First off, I am speaking from authority. If you read back through this thread you’ll find that a lot of very knowledgable people have contributed to this discussion – people who have direct and extensive experience of working with networks and network components. It’s their authority that I’m drawing on when I say that routers and ethernet cables can’t make a difference to SQ.
Second, there is absolutely no point in me experiencing this for myself, unless I were to do so under double blind conditions. If not, I might well hear a difference, but I wouldn’t trust the experience, because I know enough about the way the mind works (psychoacoustic effects, expectation bias, and so on) to know how easily we can be fooled into experiencing things that have no objective origin. Out of interest, why do you find this idea so hard to accept or contemplate?
Third, and related to my first point, I’m not stating an opinion, I’m stating the facts about how networks and network components work. Anyone who claims that routers and ethernet cables make a difference to SQ is stating an opinion with, to date, a total absence of acceptable evidence to support it.
People that want to spend money will always find ways. Just looking at Audiophile usb cables, that usb jitterbug stuff and linear powersupplies for a router say enough how far people are willing to go to spend money.
Has anyone read that link? Personally I find the links from this thread extremely misleading
For those of you with the sense not to want to read 12 more pages of this sort of nonsense, the bulk of the thread has absolutely nothing at all to do with a listening test, sighted or unsighted. It is a completely circular thread just the same as this. Unless there was expectation bias about the content of that thread, why on earth would anyone expect such a thread to be somehow different and cherry pick to support an argument in this way?
Anyone who cares to read it will see that just in the second post, one of the moderators makes an emphatic “no” that "audiophile switches make no difference at all. Most of the the rest of the thread is on LINN’s recommendations to use cheap consumer switches. There is then a lengthy exchange about how the cheapest Zyzell switch for 20 bucks or so performs just the same as some popular mid-range “audio” grade switches in the 500/600 bucks price range as they are all essentially the same switch:
All these three “audiophile” switches, for example, use the identical same mainboard as the Zyzell:
The board is made by Thunder Data, it’s the ZYO-GS208.
Only towards the end of the thread, exactly two buddies share their informal listening impressions of the 3.5k bucks Innuos PhoenixNET switch. A third poster then chimes in with a story of his sellers regret of the PhoenixNET.
There is nothing in that thread which in anyway shape or form supports the idea that there is something “off” with the objectivist posts and approach being taken in this thread because on another site a more “reasonable” old-school subjectivist approach is being taken. It is extremely misleading to try and imply that IMHO. Just three posters chime in with their listening impressions of an extremely expensive audiophile switch. The thread is just as inconclusive as this one with even thinner support for the value add of audiophile switches if you care to read it and it is very misleading to try and imply otherwise.
Hey, how about losing your wallet? Sorry, I’ve been perusing this thread for awhile, so please forgive my long post intended to describe yours—namely one of many “listening test” anecdotes popping up in a recurring cycle throughout this forum, each followed by a litany of evidence-based arguments to the contrary. Rinse and repeat. The anecdotes are undisciplined and free of any authority, while the rebuttals are made up of the logical conclusions of those with an informed understanding of how network protocols work.
Cognitive biases are truly a thing, honest—they’re the foundation of how every predatory “audiophile” brand successfully convinces untold numbers of susceptible folks to pay outlandish prices for components that operate solely in the digital domain—where “sound quality” is not even a tangible term.
To roughly summarize what has been repeatedly put forth—networking protocols are well-equipped to deal with errors and packet loss, “shielding” is not an issue where analog concepts such as electrical interference and noise do not exist, and the only time sound quality enters the equation in any reasonably designed digital audio setup is at the time of DA conversion. And even then the factors in play only pertain to how accurately a DAC reproduces the original master from a digital file—specifically how much noise is introduced in the process due to error. In the event that any data was indeed lost in the network milieu it would manifest as pops, glitches or dropouts, not in any degradation in sound quality—period.
What’s at stake here is nothing less than the cold hard cash for which each of us works hard to attain. And while other folks try to tempt us into parting ways with $3,000 for a streamer that offers nothing more than what an RPI can do, the strong among us hopefully resist, and save that money for where sound signature really can be a major consideration—i.e. amps and speakers.
Unless you can produce a source of valid data that proves otherwise, the words of the folks at Wigwam can be disregarded as the hallucinations inherent in cognitive bias. The criteria for valid data would require a prospective, randomized, controlled and double-blinded study with a statistically-significant sample size—which for an experiential endpoint such as this would be in the triple digits. No offense to the good folks at Wigwam whose prerogative it is to spend their money as they wish, but please don’t help propagate their bad information. Peace.
Are you referring to “audiophile” networking cable specifically (not that it matters)?
Update: Never mind, I just checked out your 70+ posts in this thread insisting that “audiophile network cables” are really a thing. I won’t engage. If you can still persist with this logic-free belief after my lengthy post above along with the hundreds of other explanations on this thread from folks way smarter than both of us on the topic of digital signal transmission, then you’re either someone who has already invested thousands of dollars in this snake oil, or you’re peddling it. Ciao
As I understand it from personal experience. Ethernet cables do not have any effect on sound. An ordinary high-quality cable is enough. As for the switch, there really are changes here. “Audiophile” switch is a filter of interference in the network created by various connected devices. Changes are audible not only during streaming, but also during playback of music from a disk inside Noocleus+.
@Yury_Kochetkov
Can you provide a source for this? How could any element in the network affect the “sound quality” of a digital stream? How would these alleged improvements change what is encoded in the source file? It’s a stream of ones and zeros, and network protocols have intrinsic error checking and correcting. I don’t understand what you mean by “switching”…
Here’s the science, with evidence to refute this misconception—one that makes the manufacturers of these expensive switches unhappy…
Takeaway—if there were any changes to the digital stream being transmitted, you would not hear music—you would hear stutters, glitches, dropouts. This is a stream of NON-MUSICAL ones and zeros being fed into a DA processor. The music occurs after that process. There is no sound signature or frequency response curves contained within those ones and zeros that can be narrowed or reshaped prior to DA conversion; those modifications can only occur in the analog realm. A DAC being fed a bunch of errors would produce gibberish—not music.
Let your head work through this one before your ears—these claims make no sense whatsoever.
This is a tired old argument, but analog signal characteristics just cannot be applied to a stream of data, though some old school “enthusiasts” just can’t let it go.
That’s strange, since most of the audiophile switches in the sensible price range are based on a generic £20/$20 Gbit switch. They only differ in having a more precise clock, which is completely superfluous - the IEEE 802.3 standard specifies Ethernet clocks to be within ±100 ppm, and as has been discussed numerous times, TCP/IP is all or nothing. A more precise clock makes not one iota of difference to the datastrean, and therefore cannot affect the audio coming out of the streamer/DAC.
This argument just keeps rearing its head on here in cycles, despite the evidence. I’m convinced that these players have either invested a thick wad of cash on one of these “audiophile switches” already, or they’re selling them. Nothing else makes sense.
Their argument is like suggesting that if DNA was transmitted in a stream and we didn’t have $2,000 cables, the creatures that would result would look blurry or fuzzy, rather than turning out as an abomination or being aborted altogether.
I tend to think it’s mostly a fundamental misunderstanding of how digital data transmission (and further tcp/ip) works. Depending on if one stands in front or behind a counter it’s either being uninformed or intentionally misleading.
I’d call it more like willful ignorance, all the more irresponsible for pressuring others to waste gobs of cash on something completely fraudulent and often expensive.
Audiophoolery is like enticing others into drug addiction in a way—since once you get hypnotized into hearing more and more improvements as you invest more and more cash, it’s hard to stop—and the more folks you convince to join you the better you feel about your choices.
That may truly have been the case with full analog chains back in the day, where all noise was additive - although the limits of hearing still applied and some claims were outlandish even then. Digital alleviated all that, so the push is to convince people that digital hasn’t delivered on its promises and the paradigm hasn’t really changed. I guess this works mostly with older people who grew up with analog and were rightfully disappointed by the shoddy early implementations of digital. Those times are long gone.
Oh, one only needs to spend a half hour on Head-Fi (as I’m sure you’re aware) and there’s no limit to the number of audiophile “improvements” available to lift the veil off those ones and zeros. Power conditioners, power supplies, power cords, $1,500 USB cables, line conditioners, “audiophile” switches and Ethernet cables, repeaters, $20,000 network streamers (!) and don’t even get me started on DACs.
I say this from experience because I too was gullible once and parted ways with more cash than I want to think about, before some smarter folks finally knocked some sense into me. The Museum of Snake Oil Audio is available on display in my upstairs closet—and I charge admission, of course!
