23-Apr-2017, 15:22
(23-Apr-2017, 13:51)Confused Wrote: I have now spent quite a bit of time carefully listening with the Aqvox switch. For the record, the setup was an i5 PC running Roon, this runs to a Virgin Media Superhub, about 10 meters of cat 5 Ethernet, the Aqvox, microRendu, Mutec MC3+USB, AES/EBU to the Devialet I ran through a selection of music with the Aqvox, then listened to the same playlist via my cheap and cheerful TP Link switch. After listening to about 45 minutes Aqvox and 45 minutes TP-Link, I was thinking that maybe there were some very subtle improvements, but to be honest I was not sure. I was taking some notes regarding anything I noticed that was particularly good or bad, and then moved on to listening to some key sections of music, and swapping between the Aqvox and TP Link switches. One observation here, it says something for the stability of Roon with the microRendu that I could get up, swap the Ethernet cables between switches, sit down, hit play on the iPad, and music played, somehow I was expecting more hassle!
Another point to note is that with the set-up mentioned above, you can remove the Ethernet cable feeding the microRendu, and music continues to play for a second or so.
Anyway, switching back between the Aqvox and the TP-Link with the key sections of music I think I did start to pick up some benefits from the Aqvox, but I have to say these are very small. One aspect was in terms of 'hearing the room', those tiny little sounds that give you some insight into where the music was performed, this seamed to be slightly improved with the Aqvox. In a couple of areas I felt that the sound stage was more robust and a very slight 'digital edge' was removed. I have to emphasise though that these differences were tiny, I am pretty confident that I would fail to separate the Aqvox and TP Link in a blind test. To give you an idea, after the two full runs through of the playlist, I did have some thoughts of checking the return policy for the Aqvox, although I thought that maybe I was picking up some improvements, I really was not sure. After the later rapid A/B swaps between the two switches, I did then start to think it was maybe worth keeping. To sum up, I would say that in terms of my most recent 'tweaks', I'd put the Mutec MC3+USB as a clear number 1 (if you can consider the Mutec a Tweak, it is perhaps more of a source component), the Uptone Audio LPS-1 to power the microRendu would be next up, then the Aqvox. To sum up, I've decided it's a keeper, but if I'm brutally honest I am not 100% sure how much of the improvements are real or in the range of expectation bias and placebo effect, it's a subtle one!
Anyway, I think I will leave it in the system and enjoy the music for a while. I also have a plan to try by-passing the nasty Virgin Superhub router using the old TP Link switch which is now going spare, but that's enough tweaking for a while!
thanks a lot for the honesty of your response, i really appreciate. I feel you must be right, i was thinking of this a little too, when you say that the addition of two components that have quite the same functions may be too much. I will take time to listen to more sharings with the aqvox, specially in addition with optical bridges or ethernet isolator.
