Network Switches

I'm not one to say switches don't affect sonics, but just like this entire thread shows results highly variable. I've tried both generic and a $1500 audiophile switch, both changed the sound and not for the better. The various filters I've tried over the years are more effective, yet they may also change the sound quality in ways not appreciated, again we see this in this thread. Bottom line there is not a single best way or network component that will be best for everyone. 

My streaming chain is so entirely unique that specific recommendations are difficult, most of my knowledge comes from the 'experts' over at audiophilestyle forum. Based on that and my own experience, no wifi on audio network, every hard wired cable short as possible, this includes modem and router, this means ISP feed in listening room, clocking extremely important this includes network, so network devices like switches/filters should have quality clocks and power supplies to those clocks, filters are effective, optical is nice, quality of all cables makes a difference, this includes all DC and AC cables, quality dedicated and conditioned AC for all streaming components. So that's just for the network, a high quality dac, streamer and audio system is by far the priority, this all icing on the cake. Good test for quality streaming setup is stream sound quality should equal cd rips on local network or cd player/transport, I have over 3k rips to compare with.

@sns good post.
CD rips on SSD mounted inside my streamer (AAIF, FLAC) is what I use for comparison as well but once again we’re potentially comparing 🍏 and 🍊 as we just don’t know if we’re streaming the same master from Tidal and Qobuz. In most cases streaming in my system equals to or beats CD rips. Streaming also far exceeds the sound quality of my CD playback using the same DAC but that’s not a fair comparison as my streaming setup is approximately 10x the cost. I just enjoy popping a cd in once in a while. 

“Network Acoustics products found them to compress dynamics in his system”

@rivinyl 

That was not the case in my system when I tried ENO…it was a definite improvement vs not using any filters. The key here is to try..ENO is now on 2nd generation..ENO2. I don’t think @audphile1 tried their ENO2 (I could be mistaken in assuming that)!  

@lalitk you are correct I only tried the original Eno streaming system.

@audphile1 @lalitk @sns it is all system dependent.