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Do I really need an " Audio Grade Network Switch "?

Preston8452

Preston8452

New Member
I think it's been a quite controversial topic for years, like what's the difference between normal network switch and an audio grade network switch, the price difference is certainly obvious though...
Anyway, I've done some researches, most audio reviewers say that under this " new digital streaming era " that an network switch is a must for an audio system, which is understandable for me, I mean because if I wanna play TIDAL or Qobuz or Spotify, I gotta use network so I can stream these online services, so yeah I get that if the network quality is good enough, it can possibly level up the music performance.

But anyhow, I'm new to this area, so I don't like to spend big bucks on my first purchase hahaha... there's a very wide range of the prices though, the top one is Ansuz Power Switch I think, the inner circuit and design look pretty sharp, and surely over my budget lol

So I'm choosing between Bonn N8 and SW-8, these two both got good reviews, and the prices seem so darn much friendly to me as I'm looking for an entry level switch now, do any of you have any insights to share?
or should I just go for the higher level ones?

Best,
 
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There's a thread here somewhere that suggests the likes of the 'Silent Angel' are nothing more than conventional routers, re-badged. The device goes under a number of other names. I can't find the thread at the moment...

[edit: it wasn't on AK, it was ASR, which has pictures of the guts of the Silent Angel, showing it to be a perfectly standard switch. Really, don't pay £400 for one; buy a Netgear or similar switch for £20. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...el-bonn-n8-audio-grade-ethernet-switch.12360/ ]

Whilst it is possible for a digital interface to carry electrical noise, a good network interface should isolate that noise from any analogue processing; a network endpoint will have its own internal digital processing anyway, generating its own noise, which must be isolated from the analogue processing.

In summary, no, I don't think you need an 'audio grade network switch'.
 
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As an AV installer of systems that use Dante and AVB, I say if you do not know what either of those are and how they work any benefit you get (hear) will be psychoacoustic.
 
I was sure that I had posted somewhere, a discussion of the causation barriers that exist between a network interface and the DAC analogue output of a streamer. I had, but it wasn't on AK. So I may as well repeat it here.

Most of these 'audiophile switches' make a point of using a high performance clock, claiming that this reduces audio timing jitter. The 'English Electric 8Switch' does, as does the Bonn N8/Silent Angel (which are quite possibly the same thing). This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how packet-based streaming works.

If you try to justify why a magic box makes it sound nicer (e.g. the EE 8 Switch: "Powered by a customised TCXO (Temperature Compensation Crystal Oscillator), accuracy is 0.1ppm", "The network switch reclocks the signal, resetting the time relationship between the digits", "This is going to reduce jitter by providing the server with a perfectly synchronised data stream"), then you need to be able to explain why that would make it sound nicer, which does require understanding. If you want to improve your audio system, it's worth having a reasonable understanding so you know where to spend your money effectively.

The Ethernet interface is separated from the DAC by at least six causation barriers:
  1. Ethernet physical layer protocol
  2. Ethernet transport protocol (be that TCP/IP or UDP)
  3. Streaming protocol (Airplay, Chromecast, SlimProto, UPnP, etc), carrying CODEC audio packets over the transport protocol
  4. Rendering of the CODEC packets (FLAC, MP3, etc) into PCM by some processor
  5. Buffering of PCM samples into at least one FIFO buffer
  6. Fetching of samples from the FIFO buffer
Each of those barriers completely separates the network jitter from the DAC audio; there is no causal relationship between jitter (short-term data timing variation) on the Ethernet, and the DAC input samples, let alone the DAC audio output. At each stage in the above process, there is a data buffer of some size, and the input and output processes of those buffers are not synchronous. The only place jitter matters is in the DAC sample clock; that is nothing to do with the Ethernet data clocking.

So the claim that reduced timing jitter on the Ethernet interface will reduce DAC sample jitter is complete nonsense.

The Ethernet interface may carry electrical noise from the switch into the network streaming endpoint, as I said above, and a badly designed unit might allow that electrical noise to get into the audio. But there is a also lot of digital processing going on in that network endpoint (to handle the Ethernet packets, streaming protocol, CODEC rendering, etc.), which also generates electrical noise; they've got to deal with that, too, so the additional noise from the Ethernet port isn't a big delta.

We can measure noise in streamers/DACs quite easily; the SNR of a well-engineered DAC can be way below the threshold of human hearing, and way below the noise floor of any listening room.
 
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Been in the data wiring business my entire life after the military. I seriously doubt there’s much benefit to using an audio switch, no way I’d pay 10x what a normal switch would cost to find out. I have customers with million dollar sound rooms that use normal switches for audio. Not hobbyist mind you, I’m talking about a church or school
 
Use wifi and eliminate any chance of electrical noise going from the switch to the streamer/DAC.

Jblnut
 
Everything is relative and RFI induced noise can enter your system via many different points. I would not start to address that challenge at the switch.

I use a standard Cisco VPN router but feed both it and the cable modem with a linear power supply. And use a Tripp-Lite ethernet isolator just before the ultraRendu renderer.
 
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