Audiophile Switch Experiment Results

Well there is always room for improvement. Think of buying a Porsche sports car and replacing the standard rims/tires with better ones providing an overall higher performance :wink:

True. Or owning an apple and replacing it by a high-end orange.

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Well it’s up to you of course what you do with the knowledge.

This sounds like a very reasonable way to start a sentence, and it works for your example: better rims and tires will likely increase a car’s performance in terms of improved acceleration, deceleration, cornering, fuel economy and so on. But you should note that all of these improvements can be quantified, i.e. various rim/tire combinations can be objectively measured, compared and rated with respect to one another.

As far as I’m aware nobody has yet developed the “number of veils lifted” methodology to the point where similar measurements can be made with respect to boutique power supplies for esoteric network switches.

The claim that better rims and/or tires increase performance can be objectively measured and verified using commonly accepted tools and methodologies.

Expecting that changing the power supply on an EE8, or that replacing an apple with a high-end orange, will follow the same maxim - that “there is always room for improvement” - err, not so much.

Tl;dr
“There is always room for improvement”. No, there isn’t.

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Another way of looking at it is you can buy a Porsche, upgrade it with adjustable suspension and totally ruin the handling because you don’t actually know better.

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And yet another way: you can buy a Porsche, have it resprayed, install a diamond encrusted rear view mirror, and paint ‘go faster’ stripes on the seats, and totally have no effect whatsoever on the handling because you don’t actually know better.

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‘Drop it to da floor, wicked’ body kit and boomin’ pipes.

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Given that the EE8 is pretty much a rebadged Zyzel (which costs all of 20 quid), that’s pretty accurate :wink:

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Don’t forget that high precision TCXO add-on that does absolutely fook-all as the original clock is well within spec for the purposes of Gbit ethernet…

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Maybe that EE8 is nitrogen filled. As some fancy Porsche wheels are.

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I’m still waiting for @Martin_Kelly to tell us why he upgraded his power supply. According to English Electric, their PSU is specifically designed to optimise quality, so I’m wondering how on earth it was possible to add yet another “demonstrable improvement” to an already “optimum quality network signal” :wink:

I’m expecting it was a linear PSU, but I may be wrong. Hopefully Martin can confirm.

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Possibly, but as nitrogen only costs about 15 quid per cubic metre, and the capacity of the EE8 is probably somewhere around 450cm^3, that works out at around 0.7p per unit. Not sure that would account for the 480 quid mark up :wink:

EDIT: I’m assuming we’re talking about ordinary nitrogen, but maybe audiophile nitrogen is more expensive.

I’ve actually changed the psu of my EE8 to iFi also. It just sounds better than the stock psu. Probably less ripple noise to contaminate the rest of the system connected to the same power block. I just recently switched back to the stock psu to try it again and maybe sell the iFi but the difference was so obvious that iFi stays.

I assume you have done subjective comparison of these psu’s also since you’re so eager to comment on the subject. I’m curious to hear about your findings.

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Breathe. I need to breathe. LMAO :rofl:

No you don’t. You’re buttressing your argument by claiming that experiential/subjective ‘evidence’ should trump common sense and scientific evidence. It doesn’t.

I’ve found that you can fool all of the people some of time; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.

Assuming, hypothetically, for just a second that this may be true:

Then, you have some serious issues with the rest of your equipment if they are this sensitive to mains noise.

My house runs on one of three supplies -

Mains from the grid provided by SSEN, my local DNO. ‘Mains’ provided by my LG Solaredge inverter converting DC from the Panels to 240V AC or ‘Mains’ provided by my Tesla Powerwall 2 inverter converting DC from the battery to 240V AC.

Given that Inverters are usually claimed to be ‘noisier’, then why does my hifi not sound any different, regardless of which way it’s powered?

Oh so you have zero experience with the topic but you just throw around theories here, I see. Thanks for nothing. Love your enthusiasm though, keep it going. I’m sure many of us who hear the differences with the audio gear suddenly stop hearing those differences after reading your messages.

Can you tell me why there even are medical grade psu’s with smaller ripple noise specifications? It should make zero difference to the power grid right? I guess psu manufacturers like Mean Well like to just design these higher spec psu’s for nothing.

I use Linn ADSM/3 and ATC 50ASL monitors which sound and even measure pretty close to perfect. Though I guess the system is crappy as hell since power cable and psu changes are easily audible to me.

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Medical grade PSUs are primarily designed to have minimum leakage currents from a purely electrical safety perspective, i.e. to help keep patients alive.

Low ripple can be beneficial for sensitive instruments, but again that comes down to equipment design.

No idea what medical grade power supplies have to do with hifi. More Voodoo…

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Some audiophools get a ‘demonstrable improvement’ with such regularity, one can only wonder how execrable their system sounded when they bought it.

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Genuine question, have you tried a quality linear power supply like Farad, Gieseler, etc on any of your Hifi, streaming or networking hardware?