All we have on ours is the Nest mesh, TV for Amazon Prime and BBC on demand, the Mac and our iPhones, plus the Nova and three Qbs. The little SF110 has handled everything absolutely fine. You’d maybe need something faster if you were home working with conference calls, big downloads etc, but for the sort of things we do it seems perfectly ok.
I run my whole home network at ‘fast’ 100 meg speed instead of Gigabit speed by choice. There is a setting on my router for it. It’s more than enough for my needs, and considerably faster than my internet connection.
There is a potential sound quality benefit to this as there is less electrical noise generated, which is why Naim (and others) use only 100 meg ports on all their streamers.
More importantly, it consumes less power, which is obviously something we all need to consider these days.
Thanks again - does look as though the SF110 would be fine for me so I think I’ll go down that route, then if all OK try the EE8, with any luck I can have a listen at the dealer before buying.
That’s interesting, Chris. I didn’t know about the noise. Certainly I feel a lot more comfortable with the little 110 than the power hungry 2960.
I’m not too sure about extra noise on Gigabit 1000Mbps vs Fast 100Mbps, are there any www docs/papers on this as I would like to know more.
Leaving Fast 100Mpbs for (all brands) audio streamers aside, Gigabit 1,000 Mbps is already outdated, it has a transfer rate of only 125 Mbytes per second, which is much slower than the maximum speed of a RAID HDD array, an SSD can use more, but its nowhere near fast enought for HD 4K which really needs 10 GbE, this (10,000 Mbps) has a transfer rate of 1,250 Mbytes per second.
Re power consumption, yes it all adds up, but can it be measured in practical domestic consumption terms. I believe my SG110D uses aprx 1 watt per active port.
Whats an active port? Most switches have Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az standard) that enables Auto Power-Down Sleep mode on ports. This turns off power to a port if nothing is connected or its connected device is off.
Another feature, although not really applicable to the typical very short cable runs used in domestic installs, it adjusts individual port power based on cable length.
Whatever, I’m happy with by Gigabit switch cababilities, but aware that times & ethernet speeds are changing.
1 Like
For me it was transforming. I recently tried, for fun, to connect my Nds directly to my router, which is fiber optic with one Ethernet port, and compare to Nds into PhoenixNet, the later connected to the router. Night and day is really the appropriate expression. I don’t exaggerate.
2 Likes
You mean the phoenix is better or the direct connection?
I agreed. I got Silent Angel Switch NX with external clock, external power supply. I don’t know how it works/ why it makes difference. But definitely it makes huge improvements in my system.
I was a bit skeptical at the beginning but my dealer let me take brand new in the box for 7 days home demo… ha then after 2 days of warming up, I can not take it out from my system. One major improvement is transparency.
It must be old dealer trick… I could be hallucinating or bias but I am happy for what it does.
Internet switch may not for everyone. It probably brings out what ND555 steamer can do.
2 Likes
the Phoenixnet in the chain gives much much better results than without it, so only the router.
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.