"Audiophile Grade" Ethernet Switches - The new generation

[GuillaumeB]

Hi Guillaume 

Any news? 

@GuillaumeB 
Come on, there are many guys anticipating your impressions

Best regards,
Marcin Ostapowicz
JPLAY & JCAT Founder

Indeed and I must apologise to all on here for such a long delay.

The truth is that I found myself down a bit of a rabbit hole with endless variables and changing observations. I will therefore try and summarise my overall findings.

I spent a lot of time with the Telegärtner M12. I really liked it. There was something about the music that just sounded "right" and flowed. I should add that the M12 is very much a "closed" system. That is it comes with special ethernet cables, and by special I mean cables with M12 industrial connectors at one end (and very fancy looking "gold" Telegärtner MFP8 connectors at the other end, apparently used on the ISS space station!! See here: https://www.telegaertner.com/en/infostre...rtner-iss/). It is therefore not possible to use different brands of ethernet cable with the M12 Switch Gold. I am guessing that the M12 connectors are designed for use in harsh environments (either outdoors or areas with a lot of EMI/RFI). Also the cables come with the one of most advanced test data sheets I have ever seen: 


  img20190613_13501407.pdf (Size: 649.54 KB / Downloads: 9)

Here is the MFP8 "gold" RJ45 connector:

   

   

   

The M12 connector (it's a beast!):

   

I spent a lot of time comparing the Telegärtner M12 and associated cables to the SOtM (sNH-10G with internal master clock option). To my ears the differences weren't great but something was clearly noticeable, namely that with the M12 the music just seemed that bit easier to follow/enjoy. I did a lot of A/Bing and almost drove myself crazy trying to pinpoint something in the sound... I must confess that I did start losing interest at various points! However, it did seem as though the M12 was better but why I couldn't quite put my finger on it! 

Then Rob came to visit and he was really surprised by how great the differences were (!), his preference being clearly for the M12 which he felt was more dynamic. I'll let Rob post some of his impressions here (if he wants to!). I was pretty careful not to tell Rob what I thought before hand and with Rob sitting in the sweet spot I was able to make quite rapid changes from one switch to the other.

The M12 switch Gold was sent to me with its medical SMPS unit, in addition to a HDPLEX 200W LPSU. The LPSU seemed to make a small improvement to the M12 but in my opinion it was pretty subtle. With that said I spend most of my time testing with the LPSU.

One of the things that I liked less about the M12 were the ethernet cables, nothing to do with sound (since I couldn't compare them to anything else) but rather they were quite difficult to orientate. The cables are quite stiff making A/B comparisons a little tricky. But this is a pretty minor gripe since once in situ this isn't really an issue!

So what do I think overall? The M12 Switch Gold is a great all-in-one solution, literally plug and play and forget about it. Compared to an SOtM with the best ethernet cables I could throw at it, it was slightly better. If you include cables in the mix (and of course the additional PSU required for the SOtM) you are in similar territory £$ wise. The M12 Switch Gold ships with 2 Telegärtner cables and I believe you can spec the lengths when you order.

However, once you start daisy chaining SOtMs and using an external Masterclock it is possible to improve on the performance of single SOtM and exceed that of the M12 Gold. Unfortunately I did not have access to a master clock during the M12 Switch Gold evaluation period so I am not able to say whether its was able to beat a single SOtM with a connection to a master clock.

Lastly I would like to thank Marcin at JCAT for giving me the opportunity to try this fantastic switch. 

Cheers,

Guillaume