I do not know why you are hearing what you are hearing as piano sounds to me as if it were… a piano! It is so physical that on the right recording there is
such a convincing audio hologram that I feel that could walk up and touch it.
As I said earlier I would not make a comment about adding a better PS until you had tried. I am not in disagreement with you. If I use a metaphor of the sound via the S100 measuring 1m, then adding the SBooster makes it measure 1.01m. I have not noticed a huge improvement over the stock switching PS but have left the Sbooster in place as 1. I own it and 2. It has no negative effects. NB: I am assuming that the borrowed SBooster was the correct electrical specification, they make so many different ones?
Or, equally, the opposite
So the S100 is not for you. That is, of course, fine as if we were all the same we would all run identical systems and listen to the same music.
I guess i just dont like whatever this switch is doing, as its certainly doing something to it all.
As for the sbooster it was a melco one, as my mate got it for his D100 and N100, that he now uses it on, in his 2nd system
its quite intriguing that an addition of an audio specific switch plus a power supply can be mapped to a specific and noticeable change (good or bad ) and narrowed down to a piano note.
If different gear can impact the sound of a stereo, then piano notes are included, I guess…sound improvement excluding piano notes would seem strange to me…Does a switch, a cable, a clock, an up sampler, a streamer, a dac etc…can improve the sound ? That is why there are audio forums, for sharing different experiments…
For me its all affected, and in a bad way. As i said in a previous post, the dynamics have altered, its all sounds a bit off, more dull if you like. But its the piano notes that really stands out as being quite different to no switch.
Haven’t a clue why, or what this switch is doing, yes it has made a few improvements, and it was these that first hit me, and i did think, thats nice, as tracks are easier to follow, instruments do sound like they have more space around them, and so it sound more open.
But the more i listened to my favourite tracks, i started to notice things, so removed the S100 and N10 from the rack, so i could easily and quickly swap over the ethernet cables, in doing this it soon became apparent.
The S100 was brand new, i had even left it on a few days before i used it, as i was still getting acquainted with the new N10, its now been on 24/7 for over 250 hours, so i would hope that it was burnt in, but in that time it hasn’t changed anyway, and the sbooster i tried, is well run in.
So thats my time explained in more detail, with the S100, not going to try it anymore in the system, and right now i am not using any switch at all, have been using he Cisco, but now straight from the router to the N10, using catsnake 6a floating, then AQ diamond from the N10 to rossini.
Just spent a couple of hours comparing an English Electric switch and expensive cable to cheapest plastic switch and cable I have. I could detect no difference in sound quality connected to a dCS Network Bridge.
So just looked for positive reviews and only found the usual suspects suspect positivish reviews. Stereophile do not seem to recommend expensive switches. I can find no reliable positive reviews.
Given that in other threads you are asking for help as you cannot get your new Vivaldi /Network bridge to work correctly isn’t your view of the performance of the EE network switch premature? Judge it again when you have a stable system.
You may turn out to be correct in the end but at the moment and until everything is running as it should be I shall be awaiting a subsequent opinion from you .
Thanks. Yes I was maybe overstating by saying “save your money”. Different people/systems/environments may hear a benefit. I will try it again now that system seems to be working correctly now.
Any thoughts on this video review of audiophile switches?:
Yes, I agree with it all! Which is why ( i think earlier in this thread) I said that although I know the fancy switch cannot make a difference as far as I am concerned the Melco S100 does. Actually it’s now about time I removed it from my system to check if its absence makes a difference.
Actually if one pursues the logic of the video ( and I cannot think of a reason why not) then we have been fortunate to have been listening to high end electronics for the past few decades where all of the aspects that are commonly measured have variations which either lie below the limit of human hearing or are are unlikely to produce any material negative electrical outcome. So everything must sound the same unless one is dealing with, what is now a rarity, a really poorly designed component.
Yet we have a paradox. Most modern competently designed equipment has effectively a blame free technical performance nevertheless we claim to hear differences.
So , is it all some kind of mass or self hypnosis or is the standard model of objective measurement of audio equipment somehow missing something? I do not know but I am aware that I deliberately use at least one component where I know that its measured performance is in all respects inferior to a another of the same purpose but which, by subjective comparison, I prefer to leave on the shelf. Humans , eh? Can’t be trusted
Tested the switch again and still no difference to me. I think I’ll return it for the moment and maybe revisit in a few months.
The whole measurement thing is interesting. Amir does say he thinks speaker measurements account for 80-90% of sound quality whereas for electronics he believes measurement can account for 100% of the sound quality. I seem to remember DCS also saying that all their development work is measurement based followed by listening. And they claim their custom measurement equipment is better than any available elsewhere.
Self delusion is of course a huge part of Audiophilia. I really liked Amir’s explanation of why we like new a component more than an old one even though they may sound identical: when you listen to the new piece you are concentrating much harder on the music so of course you hear more detail, more colour, expanded soundstage, more emotional involvement, air and space. You then go back to the boring old item and don’t really bother concentrating so it seems lifeless.
Missed that it had been posted already, I was reading the forum new posts on my phone, sorry. I work in IT but do keep an open mind about all things to do with my Hi Fi, I have access to anything network wise I want to use/try at home, no switch or cable has made any difference to my streaming setups’ sound quality.
I can see the attraction of these types of housings aesthetically but cannot see where the £2.5K plus has gone and believe they are cashing in on audiophiles wanting to wring every last possible improvement. Streamers buffer so any benefit seems to be technically improbable, impossible really.
Some of the earliest types of these devices the were just bodged 8 port Netgear and TP-Link switches full of silicon potting compound to obfuscate their origins. Innuos and Melco do appear to have designed/implemented these devices from scratch but still obscure any chip IDs from the pics I’ve seen, I expect someone will do a teardown video and we’ll see what the Silicon part IDs actually are.
Unfortunately neither of them do either Angus - the Melco S100 uses an identical motherboard to the Buffalo BS-GS2016 Switch, which literally cost one-tenth the price. Likewise, Innuos uses stock standard Supermicro motherboards with a few components removed.
With the exception of EtherRegen - which is a “solution looking for a problem” - ALL of the other “Audiophile Ethernet switches” - Silent Angel Bonn N8, the English Electric 8Switch etc., have commodity counterparts that provide the exact same functionality with no (humanly) measurable difference, for a tiny fraction of the price
Buffalo being a subsidiary or Melco nicking their internals makes sense, wasn’t aware of the Innuous/Supermicro link. Am new on here and by questioning such things effectiveness wasn’t sure what the consensus/temperature would be. You don’t know what you don’t know so I’m open minded to all things which may improve my system, having tried various switches and cables I have not heard any changes for better or worse, the fact that the data stream is buffered in the player, as evidenced by pulling the network cable and music carries on playing for quite some time is proof enough that such devices scrubbing “noise” are pointless. The one area I believe can be improved is the power supply feeding these small switches, replacing the wall wart/laptop style ones with a low noise ones or putting them on a separate mans supply.
True, but is it audible? If the streamer is well designed it should filter all audible noise out of the ethernet input. As a well designed dac should filter all audible noise out of it’s inputs, including power.
I was referring to noisy power supplies injecting noise onto the mains in general, which can possibly affect any hi fi device - much like DC Offset or a Fridge causing clicks/pops. Whether that is audibly degrading things or just annoying is an unknown
I suppose that I could add some comments to the most recent posts but I am withdrawing from this topic.
I can see that we are into another " wires sound different " No they don’t" type of dialogue. That one started in the audiophile community in 1975 or thereabouts after the French audio writer Jean Hiraga had an article published in a French magazine proposing that they do. It is now 46 odd years later and still the argument persists in most media focussed on audio matters. Lots of heat expended, virtually no light.
If you feel you need to spend out on switches and then better power supplies, then go for it, is what i say.
For me i tried one, it didn’t work, so happy days, i saved £2100 plus more, as i guess a better power supply would have been next for it, plus an extra nice cable to run between it and the gear.
But for me adding more stuff and putting signals through more gear can make things worse, most times the simply way is best, also the more the plugged into the mains, the more noise this adds to it all, and everything makes a noise or injects out noise, etc.
I might be inclined to differentiate between analogue and digital signals here. I think analogue cables can and do act like tone controls, sometimes subtly, sometimes quite egregiously. And there are electrical measurements to lend credence to this viewpoint. I think there is light to be found in that realm. My own experience on the digital side is less persuasive. I am open to the possibility but have yet to hear an engineering explanation, other than parasitic noise, that might explain what some people claim to hear. And I am willing to believe they do hear it. But since I don’t hear it on the digital side, while hearing it quite distinctly on the analogue side—while also hearing improvements on the digital side from non-cable improvements like clocking, for example—I remain far more skeptical in that realm.
