I'm concerned about the recent actions taken by UpTone Audio in publicly criticizing another manufacturer's product in this discussion forum. Sharing internal pictures and labeling components as "cheap" without considering the product's overall performance.
If you, as a customer, believe it's important to share pictures of devices you've opened to demonstrate how they produce bad sound, I see no reason to stop you. However, when manufacturers engage in this practice, it crosses a line, even more when they avoid discussing the sonic performance of a device that has already been judged by buyers as having good sound quality.
But let’s move on and compare the candidates for best audiophile switch with the internals exposed!
I wish to be clear about a few things:
a) My intent in posting about the design/circuits/construction/pricing of other manufacturers' products is
never intended to, as you state, "demonstrate how they produce bad sound."
People hear what they hear and like what they like and that's 100% fine.
Yet I have assumed that users spending a great deal of money on equipment have both a right and an interest in learning about these products. That interest can be served either by discussion of theory of operation and technical issues related to (Ethernet in this case) the process, or by an examination of various techniques and implementations employed.
I apologize if such examinations have sometimes lead to me being critical of numerous manufacturers utilizing stock sub-$20 Ethernet switch boards rather than putting in the work to develop something innovative of their own. Such may be fine: It is somewhat common across the audio world for some manufacturers to put all their design efforts into a technology and technique that they deem most important, while discounting the importance of other things.
Ansuz is but one example of that in that virtually all of what you see in their products is application of their somewhat mysterious power supply techniques (their published explanations of their "Tesla coils" and use of zirconium do not make much sense to us, but that's okay).
Reiki (Nigel B. here at WFF) is another example as it appears he too uses a stock switch and puts all his efforts into an elaborate multi-layer noise shielding case (and he unsolders the LEDs--also for "noise" reasons though the truth is that LEDs are VERY low noise, even frequently used as voltage references; if they are causing noise on a board it is because the design is driving them with a PWM power regulator!)
We prefer to take a balanced approach in design and to actually develop our own data handling isolation and reclocking systems to deal with what we measure to be the root causes of propagation of "pollution" ("noise" is too much of a generic catch-all word for me) in packet data interfaces, namely ground-plane noise (caused by both leakage currents and chip-generated phase-noise) that gets into the DAC and causes what we coined as "audio clock-threshold jitter"--really just the low-and-high frequency bouncing of the ground-plane that the DAC's master clock is referenced to).
b)
UpTone has never taken photos of the internals of other manufacturers' products! Every photo that I have posted of someone's product was found on the internet. They are often from magazine reviews or the manufacturer's own web site. Sometimes they are photos that owners of the products have taken themselves and posted somewhere.
The internet--and audio forums--natch, is awash in misinformation and conjecture. It is in my nature to openly share knowledge and ideas. I'm 62 and been an audiophile/music lover since I was 12, and in the business since I was 20.
Yet I do recognize that as a competing manufacturer my comments about other products can be construed as nefarious and crossing an ethical line of propriety. (People who know me know that I am the most opposite of devious, and that I have no need or want to give the "hard sell" to what we do.
)
I admit that to this being a personal conundrum.
I promise to be more mindful of this, especially in forum topics where folks are less interested in engineering factors and simply want to discuss the SQ of the products they are trying.
Thank you all for your forbearance.
I will try to leave you in peace..
Ansuz, although it might prove to be something entirely different, seem to be incorporating (among other things) some kind of "dither" technology in some of their TOTL Power switches.
Whatever they are doing with "dither," it is entirely done in the DC power supply of their switch--and has nothing at all to do with the Ethernet data.
When you look at their units, you see that all of their "Tesla coil", "Tesla squares" and "dither" chip stuff is entirely for the creation of the DC power feed to the D-Link DGS-108 switch they use.
