People have done that, including Naim with the HDX music player. There are other disadvantages, mainly interference and noise within the one box solution. And that’s aside from the fact that people are increasingly moving to streaming and away from local storage.
A good LPS significantly improves the performance of at least some switches, however, in my experience certainly the EtherRegen.
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I’d certainly recommend giving it a try if you can get it on sale or return, which is how it is generally sold.
Sure, some low end consumer switches have no doubt minimum spec power supplies that just scrape through the EMC specs. But if you replace a device’s power supply do check the linear power supply is designed for powering digital equipment as it will have the necessary HF decoupling on the DC line… otherwise it could be quite a noise radiator. Typically you may also see the D.C. lead pass through a ferrite choke for EMC reasons.
Commercial equipment typically is built to higher specifications, albeit at a cost, as it may need to work in more sensitive environments like data rooms
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My little basic Fluke o’scope tells me whilst some of the regular consumer SMPS are not good, the specialist SMPS such as iFi & my current Friwo beat all the LPS that I’ve tested. The test is for noise, ripple & stability under load I hasten to add, not implying subjective SQ results.
Mike, how have you measured this, with a pickup coil? Or probes on the D.C. power lines?
I have a very low noise SMPS for some of my radio work… and I can shift the switch frequency slightly should I need to… I can still see it’s harmonics on my bandscope, but they are very low level and otherwise well behaved. Contrast that with my Apple iPhone charger… it’s laughable…
Probes on AC & DC.
It’s a handheld tool intended for industrial electrical equipment troubleshooting. I used it in field diagnostics predominantly for 12vDC control & 380/460vAC generator diagnosis. It shows an OK picture of SMPS & LPS regulator ripple & is a useful comparison tool.
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Sony had a go at this e.g. with their HAP-Z1ES flagship HDD player
Good to have this topic back!
Sorry to go about off topic but I remember some people experimenting changing the phone cable to the router. What were antibodies findings?
Thanks
Rich
I changed my comes-with-the-kit flat pair to a twisted pair type, it didn’t make much if any difference that I could hear (SQ) or see (line sync speed). But others have reported some improvements.
By BT service is up to 73mb/s & I get 70/71mb/s down & 18/19mb/s up link speeds
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Hi Rich! I’ve got more and more antibodies at the moment 
Sorry - couldn’t resist! However, to actually answer your question rather than prat about: I bought an unbranded RJ11 using Cat6 on the Internet and this was a slight improvement for me. So I then got DesignaCable to make one up using the Belden CatSnake Cat5e (they couldn’t get the Cat6a to work with the RJ11 plugs) and this improved things further. Not massive improvements by any means, but noticeable and for only a few quid.
I look forward to hearing about your DC4 - great that Sean could split it into two boxes.
I’m still tempted by that clock. What are your feelings now that it’s more fully run in? I only have a 50 Ohm input on one of my EtherRegens, but from what you’ve found there’s no difference daisy chaining them with the clock…
Thanks Simon, it was a typo due to cut & paste!!!
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Cheers michaelb.
It was corrective text from any bodies, sorry I didn’t notice.
What did you ask designacables for exactly?
Yes, the clock is good, I have reverted to one switch with it. I couldn’t justify the full price tag though. It would be the last thing I would do when all else is done. I am hoping the new ps will add more as it will power the switch and rendered so maybe a double improvement.
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Have a look at Chord Electronics new 2go+2yu combo, which would add capabilities to your Naim DAC: network streaming (Ethernet, Airplay, Bluetooth), USB input & 4TB SD transport (it has 2 Micro SD card slots).
I asked Chord which mode of use sounds best and the reaction was one of surprise - they’ll sound exactly the same as your Mac mini, but you’ll gain all the advantages of Roon: as Roon doesn’t appeal I’ve passed.
I don’t know if Chord 2go+2yu would bring anything to your setup, but it moves things in the direction you suggest.
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No need to apologise. I was just being silly. It comes naturally.
I asked them to make me up an RJ11 to RJ11 connector using the Belden CatSnake Cat5e cable. I think I needed around 2.5m but they’ll do anything you want. The RJ11 doesn’t manage to hold the outer sheath properly but it still works fine and sounds better than the untwisted cable BT supplied or the eBay special that replaced it and provided a small step up.
In respect of @frenchrooster I was thinking about any unwanted traffic heading the way of his streamer such as broadcasts. He could use Wireshark to see if any spurious traffic targeted his streamer. A switch with a filtering module could block this spurious traffic.
So a proposed Super AudioFilter Switch (SAS) could say in its brochure
Broadcast traffic plagues your home network and reduces the performance of your audio streamer. Every time a device joins your network and needs an address it uses Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to retrieve network settings from your router. It broadcasts a “DHCP Discover” message asking the DHCP server (your router) to identify itself and provide information about the network: your streamer has to discard this. But it doesn’t stop there. File Servers (NASs) and printers announce the availability of the resources, routers search for other nearby routers or more efficient network paths, computers translating physical link layer addresses into the IP address. Your streamer has to discards all this unwanted malarky and that means processing noise. Ever wondered why Mrs Miller’s version of Lover’s Concerto just doesn’t sound as good as it should - it’s processing noise, the bane of audiophiles. Our Super AudioFilter Switch (SAS) is the answer.
Putting a network security hat on, it would seem plausible that stopping spurious traffic reaching a streamer would do no harm.
To a point, but there might be some confusion here… DHCP simply uses a variant of the core functionality of Ethernet itself(albeit occasionally with a new host or lease renew period using a modified BOOTP message encapsulated in UDP). Ethernet using IPV4 uses the ARP protocol for devices and switch ports to function… without this nothing could communicate on the LAN. IPV6 uses a different method called network discovery… This is a low level function handled by the NIC. This is what Ethernet is about, and how Ethernet functions…
Broadcast IP traffic is different and is an application specific function (Arguably lazily designed in many cases) and is different, and requires the host stacks above the NIC to investigate or ignore. This is why broadcasts can be bad for streamers, but ARPs are not. DHCP renews are often every 24 hours, on Cisco equipment ARP renews are every four hours.
Now sure on large commercial networks (Subnets) ARP / ND messages are often managed and rate controlled to stop storms which can saturate the network with administration management traffic and there is no room for anything else. This can happen after certain convergence or recovery events… but we are light years away from home networks.
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I was one of the people who recommended the ER. It was good enough that I kept it.
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I’m also very pleased with mine.
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+1
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