Why do I need a switch?

@markprice i am perfectly happy not being fooled by snake oil salespeople. You do you though.

@fredrik222 Yeah, you also don’t believe in published standards, so you we did go through this and we decided you didn’t know what you were talking about.

Interesting you are changing your tune now, a month or so ago you assured me there was no reason for them ever. Now you are saying there is. We’ll get you there.

Under normal operating conditions it does not do anything at all, it is even says that in the specs you share.

I’ve never claimed it did a thing for audio. :) What they do, which is useful for me, is add about 4kV of breakthrough voltage, forcing potential surge currents to find a path upstream instead of downstream.

OP - Do you have a CD transport? Have you compared the same title/version of a CD with the streamed file to see if you can hear the difference?

I am streaming with my ASUS laptop gaming computer hooked up with an inexpensive USB cable to my PSA PerfectWave Mk II DAC. The computer is receiving its signal by WiFi. According to conventional audiophile wisdom, this setup should sound terrible.

I also have a PSA PerfectWave Transport hooked up to the same DAC. If I play a track from a CD and then stream the same version they sound identical. I have done this at least a dozen times and the results are consistent.

Does anyone think that the streamed track will ever sound better than the same track played from a CD (through the same DAC)? Every time I read reports of our audio brothers spending thousands of dollars on digital tweaks I want to know if they have ever compared their streaming setup with the corresponding CD. Does their streamed version sound clearly inferior to the CD? Is this why they are adding hardware, cables, and expensive streamers to their system? After they spend the big bucks, does their streamed music sound better than the CD?

CD playback has been optimized for sound quality for 50 years. It is relatively simple and straightforward compared to streaming. They both play the same original file. The difference is that the streamed file has been folded, stapled, split apart, knitted back together, and abused in countless ways before it reaches your DAC. Can anyone explain to me how a streamed file would ever sound better than the original CD played through the same DAC? When audiophiles spend tens of thousands of dollars on their streaming setup are they simply trying to match the quality of playing a CD through a decent quality transport? If that's the case then why did they go with streaming in the first place if they really care about sound quality?

Before you spend the time and money tweaking things like digital switches, my recommendation is to get a handle on how your streaming quality compares to CD playback. If you don't have a transport you can pick one up for a reasonable cost. Then, if you decide to add esoteric digital equipment to your streaming setup you can check the SQ effect with each "upgrade." My guess is that if you do this you will quickly find that the digital signal is quite robust and that if you compare to a standard (CD playback) you will determine that adding things like switches don't make a perceptible difference.

Using some sort of control - in this case CD playback - is critical to making SQ judgements IMO.

@erik_squires  nothing has changed, I said the same thing then as I say now, there is no need for these Ethernet filters, they do not do anything for audio at all. Never will. 
 

the standard you are referring to specifically states what it is for, to prevent current leakage that could take life preserving equipment offline. And your filters are for equipment that doesn’t have it built in. At no point will it improve the signal, and the standard certainly doesn’t state that. 

oh man here we go again... 🙄