English Electric 8Switch audiophile network switch

English Electric sounds familiar but from what. And how good is their only product, the 8Switch audio grade network switch? The influence network switches have on the sound quality of a network player has been a point of discussion for some time now. Especially those that did not tried it, are critical. Those that did, are sold. For those that wonder what it is all about: a switch is a kind of distribution center for network connections. Current network switches are all of the intelligent kind that only pass through data to the port that is connected to the addressed network device.

To simplify matters even more, you can see a network switch as a mains distribution 00:51 - socket that lets you connect several devices. Let’s see where it fits into your stereo. Your stereo might have an amp with speakers and a network player attached. This player will normally be connected to your router over a network cable. Your computer will also be connected to your router. An audiophile network switch is inserted between the router and your network player.

If your computer is closer to the switch, you can connect it 01:19 - to the switch as well, although I should be careful since computers cause a lot of electrical noise on network cables. If you have an amplifier with streamer built in or an AV receiver with built-in streaming, the switch is, of course, inserted between your router and the amp or receiver. The network connection from our smart-tv can be connected to the audiophile switch as well, often the picture quality will increase too, provided your tv is of sufficient quality and adjusted properly. Look somewhat closer to the tv and you will see details are more stable when watching video from the web or your computer. The network connection of any other AV device, like for instance a blu-ray player, can be connected to the audiophile switch as well.

By the way, in this diagram only the network connections 02:11 - and the speaker cables are drawn to keep it simple. The TV and the Blue-ray play need to have their audio and video connections made too. The 8Switch has a solid aluminium housing, placed on four feet with rubber damping rings. It measures 153 by 85 by 34 mm and weighs 408 grams excluding power supply. On the front we see tiny holes with behind light pipes that pass on the light from ten LED’s on the circuit board.

The left one shows the power status, the next one shows error status 02:51 - while the following eight show activities on the eight network ports. A green pulsing means there is a gigabit signal, amber indicates 100 Mb/s. The construction is such that you can place the front towards your seating position so you can monitor activities if you like. But the brightness and size of the lights are tiny enough not to be distracting. Clever thinking! On the rear we see the eight ethernet ports. Port 1 to 7 are for connecting to AV equipment while port 8 is to be connected to your router. On the right the power input that is to be connected to the supplied wall wart 5 volt 2.5 amps power supply. Since the housing is machined from a slab of aluminium, the circuit boards become visible through the bottom opening after removing the cover. Directly behind the power socket there is some power regulation. Then the network sockets with directly behind it four inductors per socket.

A network cable has eight strands that per pair carry a signal. The inductors are to filter out high frequency noise from these signals. Behind these filters 32 small transformers that provide galvanic separation on all eight network ports. Under this black sheet that fights stray magnetic fields the microprocessor is hidden. At this spot a clock oscillator could be placed but here a thin HF cable is soldered to the solder islands that leads to a small board that is still in the housing.

It holds the high spec temperature 04:31 - compensated clock crystal, branded Silent Angel en specified at 0.1 parts per million. The board is connected to the main board using a 4 pin socket that runs the power. The name Silent Angel might ring a bell. Indeed, I reviewed the Silent Angel Bonn B8 audio grade switch nine months ago. And what do we see when we compare the boards of both products? They are identical. As is the circuit board holding the crystal oscillator. That would suggest equal performance if not the power supplies differ as does the housing. Audiophile switches do have effect on the sound quality simply because the input circuits of the connected streamer is not able to clean up the incoming signal optimally. This of course can be a matter of both money and knowledge. It also means that the sound of a very high quality streamer or network bridge will increase less when using an audio grade switch than a mid-range streamer and that a cheap streamer might not even benefit at all since it might have a very high level of jitter itself. It is hard to say at what price these cross overs are.

It also depends on the rest of the stereo, your acoustics and your listening experience 05:55 - and taste. And of course budget. The fact remains that most people will hear the difference provided it is demoed on a stereo that truly benefits from a good audiophile switch. I have used the Auralic Aries G2, the SOtM sMS-200 Ultra Neo and the MiniDSP SHD Studio in my setup 1 and compared the performance of the England Electric to that of the Uptone Audio EtherREGEN. I did not include the SOtM sNH-10G and AQVox AQ-Switch SE that I also own simply since they do not perform better than the Uptone while costing more. It would only make things more confusing including them. The ‘normal’ switch was the TP- Link TL-SG108.

06:44 - In all cases the power supply that came with each switch was used. I have come to the conclusion that using a linear power supply on switches does degrade the performance slightly. And the audio grade switches came with higher quality switch mode power supplies that are a better match for binary electronics. In all cases I used the AudioQuest Diamond CAT7 ethernet cable since I also used it in previous reviews of audio grade switches. I also did short tests in my setup 2 and 3.

07:21 - This is a digital signal processor that can do active cross-overs for loudspeakers, equalising and Dirac room correction. It also has a streamer and digital pre-amp aboard. The streamer is an OEM version of Volumio and can function as Roon endpoint as well. And that’s how I used it. The digital output was sent to the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge over SPDIF, using a VandenHull 75Ω cable. It is a very good streamer but not of the SOtM Ultra class. Using the 8Switch in stead of the TP-Link did bring clear quality improvement.

Resolution 07:59 - increased, sibilance was controlled better and the stereo image was more natural. Overall the sound was more relaxed with better pace and rhythm. Using the EtherREGEN increased the sound quality again more. The sMS-200 Ultra Neo is a so called network bridge, although it also can be used as DLNA or Squeezebox streamer. And even as a simple DLNA or Logitech server. It was connected to the DAC using a AudioQuest Diamond USB cable Here the difference between the TP-Link and the 8Switch was slightly less because the SOtM managed to clean up the TP-link signal more.

The end result is of course better than that from the MiniDSP because of the quality 08:49 - of the SOtM. Using the 8Switch breaks open the stereo image further, sibilance sounds cleaner while de music gets more evolving. Using the EtherREGEN brings this experience even somewhat further. This s a high end streamer that can also function as Roon endpoint and has DLNA functionality. Even when using the consumer grade TP-Link switch the sound quality is of very high quality.

09:19 - Although the increment the 8Switch brings is smaller, the overall sound quality exceeds that of the SOtM with 8Switch. Using the Uptone does bring only a slight increment, especially sibilance comes even closer to perfect while the stereo image is impressively unimpressive, if you catch my drift. Using the 8Switch does bring clear sound improvements if your stereo is of sufficient quality. I even heard some sound improvement in my sub €1,000 setup 3. Whether it is wise to try to improve the sound quality by investing € 500 in a switch is questionable.

I think 10:03 - that spending it on a higher class digital source might increase the sound quality more. In my € 4,000 setup 2 it is a wise investment that does bring clear sound improvements of a very pleasant nature. For my setup 1 with the Aries G2 the 8Switch is a good investment too, although when you spend € 20k on a stereo, a few hundred bucks more for the EtherREGEN won’t hurt while it is again a bit better. At this level you mostly increase the sound quality by small steps in all stages. As we have seen is the electronics inside in the 8Switch the same as in the Silent Angel Bonn B8.

Still there are three clear differences between the two: the 8Switch has a machined 10:55 - aluminium housing while the housing of the Bonn B8 is made of folded metal. Especially when using very high spec crystals, like here, a solid housing can make a clear difference since crystals are rather microphonic - sensitive to vibrations. The second difference is the power supply that comes with the units. The Bonn B8 comes with a medical grade switch mode power supply while the 8Switch comes with a multimedia grade switch mode power supply. This chapter is a bit nerdy but interesting to those that want to know about ‘medical grade power supplies”. To skip it, goto the timecode below.

11:38 - Although ‘medical grade’ sounds better than ‘multimedia grade’, I discovered that this is not necessarily the case. Medical grade equipment need to be conform to the IEC’s EMI standard EN 55011. This standard is split up into general purpose and RF specific applications like Wifi. Then there is class A that is intended for all establishments other than domestic while class B is for domestic use. So ‘medical grade’ is a broad concept. AV equipment has to comply to EN 55022 or the newer EN 55032.

Here again there is an 12:21 - A and B class where the B class is for in-house use and A for elsewhere. Now come the fun part: when we look at the conducted emission - the amount of unwanted noise that travels over the cord to the device it has to power - we see that both the peak and average specifications for multimedia equipment class B are considerable lower than even the most critical specification for medical equipment. When we look at the peak measurement standard we see the multimedia standard is grossly below 56 dBµV while the best class medical is 73 dBµV at best. The average measurement specs are mainly below 50 dBµV while the best medical is 60 to 66 dBµV. Now, I can’t say what lies behind the better performance of the 8Switch, the metal housing, the power supply or both.

But it again is proof that you should not trust commercial write-ups. And the third difference? Well that is the price. The Silent Angel Bonn B8 costs € 399 and comes with an unlabelled network cable. The England Electric 8Switch costs € 499 and comes with a Chord C-stream CAT7 network cable which a catalog price of € 49. The net price difference, when taking into account the Chord network cable versus the non branded one, will be around € 55 euros.

The England Electric performs better than 13:56 - the Silent Angel but differences depend on the equipment used and vary between a very small difference and a fair difference. I have tried to be as factual as possible but it’s up to you to decide what suits you best. The most important thing to realise is that when you own a well chosen stereo of a few thousand euro’s or more that needs a network connection, an audio grade network switch is a sound investment in audio quality. I consider the England Electric 8Switch worth every penny to those that own such a stereo. Which brings us to the end of this program.

But there will be another video next Friday 14:39 - at 5 pm central European time. If you don’t want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you’ll be informed when new videos are out. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially, it keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on Youtube.

15:07 - I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music. .