Stupid questions, SFP+ and some other things.

[Xymox]

So I have a few questions. Please don't smack me too hard for asking stupid questions and being a noob here.

I guess my first question is why all the high end audio switches are based on reworked consumer solutions ? You take covers off these high end switches and the base unit before power supply changes and caps and other things like a ext clock in and you find its a low performance, older, basic, consumer switch like you get at Best Buy.

I suppose because far better switches with up to date technology, management software, modern interfaces like SFP+ don't sound good ? Or is it that they were not considered before modding and listening ?

Mikrotik and Ubiquiti make nice products. Whats wrong with someone modding one of those and listening ?

I could see that finding a switch that could get a 10Mhz clock input to work on a board with its existing clock would be tricky so possibly a switch was picked that could do that even tho its does not have the lowest jitter chips. OK I could see some voodoo and maybe some RF noise being relevant in a choice. But honestly I just don't think professional devices are really being looked at ?

So I am confuzed as to why consumer devices are the basis for many high end audio switches ?

Different question. SFP+.. A SFP+ single mode optical link has less jitter. The high link speed provides a larger headroom so the link is less disturbed by streaming data. The chips that handle 60Gbps switching are far less disturbed ( jittered ) by audio streaming packets. A whole switch that is 60Gbps is just more stable and less jittery.. I would also argue that maybe the higher clock speeds and higher freq RF moves the noise further out of the bands that matter to the gear. I suppose some voodoo might be at work, and there is something not apparent, that makes these far more power switches not sound as good ?

This is a example of a nice switch for "dirty" networking. It might make a nice "clean" switch for use in audio ? Might make a good base to mod ? Mikrotik will sell just boards, they will do custom stuff and stuff parts asked for. Even do custom engineering. So I just dont see why the high end audio networking buis is centered around such "consumer" grade devices ?
https://i.mt.lv/cdn/rb_files/CRS305-1G-4S-IN-190708144252.pdf

 

[nenon]

I think part of the answer is related to support.
Imagine a small high-end audio company modding a Cisco Catalyst switch. Chances are they would not sell those in huge quantities, so they can afford a 24/7 support team... or even a regular business hours support team. Also, chances are that not many audiophiles feel comfortable with the Cisco CLI. Ongoing Support could easily eat up a lot of resources, and even if they have a 10 fold markup, unless they sell many of them, the ongoing support cost could easily take their business down. Most audiophiles would probably not be willing to pay an annual support contract fee for their switch like enterprises do.

So what is the alternative? Consumer devices. They are made to be sold in BestBuy, user friendly, easy to manage... or even better - unmanaged dumb plug and play devices.

There are a few other factors I can think of. Most enterprise class network devices are rack mountable and have multiple fans. Probably not suitable for a listening room. They are not easy to mod. They consume more power, generate heat, and can't be fed by a 1A DC linear power supply.
This is what makes consumer switches a better choice IMO.

But also, not all switches are based on consumer grade components. I think that's how it all started with AQVox, TLS, etc. But that's changing too. Uptone Audio's etherREGEN is designed from the ground up. Melco is based on the Buffalo BS-GS2016/A which is not exactly BestBuy grade. The Telegartner m12 is an industrial switch. I think we are seeing the market moving away from consumer grade switches.

But wasn't that the case with servers? We started with laptops and MAC Minis, moved on the NUCs, and now the leading server has 2 CPUs, 20 cores, 40 threads, 48GB of RAM, and the chassis is the size of a D'Agostino amp. It's funny how everyone knows exactly what server I am talking about without even mentioning the Taiko Extreme name . I would not be surprised if we see a similar trend with switches over time.

 

[Xymox]

Good to hear that things are moving towards better performance devices.

I think one of the obstacles to using pro devices is that you have to know what your doing. They don't come out of the box setup as a consumer friendly SOHO router. For home use these professional devices do not work out of the box. They require knowing what your doing in networking to setup. So these professional devices are not really considered even tho they could be WAY better SQ then the consumer devices in use now.

Mikrotik is a great product and stuffed full of caps and other mods like a external clock would make for a great switch and router for performance AND SQ.

I know higher performance switch chips and more cores for ARM based routers reduce jitter by a lot. So a 36 core ARM based router will do circles around any of these audiophile routers mentioned here in reducing jitter. RF can be modded and gotten under control. A ext clock can be added.

So, I feel strongly that the audiophile networking community needs to look at better devices and mod a real switch and router not these consumer toys.

Someone should mod the crap out of this router https://mikrotik.com/product/CCR1036-8G-2SplusEM

Maybe mod the *** out of this switch. You can stuff in 1Gbps Ethernet modules, or 2.5, 5, 10 Gbps SFP+ ethernet modules. Or go single modem fiber in SFP or SFP+ OR anything you can get a SFP or SFP+ module for.. https://mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in