Thanks Angus but do you have a comment to make on this? The You Tube video has already been posted in this thread yesterday by @GAS_sufferer.
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 setupsā sound quality.
I can see the attraction of these types of housings aesthetically but cannot see where the Ā£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 Iāve seen, I expect someone will do a teardown video and weāll 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 āsolution looking for a problemā - ALL of the other āAudiophile Ethernet switchesā - 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 
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Buffalo being a subsidiary or Melco nicking their internals makes sense, wasnāt aware of the Innuous/Supermicro link. Am new on here and by questioning such things effectiveness wasnāt sure what the consensus/temperature would be. You donāt know what you donāt know so Iām 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 ānoiseā 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 itās 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 donāt" 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 didnāt work, so happy days, i saved Ā£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 donāt hear it on the digital side, while hearing it quite distinctly on the analogue sideāwhile also hearing improvements on the digital side from non-cable improvements like clocking, for exampleāI remain far more skeptical in that realm.
I wonder if they should be sold by age of listener?: As we age we lose high frequencies so cables with greater and greater high frequency boost could be marketed to ageing audiophiles? Any recommendation for upper middle age?
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I donāt think Iād be interested, but I can see how some might be. No question our hearing changes over time, and that high frequencies are usually the first to go. Same for me. But I have been struck by how little musical information I seem to be missing. I have falloff in my hearing above 12k, and definite loss above 15k, but in discussions with my partners and children, I realize how little info is actually āup there.ā More importantly, Iāve become even more sensitive to upper frequency āharshness,ā to the point where poorly recorded high frequencies can truly feel uncomfortable. I still prefer neutrality in my equipment as much as possible, with a preference for reproduction that sounds and feels lifelike. I donāt think I want my cables to do any more āshapingā than is unavoidable in the design compromise. But thatās just me. Many might like the idea.
But isnāt music much more than high frequencies? We know it is. So when I make a change to my system, if I find myself more emotionally connected to familiar music, then Iām in. No test equipment or scientific explanation on earth can tell you that and I say that as a Chartered Engineer.
Exactly, you are right, that is the reason why you can sell anything at any priceā¦it does not apply only to the high-end audiophile market by the wayā¦but, until you think that what you bought, provides you with a great value, then no one can or should argue with that.
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Good points. I guess what we hear as we age changes but our perception of it probably does not. A real piano still sounds like a real piano to each individual even though we may not hear much above 15kHz. So if we buy the 55+ cables (those ones are very expensive) and artificially boost frequencies above 15kHz it would no longer sound real to us.
Iāll stop investing in that business idea then. How about a tablet that increases emotional involvement? Any interest in that one? Oops, this is deviating from the thread topic.
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Which ( as I have withdrawn from discussing network switches) allows me to remark that devices that are intended to increase emotional involvement exist and were used ( still are occasionally) at the recording end of things. They are known as aural exciters and manipulate the signal so as to add excitement for the listener . As well as the Aphex tool another one used was the BBE Sonic Maximiser:
More familiar to home users will be that button that used to appear on amplifiers āloudnessā. This was an attempt to increase your listening pleasure by trying to compensate for the change in perceived frequency response as listening spl reduces (see Fletcher Munson ). One may like it but it is also inaccurate. If you go to a live concert the frequency balance that you hear will alter the further away from the group or orchestra that you sit as the sound level will reduce ( irrespective of acoustics and without compensation such as amplification).
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One might well say that is a textbook definition of audiophile confirmation bias. 
But I agree with you. No measurement or hypothesis can predict whether the changeābe it component, cabling, fuses, power, vibration controlāwill emotionally satisfy us. Engineering can tell us whether a change has actually been introduced, but science cannot predict our reaction. Finally finishing my cable overhaul may or may not alter the signal being received at my speakers in the slightest, but I can guarantee I relaxed and settled into the music much more completely when it was done. The replacement cables are electrically and mechanically superior to their predecessors. Do those measurements matter as much as my relaxed receptivity to the music? Donāt know. Two very different things.
Cool!
Donāt get me wrong, measurements are really important in terms of safety, manufacturing quality standards and general repeatability to ensure every customer gets the same brilliant product.
But the thing that makes really special products special is talented visionary people who have an appreciation of science and engineering and can reconcile that with the reproduction of beautiful music in a way that regular science and engineering canāt explain. Thank God for those people and their passion which leads them to think in non-standard ways for the benefit of society - us.
Interesting deviation. Do you think dCS put that into Map 1? Is that why it sounds so nice?
No. I think that they went out of their way to avoid putting it in 
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