Yes ferrite chokes can be useful, but in only certain situations, specifically to impede high frequency common mode power with respect to local ground. This can often be from power supplies or clocked circuitry from double insulated devices.
Using earthed devices with three pin mains sockets will often circumvent many issues, as the lowest impedance path to ground will often be within the appliance itself especially if your domestic supply uses TT earthing.
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I am curious to hear about your experiences with Silent Angel Bonn NX / Forester NX… an expensive solution that has not been discussed much here in the forum yet – thank you in advance…
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I’ve only just caught this thread, and have read it through. I’m not sure that no-one cares, but I suspect many of the 777 views to date will be people who have no knowledge or experience or views to contribute, but may be interested in real world experience, whether through measurement, listening or both, though I expect most interest would be in audible results.
As for your references to ChatGPT, I am astounded that despite your denial you appear to prefer to believe ChatGPT, however I posted my views on the use of LLM AI like ChatGPT in response to you only 9 days ago on the nordost-megabucks-vs-189-wiremold thread so you know them therefore I won’t repeat here. ChatGPT can be used to delve deeper and find useful recommendations including on tgis subject, but only if focus it by asking suitable questions and then consider what it says, including seeing what it references.
You said you would ask ChatGPT’s view of the TI paper Simon referenced, but haven’t published the outcome. Out of curiosity I thought I’d do just that, asking first what it thought of the content of that paper. Following its answer that effectively said the paper serves as a good foundation for reducing radiated EMI in 10/100 Ethernet systems but that for modern, higher-speed or PoE-capable Ethernet implementations supplemental strategies may be desired. I accepted its offer to help sourcing modern guidance for higher-speed Ethernet and it came up with details of four references that it summarised and compared.
I then asked what are the best recommendations for using ferrite chokes in this application? To that it responded saying “Use a high-quality common-mode choke placed at the magnetics/RJ45 side to remove common-mode radiation, add ferrite beads on power and noisy single-ended lines for broadband suppression, ensure the magnetic parts have sufficient DC current rating (PoE), and verify that the chosen filter has high common-mode impedance but low differential-mode impedance across the Ethernet noise band.” and gave more detail, well referenced as to the sources of information most if not all from manufacturers or supplies of electronic components. Witb some reading around that, I think I’d probably be in a position to make informed decisions, though first impression from a scan ChatGPT’s summarising of the information from these references is not dissimilar to information @Simon-in-Suffolk has posted in thu and other threads on this subject. So AI is usable, possibly useful, as a tool but it is only that, and just like any other tool only as good as the person wielding the tool, with the potential to do more harm than not using it if used blindly, carelessly or badly.
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Oh - the nap 100 thread had nothing to do with me - but interesting that it got the input voltage wrong…
Sorry, indeed wrong thread memory. On checking I see it was the Nordost one, so I have duly amended my post
@Wilfried - in fact it was someone from Switzerland who was visiting a friend in Seattle that pointed me towards silent angel - and I heard from him that the EE switches are the same as the Bonn ones. He swears by it and motivated me to try this.
As far as I know, the EE8 is technically based on the Silent Angel Bonn N8. The EE8 has a more sophisticated housing, but otherwise the two are identical. There is a matching LPS (Forester F1) for the Bonn N8. The Silent Angel Bonn NX is the new high-end model, which is eight times more expensive than the Bonn N8. There is no parallel model from EE/Chord; it is more comparable to the Innuos Phoenix NT, which is widely discussed here in the forum. My dealer has already highly recommended the Bonn NX to me. I have refrained from a home demo so far because it seemed too expensive to me in relation to my mid-price system. But I would be interested in hearing about your experiences.
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@Wilfried - just put the Bonn NX into my stack and I don’t think it’s going back. Haven’t even put the forester fx in yet.
I had done the best to sort the rest of my system and networking out and the comparison is with a ee8+forester f1 using the EE1 and EE1 plus - so not a basic switch.
Seems a little brighter - but more leading edge - and foot tapping involuntarily from first notes.
I’ll let in settle in before more comments but happy so far with my spend of usd 2K. The forester fx I paid 2400 for - let’s see what that does… - I’ll put it in later today. Got both units second hand.
Vocals more prominent. More separation, involuntary toe tapping.
Limit to your love by James Blake - bass line finally super precise.
All good things.
About the price to value: for new prices, I think I’d rather do the Bonn NX/Forester NX than a second 555DR on my ND555. As it is, used prices in the US for the CD555 are about 5K now.. so this used was still less than that.
TBH - I wasn’t expecting much - since the Naim streamer downloads the music and that shouldn’t take more than a second or so at the beginning of the music. But maybe the streamer also preloads music at the end of the track in anticipation of the next piece starting so you’d expect improvements just then. Or maybe it does trickle downloads all the time… I don’t know….
Roon should even better now / since the clock actually would matter and I would expect Qobuz connect to sound better now.. let’s see… but since that’s flac and not wav I still don’t expect it to sound as good as purchased music.
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Hi @MangoMonkey thank you very much for your feedback. It is very helpful to me, especially in terms of comparison. I use Silent Angel Bonn N8 with Forester F1 with Furutech power cable and Bastei Orange DC cable. In conjunction with the Cisco 3560 as the first switch for the entire house cabling, the N8 already performs well. Your assessment motivates me to try the Bonn NX myself when I get the chance. Perhaps I can find an affordable second-hand device. I’m also curious to see what additional benefits the Forester NX offers. The Bonn NX is said to have a high-quality built-in power supply. Enjoy your system!
You’ve got a different enough system that I don’t know whether this is the best spend of money - specially since you’ve got the ndac in the middle.
I’d hope the nd5xs wouldn’t be bothered with the noise that comes in since it’s outputting just to digital, and the ndac would also be able to deal with that noise…
If anything upgrading to the 555DR on the ndac might be better… only I don’t know how much money you’d get for the olive xps since that’s probably used to power an olive cd player and not sure how many people would still have that…
In my case its the one unit that converts from digital ethernet coming to analog…
also money might be better spent on 50->s/h sn3…
Dont trust reviews on the internet. 
it might all be placebo …
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also - in my experience I preferred the Netgear 108e running in low power (green) mode powered by ifi instead of the Cisco. I do have the Cisco - it’s sitting unused.
I hated the netgears - they did something to the system that literally caused something in the inaudible range that I still could negatively perceive if not hear directly. I threw out the netgear 108s I had - and some 10GB switches too - now totally converted the whole home to 108e . I’ve got 6 of those now throughout the house. Why throughout the house? Trying to reduce the use of wifi to a minimum - less noise in the air that my system has to deal with.
Yeah, I’ve probably gone off the deep end but figured everything helps - just can’t do much about the wifi noise of my neighbors …
The Netgear 108e running in low power mode with ifi are almost as good as the EE8 switches.
See if you can get the EE1 isolators for the biggest bang for the buck. Two EE1 are probably better than one EE1Plus for 1/2 the price, but YMMV.
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Hi again, thanks for the feedback and recommendations, which I am happy to take on board. I am aware that investing in a high-end switch for my system needs to be carefully considered and that there are alternatives available for this price. It was not my intention to hijack your thread. I just wanted to ask a quick question about the Bonn NX, as you are one of the few users here in the forum. I simply couldn’t resist… When it comes to the home network, we have two different approaches. I use the Cisco as the central switch for the Ethernet home cabling, as well as for heating, solar panels, etc. It is a technical switch that monitors everything perfectly and reduces the data load with IGMP snooping. Since the power supply is built-in, no external power supply can be connected. But a good power cable on the Cisco (I use Vovox Excelus) helps a bit here. Incidentally, I also find the topic of ferrite exciting, even if I can’t actively contribute anything myself.
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Hey - no worries at all. It’s good to have just the one thread.
And I’m sure more people are interested in Bonn Nx than my now failed experiments wish ferrites.
Our home topologies are different/and the ways home are setup in the US are different too. And I’m sure 220V vs 110V also plays some role.
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Not so sure about the aesthetics…
But the Bonn Nx is better away from the Nd555 - and also space between the Forester and Bonn is needed.
With the forester FX, the leading edge sharpness and brightness is gone, music is engaging but in a different way.
Not crazy engaging like last night … let’s see… but that’s because of more darkness between notes..
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Forest FX now sold off - I just had a feeling it was sitting on the music and all that being a SMPS.. and Naim didn’t like that.
Farad3 seems better on the BonnX.
In other news - ordered a few sheets of the 3M non-conductive emf/rfi absorber. Will line the insides of my new GS108Tv3 and see if it beats the E8/BonnNX.
The switches are $70, the Farad3 about $800, and the sheets a $100 each for a DinA4.
Apparently I can get a few switches out of one sheet…
I’m hoping I can beat the BonnNX by doing this hack…
I mean they’ve just got steel and aluminum as an enclosure - but its not much of a faraday cage..
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I think both could make perfectly effective Faraday cages, depending on how joints are made, and I’m not sure that 3M’s non-conductive wrapping will make much if any difference (their conductive self-adhesive material might be more effective at strategic points). Any possibility of effect would depend on whether the box of the switch you propose to use it on is allowing EM radiation to induce signals within the electronics, or to allowing any EM radiation from within to induce signals in nearby cables or electronics.
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You’ll need to make sure you don’t add insulation or block ventilation if you’re going to do that. A passively cooled device needs to lose heat somehow.
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that is several hundred dollars worth of non-recoverable pure speculation! How are you going to do objective assessment to tell if it really has an effect, as opposed to you convincing yourself it has an effect? You can’t do simple a B comparison unless before doing you get an identical switch and verify that the sound using both is identical, to then afterwards (of course as a blind comparison).
I’ve got 6 of these switches around the home now, so just going to mod one and see if it does anything.
Given that I also have a EE8 and Bonn Nx I’ll know whether I’m moving closer or further away from this ‘reference’ level switches.
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If it’s AB5000 series or AB7000 series, also place it directly on the silicon chips (trimmed to exact size) and experiment with some strips running perpendicular to the circuit traces non the board.
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