TherealJohnD
New Head-Fier
I think the difference will be slight at best but you never know. Over at the Niam forum, some prefer daisy chaining two ER's, a bit too spendy for me.Yep that's it, and I was also not sure if it would work but there was nothing to worry about in the end. I think the ports on both sides of the cable just need to be the same 1G speed.
I'd be curious to hear if the dirty-side FMCs make much of a difference in your chain, let us know what you find.
My brief notes about the options I have are:
30 ft ethernet cable straight from router to R26: Truly awful. Foggy, dull sound and dynamics with soft attacks and leading edges. I can't believe this used to pass as a baseline not that long ago.
Router > 10Gtek FMC boxes > R26: Clean and clear, but bright and thin. The edges of notes and voices have over-sharpened digital fuzz around them. I enjoyed this when it was all I had but I don't care for it now.
Router > N18 > R26: Gorgeous. Neutral, loads of detail and grunt. Powerful bass and dynamics. Ghostlike center image. It was fatiguing the first few days but settled down.
Router > FMC > Cisco AOC > N18 > R26: This is the way. Noticeably warm but nicely so. Further uptick in detail. Smooth as butter.
I used to not understand when people said CDs sounded better than streaming or digital files because 1s and 0s blah blah blah. But this experience has made me realize that a lot is riding on the quality of that connection into the streamer. My thought is that these audiophile switches prepare the signal in such a way that streaming can rival a physical format. The R26+C18+N18 is an awesome stack which seems to be greater than the sum of its parts.