Silent Angel Bonn N8 Audio Grade Ethernet Switch

[Deleted member 9286]

"Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way." ― Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad

Is it wrong that any mention of dragons nowadays just instantly leads my mind to:

 

[LTig]

"Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way." ― Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad

This citation was the reason why I asked in the first place. I love Stanislaw Lem.

Is there an analogy between dragons and sound differences of ethernet switches?

 

[sq225917]

To be fair I'd like to see if it makes any difference with a low quality streamer. Not that I expect it will, but it would be nice to shut this type of bollox down completely.

 

[mhardy6647]

Is it wrong that any mention of dragons nowadays just instantly leads my mind to:

View attachment 57179

Better by far than thinking of this guy, I'd opine...

... or even his dad, for that matter -- another well known Dragon in his day.

 

[tifune]

He has said the same before so it is serious.

@Seraph @amirm

I'm confused on this reply; he did a poor job of explaining his conclusion but he is correct: no standards-compliant switch, free from defects, impacts audio quality.

Is there some background on this fellow I'm missing? Since he posted this on April Fool's day is it some elaborate prank targeted at objectivists?

 

[KSTR]

I'm curious about the level of interest in such measurements.

The results are known in advance. The effort to make the measurements and write the report is significant. What's the ROI? What's the pay off that justifies the effort?

The point is: A measurement only reflects the performance of DUT under the circumstances given by the test setup.
That's the main problem when a test doesn't produce a positive result. You won't find EMC problems (demodulation) in an amp or linestage when you don't inject RF. You won't find ground layout problems in the DUT if you don't inject balancing currents, etc.

I'm not saying an "audiophile" network switch or whatever actually does improve something, I'm as sceptical as anyone else here about those claims, but there is a risk that the test did not show any result because the circumstances were sort of non-real-world, rather a simplified (and, importantly, well-defined) test-bench setup.
Of course I fully suscribe to the idea that those who design and market such devices are responsible to make clear what error/noise scenarios are needed for the unit to show an improvement (at the actual audio output of the DAC), or at least give some reasonable pointers. Which they don't....

 

[tifune]

I'm not saying an "audiophile" network switch or whatever actually does improve something, I'm as sceptical as anyone else here about those claims, but there is a risk that the test did not show any result because the circumstances were sort of non-real-world, rather a simplified (and, importantly, well-defined) test-bench setup.

Finally, a thread on this board where I can contribute! I'm a network engineer by trade, so if you clarify your concerns I can probably ameliorate them for you?

Maybe if you give a few examples of "real world" use cases? (Not trying to sound confrontational here, just excited that I can finally give back a little to this community

 

[KSTR]

Finally, a thread on this board where I can contribute! I'm a network engineer by trade, so if you clarify your concerns I can probably ameliorate them for you?

Are you a hardware/rf/analog guy? Because that't where I think the issues are (if any), on the digital (interpreted) side, let alone at protocol level, everthing is settled: 0's are 0's and 1's are 1's, and it's either correct or not, no twilight zone.

To my knowledge there are zero investigations for example for the following kind of stuff (just proposed by a member in german forum) : what if we replace the main clock oscillator of a good (or even "audiophile") switch with the worst one we can imagine wrt stability and jitter, just good enough that the thing keeps on working with no or little (recoverable) digital errors? Does it have any impact on audibility when the signal is feed to, say, a given streamer+DAC unit? The expectation is: no (for all the well-known reasons like mutiple levels of buffering etc etc), but do we know fur sure?

Maybe if you give a few examples of "real world" use cases? (Not trying to sound confrontational here, just excited that I can finally give back a little to this community

Sadly, I can't as I have zero expertise in this field. From what I've read, though, it seems people are getting sound changes depending how many other units are connected to a switch, what their power-supply specifics are, etc. Of course, no blind testing and all, and there is a big chance that if the perceptions are real, they could be induced by secondary effects... notably EMI is IHMO the most likely candidate for all sorts of otherwise "unexplained" audio phenomena, both with direct connection/cabling and indirect paths via mains-grid. We have people reporting their sound changes if they replace the power supply of their WLAN router, a use case that certainly can only have a indirect mechanism via mains grid disturbance.

 

[Jinjuku]

To my knowledge there are zero investigations for example for the following kind of stuff (just proposed by a member in german forum) : what if we replace the main clock oscillator of a good (or even "audiophile") switch with the worst one we can imagine wrt stability and jitter, just good enough that the thing keeps on working with no or little (recoverable) digital errors? Does it have any impact on audibility when the signal is feed to, say, a given streamer+DAC unit? The expectation is: no (for all the well-known reasons like mutiple levels of buffering etc etc), but do we know fur sure?

What good does such a contrivance do? It's like doing yoga while skydiving without a parachute to see if you can break your leg doing yoga.

 

[bidn]

Sadly, I can't as I have zero expertise in this field. From what I've read, though, it seems people are getting sound changes depending how many other units are connected to a switch, what their power-supply specifics are, etc. Of course, no blind testing and all, and there is a big chance that if the perceptions are real, they could be induced by secondary effects... notably EMI is IHMO the most likely candidate for all sorts of otherwise "unexplained" audio phenomena, both with direct connection/cabling and indirect paths via mains-grid. We have people reporting their sound changes if they replace the power supply of their WLAN router, a use case that certainly can only have a indirect mechanism via mains grid disturbance.

EMI (and the less the power supply of router or a switch!) cannot change the "sound" of TCP/IP because the data is sent in the form of packets with error correction, so it will always produce the same result. The only case where you could have delays is if all connections were used and all were overloaded at fully capacity (which is unrealistic in a home setting, given that a flac in CD quality doesn't normally exceed 1 Mbit/s and nowadays a single connection has a throughput of 1000 Mbit/s...) and there would be a lot of cross-talk between the cables at the point where the wires are no longer twisted when they spread to fit into the RJ45 connector. In this case the only solution would be well protecting cable-plugs interfaces avoiding cross-talk between neighbouring cables, like in the new Cat 8.1 standard, e.g. cables such as this one:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07V1LVHV2

I am certain that the perceptions of these people you mention have nothing to do with what happens in the real physical world, but are typically based on subjective expectations such more focussed listening, excitement about newer and more expensive device, etc.

 

[KSTR]

EMI (and the less the power supply of router or a switch!) cannot change the "sound" of TCP/IP because the data is sent in the form of packets with error correction, so it will always produce the same result.

Yes of course it can't affect sound this way, and that's what I already wrote, didn't I?
The EMI impact mechanism is on the analog side, at the DAC proper and downstream analog equipment.

 

[Jinjuku]

Yes of course it can't affect sound this way, and that's what I already wrote, didn't I?
The EMI impact mechanism is on the analog side, at the DAC proper and downstream analog equipment.

No manufacturer has ever been able to show this is the case for UTP cabling. You can get ground loop with shielded cabling tied at both chassis and endpoint but that's used only environments that require hardened cabling.

 

[bidn]

Yes of course it can't affect sound this way, and that's what I already wrote, didn't I?
The EMI impact mechanism is on the analog side, at the DAC proper and downstream analog equipment.

Sorry I misundertood you,
actually we fully agree then.

 

[pozz]

"Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each non-existed in an entirely different way." ― Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad

In philosophy, in case any one is interested, the name of the final piece of reasoning in that quote is called determinate negation. Cf. Hegel.

Lem's Futurological Congress and Solaris are excellent stories, by the way.

 

[FrantzM]

When someone wants to believe , no amount of explanation will make her/hm change her/his mind. EMI has entered the mind of the audiophile and it won't come out. Anything that anyone says that doesn't fit the belief is "noise".
This switch is ugly enough to not sell too many but expensive enough to have the person who's putting the badge and reselling it, recoup her/his investments at the very least... That is at most a $20 Ethernet switch ...They sell 10 at this price and money is made ...

 

[tifune]

Are you a hardware/rf/analog guy? Because that't where I think the issues are (if any), on the digital (interpreted) side, let alone at protocol level, everthing is settled: 0's are 0's and 1's are 1's, and it's either correct or not, no twilight zone.

To my knowledge there are zero investigations for example for the following kind of stuff (just proposed by a member in german forum) : what if we replace the main clock oscillator of a good (or even "audiophile") switch with the worst one we can imagine wrt stability and jitter, just good enough that the thing keeps on working with no or little (recoverable) digital errors? Does it have any impact on audibility when the signal is feed to, say, a given streamer+DAC unit? The expectation is: no (for all the well-known reasons like mutiple levels of buffering etc etc), but do we know fur sure?

Sadly, I can't as I have zero expertise in this field. From what I've read, though, it seems people are getting sound changes depending how many other units are connected to a switch, what their power-supply specifics are, etc. Of course, no blind testing and all, and there is a big chance that if the perceptions are real, they could be induced by secondary effects... notably EMI is IHMO the most likely candidate for all sorts of otherwise "unexplained" audio phenomena, both with direct connection/cabling and indirect paths via mains-grid. We have people reporting their sound changes if they replace the power supply of their WLAN router, a use case that certainly can only have a indirect mechanism via mains grid disturbance.

I would bet a substantial portion of my life's earnings that anyone claiming to hear a difference by changing the PSU of their WLAN router is placebo entirely. Think of it in the same terms as power cables that cost hundreds, or even thousands. How does a passive cable improve anything when the wiring in the wall costs afew dollars, maybe even pennies, per foot?

All audio delivery protocols that I've seen are predicated on TCP. Spotify, Tidal, as well as NAS protocols like SMB or (rarely) NFS - all TCP. That matters because TCP has built in error correction - when a packet arrives, it's checksum is calculated and compared to the checksum that was embedded in the packet upon transmission. If it is NOT a match, TCP automatically requests retransmission and waits for it to arrive so the data stream can be reassembled then presented in order.

So, in your example of mains grid disturbance, we would experience this in potentially a few different ways. The 2 most likely out comes would be Ethernet engotiating at a slower speed (wired 1Gb may negotiate to 100Mb half duplex, a problem I see often w faulty hardware) or it would negotiate at full speed but TCP retransmits would be off the chart. That would look like high % of failed checksum compared to a functional connection. "High" is relative, but In a healthy network they should be well below 1%.

Now, if we put all this together even some rare streaming protocol that is NOT based on TCP, rather UDP which is the most common alternative, we would experience this as stuttering audio. Think of a poor quality VoIP call - there are very tiny gaps in the conversation because UDP doesn't re-request those lost packets. What would be the point? It would actually make LESS sense if a lost packet was re-requested during a live interaction. The sentence would be like:

"I'm on my way to my girl....... House.

..................

Friend's."

You can see how that would quickly become a problem in music. The sample/packet size are much smaller of course, but hopefully my example illustrates the point.

So, in short, IETF standards were designed with your use case in mind - engineers knew that as data networks scaled, transmission signals would be subject to alllllllll kinds of abuse. Poor power, poor application design, misconfiguration by entry level techs, etc. So they built error correction into the data stream wherever they could (TCP).

Thus, we can be highly certain that changing a clock will not produce distortion in the way we tend to think of it here on ASR. Impossible? I suppose not, but only to the extent that walking through a wall is impossible: quantum theory suggests that if you try walking through a wall over and over, sometime in the next few trillion years it will actually work.

The exception being a modification that takes the network switch OUTside IETF standards, in which case I guess anything can happen although I would bet on degraded or outright data stream failure over an increase in THD, IMD, etc. Jitter, sure, but again not necessarily in an audible manner (more like sporatic buffering).

Hopefully that's helpful? I didn't really address your RF point, I suppose. That is actually a known issue, and the reason why shielded cabling was invented. However, again that scenario would be perceived as slow throughput equating to buffering. It's a little more complex than that, but not much and certainly wouldn't affect sound in the analog domain in any way once the buffer completes.

Edit: I completely forgot, UDP also leverages checksums but because the whole point of UDP is generally lower latency/higher throughput, bad packets are typically discarded unless the application itself re-request them.

 

[KSTR]

@tifune, thanks four your input.
Alas, I think you still missed my point. We all are 100% confident that a PSU change, ethernet cable change, etc *cannot* affect the digital transmission, even in case there would be a slight change of low-level error probability. All of this would be corrected and the output stream to the DAC will be always 100% bit-perfect. Either that or totally corrupt, stream interrupted.

The issue is most analog gear, from DAC downstream, is likely way more prone to EMC issues than we would imagine. The more vintage and the more boutique the higher the chance of demodulation. In the extreme case you hear the "klicking" noise from a cell phone nearby. Modern gear usually is, and has to be, EMC tested but the typical test (I had to do with this in my day job) is pretty much crude when it comes to pass/fail decision, actually the setup and assessment process to find any harm to the audio output doesn't seem to be clearly defined at all. Unless the demodulated test tone is immediately clearly audible to the examiner the result ususally is 'pass'.

Now a router/switch still emits some RF over the ethernet cables (it's only reduced to the levels required to pass EMC tests), and while ethernet cables are transformer-coupled this isolation is a dead short for RF. And the same applies to the mains side, ususally SMPS (which again is a dead short connection to mains for RF, and it adds it own dirt). That's why I'm saying EMC issues are flying under the radar when looking for causes of sound changes with "no viable explanation".

How does a passive [mains] cable improve anything when the wiring in the wall costs afew dollars, maybe even pennies, per foot?

It doesn't when you have only one single piece of audio gear, your proverbial ghetto blaster... though even then a cable can make a difference that is real, say for example a cable loaded with ferrite-paste, or integrating a mains filter and such. In a typical HiFi setup we have many mains-powered devices connected together to the grid and then subtle technical details of the cables -- impedance mostly -- can have some impact, in the way devices interact, disturb each other.

All I'm saying is that the world isn't just black and white, and it is not helpful to restrict one's thinking to inside the comfort zone, jumping to quick (and often false) conclusions, like it seems you did in the mains cable statement.

 

[tifune]

@tifune
Alas, I think you still missed my point.

Agreed

 

[Jinjuku]

The issue is most analog gear, from DAC downstream, is likely way more prone to EMC issues than we would imagine. The more vintage and the more boutique the higher the chance of demodulation. In the extreme case you hear the "klicking" noise from a cell phone nearby. Modern gear usually is, and has to be, EMC tested but the typical test (I had to do with this in my day job) is pretty much crude when it comes to pass/fail decision, actually the setup and assessment process to find any harm to the audio output doesn't seem to be clearly defined at all. Unless the demodulated test tone is immediately clearly audible to the examiner the result ususally is 'pass'.

Now a router/switch still emits some RF over the ethernet cables (it's only reduced to the levels required to pass EMC tests), and while ethernet cables are transformer-coupled this isolation is a dead short for RF. And the same applies to the mains side, ususally SMPS (which again is a dead short connection to mains for RF, and it adds it own dirt). That's why I'm saying EMC issues are flying under the radar when looking for causes of sound changes with "no viable explanation".

Can you provide a real example of all the above? CAT5 UTP is pretty much noise immune from external factors up to 30Mhz. I have three setups: HT, Stereo, and Office headphone.

Cellphone always in pocket. Zero problems.

Also with all the other peripherals connected, how do you know it's Ethernet as suspect #1?

 

[sq225917]

Adding a switch between a dac and nas really doesnt reflect the typical home use setup where multiple devices may be simultaneously bouncing traffic through a hub/ router.

We have 3 phone, 3 laptops and a tablets plus pi and dac on our home network.

Take a look at the traffic on your network, if you have no lost packets, all good. If you do maybe a reconfiguration with static ip for the audio stuff and a managed switch might actually help eliminate collisions and lost packets.

It's certainly not going g to help in a 3 point music only network. So why test that way.

Identify an issue exists, then address it, dont proclaim an item is useless when you've only tried it in a no fault system.