Apparently the capacitors are of better quality in the Melco, based on what a member discovered after some tests.
Melco sounds softer.
But there’s still a big difference in price. The Buffalo is not bad, because this same person found that Buffalo with ER in cascade sound better than ER alone.
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Indeed I was agreeing with FR, apologies for my lazy English
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Even if true, which I doubt that does not justify the difference in price, marketing forces in action I fear.
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@TimOopNorth, the Buffalo bs gs2016 is available in France. 94 euros, Darty. And other sites here.
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Hard to say without pricing the caps. Mundorfs are quite expensive. Others are also very good and cost lots. I think lots here of the Forum are naive about what you need to sell a product for in order to break even based on material an labor in a product. To make some money, and cover advertising, shows, research and development, it all adds up. I speak from experience.
Maybe, and I must say that Melco are leaders in consumer audio server and switch technology. They have also struck me as a fair organisation when it comes to pricing bearing in mind the degree of R&D they appear to invest in their products.
Having said this, the similarity between the Buffalo and Melco PCB is staggering and suggests they are indeed the same board. I also understand that Buffalo and Melco are part of the same organisation. Even if a couple of the caps and other components have been upgraded, it is a stretch to justify the the price differential between $100 for the Buffalo switch and £2000 for the Melco switch.
I think I would call myself cynical rather than naive.
@bailyhill, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my congratulations for coming through such an extraordinary illness. The Gods were certainly smiling on you and it is heartwarming to hear such a great outcome from such a lucky escape. I hope you make a continued and speedy recovery to full fitness.
This is a common practice in the HiFi realm.
Another good example of what you’re describing are Magico PODs :
Cheap to manufacture and minimal R&D (constrained layer damping is a well know and commonly used technology).
My SPODs are worth ~ €4000 euros 
Probably because they are made of Unobtainium.
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And because they are Magicol
All joking apart, those little buggers make a rather nice job at damping vabrations!
And that is how Magico justify the outrageous price, as they still offer VFM.
That’s unfortunately right.
It took Magico years of high tech R&D to design their speakers with a flaw that could only be solved by buying a device that is cheap to make that only they sell.
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That’s a good one
No, Jim Magico speakers are not flawed.
All piston based speakers vibrate. The only way to completely solve the vibration problem is to press “mute” 
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Why would a speaker vibrate!
That could cause sound waves to propagate in all directions through the air.
But seriously - a critic could suggest that those SPODs should come as standard…
Correct. They all vibrate.
Well, for the same reason Naim doesn’t ship the ND555 with the SuperLumina interconnect.
These pairs of things (ND/SL and Magico Speakers/SPODs) lie on a continuum of which one end is “essential part of the item sold without which it doesn’t work properly” is at one end and “frivolous add-on” is at the other.
The closer the ‘pair of things sold as separate products’ are to the former end of that spectrum, the less palatable it is as a sales tactic.
SL is nowhere near the former end of the spectrum - all Naim gear works fine without it.
(In a test at a dealership, I much perferred NACA5 to SL).
Magico SPODs (from what you have said) are I think quite a bit closer to the former end of the spectrum. OK, the speakers work fine and sound very good without them, but they’d sound a lot better for almost all normal uses with the SPODs.
By comparison, I bought my Naim Ariva speakers new with nicely designed and made plinths as standard. Naim could have sold those to me separately, as the speakers worked fine without them. But Naim didn’t do that.
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Speakers vibrate. Try a glass water on top.
I wouldn’t put it that way.
The Magico speakers sound sublime on their own.
The SPODs don’t make them “sound better”.
They efficiently prevent vibrations to reach the floor. That’s all. Nothing magical their, if I may say 
It changes nothing to the speaker’s performance.
It’s like adding Townshend Podiums, or any other decoupling device, to any speakers.
You could argue : why doesn’t ATC, PMC, ProAC, etc. include a decoupling system to their speakers…
It happens that Magico not only designs speakers.
They also design highly efficient decoupling devices (the PODS). And wonderful racks, btw. You may or not add them to your system.
It is that same logic that Naim applies to their boxes : the stock cables do an excellent job. But the SL take the system to another level (you may, of course, like it or not).
But he SL cable doesn’t change how the streamer performs. It’s juste a cable that allows the signal to pass through.
Needed a small extra switch so decided to get the 8 port version and place it before the ER.
We’ll see if it has any “audiophile “ worth 
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