Suggestions for an Audiophile grade Ethernet Switch
 

There's a fairly good possibility that we will be purchasing an Aurender A10 in the next month or so.

Problem is we only have one port in the Great Room and I have at least a Mac mini and Aurender to plug into it. I've always used Cisco in our homes before - but that is without a Streamer.

So, can anyone suggest an Audiophile grade Ethernet switch that's within reason?

Thanks in advance.

The Uptone Audio EtherREGEN at $640. No additional linear power supply required, either. Check out my post here: https://www.audioaficionado.org/showthread.php?t=46843

If you're lucky and order today, you might be able to get into the shipments scheduled for January, 2020.

In the interim, if your Cisco switch is connecting to your stereo system and using a Switch-Mode Power Supply, replace it with a linear power supply. Its creating high-impedance leakage currents that are getting down to your DAC. These leakage currents cause an increase in jitter and clock phase noise, which is audible.

You can get good wall-adapter style linear power supplies from Jameco for about $11 in various voltages and amperages.

Cheers.

audio bill and Puma Cat,

Thanks for the information and link. I've some reading to do. Many thanks

Joe, there is much more information available at Uptone Audio's web site, as well. You can check it out there.

I've been following the development of the EtherREGEN for almost a year now. The designer, John Swenson is an IT-industry engineer that has >30 years experience working for Broadcom and Cisco. John pulled out the stops on the EtherREGEN, even down to the specifications for isolation transformers....

"Even the magnetics of the 4 Gigabit ‘A’-side ports are special. We chose a module which utilizes 12 transformer cores in each port (most Ethernet ports have 2-6 cores), and ground their center-taps through capacitors in a way that blocks port-to-port AC leakage."

Puma Cat,

Thanks. I'm on their site now. Your post was very educational and is a great summary of what I'm reading there now. I had a feeling I could degrade the signal by using the wrong Switch, but from my reading it is far worse than I would have ever imagined. Thanks again. This is very helpful.

You're welcome, and yes, it is.

From my experimentation with all of this for the last 6 months, I've discovered that everything matters. Even the quality of the power cords powering linear power supplies for switches, bridges, fiber media convertors, etc. matter. One of the biggest improvements I've made to the system this summer was to install a Shunyata Venom 14 Digital power cord to power my Keces P3 power supply that powers my SOtM UltraNeo network bridge. That brought a BIG improvement.

Of course, the Ethernet cables matter, and in a big way, too.

Puma Cat, I agree. :thumbsup: Multiple Reciprocities - like in many other things, in audio everything matters and everything is dependent upon everything else that also matters. And around the audiophile merry-go-round we go and go.

Of course, depending upon many factors the law of diminishing enters somewhere along the line. And that is different for everyone. However, since this is one of my main sources of music, I'm taking action on this for my new system.

This said, now I am now thinking of adding a turntable to the system. When will it ever end - I didn't really type that.