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Some audiophiles are used to spending thousands on cabling and power cleaning and it does make a difference if $100k has already been spent on the gear. So when

Some audiophiles are used to spending thousands on cabling and power cleaning and it does make a difference if $100k has already been spent on the gear. So when presented with a switch like this it makes sense to them. But they are snakeoil. One thing that these things claim is jitter reduction - because jitter was an issue on the original USB devices using synchronous protocol. But try to explain that any kit they have is already buffering ethernet because it is impossible to do otherwise, and you'll just hit a brick wall. Better to drop $2k on this, and another $10k on special ethernet cables, just to be safe! Hang out on a website devoted to high end audio, like Meridian [1], and you'll see half the people starting threads about some new $10k cable they bought, and the other half studiously avoiding telling them they are wasting their money. Just don't get involved. [1] https://www.meridianunplugged.com https://www.meridianunplugged.com

hagbard_c 5y ago
> it does make a difference if $100k has already been spent on the gear. That sounds like a sunk cost fallacy, why does it matter how much was spent? It should be the other way around where "clean power" makes a noticeable difference with cheap playback equipment with flimsy filtering capacitors in their power supplies. So-called "audiophile" equipment of boat-anchor weight should not need "clean power", that should be handled by the power supply. The whole "audiophile" scene is rife with mass-delusion, they fall for the same scams as those who e.g. buy "amulets for protection against evil spirits". Neither of these do anything but both may feel better by having them. The "audiophile" may get the same satisfaction from listening to whatever he plays as whatever random person does listening to his or her music using whatever equipment they have at hand. The difference is that the random person did not have to pay a scammer to achieve satisfaction. The same was true for the "audiophile" before he fell into the trap but now he's lost that ability.

hagbard_c 5y ago

> it does make a difference if $100k has already been spent on the gear. That sounds like a sunk cost fallacy, why does it matter how much was spent? It should be the other way around where "clean power" makes a noticeable difference with cheap playback equipment with flimsy filtering capacitors in their power supplies. So-called "audiophile" equipment of boat-anchor weight should not need "clean power", that should be handled by the power supply. The whole "audiophile" scene is rife with mass-delusion, they fall for the same scams as those who e.g. buy "amulets for protection against evil spirits". Neither of these do anything but both may feel better by having them. The "audiophile" may get the same satisfaction from listening to whatever he plays as whatever random person does listening to his or her music using whatever equipment they have at hand. The difference is that the random person did not have to pay a scammer to achieve satisfaction. The same was true for the "audiophile" before he fell into the trap but now he's lost that ability.