2.5Gbps Ethernet in the Sound Room... (D-Link DMS-106XT & GigaPlus S25-0802 2.5G Smart Switch). And a quick peek in the Headphone Bar & Red Cat Records.

On occasion, I get a kick out of reading the audiophile media's review of ethernet switches. These are perhaps some of the most hilarious pseudo-infomercials out there as companies try to justify their highly expensive network switches in the hopes of capturing the interest of the few audiophiles who still somehow do not realize that there's no benefit to these devices (even Paul McGowan agrees, imagine that!).

Feel free to check out the reviews of such things like the Silent Angel Bonn NX Pro Ethernet Switch (asking US$4000!), or filters like the Network Acoustic Muon Pro (asking £1,329.17!). There are also now Chinese companies that make these things for audiophiles - Gustard N18 (US$370 - only 2 ethernet ports + 1 gigabit SFP) and N18 Pro (US$530 - 5 ethernet + 1 gigabit SFP) for example; sure, they're cheaper but that's still quite a bit for what you get which is just a nice looking ethernet switch with integrated power supply and an essentially meaningless 10MHz clock input! (Timing is essential inside the DAC for precise conversion to analog output, not the network switch.)

A few years ago (2020), I talked about the Netgear Nighthawk S8000 as a great choice for a high quality ethernet switch which affords features including port priority. Hey, it's still a great little switch and I see that sometimes there's still stock available on Amazon.  Over the years, I've upgraded my home network beyond 1Gbps (and update here) so I figured let's find faster switches to try out for the sound/media room.

Here are two easily available and not expensive options: the D-Link DMS-106XT (US$200), with 10GbE high-speed port to connect to your main network plus 5 x 2.5GbE ports for downstream devices with user-defined port priority, and the very inexpensive GigaPlus S25-0802 2.5G Smart Switch (US$80), an 8-port 2.5GbE switch with 2 x 10Gbps SFP+ for those who want to use fiber networking, or possibly 10GbE RJ45 multigigabit transceivers (some very inexpensive like this).

Both are fanless - essential for the sound room.

I. D-Link DMS-106XT (~US$200)

So let's start with the D-Link DMS-106XT. It's a pretty nice looking box. Externally it's plastic, but weighs 675g due to internal metal construction. The little switching power supply is a 12V, 1.5A unit. Unlike my older Nighthawk S8000, it's an unmanaged switch but allows for a couple of nice features like allowing you to turn off all the lights as well as assigning port priority:

A look behind shows us the ON/OFF LED switch. And there's the "Turbo Mode" switch which turns on port priority. Priority is determined by which port you physically plug your devices into: Port 1+6 (highest)>2>3=4=5 (lowest). Therefore, if your audio streamer/computer is the highest priority, plug that into Port 1 and connect your main switch/router to the 10GbE Port 6. Backplane speed is 45Gbps, jumbo frames up to 9728 bytes, has IGMP snooping, and cable diagnostics features. (See multilingual install guide here.)

When port priority is on, the front LED turns into a multicolored strip with a "breathing" blinking pattern. I don't find the visuals too distracting since I put the port behind some gear or decorations so it's partially obstructed. Turn the LED off if this is a problem.

As you can see above, connected to my sound system, we can easily tell which ports are attached by the top lights. The blueish lights indicate multi-gigabit connections and white is up to 1Gbps. In the picture above, the blue LED on the right indicates connection to my main ethernet switch (Port 6, QNAP QSW-M2108-2C) and the left is connected to the fanless MiniPC running at 2.5Gbps (Port 1 - highest priority) which I use as my HDMI multichannel Roon endpoint. The white LED is the AppleTV 4K running at 1Gbps.

Size comparison of the Netgear Nighthawk S8000 and D-Link DMS-106XT.

Idle power draw is <6W. The switch barely gets warm after being on for hours.

II. GigaPlus S25-0802 2.5G Smart Switch (~US$80)

At less than half the price of the D-Link is the more generic-looking GigaPlus switch:

The case is metal, there's a ground screw up front if needed.

Just plain metal at the bottom of this box. I put some silicone stick-on footers to add clearance on my table.

Clearly this is a more utilitarian looking unmanaged switch. It's made of metal, weighing in at 570g, a little lighter than the D-Link above. Also 12V, 1.5A switching power supply included.

It features 8 x 2.5GbE ports with an extra 2 x 10Gbps SFP+ ports which are great if you have a few more devices in your sound/media room. Backplane bandwidth is an impressive 80Gbps, up to 10KB jumbo frame support (I recommend sticking with the standard 9KB if you go jumbo). Again it's fanless and barely warm to the touch after hours/days of operation.

Not much to say about this one. The rear LEDs will turn yellow for speeds >1Gbps. There are no front lights and the power connector is at the back so there should be no distracting lights.

No port priority feature or anything fancy, just plug and play.

Works well. Idle power draw on this unit is <4W.

III. Performance

Well, either it works or it doesn't at the rated speed with ethernet switches folks. Data transfer speed is fast for both; here's transferring a 12GB movie file across the network from SSD to SSD from my Server computer to the fanless Intel i3-N305 MiniPC over my mixed Cat-5e/6 network here at home:

Above, we see stable Windows SMB data transfer averaging 280+MB/s using the GigaPlus - clearly faster than the ~100MB/s running 1Gbps. No significant difference with the D-Link to report (also 280MB/s).

D-Link on the testbench...

And if you're worried about "noise", here's a look at a 1/10-Decade Multitone 32 signal from the RCA output of the Topping D10s DAC connected to a Beelink AMD Ryzen 7 MiniPC streaming through the WiFi network vs. through the D-Link switch running at 1Gbps to the computer and connected to my main network either at a slow 100Mbps or at 2.5Gbps - LEDs turned on (in case anyone worries about the lights causing noise like I've seen some folks freak out in the past!), port priority turned on:

This inexpensive single-ended RCA USB-powered DAC was selected as it's much more susceptible to noise if there's a problem than balanced devices. As you can see, there's no difference either in the audible spectrum or ultrasonic up to 192kHz. A rational audiophile will recognize that no difference would be expected of course especially since ethernet is inherently isolated and "Bits Are Bits". We've also known that WiFi does not introduce any distortion for years at this point, nothing to be afraid or insecure of.

I don't know what guys who buy "audiophile ethernet switches" hope they're able to improve when it comes to sonic output... As you can see, there's no evidence of any horrible noise all the way out to 192kHz even with a USB DAC connected to a computer which is subsequently connected to the network. In fact, any noise the DAC might pick up would be from the computer anyways rather than the ethernet switch. Jitter is a result of DAC clocking issues with modern asynchronous devices so this would not be affected by the network. Even if we're not using a general-purpose MiniPC, if we connected an audio streamer directly to the ethernet, it would make sense that from the perspective of the DAC circuitry in the streamer device, noise would be from the CPU (these days likely low-power Raspberry Pi-like ARM CPU), storage system, or I/O that's in the streamer box, not the ethernet switch which is more than likely a few feet away.

Switching the router to the GigaPlus did not show any difference (not shown), nothing new within that quiet noise floor from the DAC even with a very complex signal like the 1/10-Decade Multitone 32.

[Of course, no need to beat around the bush after all these years on this blog! From my perspective, some companies are just taking advantage of audiophiles' insecurities. And reviewers like this, and this, and this, and this, and this and this are simply aiding and abetting the sale of essentially snake oil products when there are claims of audible improvement whether they be ethernet switches or expensive network cables. At best, they're genuine but naïve reviewers with extremely poor existing home networks or easily swayed by psychological biases (more likely the latter). At worst, they're unethical liars claiming to hear all kinds of things, hiding behind the haze of a "subjective" review where they feel they can express whatever opinion they see fit. Such is the state of much of the audiophile industry's media.]

The connected home...

IV. Summary

Well, these days as multi-gigabit becomes less expensive, it's easy to increase the connection speed to your sound room. There is no evidence to suggest that doing so would somehow affect music playback fidelity; for years, audiophile switches have been stuck at 100Mbps and more recently dared to go up to 1Gbps. 🤣

If you're just starting out with a home network, might as well begin with 2.5Gbps gear especially if you use a NAS/file server. Realize of course that 1Gbps is more than fast enough for lossless hi-res audio. I would be surprised if in the next decade any kind of streaming technology (audio + video + other sensory modality!) would even need 1Gbps, so I think we should be very safe with 2.5Gbps. 😁

At the extremes, for home audio, even an insanely lossless multichannel uncompressed 7.2.4 24/384 stream "only" needs a little less than 120Mbps (for reference, lossless 16/44.1 CD is only 1.4Mbps and stereo 24/96 4.6Mbps). In practice, TrueHD-Atmos (always encoded at 48kHz, although the master can be 96kHz) might peak out around 18Mbps, averaging typically <10Mbps. For geeks who like the latest tech, sometimes there's just a "need for speed" - whether we actually need it or not. 🙂

Both the D-Link DMS-106XT and GigaPlus S25-0802 switches worked well for me with no hiccups. Esthetics, number of ports you need, 10Gbps, port priority (can reduce latency for heavy gaming, not really beneficial for streaming), price, and access to SFP+ transceiver modules are the variables to consider. If you want a mainstream brand with port layout similar to the 2.5GbE and dual SFP+ GigaPlus but with managed features, have a look at the TRENDNet's TEG-3102WS (~US$200) also.

With this update to the sound room, all the main network "hubs" in the various rooms of my home network are now either capable of 2.5Gbps or 10Gbps. Great how over time things get faster without costing much money and on the whole, maintaining low power draw.

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Over the years I've talked about audio stores visited when going to cities like New York recently or more exotic travels to places like Singapore. But within walking distance there are interesting stores here in Vancouver. The other day I had lunch down Main St. and thought I'd check out a couple local establishments.

Here's the Headphone Bar. This store has been around for a number of years already and they've got a good selection of stuff to try out; Audeze, Sennheiser, Dan Clark, Beyerdynamic, Fiio, Focal, HiFiMan, Meze headphones were all spotted when I went in for a quick look. Both wired and wireless offerings. I imagine these days much of their business must also come from online sales.

Side wall of headphones to leisurely try out with many more in the back.

Nothing fancy or pretentious here. Good relaxed atmosphere with a couple of rooms at the rear with some amps to try the headphones on. Salesman really relaxed, it seemed like a genuinely nice place to try out the goods and compare before you buy. I'm pretty sure the proprietor would be OK if you brought in your own headphone amp and try out the products they have out also.

I see they also sell a number of DACs and headphone amps (some AUNE, FiiO, iFi, Shanling models) and I saw a number of headphones on sale at pretty good prices, certainly very competitive with what I see online.

Some FiiO stuff: FiiO Q15 DAC (AK4191EQ+AK4499EX, left), FiiO K11 (R2R DAC + headphone amp, center), and FiiO R7 (Android-based streamer with ES9068AS DAC and 2xTHX AAA 788 headphone amps, right).

Some IEM's: AudioTechnica, Campfire Bonneville and Cascara. Noble's FoKus Triumph uses Cowell's XMEMS solid-state driver paired with dynamic driver; should be good wireless compatibility with Qualcomm QCC3071 Bluetooth 5.3.

Walk a couple blocks north, there's Red Cat Records.

Hey if you can't find an album you like, maybe blow some money at the psychic reader next door.😂

This place has been around for many years now (I think they started in 2002). Since my son buys more LPs than I do these days, it has been years since I've been here. I see they've made some changes with a more open floor plan than I had remembered.

A good amount of new and used LPs of all genres. And in the back we have the digital section:

Who knows if some day there will be a revival in spinning CDs. Like LPs, I suppose there could still be a "physicality" aspect that folks might want to hang on to. Perhaps CDs will have their own form of collectable nostalgia for aging Gen-X'ers. 🤔

There's a small section of 'special' discs like SACDs:

Not sure I would consider HDCD as particularly unique or collectable items; they're just CDs with some extra data in the LSB for the HDCD decoder. Over time, SACDs could become more rare and treasured, I suppose. I see they had a number of unopened new old stock classical and jazz SACDs in the mix. Since most rock/pop productions go through quite a bit of studio editing, it makes sense to just buy acoustic recordings in DSD where there's some likelihood that they haven't gone through PCM steps (remember that many SACDs are 44.1/48kHz PCM transcodes).

Up at the front behind the cash register, I see some collectables:

Notice top left, we have a The Sound's 1979 EP Physical World on offer for CAD$400. On Discogs these go for CAD$250 average with a top price paid previously at CAD$423. I imagine this copy must be mint at this asking price!

Anyhow, not a bad little walkabout on a lazy summer weekend...

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I had a listen to The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002, DR12 multichannel/Atmos). It has been awhile since I heard this one - a very cool, quirky, witty album with some really great sound design! A nice example of an older album (22 years now) treated to an excellent multichannel/Atmos mix. The title track "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" is tagged as one of my demo multichannel tracks now. When I first heard this track with its background vocals and robot sounds, I mistakenly had to look around thinking that someone had entered the room!

I see that Chris over at The Computer Audiophile also has this album listed as one of his favorite immersive albums for the first half of 2024. Yup, I agree.

BTW, back in 2003 around the time of the initial release of this album, there was a DVD-Audio version with a 5.1 24/96 "Advanced Resolution" multichannel mix plus bonus tracks. Being from the early 2000's, the CD was a poorly-done over-compressed mix at only DR5 and the 5.1 DVD-A version improved that to DR10 average but still loud for a multichannel mix. This new Atmos mix is more natural with higher dynamic punch - make sure to turn up the volume a little compared to those older mixes. They also released The Soft Bulletin (1999, DR7 multichannel 5.1) and At War With The Mystics (2006, DR7 multichannel 5.1) in DVD-A. Alas, both are also over-compressed and unnecessarily distorted with clipping for multichannel recordings! This is what happens without loudness standards in place.

Oh yeah, there was also a musical based on the Yoshimi album in 2012.

Hope you're enjoying the music, friends!