Very well said. Just to stay in the middle, a Rossini DAC + clock is around 30K, so presumably we are talking about 50K - 100K total in hardware for an average Joe here.
Then you look at the modem/router/access point supplied by your Internet provider and think: “What am I doing with this piece of junk? What if this is a source of noise?” Then you see that you can raise the bar with 2K and go ahead. I find it perfectly logical and I have done the same in the past, paying >1K euros for some feet under my rack and >8K for my speaker cables.
I am not saying that you cannot have any benefit, I am just saying that “night and day” is maybe a tad exaggerated, and that, in absence of a clear technical explanation, the clock has no part in improving SQ in data packet transmission over Ethernet.
The fact that this view is supported by the technical guys at dCS makes me think that I cannot be very far from the truth.
I just want to share my experience.
I built a completely new system in March this year and slowly worked to improve it, step by step.
My dCS product is the Bartok.
Among those improvements, I got to experience with the data chain.
In my experience, every step taken to improve it has paid dividends.
First, I connected the Bartok straight to the router using a generic cat 5 cable.
It didn’t sound good at all.
Then I changed the smps of the router for a decent LPSU, big difference.
Then changed the ethernet cable for a Supra cat 8, again, better.
Then placed a regular switch between the router and the Bartok, better.
Then purchased the silent angel switch with an ifi x smps, better.
Then I upgraded the switch with the ediscreation switch, a nice PC, more refinement, better.
Then I got to play with Ethernet cables.
As per dCS recommendations, I ordered the actual certified cat 6 cables they recommended and got to compare with a 750 euros audiophile cable I won’t name and then tested and certified cat 8 from a german company that were recommended to me by an IT friend.
The audiophile cable didn’t bring anything special and I found the cat 8 cables to be better than the cat 6 ones.
I know dCS recommends to use ungrounded cables but my switch has a neat function where you can flip a switch to ground or unground the port. My preference is to unground the cable coming from the router and ground the other connections.
In my case the cat 8 sounded better. They’re really good for the price.
And it’s not psychoacoustics, it’s not subtle differences.
All this to say that data is no different than the rest, there is noise, there is pollution and you still have to use the basics, ie a proper and quiet power supply and decent cables.
For those not convinced, try to disable the wifi on your router and change the smps by an aftermarket one and already you will already gain a lot.
I have the English Electric (Chord Cable) switch.
They rehouse an existing brand.
I bought it on a whim as it is not that expensive.
It makes a difference. It’s instantly noticeable even to people who aren’t interested in HiFi.
The way I have set it up, I can easily pull the cable out and do sporadic tests - just to see.
It’s really annoying, because I know it shouldn’t make a difference and … it just does.
I recommend everyone gets one, just to try. If it works, it’ a cheap upgrade - if not, return it.
Hello Rohan @RL435 I presently use the same switch and got comparable results. Adding an audiophile power supply - the Ferrum Hypsos - to the switch was another recognisable step in the right direction.
These are FIVE levels of improvement. And you distinctly heard each step as an improvement. Not saying that you didn’t, but you must have exceptional ears. And of course all sorts of unconscious biases have been eliminated (such as confirmation/ expectation bias, priming, …) (?)
Is that actually possible? Can one control one’s unconscious mind? There is an irresolvable nature v. nurture debate here. Of course such things also work in either direction. If @RL435 had heard no improvements at all could not that equally be due to confirmation bias etc.?
When testing a modification on the system there are two possibilities.
Either it’s very obvious or it’s subtle / doing nothing.
If I can’t pick the difference myself, I ask my gf to listen because she has better hearing than me.
She doesn’t understand what I’m trying at the moment, and I A/B.
Alternatively, I can leave the modification in place for a few days and unplug it and see.
But at the end of the day, it should be binary, 0 or 1.
Can you hear an immediate and positive difference or do you have to think about it.
If you have to think about it or concentrate hard, then discard it.
I don’t have exceptional hearing unless that was sarcasm, all those difference were very obvious.
I describe myself as skeptic with an open mind.
Unlike a lot of people who talk about things they didn’t try or don’t understand, usually both, I actually purchased things to try in my own system before having an opinion.
These people are not ready to put money where their mouth is, yet bash people who actually tried things in their system, had a positive experience and try to share with others so they can benefit as well.
Go figure.
I also purchased the ENO AG filter that everyone raves about and it did modify the sound but not in a positive way for me. I sent it back.
I bought and tried an expensive ethernet cable, didn’t do anything for me, I sent it back too.
If anyone wants to try, I can sell the silent angel switch with the ifi power x since I’ve upgraded since, just DM me.
I agree with you on the fact that noise entering via an Ethernet cable can ruin the sound and be audible. I had a certain proof of this in the past three days, and I will share the experience in another post.
What I do not agree about is when you say “Unlike a lot of people who talk about things they didn’t try or don’t understand, usually both, I actually purchased things to try in my own system before having an opinion.”
I hope you realize that among those who “talk” here there are the guys who actually design and build the dCS boxes you and I are happily listening to. I am confident that they understand how things work and they try cables, switches, and stuff. Also, many of the Forum members are quite accomplished high rank professionals, some of them with robust background in Electronic Engineering, Signal Transmission, Digital Systems, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, you name them. So what is usually true somewhere else, where 20 years old college students talk about things they have never studied, doesn’t apply here.
Also, “These people are not ready to put money where their mouth is”, which is totally true somewhere else, where people laugh at 30000$ DACs because they can’t afford them, doesn’t apply here, where some spent many hundred thousand bucks for their hardware/listening rooms, and are still totally able to put substantial amounts of money on the table to fulfill their wishes.
Go figure.
Enjoy your music as you like it, you are the only judge there.
The dCS engineers only have control on their machine and do their best via sound engineering (no pun intended) to negate any effects of the surroundings / signal interferences / quality. Just because their machines are well engineered, doesn’t mean they’re totally immune to various sorts of pollutions or can fix the signal.
They are less sensitive than others but not immune.
It’s a vastly accepted fact now that improvements done on the data chain are providing dividends.
The fact they are choosing not to discuss anything else outside their products is understandable.
And for the second point, it’s not a matter of money but a matter of principle / ideology.
Some people are happy to spend lots on a dac or a new component but have an ideological blocage to spend in a fuse or and ethernet cable or something they think shouldn’t cost so much.
Anybody can spend 500$ in a fuse for exemple but how many are mentally ready to do it?
I for one am not happy to advance the money to experiment tweaks / improvements where I have already purchased expensive components but that’s how it is.
“Due to deterioration of signal integrity, Ethernet cables longer than about 2 meters activate extra DSP circuits in the PHY/ receiver chips of the equipment they are connecting. This is not desirable as such circuits increase ground-plane noise. So it is best to keep short the cable from the final switch to whatever is your DAC-attached computer/streamer/renderer endpoint (or Etherne-input-equipped DAC).[This is what we advise EtherREGEN owners and it is based on knowledge that my partner John Swenson has—since he literally designed Ethernet PHY chips during his 31 years as a senior engineer at LSI Logic>Avago>Broadcom.]”
This is a comment on another forum from EtherRegen engineer. Might explain a part of what you’re hearing.
To be honest, it is not true that dCS engineers choose not to discuss anything else outside their products: in fact, they say “Audiophile Ethernet switches are a solution looking for a problem.” And they quite explicitly say that you should use a fully certified, cat 5 or cat 6, unshielded cable.
I totally agree about noise pollution: today I had a tangible proof of the difference between a shielded cat7 cable and an unshielded cat6 certified cable.
What I can’t agree with is people claiming that Ethernet data packet quality is improved thanks to some fancy switch or clock. That is not how Ethernet works.
That’s my point. It’s extremely difficult to eliminate bias; all we have is the scientific method, such as double blind testing and a sure grasp of what is actually possible within a particular domain.
When someone makes claims that are highly controversial (and that means shared by a tiny minority) and presents these claims as somehow objective – I take out my Occam’s razor and muse: what is more likely – that one person has detected something that nobody else has, or that we have a case of (self-induced) illusion here?
No disrespect intended. But if you think I was being sarcastic, have a peek on the Roon forum re ethernet switches and cables. Some wild and witty sarcasm there.
And I mean it when I say that you have exceptional hearing: in a synergistic system, such as hifi gear, to make a small modification and hear an “immediate and positive effect”, now that IS exceptional!
This should worry people over at dCS, because it means that their products are badly designed – can’t even deal with puny electrical noise.
I can only comment on my experience and I can’t speculate as to why they would deny the benefit of a switch.
I did follow their recommendations though and purchased the cat 6 cable they recommended but I found another certified and tested cat 8 cable to be better.
How’s your experience with the cables?
As I said before, I do not have exceptional hearing, some differences are very audible.
I do have a relatively transparent system though and the flipside is that I can pick up unwanted noise more easily, and my system is relatively new so it’s still maturing and improving. It’s trial and errors.
I just want to share an anecdote. A couple of weeks ago, my brother in law came to spend a few days.
He had issues with internet, so I activated the wifi on the ISP provider router.
I couldn’t listen to the music anymore, initially I didn’t put two and two together.
When he left I turned it off and the sound came back to normal. It was very aggressive with the wifi on. Like rough around the egdes.
Would you call this a dCS product flaw?
it’s not always black or white imho.
I’m sorry, but that’s just nonsense (the UpTone folks get away with talking nonsense because most lay people just don’t know how Ethernet actually works).
The Ethernet PHY layer operates the same way regardless of how long the Ethernet cable is. Naturally the longer the cable, the greater the signal degradation for decoding, but even a typical CAT5 cable used with a Gigabit Ethernet interface can operate normally at 100 meters.
Once an Ethernet signal (over copper CAT cable) is decoded at the PHY layer and data bits passed onto the Ethernet Switch processor (over the MAC/MII interface), the physical layer problems, i.e. length, noise etc. is completely irrelevant. Everything is handled digitally up the networking protocol stack from thereon.
I highly recommend you spend maybe just 30mins or so to educate yourself on exactly how the Ethernet PHY layer works. Here are two good relatively new videos from Texas Instruments - watch all of the first, and maybe just the first 10 mins of the second.
Full disclosure, I work for an Ethernet Switch manufacturer.
‘Controversial’ and ‘tiny minority’ have no relationship to each other. Consider the examples of the last US president or the issue of abortion.
Personal experience is weaker than samples in empirical research. The individual reports here are still valuable for those who look for patterns. You use the word ‘objective’. I would at least call into question the usefulness of the concept of scientific objectivity for going about our audiophile hobby. Scientific objectivity seeks to eliminate biases, emotions and false beliefs for testability and reproducibility. Biases - I don’t care, it’s my free time and if I’m enjoying myself, where’s the issue. We are talking about music listening and that’s an emotional affair. Eliminating emotion doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. False beliefs - yes, as it would help in choosing better gear. Instead of objectivity I suggest using the methods of dealing with complex systems as the human body and mind are complex.
Occam’s razor refers to parsimony in scientific problem solving. Maybe you can explain how that relates to the issue at hand?
We arrive at this point regularly in our community. It feels repetitive. It really helps when we recognize the vast diversity of dispositions we all have. Just look at a beggar versus a king. Their lives are completely different and presented with the same information they would surely decide differently. Or look at an accomplished composer. His perception of music must be very different from mine. I’m actually incapable of creating music. Or look at the portraits of rock and pop musicians Annie Leibovitz shot for the Rolling Stone. I would never be able to create those. These are just analogies for how each one of us perceives music or sound in a different fashion. You might be interested in the books ‘Musicophilia’ by Oliver Sacks (where he describes ‘amusia’) and ‘This Is Your Brain On Music’ by neuroscientist Daniel Levitin.
Sometimes the dCS employees really hold back their feelings:
I’ve had that tab open on my phone for months now. Every time I see it I giggle.
I tried a mix of network things (cables and devices), and the only things that I’ve kept around are BlueJeans Cat6 cable, a GigaFoil and a Cisco CBS110-8T-D switch. The last two are both powered by a Keces P8.
Everything else I returned or sold. It was fun to try stuff out, but even more fun to have some more spending money after the tests were over
