Audiophile Fiber Optic Switches

[Markus87]

I am in the market for a new switch for my audio system.

I went down the fiber optics route with the idea of maximum isolation.

 

So I installed 4 fiber optic tracks:

- Router

- Wifi AP

- Roon core

- Streamer (RJ45 via modded FMC with TCXO clock)

 

I am currently using a Microtik CRS305 4 port fiber optic switch but am looking for a more audiophile replacement.

Unfortunately all the audiophile solutions out there seem to be limited to 2 SFP ports max.

The switch should meet the following requirements
- at least 4 SFP or SFP+ ports (more is better), SFP+ (10Gbe) would be another benefit (gear for photography workflow is also involved in my network)
- good internal build (e.g. linear DC-DC converters) —> switching converters might be up for an upgrade?
- Either a good internal LPSU (suitable for 230V AC) or connection for external LPSU (12V preferred)
- high precision clock(s)
- ideally not huge in terms of dimensions (full-size 1U 19“ is too big)

Unfortunately I was not able to find anything out in the market so far.

Does anybody know a starting point? Maybe a solid consumer product that can be modded accordingly?

Cheers,
Markus

 

[plissken]

There's no such thing as an 'Audiophile' switch. You are already doing what you can by going Fiber to cut out the electrical linkage.

 

Ethernet is asynchronous so you don't have to worry about expensive clocks. The only clock that matters is the last clock.

 

Would your photo's look any better when you have copied them from your file server over a modded switch vs the Mikrotik?

[EdmontonCanuck]

9 minutes ago, plissken said:

There's no such thing as an 'Audiophile' switch.

 

I 100% agree with your statement, however, I'm afraid the horde of subjectivists will descend upon you shortly. I'll get the popcorn 😄

[MarcelNL]

8 minutes ago, EdmontonCanuck said:

 

I 100% agree with your statement, however, I'm afraid the horde of subjectivists will descend upon you shortly. I'll get the popcorn 😄

basically you are doing the same, yet as 'objectivist' 

 

@Markus Search for some posts by Streamfidelity he may have modded some optical switches, I'm not sure about that though

[plissken]

58 minutes ago, EdmontonCanuck said:

 

I 100% agree with your statement, however, I'm afraid the horde of subjectivists will descend upon you shortly. I'll get the popcorn 😄

 

That's ok I can more than handle that. With the OP being a photog I would imagine they have either used or contributed to Stock Photo companies. I can guarantee you they can license their work out, upload it, years later over 17 hops from the services file server, retrieve the .raw and it will be identical to what the submitted years before.

 

Regardless of whether they have a $29 TP-Link or a $2000 Melco.

[The Computer Audiophile]

I use Ubiquiti UniFi switches. The company has switches with as many SFP+ ports as you’ll ever need. 
 

i have this one feeding other switches via fiber

 

[plissken]

20 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I use Ubiquiti UniFi switches. The company has switches with as many SFP+ ports as you’ll ever need. 
 

i have this one feeding other switches via fiber

 

 

That's a good switch for the money. There are plenty of business grade solutions on eBay.

 

My Cisco 2360 only does layer 2 so I went on a search and found this Netgear Prosafe GSM7352 v2 L3 switch with four 1GBe SFP and two 10GBe SFP+ for $60 shipped.

 

I plan on shooting a tutorial video on setting up for Intervlan routing with a $200 HPE Proliant G7 DL360E with 480MB Kingston SSD  and 32GB DDR3 Buffered ECC running Windows 10 as a host OS and Virtual Box running pfSense. It has 4 copper RJE so I can do a WAN/LAN link, one link in management VLAN and the other link in production vlan.

 

After that I'll shoot another video on production, guest, and management vlan for multi-SSID wireless in the home.

[The Computer Audiophile]

12 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

That's a good switch for the money. There are plenty of business grade solutions on eBay.

 

My Cisco 2360 only does layer 2 so I went on a search and found this Netgear Prosafe GSM7352 v2 L3 switch with four 1GBe SFP and two 10GBe SFP+ for $60 shipped.

 

I plan on shooting a tutorial video on setting up for Intervlan routing with a $200 HPE Proliant G7 DL360E with 480MB Kingston SSD  and 32GB DDR3 Buffered ECC running Windows 10 as a host OS and Virtual Box running pfSense. It has 4 copper RJE so I can do a WAN/LAN link, one link in management VLAN and the other link in production vlan.

 

After that I'll shoot another video on production, guest, and management vlan for multi-SSID wireless in the home.

Excellent.  

[Cintvs]

We use a lot of Unifi gear. But for something smaller in our test lab we use MikroTik CRS305-1G-4S+IN and Intel sfp units.