Relationship between Ethernet Switch and SQ

@mathiasmingus

Thanks for providing more info on your router. By eliminating cheap stock wall warts, you have already improved performance of your router and modem. For now, just hold off to upgrading the router and streamer and work with what you’ve got on hand. I like the idea of choosing a CAT 8 cable for serious listening. Link Up Cat 8 cable is a very nice high quality cable with an option to return if you don’t hear an improvement. I’m currently using an 22AWG version which is bit stiff ahead of a $5K switch from my modem. The 26AWG version (blue) is lot more flexible.

Try it with LHY, let it settle down in your system before forming any opinion. If you feel there is no net gain then trying a better streamer from Aurender or Innuous would be the next step. They have many offerings, pick one up based on your budget.

OP,

I have lots of experience with non-dedicated streaming and dedicated. For dedicated: Auralic Aries G2, Aurender (N100, N10, W20SE), Grimm, Linn at several levels… and, more casually, others. My rule of thumb is to match investments in all your electronic components. So if your preamp and amp are about $5K… then start your research for a streamer at $5K. In general, I have found them to pretty much sound better in proportional to their cost (but I am picking highly reviewed and the cream of the crop at that price range).

Unquestioningly I recommend Aurrender. I have two… an N100 and a W20SE. Kind of the top and bottom of their line up. There is no way you will go wrong buying one. They have a very highly regarded controller app for your iPad… they even have it for the iPhone… but a phone is small.

The Aurrender is built from the ground up assuming you have a terrible network and isolate you from it, they require very little band width and work well if WiFi extenders. No network fiddling required… but, LUMIX, Aurlic, Grimm make good streamers as well. Just do your research and don’t go cheap on the streamer and you don’t have to become a IT guru to get world class audiophile sound from streaming.

I was an IT guy since the early 1980’s… I do not want to be any more.

@mathiasmingus I tried the switch, a cheap one, between the router and the streamer, and I didn’t like the change in sound quality. I have also used Network Acoustics Eno Streaming System (filter and a 1m Ethernet cable). With and without the switch. Again the sound quality without the switch in the chain is what I preferred. 
I eventually sold the Eno and opted for just a good Ethernet cable, a Purist Audio Design Cat7. 

The LinkUp Ethernet cable from Amazon suggested by @lalitk is a solid recommendation. If you embark on the tweaks journey all that does, IMO, is create clutter and a spaghetti of wires, with questionable, if any, improvements…if you’re lucky. I’m of the mindset that investing in a better component (DAC and streamer) will give you a much better ROI than dumping $ into tweaks. 

I also had a 30’ Ethernet cable to my streamer. CAT 6a from Blue Jeans, so a little step up from your CAT 5. I swapped it out for fiber to isolate my streamer and it was an improvement. Bonus feature is that the fiber is so thin that it conceals well, you might be able to leave it in place. There is a long discussion in this forum on what you need to buy, and it is in the neighborhood of $100, to try it out. 

It took me a while to figure out digital. Contributing to the confusion were the IT professionals who don’t understand streaming. They spend their lives in the corporate world where dropping a bit in a $Billion transaction would be really bad. So all files are transferred with error checking protocol that won’t let the transfer complete until verified identical.

This isn’t fast enough for streaming so error checking goes out the window, replaced by "error correction" meaning that if a bit is dropped, some value between the 2 adjoining bits is chosen (interpolation). still sounds smooth and is just peachy for consumer stereo, but not good enough for us OCD listners who call ourselves "audiophiles’.

So we have to do everything we can to avoid dropping bits IN REAL TIME.

So back to the question. When an IT professional tells you that you are wasting money buying anything more than a name brand $40 switch, such as the ubiquitous Netgear 5 port, thank him very much smile, and tell him you’ll run out and get one right away....because he doesn’t understand the problem and there is no use arguing with him.

So streamers, clocks, power supplies, and audiophile switches are ways we endeavor to avoid dropped bits. I’m currently using an EtherRegen but considering upgrading.

Jerry