Good mid-price audiophile switches

[Golum]

Could anyone pls advise if you have sent the Edison Fiberbox II to be upgraded to the latest mk.3 spec? If so did you find it as meaningful investment as the cost behind the upgrade is a bit let's call it "high" - so I'm not sure if I should do it.

Many thanks!

 

[agisthos]

Matrix Audio have released 2 new switches that look to have a high price to performance ratio. The SS-1 and SS-1Pro, the later of which is only $1700 USD. These are an inhouse ground up design by Matrix, not a repurposed commercial switch board.

Sandu from Soundnews is a very thorough reviewer and puts them through their paces…

https://soundnews.net/reviews/acces...o-ethernet-switches-review-can-bits-do-beats/

He says the Matrix is well above the Melco and LHY SW-10 and gets very close to his reference Ansuz D3 (for a quarter of the price by my calculation).

 

[Synaxis]

Matrix Audio have released 2 new switches that look to have a high price to performance ratio. The SS-1 and SS-1Pro, the later of which is only $1700 USD. These are an inhouse ground up design by Matrix, not a repurposed commercial switch board.

Sandu from Soundnews is a very thorough reviewer and puts them through their paces…

https://soundnews.net/reviews/acces...o-ethernet-switches-review-can-bits-do-beats/

He says the Matrix is well above the Melco and LHY SW-10 and gets very close to his reference Ansuz D3 (for a quarter of the price by my calculation).

Looks very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

 

[agisthos]

I have a LHY SW-6. It does make a nice improvement over even a LPS powered commercial switch, let alone stock.
I have mostly Nordost ancillaries so the obvious next step up on the network side was going to be the very well reviewed QNET. But it really needs the QSource power supply to feed it, along with the LEMO DC cable. This pushes the full package up to 9k AUD (about 6k USD in your money).

Its a bit much to drop at the moment so this $1700 USD switch looks great and it might even be the equal or better than the QNET, given Matrix Audio's value manufacturing system. It has its own low noise LPS built in so there is no need to wonder/worry if a different LPS would sound better than the previous LPS.

And not that it matters for audio quality, but the chassis and industrial design of these switches (and Matrix new M line) looks absolutely spectacular, like it could easily be on components costing 15-20k.

 

[audiobomber]

It has its own low noise LPS built in so there is no need to wonder/worry if a different LPS would sound better than the previous LPS.

And allows fiber optic connection.