Posh switch - another cause of Audiophilia nervosa?

SIMON-IN-SUFFOLK posted:

The switches I suggest you want to look for are the ones with more accurate clocks - i.e. can act as a PTP sever and/or support synchronous ethernet - those devices have typically better regulated crystal controlled clocks. 

How is the accuracy of the clock timing going to make any difference with the size of the substantial buffer on the Naim streamers?

I am not sure what the Naim streamer buffer has to do with any of this - you have confused me with that one I am afraid.

With PTP/IEE1588 the timing period is important between the  sync messages. Physical clock variance or jitter will introduce unreliability in this timing - therefore switches supporting of PTP typically should have better physical stability. The Cisco 2960 supports IEE1588. Its reasonable to assume this may be contributing factor the reduced physical clock jitter.

This has nothing to do with data buffers at the TCP level or application level. This is nothing to do with sample jitter (was that what you were thinking of?)..... This is purely related to transport jitter such as with USB audio and modern day SPDIF and subsequent system cross talk derived from it.

Simon

jon honeyball posted:

What tools are you using?

Hi Jon, using Wireshark reading a SPAN port of a witch. If you drop me an email I can send you the timing traces of the relative inter frame packet timing for different media servers.

As I inferred I am looking forward to be able to do this analysis on the Uniti Atom.

Simon

I tried a shielded mains cable with the Cisco today. Wasn't expecting much difference if any but surprisingly it did result in a bit more added clarity and definition, building on the strengths already noted.

What's remarkable is that for a cost of c£100 for the switch and shielded mains cable the improvements in sound is equivalent to changing from the standard interconnects to Naim SL or Chord STA @ £1000+ IMHO so top VFM.

Jonn posted:

I tried a shielded mains cable with the Cisco today. Wasn't expecting much difference if any but surprisingly it did result in a bit more added clarity and definition, building on the strengths already noted.

What's remarkable is that for a cost of c£100 for the switch and shielded mains cable the improvements in sound is equivalent to changing from the standard interconnects to Naim SL or Chord STA @ £1000+ IMHO so top VFM.

John, do you mind divulging which screened mains cable you used on the Cisco switch. I have used Supra screened mains cables to good effect but in other parts of my system.

It's a Chord C shielded mains cable which I think cost about £50 when I bought it.

Jonn posted:

What's remarkable is that for a cost of c£100 for the switch and shielded mains cable the improvements in sound is equivalent to changing from the standard interconnects to Naim SL or Chord STA @ £1000+ IMHO so top VFM.

To be fair, if the Cisco switch was a current model and you bought it new, I suspect you'd be paying closer to £500 than £50, just to keep things in perspective.

ChrisSU posted:

Jonn posted:

What's remarkable is that for a cost of c£100 for the switch and shielded mains cable the improvements in sound is equivalent to changing from the standard interconnects to Naim SL or Chord STA @ £1000+ IMHO so top VFM.

To be fair, if the Cisco switch was a current model and you bought it new, I suspect you'd be paying closer to £500 than £50, just to keep things in perspective.

This is sadly true, but as these particular devices are industry workhorses there are plenty on the used market... 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

ChrisSU posted:

Jonn posted:

What's remarkable is that for a cost of c£100 for the switch and shielded mains cable the improvements in sound is equivalent to changing from the standard interconnects to Naim SL or Chord STA @ £1000+ IMHO so top VFM.

To be fair, if the Cisco switch was a current model and you bought it new, I suspect you'd be paying closer to £500 than £50, just to keep things in perspective.

This is sadly true, but as these particular devices are industry workhorses there are plenty on the used market... 

Perhaps the same will be true about SL cables in time:-)

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hi Jonn, interesting. As Nigelb asks be interested to hear of your cable. I used an industry standard/non boutique Cat 6 shielded cable next to my streamer and then joined that to a regular Cat5e cable to my 2960 switch. I found the 3m length of Cat6 close by the streamer and audio equipment made a subtle but agreeable further increase in naturalness to the resultant audio.

 

 

Not sure if we have have crossed wires here (sorry, rubbish pun) but John was referring to a shielded mains cable for his Cisco and you mention ethernet cables.

Confused, of Chesham.

My bad - I think I am going to go to bed - my head hurts.. 

You asked a question that appeared spurious to me, however I attempted to give you a reply and to suggest I am attempting to bamboozle you with such a reply to me is disingenuous .. Why bother asking it if you are not prepared to take on the answer? I thought my description of why I believe PTP support is a contributing factor to clock stability was fairly straightforward, and was probably too simplistic on reflection. As I have said several times before I don't believe this is down to the Naim streamer audio clock per se (if you exclude crosstalk) or network data integrity, but you persist on that line, perhaps you can explain your thinking - to that end you and I appear to agree so not sure of your argument. My view, experiences and even some engineering white paper references I have posted on the forum suggest to me it's down to system crosstalk from coupled systems. System crosstalk causes coupling across components, like microprocessor noise or NIC line noise affecting audio circuits or clocks, or like WAV and FLAC sounding different in replay on certain devices. I am a computer networks and systems engineer, I believe there is a reason for all system responses and outcomes.

Simon

This is why I included audiophilia nervosa in the title. 

How insightful you were 

Surely a powerline or powerline lite is the only option here? :-)

SIMON-IN-SUFFOLK posted:

You asked a question that appeared spurious to me, however I attempted to give you a reply and to suggest I am attempting to bamboozle you with such a reply to me is disingenuous .. Why bother asking it if you are not prepared to take on the answer?

I was by no means doubting your qualifications or experience, i was simply saying your answer made no sense to me. My apologies if you have taken my somewhat flippant response to heart.
At the end of the day any possible science behind switches and audiophile streaming is neither hear nor there if like me you're one of the people who can't hear any difference.
Maybe I'll change my mind when i hear the Naim switch or network cables.

No worries, if you can hear no advantage in using these devices or methods that is absolutely fine. You have tried and that is the main thing. We are all clearly quite different.

I am one of the 'fortunate' who (believes he) can hear a positive difference with the Cisco switch. It is simple, cheap tweaks like this that have the potential to deliver great VFM 'upgrades'. As these switches are so cheap secondhand on a well known auction site, there is very little to lose by giving them a go. Although they are managed switches, you don't need any IT knowledge (like me) to get them working. At their most basic level they really are very simple as long as they have had a factory reset. So why not give them a go. You might, like me, just be surprised by the result.

I believe it was Simon who originally questioned the wisdom of using posh Ethernet cables and then plugging them in to a very basic switch. In retrospect, that now makes a lot of sense. It was also Simon that suggested we try a secondhand Cisco 2960 switch. Great shout and a great SQ result IMO.

nigelb posted:

I am one of the 'fortunate' who (believes he) can hear a positive difference with the Cisco switch. It is simple, cheap tweaks like this that have the potential to deliver great VFM 'upgrades'. As these switches are so cheap secondhand on a well known auction site, there is very little to lose by giving them a go. Although they are managed switches, you don't need any IT knowledge (like me) to get them working. At their most basic level they really are very simple as long as they have had a factory reset. So why not give them a go. You might, like me, just be surprised by the result.

I believe it was Simon who originally questioned the wisdom of using posh Ethernet cables and then plugging them in to a very basic switch. In retrospect, that now makes a lot of sense. It was also Simon that suggested we try a secondhand Cisco 2960 switch. Great shout and a great SQ result IMO.

I completely concur with nigelb having received mine today.

I was somewhat surprised by the size "said the actress said to the bishop" but a very well spent £80 for a mint example.

Hungryhalibut posted:

Brilliant's observation that the Cisco gave less tonal nuance and joie de vivre is interesting - I found the complete opposite into my 272. I cannot detect any negatives at all, and as time goes on I'm liking the impact more and more,  with the switch building on the advantages of the Ethernet wires I changed a few months ago. 

It is worth mentioning again that I did not test with a Naim streamer. The setup I am using has a microRendu which may be more susceptible to smps switching noise than the Naim designs, making that the overriding factor.  Sometime in the future I hope to try an externally powered version with a nice LPS for comparison.

I too thought I'd give a Cisco 2960 a go - nothing ventured nothing gained as they say. Received it yesterday. It fitted straight in to replace an existing Netgear switch with no set-up faff and worked immediately. Noticed no difference at first - it was very cold to touch anyway but after an hour or so the sound smoothed out nicely, sounded a bit cleaner and overall it was a nice effect. Not huge - I'm not claiming it matches a new PSU or anything but as a cherry on the cake of a good system, well worth the £70 odd I paid. For info - it sits between my NDX and QNAP 451/SSD using Chord ethernet cables. Thanks S-in-S for the suggestion.

I wonder if a newer Cisco 2960 sounds better than an older one. In which case maybe Cisco will offer some type of service/recap for their switches.

Is there a gigabit equivalent of the Cisco 2960, 8 port managed switch?  
As far as I can tell, the 2960 series is a 100MBit switch, at least as far as I understand such things.

In case anyone asks, we don't need the extra speed for audio but for other bulk data transfer duties. 

Best regards, FT

Foot tapper posted:

Is there a gigabit equivalent of the Cisco 2960, 8 port managed switch?  
As far as I can tell, the 2960 series is a 100MBit switch, at least as far as I understand such things.

In case anyone asks, we don't need the extra speed for audio but for other bulk data transfer duties. 

Best regards, FT

I imagine all current versions of the 2960 are Gigabit switches - possibly the reason the older ones are so cheap is that they are only 100MB?