More Snake Oil - low-noise network switch

Catering to high-end digital audio gullophiles (those who don't understand anything about data transfer).

Melco S100 Audiophile-grade Data Network Switch Announced | StereoNET United Kingdom



Only £1,999.


Linksys SE3008 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch

Why spend $49 when you can burn $2500 more?

 

"audiophile-grade"

 

the thing is, you just know some folks will buy this and claim to hear more 'air between the instruments' and other placebophile buzzwords.

 

"You can also disable the LEDs for further noise reduction."

What kind of garbage is this?

 

This manufacturer external HDD drives (extremely lame BTW) have a separate power supply - why not that switch?
I felt more advanced version coming...

 

Time was you walked into a store and walked out a bog standard 8 way switch box now they wanna push this nonsense???

 

Which bit of my turntable do I plug it into?

 

I'm truly disappointed with Melco. I expected such a reputable company to warn its potential customers that its S100 switch may not perform optimally unless you also buy the audiophile RJ45 wall plates and connectors. Alas, this seems to be yet another occasion when the rush to push a product to the market without its necessary accessories will result in a less than adequate audiophile experience.

 

They do have $100 audiophile CAT7 cables, but clearly those cheap cords will degrade the sound.

 

If it says Lynksys it is generally crap...

 

That's a real problem that is being discussed in another thread on this forum. It seems that TCP data packets are getting confused as soon as they encapsulate audio and are asked to travel along copper wires. However it's childishly easy to treat since you only need to draw direction arrows with a sharpie on the cable jacket to restore order and ensure that the music will flow in the correct direction and without jitter.

 

But. It's a LInksys.

 

Yea yea yea I can't spell... Linksys. Linksis, Lynksys all the same.... Spend a few more $$$ and get Meraki, Cisco, Ubiquiti, etc...

 

I'm waiting for the Deluxe version... I understand it comes with a veil that I can lift myself!

 

Makes you wonder, again perhaps, how a fool and his money ever got together in the first place.


Dan

 

There are people who simply do not care. They come to the dealer, he shows them system for 250K, they say "OMG it sounds great, I want it all" and here you go. This is not a product for us )).

 

I think I'm going to wait for the tube version.

Should be 3 db cooler in the low end...

 

I think I just found my new kickstarter campaign!

 

I honestly can't believe this will be a successful product launch. Even if you were to believe that a switch could make a sonic difference, at what point would anyone think that this is the next sensible step to eek out more performance? Honestly, only someone with a $50K+ digital front end could possibly think this even is worth a try...and that's if you're already drinking the snake oil Kool-Aid . This switch is the same price as an Auralic Aries G1 streamer!

 

A budget gigabit switch can somehow manage a lossless 4K HDR video with Atmos audio, without error, but struggles with stereo .

I'm sure MQA sounds breathtaking through this switch

If one is that concerned about the impact of a switch on sound, then just direct wire using a crossover cable (audiophile grade, of course).

 

I turn off all the power in my house when I listen to music, don’t you? Really deep black background behind the soundstage and no hiss.

 

Yeh, steam powered audio is the only musical truth.

 

The fool encountered someone more foolish somewhere along the line.

 

A big part of the price premium goes toward getting the chassis to that coveted ultra-low resonance "blue pill"-fueled rigidity expected of any proper audiophile component, which will of course mechanically stabilize the circuit board traces and thereby reduce bit-transfer asymmetry distortion, which pays enormous dividends in soundstage holography and an almost complete elimination of transient smearing. The way it accomplishes these sonic improvements through the use of materials and construction methods which render its appearance sufficiently posh to proudly sit in your rack next to your finest and most luxurious components is not only artful, but truly masterful and even lyrical, and this simply cannot be bought cheaply.

In case you were not aware, "bit-transfer asymmetry distortion" is a specific type of distortion induced by the "1" bits' (digital "on" or "high" state, formed by a pulse of electron flow) tendency to vibrate and bounce around excessively within the cubic crystal structure formed by the copper atoms in the PCB traces, causing their frequency at the output to be out of sync with the frequency of the "0" bits (which are the "off" state and formed by an interval of zero electron flow, therefore impervious to being bounced around excessively within anything).

The rectangular LED is neat too.

 

Yes all this is true and may even contribute to better sound-stage but it can handle bit-transfer asymmetry distortion only when there is only a single electron bouncing around and obviously it doesn't happen very often. Perhaps the purpose of the square LED goes beyond aesthetic and it's there to handle the more common cases of bit-transfer asymmetry distortion caused by two electrons bouncing around?