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Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2020 10:23 pm
by Lindsayt
CN211276 wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 1:28 pm I have looked at the many used Cisco industrial switching devices on Ebay selling cheaply which are expensive new and wonder what effect they would have. I will keep an open mind and watching brief, my priority being a high quality ethernet cable.
Whilst I'm no CCNA, I have installed hundreds of Cisco switches over the years and it would be a trivial task for me to configure one for home use.

I'd be happy to help anyone on this forum put a basic config onto a Cisco or a HP Procurve switch should they wish to go down this route.

For the high quality cable, you can buy 500 metre reels of (non-flat) cat 7 cable off ebay for £150. You'd then need 2 plugs per cable.
Crimping tools are cheap.


Or you can buy round ready made cat 7 cables off ebay for £5 for a 3 metre length.

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2020 10:51 pm
by Lindsayt
Fretless, this audiophile switch that you've bought. What are you comparing it against?
What were you using before? Did everything go via the 4 x RJ45 sockets on the back of your home router?
Or did you have some hub or switch before? If so, what make and model?

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2020 11:26 pm
by Fretless
Lindsayt wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 10:51 pm Fretless, this audiophile switch that you've bought. What are you comparing it against?
What were you using before? Did everything go via the 4 x RJ45 sockets on the back of your home router?
Or did you have some hub or switch before? If so, what make and model?

Was using Netgear GS108E gigabit switch.

Image

It is a good switch and way better than the cheapo Dixons ones I had before.
Have 3 models from that Netgear range in use throughout the house/business.

First thing I noticed is that the Silent Angel switch is CONSIDERABLY faster.

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:48 am
by Lindsayt
Did you ever check the config on the Netgear switch to see what speeds the ports were set at?
And if it was auto did you try setting it to 1000 Mbps on the device NIC and corresponding switch port for your critical devices?
To see if it speeded things up, whilst still being reliable? And also to see if that made any sonic difference?

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:47 am
by karatestu
One or two of you are hinting that some of these products you talk of are being dismissed as bollocks or snake oil. There doesn't seem to be that sort of behaviour going on here. I presume it must be happening on the more objectivist forums or blogs ?

All this talk of cables, switches, jitter bugs, re clockers makes me happy that i have merely a cdp with no digital out and where the I2s digital signal has less than two centimeters to travel along three or four pcb tracks from decoder chip to the dac chip. Job done.

I wonder why similar can't be achieved with file based music, or may be it can ?

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 7:39 am
by Fretless
Lindsayt wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:48 am Did you ever check the config on the Netgear switch to see what speeds the ports were set at?
And if it was auto did you try setting it to 1000 Mbps on the device NIC and corresponding switch port for your critical devices?
To see if it speeded things up, whilst still being reliable? And also to see if that made any sonic difference?
Good points here, lindsay.

Despite being reasonably technical and an ex It-professional, I wouldn't have a clue about changing the settings of a switch, just like many others.

Looking at the video review mentioned earlier where they take the lid off the device and look inside; the Silent Angel has 32 sets of inductance correction and separate galvanic isolators for all of the individual lines within the 8 ports and a special layer in the case to reduce EM levels. Plus a high-grade clocking TCXO crystal for ultra-precision signal transfer.

I don't think normal manufacturers would bother as the need to reduce this sort of interference in the average network simply isn't there.

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:43 am
by CN211276
Fretless wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 9:49 pm The cable I ordered today is an AQ Cinnamon 5m Ethernet link for the Tinkerboard on the main system.

Hope it's in soon. :dance:
Very interested in your findings as this is the cable I am considering. The specs seem closest to the Carbon USB cable which brought about an improvement.

Yesterday I ordered a new router/hub which should arrive tomorrow. I am upgrading my Sky 2013 model to the 2019 with a broadband boost. Dont know if it will have any effect on SQ. Only £30 and as part of a new contract Sky are reducing my subscription by £10 for the next 18 months. :grin: Wish they were more open about such deals.

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:52 pm
by Lindsayt
On the snake oil and bollocks thing.

It's a long tradition of this forum that the sound of all hi-fi equipment is relative.

That equipment reviews in isolation are pretty meaningless.
That comparative reviews are much more meaningful.

So that in this thread, a Silent Angel Bonn 8 switch with one shortish AQ Forest LAN Cat 7 cable has been compared against an unconfigured Netgear GS108E with a so far unspecified LAN cable that might be Cat 5E, Cat 6 or Cat 7?

A considerable improvement in speed has been noticed with the Silent Angel.

So far we can say that a Silent Angel 8 with an AQ Cat 7 cable sounds better for over the network music than an unconfigured Netgear GS108E with an unspecified LAN cable. Nothing more nothing less.
There's no snake oil or bollocks there.

I also note that in the Pusuit Perfect System video on page 1 of this thread, that it is done as a non comparative review.
I've not spotted what the £4000 switch was being compared against.
Edi: just found the answer in the comments section of that video. He was comparing the £4000 switch with bespoke cat 7 cables against his existing cables (possibly cat 5e) into his router! Which will probably be a £30 consumer grade broadband router.

The vast majority of homes use just the router or some cheapo hub or consumer grade non-configured switch for their LAN connections.
Which is fine.

Anyway, A Silent Angel 8 with one AQ Cat 7 cable is the current reigning bake-off champion.
Let's see if it can be beaten for either outright sound quality or sound quality per pound spent by a properly configured Netgear GS108E (possibly with Cat 6 or Cat 7 cabling throughout the LAN). And if it can't, let's see of it can be beaten by a configured Cisco business gigabit switch with Cat 6 or 7 cabling. If the switch has to be in the same room as the speakers, we'd better make it a fanless one (at likely additional cost).


Configuring a Netgear GS108E looks easy enough: https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files ... _UM_EN.pdf

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 3:10 pm
by Fretless
You're making me work!

Don't have time to look at that properly before the weekend. And the Netgear switch has already been put into service elsewhere.

Re: It's so Ethereal

Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 4:22 pm
by Lindsayt
That's fine. It's your system, your money and your time.

Just thinking, it'd be nice to get to the bottom of the slower speed from the Netgear issue. To see if it's down to the configuration or a limitation of the Netgear switch or the cabling.

And the great thing about threads like this is that they stimulate experimentation...

BTW, the cheapest business grade gigabit fanless switches I've found so far on ebay are priced at £30.