I’m most flattered to be included. It may surprise you to know that people have bought whole systems on the back of my recommendations - it certainly surprised me!! The thing is, how does one make a decision. When listening to amplifiers other streamers I find it really, really, easy to decide which I prefer.
But these network things are really subtle differences and it’s so easy to be fooled into thinking something is better only to find it’s simply different. I’ve bought £300 ethernet wires only to find later than a £20 one is actually better.
Switches do make a difference and I use a Cisco that was better than a £20 Netgear. There are now various ‘audiophile’ switches around and I think at least four have been referred to on here. How do you choose? You can’t try them all. I guess you could get them all on trial and somehow compare them but I’m not convinced I could come to a sound conclusion. Ultimately you’ve got to plump for one and just be happy. Or just do what I’ve done and stick with the Cisco that I’ve had fir nearly four years, forget about it and just enjoy the music.
I think ultimately people must have confidence in their choice. If they buy an EE, an ER or whatever they need to stick with it and not have their confidence blown by the new must have item. Hifi does tend to attract geeky blokes (and most of the geeks are blokes) who love nothing more than to endlessly compare. The whole ethernet network stuff seems to be the final frontier of geekdom and it’s knowing when to stop and say enough is enough and be happy with your choice.
As has been said you do need, if you can’t try stuff yourself, to work out who to trust. I asked Simon what to buy four years ago and he told me and I bought it. Once these new things have been around a while a clear winner may emerge, though I doubt it.
I think it’s fine for those with loads of spare cash to drop £500 plus on something that may or may not make a difference but it’s a shame when someone who has to scrape that money together buys something on the back of a recommendation and then finds it’s no better than they started with. Of course there is a good return policy but it really is easy to get caught in the excitement of something new and shiny, only to later realise you’ve been sold a pup.
OK, it’s a box that might make your system sound better.
So a kind of extra fuel injection of electricity via some kind of tone control??
Whatever it is and however it alters the sound, it’s definitely a misnomer to call it a switch.
The Ciscos are interesting in that we get them as salvage coming off the corporate IT slag heap, and so they are great value and we save them from adding to landfill.
And they screen out some of the EM noise entering the DAC from our cheap ISP routers.
And some of us also use them as…switches.
But these fancy audiophile boxes ain’t switches.
If we could work a sensible name for them we will have done a good day’s work.
So here is JimDog’s Nomenclature Challenge - what is an accurate name for these boxes?
To start the ball rolling, do the boxes perform any of the following functions?
lower the noise floor/screen out noise coming from the ISP router and elsewhere, which is sometimes referred to as a moat, an A and B side, isolation, etc?
improve some timing aspect of the audio data?
do some of them actually reduce '“jitter”, or just claim to? - as SiS points out there is a lot of confusion about such claims
And whatever are the intended, claimed and actual functions of each switch, would it not make more sense for one manufacturer (e.g. Naim) to produce this type of “signal preprocessing box” if one is required as a separate entity rather than being included in the streaming board?
I’ve just spent a couple of years investing a lot of time and energy improving literally every aspect of my system and it sounds way better than I ever imagined it would.
I have 3 Ciscos, 2 of them in a PoE configuation.
Why don’t you give PoE a listen?
I’m interested in this thread and in the ‘switches’ mania and may one day improve mine.
But I’m not jumping on every bandwagon as soon as it comes into sight.
Bit of a sceptic here…I find it difficult to fathom how a relatively cheap (by audiophile standards) add on can do something a very expensive Naim (or other manufacturers very expensive) DAC/ streamer doesn’t already do. In fact I’d be a bit miffed if it did, and if it did then I’d expect Naim to be selling them too.
Having said I’m a sceptic I have tried a few digital tweaks - mainly cables - but without finding they make a difference. Perhaps a demo is called for just to satisfy my curiosity…
I don’t agree here. I prefer to trust people who have personally tested themselves a product than those who bash it without trying it, even if they are on the forum since 100 years.
But in all cases I trust the most my own ears.
The original response of me was not to disagree on which members are or not trustful, but disagree on the fact that someone has to take their advice as being the best in all cases.
In that cases these members have not listened to these switches, so their opinion doesn’t absolutely matter to me.
Just because “somebody” has personally tested something and enjoyed it, is insufficient justification for myself to go to the trouble of auditioning it.
That “somebody” has to be someone who’s report I can trust. eg the four people named.
I agree with BB55’s choice of advsiors, not because they are here for a long time, but because they are ones of the most SANE people amongst us (except @Richard.Dane of course).
Not trust, but take into consideration. Because that member made an effort to buy it, listen to it, compare it.
If there are several similar impressions, I then begin to be interested.
And at the end I will trust only my ears, as I said.
Read that a new product is certainly a fashion thing, snake oil in fancy case…has absolutely no interest for me.
Same to read infinite technical speculations on what should or not sound better.
I’m not sure I can always trust myself. It’s so easy to be swayed by preconceived ideas and optimism bias. And the views of anyone who says ‘it’s like this, period’ probably should be taken with a pinch of salt. Things just aren’t that simple.
Oh My God 
,.What Conclusions,and comments from some…About Confidence.