With every passing season, a new audiophile-grade network switch hits the market. These products, which can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, do the same basic thing as network switches bought at Best Buy for $30 or so (except, in some cases, slower), but their manufacturers claim they are built to a higher standard to achieve better sound.
As with all signal-conditioning devices that operate completely in the digital realm—especially those that work at packet level (more correctly referred to as “frame-level” on the local side of the router, but that’s a distinction that even few experts make)—the sonic efficacy of audiophile network switches is debated, the debate being, as usual, mainly between those who insist they hear a difference and those who insist, on theoretical grounds, that no difference is possible.1
Years ago, I almost certainly would have been on the side of those who refused to listen on theoretical grounds. Since then, several things happened. As I got older and gained experience, I learned that I’m not as smart as I thought I was when I was younger. With this came a greater acceptance of uncertainty, a willingness to give up the certainty of scientific proof and accept things with less evidence than, say, a rigorous double-blind test. In this I am not alone in this industry: I often ask and have found it quite rare for those working in hi-fi R&D to require such rigorous evidence. They cultivate their listening skills, then believe and accept what they hear.
