I think you missed my point . If the top digital sources today still need better switches to perform, i really really doubt that it’s not the case for your ndx2 / Hugo.
These mega digital sources are undoubtedly better decoupled yet, one of the reason of their stratospheric price.
Some are using separate dac, clock, ps, streaming platform…and still benefit from a better switch.
Perhaps the bottleneck in your system are your ATC 19 speakers, which can’t resolve enough to hear the differences…
I don’t know, maybe not.
On the other hand the PD models also have external power but don’t have any power going down the Ethernet cables, which could be cleaner. I haven’t compared the two though. The PD is certainly quieter than the type with internal power supply, though…
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Fortunately we live in a free society and we can make decision on which forums we join and which threads we choose to read and contribute. Lots of knowledge here and lots of various opinions. It is up to the individual to be able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff.
It is best to keep it light and not take it to serious.
JMHO - YMMV
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Hi Cyber - I wouldn’t worry - members come and go - its probably quite healthy and it kind of regulates itself ultimately with members assessing individual contributions as worthwhile or not.
I’m afraid that’s the way of things of late, well for the last few years at least. But as @seakayaker says it is up to the individual to be able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff.
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I’ve never heard of them and certainly never auditioned them - what speakers do you use with them.
It is strange to reject objective measurement as a way to create a shortlist in favour of using non-objective measurements, namely box count and price.
I think it is far more important how much you enjoy music when listening on a particular system than how much it costs.
I would not enjoy either of the cars you mention (just used a search to find out that they weren’t hifi items at all) because they are both noisy and non-electric and won’t even park themselves. I’d prefer a milk float.
So I’m lost as I can enjoy music without an audiophile switch, external clock, expensive cables or add-on linear power supplies - surely not a crime.
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Yes, my final switch is a Cisco 2960 PD.
It’s not plugged in via its external psu.
In theory it might sound worse because it’s rigged up with electrical power running alongside the audio files from a Cisco PoE switch.
I was concerned And curious about that before I bought It and installed in my system.
But when I actually did buy it and install and listen to it it was clearly quieter.
The theoretical mess that could have resulted from running power and signal down the same Ethernet cable just didn’t happen at all.
So I can say with certainty that in my particular case it worked very well, try feeding your pd switch with leccy from a PoE switch.
Unless of course you already know that’s not as a good as an ether regen…
IIRC ElMarko and SiS found the same with PoE arrangements.
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The idea that the Ethernet switch or Ethernet cables are going to impact SQ shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how Ethernet works. However, it is true that the actual PSU’s which are usually SMPS can be noisy, so getting a linear or a less noisy psu may have marginal benefit of not causing so much mains noise, but I have never been able to hear any difference from that either, but it does not hurt in any regard…
Same here. I found nothing negative and only positive about running signal and power via cable to power a 2960PD. Eliminates the wall wart potentially feeding junk back into the mains.
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Respectfully, we’ve been down this road so many times it’s no longer helpful, nor true. If you don’t have actual experience trying different switches, please do so. Technology moves on - at one time it was considered good enough to just use lamp cord for speaker cable, and I think that’s been disproved thoroughly., and most wouldn’t buy an expensive amp and speaker and run down to the hardware store for the cheapest on offer. Same goes for streaming to a high end streamer/DAC.
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What are the views of the Roon savvy people? Do they all agree with you?
I think the Roon long-time users are very knowledgeable about this subject?
Of course you can - or as many do enjoy the music on a Sonos or AM car radio - but the reverse holds true - why can’t we enjoy using better switches and cables without having to always ‘prove it’ to the naysayers? And just because we like to tinker doesn’t for a second mean we don’t enjoy music any less than you do (I’m a world famous music photographer - music has been my life). The hostility cuts both ways. Perhaps start a thread called ‘broken record’ where the non-believers in better cabling and switches just go back and forth “it can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be.”
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It seems many think cables and switches and just about anything else make no differences, and if one hears a difference one is delusional. Some really nasty comments from members over there on that forum. I gave up. I don’t think they’re at all knowledgeable.
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Maybe they all have cheap DACs, which are not sensitive enough for the subtle changes?
who wants a car that parks itself…??
The Joy of having a cooler,.tougher,more fun car,.instead of just a “transport-box” is called Driving-joy…!!
The day I buy a car that can park itself,.well then I’ve given up all the joys of life.
Then I might as well,.start listening to Linn’s Space Optimization also 
.
And it’s never going to happen.
Stay safe out there…
/Peder🤔
Nice to have you here, Charles.
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@charlesphoto,…Loved your whole post,.but cut out these two sections.
And your suggestion of a thread,.where these naysayers can house themselves was a brilliant idea.
Then we who want to discuss this,.can do it in peace,without these ever tiring comments.
These comments were ever present in the thread…“Ethernet Switch and Cables Mania”.
Although some later deleted a large amount of their posts.
But now the same post starts to appear here. Very tiring in my opinion.
/Peder🙂
As others have said we are kind of beyond this now. If it’s any help to you, we are not talking about the Ethernet and network protocols themselves for the most part (But there are exceptions such as IGMP snooping to filter unrequired group addressed data and for more advanced switches BPDU filtering) , but rather the physical media interfacing and the analogue voltage couplings in the balanced serial lines. If you search back, I have referenced Texas Instruments engineering design papers on the subject that go through the fundamentals and mitigation’s about reducing the coupling and interaction affects from 10/100BaseT connections on associated devices such as streamers.
But, as the say, the proof is in the pudding, if you hear no difference with changing such things, then that is fine, and clearly great news for you. For those of us who can it is an area of optimisation, and indeed I shared my observations and measurements in this area with Naim when they were developing the new streamers, although I suspect the NP800 front had been largely completed by then, which in conjunction with its interfacing (such as LVDS) was designed to reduce some of these affects.
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@anon56221831,…Hi,.I have written about this before,and then also added two images explaining the weaknesses of Space Optimization.
And yes,.I’ve been listening to SO V2.
But I have a lot to do today,.will see if I find my previous post.
Otherwise,.I might not answer until tomorrow.
/Peder🙂