 I get it. Everyone wants to get the absolute most out of their hardware. With gaming computers, we're always chasing the bottleneck. Is my CPU limiting? My GPU is my power supply enough for the new generation? And with audio, it's a similar story. Audio files are always looking for ways to improve clarity and reduce unwanted noise that is untrue to the original recording. That is why it came as no surprise to me that the Akvox Switch SE, an audio file network switch that promises to improve the sound quality of streamed audio exists and even has loads of positive reviews. Some claiming an immediate improvement and that straight away they could hear the difference. Don't get me wrong. We have tried some weird techniques to mitigate bottlenecks in a PC, but they all share something that the focus in today's video does not. They should at least work in theory. To be clear, I don't blame people for wanting to find unique new ways to chase perfection, but an 800 Euro version of a $30 network switch from D-Link, this is not the way. And we're gonna explain why and even run some blind tests to prove it. Just like I'm gonna prove that this is the segue to our sponsor, SignalRGB. With SignalRGB, you can control and sync your RGB with one free app. Browse their library of over 60 game integrations at the link down below. From the outside, this switch looks nearly identical to the $30 D-Link DGS-108 that it's based on. And that's because it's not a special edition or a different model. Otvox is buying these switches and then allegedly modifying them to sound much better. Frankly, for me, that makes believing this even harder. I cannot wait to open this thing up and find out what they have modified other than this sticker on the top. Even the box is the same. They put a sticker on the included power supply, but they couldn't be arsed to change it for like a cleaner power one. Like really, you guys? Oh, they put two stickers on it, sorry, excuse me. Please use the included power supply only. This is for safety and audio file reasons. You know what? I love that. I'm just gonna explain everything I do as for audio file reasons. Oh, this is for audio file reasons. You simply wouldn't understand. They really couldn't have been bothered to at least make a sticker. This just seems to be glued to the box. You know, if you're gonna snake oil, at least snake oil well, right? No, I'm not gonna be like that. I'm gonna be open-minded. We're gonna go to their product page and see what changes they made for the Switch. Our many customers say this is the Switch. I agree so far. If you think the unmodified D-Link Switch might be a good choice, it is not. If you own a good NAS source like a Melco, I'm afraid to Google this. I'm about to find the dumbest audio file crap, aren't I? Look at all, wow, look at all these different colors of thread trusted by the best and Nike. How much am I gonna pay for an external two terabyte storage device? It's over $3,000 for a two terabyte NAS. This is for safety and audio file reasons. NAS server via a Q-Switch sounds far better as internal hard disk or external USB hard drive. What is the logic there? They say it sounds better if you have a server that runs through this Switch versus if you just play the file locally on your computer. Pick a lane, Okvox. First you say cables are bad. We must be careful of the directionality so we do not distort the audio. And then you want us to add literally up to, you know, a hundred meters of network cable just so we can have your special Switch. Which one is it? Improving and amplifying the video and audio signal for longer LAN connection. That is actually a function, okay? You can use it as a repeater if you need to go more than a hundred meters. So, fair enough. Here's what they've actually modified. Internal ultra low noise voltage regulation, jitter reduction, reclocker, signal shaper, EMI eliminator, denoiser, those are the same thing, modified and optimized external power supply with two asterisks. Now hold on just a gosh darn minute here. Where's the one that came with the D-Link Switch? Because I pretty much promise you that this is either the same or worse. Shenzhen Young Hope Electronics Technology Company. Additional modification. We ask for your understanding that we will not give any details here. Must be trade secrets. The enclosures are hollow sealed and all modifications are covered with a resin compound. We may not actually be able to see what they did. Oh, we'll see what they did. The internal power supply circuits are now carefully optimized with additional ultra fast capacitors. We were talking MOSFETs, okay. But fast capacitors? Capacitors don't go fast. We have also been able to optimize the power supply even further. I don't believe you. This has not been opened. You put a silver sticker here. I'm quite certain that's all you did because this is still sealed. Wait, they have an FAQ section debunking audio file bull from other brands. Other switch manufacturers are claiming that switches connected to each other in series with short cables are improving the sound quality. In fairness to Ockvox, that is mind-bendingly stupid. This paragraph means absolutely nothing. At once, they debunk audio file bull from someone else while also saying that it does something, thereby embracing it. I thought you were gonna have an open mind with this, okay? No, I'm trying to have an open mind. That product page was great because it gives us a couple things we can actually test. First, streaming high quality audio over our local network from a NAS or network attached storage. For this test, we'll have two separate NAS systems posting the exact same music files over the SMB file protocol, each on a different subnet. Both will be plugged into the same NIC on our client computer with one running over the $30 D-Link switch and the other over the $800 audio file version of it. Our lovely subjects will then be asked to come in and compare between the two to see if they can tell a difference. And if they do find a difference, tell us which is the better listening experience. Then we will test an audio file streaming service, specifically Deezer, as that's the highest quality option available in Canada as of the time of recording. In this test, we don't really have an easy way to switch between the switches. So the subject will be asked to switch between two network cables that are marked with an LTT store cable tie with a known color. So we've got blue and purple. All the content will be auditioned using the JDS Labs Element 3 DAC and AMP, paired with the Abyss AB1266 reference headphones and over $6,000 pair of cans designed to be the apex of the headphone world as per Abyss' marketing. Hello, Alex. Hello. Put the headphones on. You have two tracks in front of you. Take a listen to the tracks in the left and right window. Can you hear a difference between the two? Don't overthink it, just answer honestly. Oh no, I don't hear a difference at all. I mean, they sound basically the same. No difference. There is more of something in the right one. It is more of something. It's slightly more, but there's more. I would describe it as more. I think, I think just because I, right at the beginning, the one on the left sounded better. I think I'm gonna stick with that. Just at the end there, I thought maybe the voice on the first one, I thought it sounded like a little bit more full. Maybe there seemed like more information there than on the right one. It seemed like maybe there was a little bit less. No, I cannot tell a difference. Not at all. I was listening for compression artifacts. Like if you're trying to see if I can tell the difference between MP3 and uncompressed, and I couldn't hear any differences. You don't hear any difference? No. In really high quality recordings, when a ride cymbal stops and they move to something else, it decays like forever. And on crappy recordings, that just turns into a mess once it starts getting pretty quiet. And on this one, you just keep on hearing it get really nice and low until it like stops on both of them. I think these are functionally identical. There is no difference for me. Talk to the camera. Oh, sorry. I can't tell. Yeah, the first one feels a lot more open. It feels like you're there with the music, like they're performing live. The second one, it sounds like you're listening it through headphones. It's really clear, but it's not as, I mean, it doesn't sound like you're actually there. I wouldn't, I don't know which one is necessarily better because I feel like they both kind of have their pros and cons, but I kind of like the first one just because I haven't had an experience like that. These are identical. These are straight up just identical. I'm trying. I'm trying to be a critical listener here. There are two network cables plugged into the computer in front of you. One is purple and the other is blue. You're gonna audition whatever track you would like from Deezer and I want you to switch between the network cables as you wish. Can you hear a difference between the two? This better be for some like ethernet card that's like made for audio files. It is, isn't it? There's not a huge difference because at the first time it sounded better to me, the purple one, but now that I switched again to the blue one, the difference is just a little bit like. If I'm being absolutely completely honest and I'm not trying to bull and like convince you that I'm an audio file, I don't hear any difference. Yeah, this song rules, but the switch isn't doing. I can't hear any difference. Is there supposed to be a really noticeable difference? Cause maybe my ears aren't trained enough, but I don't really hear that much of a difference between the two tracks. No, I cannot tell a difference. I can't tell the difference. It sounds the same. It's the same, it's the same. Did anyone actually say something that makes things up? Purple sounded worse. If these are like this, it's supposed to sound the same. I'm gonna be real mad at myself. I would say with confidence, particularly with these two songs, blue is better for some reason. What a surprise. Our test subjects were not able to discern a difference or even regularly select the Ockvox compared to the $30 D-Link switch as a better listening experience. Why? We'll explain that in a moment, but first we're gonna open them both up and have a look at at least the changes Ockvox thinks they made to the original. Well, they put these screws on really tight, crud. What the hell, they glued them. They glued the damn screws. Crap, they really loaded this thing up with glue. They do not want you opening this. It's a glued boy. And this gives us a closer look at the switch board itself. There's our processor. Here's the new version of the DGS-108. Here's the Ockvox based on the older version. So you've got one of these for every two ports. And then basically, Jake, come here for a second. There is an oscillator here. Did they put like a jewel on top of it? Oh my God. Thinking that anyone who opens this would be stupid enough to think that that makes it a crystal oscillator? What other purpose could there be for putting- We have an electronics engineer sort of here. Yeah, hey, Tynen, it appears that over the clock gen, which I believe that is, is that correct? Probably. Put a jewel, which I guess makes it a crystal oscillator. Crystal. I get it. I've never seen anything like this. They also had to machine away part of the heat sink to do it. In order to do that. And they put some hot glue on there. I mean, that's actually not that unreasonable if they don't want stuff moving around, but. Now what I'd like to know next, we're gonna go ahead and take off the board here. Oh my God, these are glued too. Are you serious right now? They glued the board into the chassis. I wanna see if they actually, so all these components that they've just dunked goo over, I wanna see if they actually desoldered and re-soldered them cause I should be able to tell the difference between a factory solder job and a hand solder job. Is that just like an Illuminati sticker? Shut up. Kind of looks like it. Oh, that might've been glass at least. Oh, it has the same like Illuminati symbol on it. It has that? Yeah, on the bottom. Oh man, I can't get this shmoo off. Well, whatever. Well, no, I wanna know if they've even bothered to replace the actual oscillator under there. Oh, I see. Yeah, I can't see the markings on it. How convenient to just hide under the guise of trade secrets, but actually you just didn't do anything. Oh my God. What, it's the same one? No, no, no, it's worse than that. They scratched it off. I'm pretty sure it's scuffed up. It's hard to tell the difference between my scuffs and their scuffs, but the way that the original one is marked, this looks like new scuffs, Jake. That looks like sandpaper. Yeah. Yeah. Jake, I kinda wanna go for gold with these screws. To be clear, I'm not blaming you if you bought into something like this. Like you got taken for a ride, but that's not your fault. People shouldn't be allowed to market this kind of stuff because the reality of it is not everybody has time to look into every thing that they buy, right? You have to try to, you know, you have to trust people. And there's so many great reviews. Oh my God, Jake. What? Guess what? What? Inside more Illuminati triangle crystal things. What is going on? What is the point of putting these in here where they are glued and screwed and glued and screwed again? What's this? I don't know. Just like. I mean, I think we made it deep enough to know that at most they've swapped out a couple of caps. As much as we've mocked this product, I wanna make it clear that if you bought one, you are not the problem. The problem is their marketing because it sounds like the kind of thing that could make a difference. So why didn't it? Well, there are a number of reasons. First and foremost, the signals that are passed over a network connection like this fancy switch are digital. Meaning that while there are indeed electrical pulses flying down the cable, they represent ones and zeros that make up a digital signal. The digital nature of the signal is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, unlike in an analog signal where interference can skew the information being transmitted, like the scratchiness that you might hear when listening to a radio with poor reception, in a digital signal where the electrical pulses on the cable are converted into ones and zeros, if those ones and zeros are received incorrectly or out of order, it would result in corrupted data. And that can happen. It's even common when transmitting data over an ethernet or other cable. These signaling protocols though, usually have some form of error correction. So when you're using a remote streaming service over HTTPS like Spotify or Deezer, or a local stream over SMB, like with a NAS, they transmit traffic over the TCP internet protocol, which has a number of error detecting and correcting features that make it effectively errorless. What that means is that regardless of the network switch in between, you will be receiving exactly the same ones and zeros that make up your audio stream or file in exactly the same order. And if you weren't, the file wouldn't even play without fixing the corruption, if there even is a way to do that. But wait, there's more. Simple layer two network switches like this one, aren't even aware of the TCP connection that is happening over them. They simply receive packets, that is the pieces of data that make up an ethernet connection with a destination Mac address, and they forward them to the interface with the matching Mac address. They don't even know what kind of traffic they're carrying, let alone have the capacity to optimize it. To add insult to injury, streaming services typically deliver their content over an HTTPS connection, which is encrypted and will even run their own secondary encryption to protect the content from pirating. Local file sharing can also be encrypted in some situations, which means that even if a network switch wanted to know what was being transferred to try to optimize it, it wouldn't be able to read the data. Of course, that says nothing about the amount of processing that would be required to analyze all of that data and optimize it. This three watt $30 switch is not even going to begin to be able to do that, which raises the question, what did they actually change? Oh, I see, we've done this slightly out of order. I already opened it, spoiler, they didn't change much of anything. So where are the positive reviews coming from? Well, there are a number of possibilities. One is the placebo effect. Nobody likes feeling like they got taken for a ride, and if you bought something, you would want to think that it's making a difference. This probably accounts for at least some of it. It's also possible that this switch could have been part of a larger upgrade for someone, all of which would have been done at the same time and predictably would sound a lot better than whatever their old equipment was. As for why a system integrator or a VAR, a value-added reseller, would include something like this in their quote, well, that's where things get really skeezy because oftentimes those types of companies know full well that the cables and optimizers that they're installing are pure snake oil. So they make more money by padding out the invoice with nonsense they know doesn't do anything for customers who might not necessarily have the time or inclination to look it up because they think they're trusting an expert. And that's really challenging because even if they did look this up, even if they did do their research, all they would have found was rave reviews from people talking about how great it is, which is validated by their own experience with how much better their music sounds. So the situation sucks. What doesn't suck is the segue to our sponsor, Grammarly. Thanks to Grammarly for sponsoring this video. When it comes to work, communication is key. Even if you don't have a writing job, miscommunication can cause confusion and misalignment with your team leading to projects being delayed. And that's why we recommend checking out Grammarly Premium's advanced tone suggestions. It can help reframe your communication to be positive and productive to get everyone on the same page. Grammarly Premium's tone rewrite suggestions also reframe negative language to be more solution focused. Simply install the desktop app, log in and start typing. 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