shouted out to my wife “you can start switching now.” She replied “I’ve already switched it five times.” She was unimpressed.
SECOND DISCLAIMER: for the sake of hygiene, I keep GigaFoil 4 optical isolators in front of my Roon Nucleus+, and the MSB, and Upsampler. Each is powered by a Keces P8 LPS. These were removed during the testing described above. I keep them in my system “to make sure,” but I have yet to hear a difference.
- During this process, I also tried some other methods to improve SQ (year 1 of pandemic, so I had time). At the time, all my switches were L3 with full management capability. So I tinkered with VLANs for audio, video streaming, and security to disentangle some of the traffic from each other. I also tuned QoS. These were mentally engaging exercises, but they had no effect on audio quality.
[SIDENOTE: I think it was @Phil who mentioned in a different thread that a lot of his network headaches—and his customers’—would go away if people would just use simple, unmanaged switches. I decided to do an experiment just to see. I replaced every switch in my home with an unmanaged switch this past week; I now have marginally better—and it is truly marginal—throughput everywhere. Eye-opening.]
From my point of view, @Anupc is probably correct that this entire realm is an example of audiophiles, and the people trying to get to their cash, convincing each other that analog principles smoothly transit to the digital domain. But the evidence of that is almost non-existent. If there was at least something we could see where a switch changed, somehow, somewhere, etc., we might be able to say that this is what the human ear-brain is picking up on. I get that there will always be improvements in measurements in the future, but that doesn’t mean we should accept anything on faith just because “measurements don’t tell us everything.” Indeed, they don’t, but refusing to allow for the possibility of human cognitive bias tells me a lot. What you hear works for you, just as what I hear works for me, but your report of a sighted comparison is not evidence that something is actually happening. You can call that a narrow view of “evidence,” if you like. But it’s neither narrow nor closed-minded.
P.S. My experiment with Black Cat clock cables was similar, but not as rigorous. I decided to try them in my own system, plunked down the almost $9k to do so (with a slightly discounted return right), and spent weeks evaluating them. Although friends here whose musical ears I respect loved them, I could discern no difference in SQ between them and my Van Damme, BJC, or Apogee cables. It was worth the $500 to find out, because I’ve invested heavily in clocking my Vivaldi system. Im not closed-minded about these things. I am however skeptical.
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Sigh, back at you!
We disagree and always will. I’ve done blind tests with various switches and got some surprising results so I know how to do them. Does a vynilista do a blind test every time they change their cartridge? No, of course not, and there are multiple other examples. Does this invalidate their findings? Does it mean everything they perceive is down to cognitive bias? And therefore can be dismissed with a “your money, whatever males you happy” response as if humouring a child? Poor thing, confusing the subjective experience with (measured, natch) reality.
I’m not unwilling to do blind tests, it is simply that on the whole they are of no interest.
Installation where you did is spot on, thanks for confirming. Your experience suggests a remarkable resistance to RFI/EMI in your devices (or a hearing problem, but I think we can discount that). I would expect this “no audible difference” to be the case with an optical connection (1) but not with 6m of ethernet cable (2) and (3).
My original point remains: if someone has an audiophile switch, the place to install it is just before the streamer like you did. This is not the same as suggesting everyone should use an audiophile switch (or any switch at all for SQ purposes).
Wife assistance stories are always good value!
Re footnote: I wouldn’t expect any difference amongst managed and unmanaged switches and their settings. All those impact the digital domain and the sonic impact of a switch is not in the same domain. All the audiophile switches I know are unmanaged switches.
Hope you had a great St Patrick’s Day.
Best wishes,
Nigel
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@imprezap2 Was this question asked of me?
If so, then I’ve messed around with different switches and different power supplies. I have to say that the biggest difference in my system was not amongst audiophile or even non-audiophile switches, it was any-old-switch vs no-switch-at-all. Installed just before the streamer.
For me the biggest difference came with trying different power supplies on my Melco S100.
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Thanks again for the thoughtful reply. Yep, we’re not going to reach agreement or convince each other here, and that’s okay.
I’m not quite sure what this demonstrates. Many of us buy/replace new equipment without making blind tests. Sometimes, we buy stuff without hearing it at all. (Guilty as charged.) When I buy digital recordings, I try to buy them in their original recordings format. When I am unsure of that, I will often buy the maximum resolution along with another resolution to compare. But that gets old fast. I enjoy the tweakery side of this hobby up to a point. While he said it in a completely different context, Teddy Roosevelt once said that “comparison is the thief of joy.” That speaks to me in this hobby; I’m still in it first and foremost for the music.
Anyway, so the fact we don’t always do blind tests doesn’t mean anything to me. There are many things in life we don’t test before enjoying. But, when someone asserts that “thing X produces Y result when used Z way,“ I don’t think it’s unfair to say “hey, let’s find out if that’s actually correct.”
YMMV.
You missed my point in recounting that story, but that’s okay.
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Who has asserted this?
Of course. But your “actually correct” is more narrowly defined than, say, the weight of evidence in a court of law. Which is a pretty demanding, er, demand.