Quick Eversolo T8 Review

Bah humbug! The Audiophile Style reviewer didn't say he changed out his switch just sfp modules. I found the T8 didn't like my Cisco, but it had no problem with my LHY or TP-Link. So, while that's still an issue, it doesn't mean that the SFP is altogether broken. 

I never really rely on Wifi for the streamers I just plug it in directly to Ethernet so I unfortunately can't speak to that aspect.

Surprised to see that some have had problems with Eversolo.  My A6 has run without any issues even after I changed out the power supply.  I thought that if it survived that , it was a pretty good unit. 

My T8 should be here this week.  I am replacing the 2021 Bluesound Node with it.  I expect that there will be a few bugs to work out and then smooth sailing.  I have no need to do any room correction so no need to worry about that.  I will let the Anthem take care of it.

My T8 arrives today. Will be hooking it up via Optical to my Marantz M1. Hoping to move away from the unreliable HEOS app, plus the T8 has an NVMe slot for my personal music collection and native Apply Music support, which will both be great supplements to the Qobuz Connect listening I do now. Will continue to rely on the M1 for DIRAC Live correction and for watching stuff over ARC from my Apple TV 4K. Hoping I can lock the volume in the T8 so I can program the M1's IR learning function with the Eversolo remote to control track and volume with a single remote (track over T8, volume through M1). I absolutely love how my MoFi SourcePoint 8s and Rythmik L12 sound through the M1, but from a streaming standpoint, it's not super reliable (the UPnP connection from Audirvana on my laptop is also kind of flakey to the M1).

-Ed

So far so great with my new T8. It has been playing almost non-stop over optical to my M1. The unit is ultra stable and sounds excellent through my M1 over Toslink. Played a combination of Apple Music (both, through Eversolo’s app and also through Apple’s app that I side-loaded), Qobuz (both, via Connect and also via the in-built app), and my own personal library housed on an M.2 SSD that I installed into one of the slots underneath the T8. I tested SMB access from my MacBook M1 over the WiFi to the T8 and was able to upload two Apple Lossless encoded albums over the air into the SSD inside the T8 from a Thunderbolt SSD I have attached to my laptop, and it worked reasonably fast and stable, so that works fine too! Very easy to use, just like copying files around between drives in or attached to the laptop itself in Finder.

The sole hiccup I’ve run into so far is occasional drop-outs when listening to 192KHz material (the drop-outs manifest as half-second long dead silences in the middle of playback). By limiting my optical output to 96KHz, this has so far temporarily resolved the issue. I’ve ordered a new and shorter cable that comes in Sunday to try again at 192KHz and see if it resolves the issue permanently. I’ve also ordered a USB CD transport that should come in later tonight, which I will attach to the T8 and try playing some CDs on. I will likely attach the drive to my laptop for ripping, but I can also give the T8 a go at ripping as well just to see what the experience is like and how well it tags the files.

-Ed