English Electric 8Switch

Sexy unboxing video please with running commentary!

Enjoy

What color of lipstick shall I have?

Green of course

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Nice! Let us know what your impressions are.

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I got one recently for my Nova and I have been really impressed. Everything sounds less ‘digital’ and more solid/‘analogue’. Probably psychoacoustics but I am happy

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My very unscientific guess is it comes down to timing. Something about that clock inside the EE8Switch. Regardless it’s been one of my better purchases and makes streaming music even more pleasurable.

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I can agree on this. It sounds more clean, less constrained. Music flows easier or how to say. I would classify it as better timing creating less work for my ears to correct things. It’s what I’ve been missing from when playing my CDs. That effortless flow of music. Initial impression is it stays here and out goes the Cisco 2960.

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It very well could be, theoretically. Could also be synchronous versus asynchronous protocols are improved here downstream, such as S/PDIF, as would be the case for me (not using USB with my DAC, though am obviously using Ethernet in that regard, which it may be doing nothing for). Then there’s the electrical noise being dumped back onto the mains, which is a topic of debate and how/if a switch can even impact that (or its PSU, linear or a well-designed SMPS).

I created a thread that gave my subjective impressions on the EE8 and agree something is impacting what I’m hearing in my system versus without it.

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I’m following that thread as well! Part of me would love an explanation but part of me just sits back and enjoys what I’m hearing. Heart vs Brain I suppose.

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Of course the problem with this is that the data is read into a 50MB buffer and is reclocked out of the buffer. This is when using the Naim app.

With Roon, the large buffer is not used, but a large number of buffers are still involved at multiple parts of the chain. And there are much more timing-critical applications in modern networking that work flawlessy.

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Yes I agree. I have no idea what’s going on. You can easily replace “very unscientific” with SWAG. (It’s an expression in the States meaning “Sophisticated Wild A$% Guess”) Speaking of buffers, I wonder if the EE8Switch plays well with other brands? Does it improve the SQ of say Linn components?

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Me neither. I wish I hadn’t heard a difference :joy: Seems I won’t get around wasting the time and doing some actual comparison

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Have you tried plugging your TP-link back in for a bit? :slight_smile:

Nope, not yet, my impression is purely from when I first plugged in the EE, so basically completely unreliable. And this was not a good time to try finding out more because of the all-new system then (around Nov/Dec). I wanted to do this “in a few months”, though the ongoing discussions have made me think about just doing it. But having a horrible time at work, so every evening and weekend I am just beat, and results of any such tests would still be crap. Plus no easy access to SOs for blinding or yelling from the other room what’s better :wink:

Take your time then, your system sounds good to you now so no need for extra testing stress!

Hope your work situaton will ease up soon too…

It does sound fabulous every day! And thanks. Customers can’t continue asking silly questions forever. That’s what you get for releasing a new software version. I swear they are sending us an email about ever unrelated thing that changed on their computers at the same time.

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All the best.

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haha Do you work for Roon? Just kidding

I don’t but I am feeling with them. Though they did mess up a bit IMHO, I am also not so happy. I am just thankful we don’t have a forum for my dayjob software.
(And yes, my frequent posting here is a bit of an escape and does not make the workload better :joy: )

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Keep posting, don’t stop! I also feel for them(Roon) and hope they can learn from it. (i.e open more beta testers sooner.)

Anyway back on topic. I’m wondering how @anon77199223 is getting along with his switch.

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