"Audiophile Grade" Ethernet Switches - The new generation

[David A]

Over on the ASR forum a „what appeared to be“ new member blind AB tested the ER against a standard netgear switch and stated that he couldn’t tell the difference most of the time.

Would be great if one of our long term members here would give it a try.

Any takers?

Went looking for his report. His first report was of a sighted test he conducted on his own and he acknowledged that there can be issues with sighted testing but he later said that he and a friend could not reliably identify the ER in subsequent blind testing but that he his final impression was positive for the ER. His comment was:

"Blind testing the ER against a "generic" Netgear switch.....two of us were not able to consistently pick one switch over the other but there was a slight preference for the ER in the overall results. We just could not reliably pick the ER out each time. Doing a "sighted" test I did have a preference for the ER each time." 

So, a slight preference for the ER in blind testing and a preference for the ER every time in sighted testing. That's a "weak positive" in favour of the ER from him in my view, not a "no difference" view.

As I've said, I should have mine in a bit over a month and I will  post my observations when I get it but I'm not in a position to make the sort of tests that Amirn is requesting and I have no faith in his "pull one cable out and plug another in fast" approach to making the swap from one switch to another and I won't be trying that. If I do that fast enough to get an immediate swap from one connection to another I don't have time to get back to my listening position to hear the swap and if I make the buffer large enough to give me time to get back to the chair then I have no way of knowing when the change occurs. I think you really need to know when one input stops and the other starts if you're going to compare 2 different devices. I can report my impressions but that's all I can do.

If we're ever going to see proof of Uptone's claims, what we need is a statement from them about what should be tested, how it should be tested  including what switches Uptone made comparisons to, and some sort of explanation of how the measurements relate to listening results. Then we can start to see people testing the same thing and find out whether everyone gets the same measurement results or not, and also start to see how measurement results relate to what people hear. If there are differences in switches then not every other switch should deliver the same measurements and switches which measure closer to the ER than others should also sound closer to the ER than others. That kind of thing is what we need for proof. Comparing one switch to the ER and ignoring the possibility of that switch being similar to the ER while others aren't doesn't prove anything and if the measurements Amirn made aren't the measurements that are required to show a difference then that proves nothing either. And if his measurements  don't prove any anything then there's the possibility that the reason he didn't hear anything was expectation bias on his part.

I'm not saying Amirn got it wrong. I'm saying that we don't know enough at this stage not to have doubts about any measurements or listening observations, whether those measurements and observations support Uptone's claims or not. All anyone has is their own listening results and some people hear a difference and some don't. That means some people are right and some people are wrong but we have no idea which people are right and which people are wrong.