Changing to Digital and Audiophile Network Switch

[Marki]

I had run the optical cable along and inside a skirting board to hide it then noticed the sound had become harsh so I removed it and now it’s back to normal I notice a lot of people just leave it in a loop maybe this is best but lesson learnt thanks

[ChrisSU]

@Simon-in-Suffolk

….you might hear the effects of microphony on the fibre, but in practice unless extreme conditions this I feel, is unlikely to be noticeable. Fibre’s Achilles heal is microphony noise… and in this case added serial clock phase modulation… twisted pair Ethernet suffers from no issue here.

Hi Simon, we’ve touched on this subject before, and I’m aware of cases where fibre has been shown to pick up vibrations which have caused audible noise from connected analogue systems. Is there any evidence that noise from a loudspeaker (or any other vibration energy you might find in a domestic environment) can produce this effect?

[Simon-in-Suffolk]

Hi…the effects will be the same with clock serial clock phase jitter on switches… which is from my perspective phase noise modulation on the link clock … mechanically modulating fibre also produces phase noise into a clocked signal… but yes the frequency modulation profile between the two is likely to be different with the audio frequency modulation of fibre perhaps being ever so slightly more obvious?

But as I say unless extreme, or one plays music very loud I suspect in practice it is unlikely to be noticeable. I also think switch clock phase noise is unlikely to be really noticeable anyway… and I think most of the benefit of so called audiophile switches over cheap double insulated consumer devices is the better mitigation of common mode currents over the ethernet twisted pairs.