This one area where the measurements really come into their own. If it measures poorly, it’s hardly a competent design…
High end audio gear often has a characteristic ‘sound’ and people talk about ‘system synergy’. You hear terms like ‘forward-sounding’, ‘laid back’, ‘warm’, ‘analytical’ and ‘detailed’. If a component is introducing it’s own sonic signature, then it’s fundamentally flawed in its design.
A moderately priced tonally neutral system is all that’s really required. Then it’s a case of finding loudspeakers that are suited to the room size, finding the ideal placement and dealing with the room’s acoustics to get the most out of them. This is an area that’s so often overlooked and yet it’s the most critical in achieving the best imaging and soundstage…
No one ever told you that this is not possible.You are talking about usb to spdif converters here. At the spdif side that is were timing matters. You cannot compare spdif to usb to ethernet, it is a different protocol. It is packet transfer vs a real time stream, those are two completely different things.
Like I have said many times before, it all boils down to a proper grounding scheme, it has nothing to do with the cable itself. You have experienced this first hand. If you don’t know anything about grouding just stay away from shielded cat in your home. The chance that it screws things up are much higher than the chance it will improve anything.
Couldn’t agree more but unfortunatly the loudspeakers you described with a 6,5" woofer and 1" dome tweeter has about the worst in room power response you can imagine. They don’t have any constant directivity behaviour whatsoever. The directivity is all over the place. Besides a 6,5" woofer is a distortion generator for anything below 100hz. It will allways sound at best like a very good loudspeaker but not like real life, it takes more than good drivers and crossover parts to get there. Unfortunatly many commercial offerings nowadays are not very good in this aspect.
I never compared USB to ethernet, just used it as an example that differences do exist in digital domain. People often like to think that bits are bits and differences between any digital transports can’t exist, being it USB, S/PDIF or ethernet.
Also thanks for the classy comment questioning my knowledge on grounding. You just told me to do something I just wrote I have already done.
I never told you to do anything, I made a reference for other to read that it all boils down to proper grounding in the majority of cases. Yours is a good example. Excuses if I sounded different, that is not the intention.
They’re not perfect, but in the room size and with their positioning, they work very well indeed. The 18W/8531G00 midbass is a very low distortion driver and produces considerably good bass at low power levels and with low driver excursion, even in a sealed box…
When the weather improves and the days get longer, I’ll complete my wide-baffle 3 way speaker project
Flawed from a measurement / analytical sense but it doesn’t mean that bit of kit doesn’t provide value. I don’t get into the debates because if it sounds good to someone they should enjoy it. Even if it’s painfully obvious what they are listening to is “off”. As much as I wish they would give-up hifi and spend their efforts on philanthropy I’m not in a position to tell someone they are wrong for their choices… unless they asked me directly.
Well said. This is my priority before I spend any more money on electronics.
The Roon Server is a NUC8i7BEH running ROCK. It is hooked up to the 24 port switch with a generic cat6 Ethernet cable, it is part of the block labeled lots of other stuff.
The reason I asked it that the English 8 may be more beneficial if it was swithing between the Roon Server and end point.
Although I concur with your findings, I would not expect the switch to have any effect. Reading the website it appears to be a commercial switch with a nice case, better clock and a better power supply, none of which will have any impact on the sound quality.
Power supplies and clocks are very important in the DAC when the digital signal is being transfomed to an analogue signal. but not further back in the chain. In fact if anything bad has happened to the digital signal up to the switch then it doesn’t have the ability to correct the errors.
At least it is not very expensive, the devotees will not be wasting too much money and if aesthetics is important, it is in a nice case.
Insides of the EE8 are same as Silent Angel Bonn N8 switch. Differences come from the casing and PSU.
It certainly does look better than most commercial switches but most importantly, it sounds better. Aesthetics only aren’t worth this kind of money.
Remember always to use switch though, any kind of switch at least. I tested to wire my Linn ADSM straight from the wall socket without switch in between and that gave clearly the worst results. Adding Netgear GS105 + iFi iPower PSU was clear improvement and EE8 further improvement. No switch vs Netgear switch was bigger difference than Netgear vs EE.
I have my music and Roon core on QNAP NAS in another room so data travels through in-wall cabling, electrical cabinet and Asus AC86U router to living room.
Love my EE8. Already have a SOtM and Etherregen connected by fiber, the EE8 justs adds more magic. If ASR can’t say why the EE8 makes the music better they just haven’t figured it out yet. Hopefully they will keep looking, the answer is out there.
Good question. Have not tried them side by side, just added the EE8. Initially I had it upstream between the home Router and the ER but is sounded so good I moved it to between the Roon Endpoint which is also a music server and the SOtM switch. The SOtM is also connected to the ER and an Antipodes Core which I use for my Roon server. Now it benefits not only Qobuz and Tidal but also the Music Server sending and receiving files from the Roon core. I believe in the synergy of multiple switches having experienced it.
To your question, I noticed an immediate change with the EE8 that I did not note with the ER however the ER’s clock needs several days to stabilize. I did note an immediate improvement with the SOtM switch but I also changed to their CAT 6 filter with cables and a CAT 7 filter/cable so I don’t know where the change was coming from.
This thread just keeps giving. It instills in me the utter fear that society is completely doomed. This is a very simple technical issue, and assuming network regeneration would be a thing is worse than believing in snake oil. It’s utter nonsense. I am a software engineering lead by trade working for one of the largest firms that have datacenters in the world. If there would be anyone at all who would know about data degeneration in switches it’s probably people at MS Azure, Netflix, Facebook or Google. Assuming that data can degenerate because it has to be realtime for freakin’ low latency, no date bandwidth audio is just laughable, when you consider VR systems, Medical AR systems, Netflix, etc.
But Audiophiles, you can sell anything to. And i assume the main reason for this is, we love our music. The idea that a tiny and cheap gadget (600$ for a switch is actually not that much, considering what real network equipment costs, and what good audio equipment costs) could improve it (instead of “hey honey, i really need a better Amp” - “Again? The last one was already 4K” - “Sure but this one is going to be really the last one, I promise, and it’s only 8K”) is just the kind of trap we want to fall into.
It’s understandable. But doomed. Safe the money up, buy better speakers, a better DAC, a better AMP. Better headphones. That stuff actually works.
Given the way that 2020 went, and the rather poor start we’ve had to 2021, I think you can safely swap the word ‘certainty’ for ‘fear’ in the above. Audiophile switches are just the tip of a very, very large iceberg.
Not really. These are all adjectives with a strong subjective charge. What is bloated for one listener might be described as full-bodied by another. Clean might be shrill for someone else, well refined might be flat and so on ad aeternam.
To be useful, these words should be defined in a way that allows everyone to assign the same meaning to them. Since this is not the case, they are meaningless and unfit for use in a discussion.