Miscellaneous

RH,

I was on the team when I was with DCA and worked with Western Digital on the 100M products. I did network routers and bridges back in my last real job before doing Wavelength Audio full time in 1994.

Testing 10/100 Ethernet requires differential probes ($$$) and a scope capable of capturing and decoding. That's pretty easy but like USB there are 3 flawed things: Computer 1 <=== Cable ===> Computer 2 which make testing a bit harder. The easy thing about 10/100 is the protocol is full duplex. There is a differential pair for both receive and transmit.
I was asked to work on 1000 back then and also USB but when they said was going to be 1/2 duplex 4 bit differential I said no thanks. Why? Testing 1000 is very difficult. It's no longer two computers and a cable. To certify anything for 1000 they test in a pretty crappy way (same with USB HS/FS/LS). You run testing software that sends out a transmit pattern on all 4 sets of differential lines into an analyzer. This stuff costs like $250K for a test set. Not that any cable company that I know tests their Ethernet or USB cables but having Stereophile pick up the tab for this would be a little bit on the long side.

I have USB (HS/FS/LS) test set and Ethernet 10/100 test sets here with my Tektronix stuff. Even that was really expensive, but required in my line of work.

Thanks,
Gordon

Or, imagine that connected to this network there's analog circuitry not 100% immune to the effects of RFI. Y'know; common- and normal-mode noise currents.

Audio playback is a realtime process. Brains don't ignore noise like packet based data transmission does.

Now, you could certainly question the merits of the devices reviewed here. Or, raise a stink about why analog audio equipment is not robustly protected against noise currents. (And, at the same time, discuss what this extra noise immunity would cost.) Both are good arguments.

Full disclosure: I am not an audio professional. But, I do spend my working hours fretting over optimizing the performance of mixed signal transmission. Admittedly, that's at frequencies between 5 MHz and 5 GHz, but similar ideas apply to audio.

Please provide an example of "But It's $%#* Impossible! become mainstream technologies"

Then read IEEE Standard 802.3 and please do tell us exactly where the non-absolute alteration of transmitted data occurs. The burden of proof lies upon you.

I really, really look forward to your response.

"Putative objectivists still seem to think this is a theological battle to be waged in place of the listener's experience and narrative: Using audio not for its purpose but to assert about it, commit fallacy, claim fraud, and leap into anonymous arguments on the internet with civil types."

Ahem. I don't think objectivists are the camp who would make "theological" claims about this stuff whatsoever. The only pseudo-theology here is the faith of the pure subjective folks who put their trust in company reps and and engineers who are of course biased to promote a product for financial gain as if these comments actually made any sense or that they have in fact done what they claim.

For example:
"We really believe that by reducing or minimizing the noise that is added into every single process that happens between signal entrance and exit—by tackling every single source of noise that might affect the signal going through the QNet—we can make a better, more silent device."

Perhaps they can show us where and what kind of "silence" they've achieved compared to a typical reasonably priced $50-100 5-port gigabit switch? Maybe show us a single instance where noise might be different coming out of the 100Mbps vs. 1Gb ports?

A modern 1 gigabit switch is mature technology these days, utilizing low power and the higher end models can also be managed with functions like QoS which an audiophile might want to take advantage of if they have busy networks. So far the claims of this $3200 Nordost switch appears to be words and testimony of those who sell and those who believe - isn't that what "theology" is about?

A alternate response to, “You could have just declined to buy the product. But you didn't.“ that you might find useful to internalize would be, “You could have just declined to prevent some trusting individual from blowing their hard-earned money on what is, essentially, bollocks. But you didn’t.” In fact it might even be gracious to append that with a note of thanks.

Another question you may consider addressing is: You could have chosen to ignore the comment. But you didn’t.” The answer might be interesting.

Asking $3200 for a 5-port ethernet switch is pricing at orders of magnitude higher than needed for home ethernet installations.

Must we try all kinds of expensive snake oil to see if they "work" when logic and engineering principles of how digital data is transmitted across networks indicate that the benefit is far and away negligible from a machine like this?

Or do we start by taking a cautious stance, and wait for the company to provide some evidence this does anything special for 3-grand of after-tax dollars? JVS' testimony is interesting I suppose but there have been instances where I think some of us know not to trust the claims completely.

... so many comments are making theory-based statements of "unpossibility!". Yet, none of them have heard the devices under review.

Hey, I have a specially minted coin that, if you tape it to the top of your wrist, will allow you to step off the ledge of a tall building, and instead of falling to your death, you will hover in the air and float down gently to the ground.

What? You're skeptical? My "zero experience alarm" is going off. You can't really have an informed opinion about the likelihood this will work, without trying it just as I described. Right?

Except we both know you don't think that at all. You don't REALLY have to go personally trying every claim anyone ever throws out in order to have an opinion. If you have some knowledge about a claim, you can rate the plausibility quite well.

If I claim to a physicist that my friend has created a Perpetual Motion Machine in his garage they don't have to go "experience it for themselves" because they have sound knowledge about physics and know the likelihood is around O such a device is even possible.

This is how we go through life making rational, informed decisions about which type of propositions are plausible or not, whether to waste time, or not.

The people here objecting to the claims about this switch are doing so on the basis of some knowledge about how these things actually work, and hence the implausibility of the claims made for the device. If you can put forth some technical argument/evidence that would support the product's claim why not present it (and not just "I heard a difference" since people easily imagine differences)?

Otherwise, skepticism based on the technical claims remains justified.

I have a soft spot for organic cashews. How about you?

jason

…there were more than 3200 people who fell for the likes of Bernie Madoff, a few more who lost a lot of money in the bitcoin pump, and several vulnerable people (some of whom have committed suicide over their financial losses) who fall prey to scams originating from Cambodia, Vietnam and India. So…the number of units sold is not really an indicator of anything other than people hoping for some improvement touted.

Positive reviews cannot eliminate the expectation bias that we are all susceptible to. While the measurements at ASR (https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/uptone-lps-1-linear-power-supply-review-and-measurements.1849/) clearly indicate what the item ACTUALLY does in situ, until you (or Uptone) provide evidence to the contrary that supports their view, using words like “muckraking” is a bit unfounded. Having no doubt in a reviewer’s findings is simply a statement of faith and belief which is a very human and doesn’t predicate delegation to the Nut House. However, as humans we are extremely fallible and while you may be content to ignore that, taking offence at others pointing out the pitfalls that our species is capable of being susceptible to is non-productive, if not counter-productive.

Maybe it was Krishnamurti in the bunker.

————-

Do we really always need to try something before we have an idea about it?

Thread drift: You know why banjo songs have different names?

So we can tell them apart.

...it's essentially indistinguishable from branded content.

[EDIT:] BTW, as a piece of branded content, I would give this a very high rating. Jason is an excellent writer.

...TAS?

As well as Stereophile?

Hahahahahahahaha!!

What a way to torture yourself!

Hahahahahahahahaha!!

You don't even need to experience these products.

There are scholarly papers and books authored by people like Bill Whitlock, Ralph Morrison, and Henry Ott that describe what often takes place with regard to noise currents in actual systems. Not just audio systems, either.

Whether the reviewed products solve these problems, I haven't a clue. Whether they are worth the money is another question still.

Here's a question... If Ethernet and other signaling systems are completely immune to noise effects and are otherwise perfect, why are there so many error correction techniques associated with them?

Why anything associated with audio gets shamed and labeled as impossible is something I've never understood. Where's a sociologist when you need one?

Full disclosure: My day job has nothing to with audio, but does encounter systemic noise issues all the time. I also don't use any Nordost products, so I've not got a horse in that race, either.

My home computer based playback set up performs much better than any CD transport in fair fight playing the same master CD vs. an error checked rip of the CD on the computer based system. In addition, my Computer based set up allows me to take advantage of the far superior oversampling algorithms of HQPlayer which gives even further sound quality benefits. For example, I use a Bricasti M3 DAC which features a discrete true single bit DSD converter for DSD input, which does no onboard data manipulation of any kind (for DSD input). I oversample/remodulate everything to DSD 256 in the computer using HQPlayer, and send the now native DSD 256 over optical Ethernet to my Renderer in the audio system, which then converts the optical Ethernet stream to USB input for the DAC. Far superior sound to any spinning disc player results, or just about any DAC with (far more simplistic) onboard oversampling.

Whether or not one "needs" a better switch is certainly debatable, I consider Network optimization such as this to offer meaningful improvements, but not to be "needed" to achieve better audible SQ than a lowly CD transport! BTW, I work in audio hardware development, building, and servicing.

IDK where this switch is made, but virtually all Nordost products are US made. I suspect you can find out at their website. As far as their margins go, good luck with that, they are a dealer based company though, so If one walks in to a dealer for purchase the dealer is going to able to bargain on price, and I suspect discounts would be available, but not likely to be publicized. In any case, the vast majority of the cost of a product like this goes towards the development cost, rather than the cost of the parts and building of it. A commercial switch such as Cisco or Netgear, will sell millions of units making the development cost a non-issue as far as the selling price goes. An audiophile switch like this which will sell in thousands of units has to cost substantially more in order to cover the development cost.

That’s an interesting comment, because although it may come across as being insulting it is a charitable take on things. The alternate take on on it might be, “You can’t fool all the people all of the time, but Jim Austin sure tries hard.” Now that one would not only not be insulting but be high praise, yet far from charitable. It’s debatable what the preferable reality happens to be.

Respectfully, you are missing the point. No one is claiming that there is any problem with the data itself, the problem is that noise coming over the Network connection can get into the DAC, and mess with the signal, both by putting noise on the DAC's ground plane(s) and noise getting to the analog circuitry of the DAC. Anyone who has played around with noise reduction (by various means) of network based noise can easily hear the differences. Things in audio reproduction are not really as simple as they may seem.

Video as well as audio uses DACs. The improvement can't be discriminate between audio and video due to the fact that Nordost had to implement to IEEE 802.3 standards.

Even worse is that the Nordost product features 100Mbit ports. Go with 10GBe SFP+ fiber transceivers and you'll get much better jitter performance.

Why mess around with 11.25MB/s when you can get 1125MB/s and transfer an entire album of 16/44.1 PCM data in .5 of a second to some local buffer.

Nordost created a product that actually does the worst things:

1. Keeps the Tx lines active longer
2. Loses the galvonic isolation that a fiber connection can provide you.

For $210 I picked up a Cisco 2960 48P copper, 4 SFP+ (SFP is 1G, + is 10G), Dell R620 SFP+ daughter card, Solar Flare PCIe Dual SFP NIC, and FS.COM transceivers and MM cabling.

I'd bet you a good sum it will wipe the floor with the Nordost switch in every imaginable metric.