From your router to your switch, shielded cables can provide greater protection from RFI ingress. The SuperSwitch will massively mitigate whatever noise reaches it but it makes sense to minimise this incoming noise and there is most certainly no disadvantage to doing so. Shielded cables include certified Cat 8 and some Cat 6A as well as many uncertified cables from boutique manufacturers. Cat 7 is also shielded and quite popular despite being a proprietary standard which was never approved by the IEEE.

Data handling rates increase from Cat 6 to 6A to 7 to 8 but for audio purposes, Cat 6 data rates are absolutely sufficient and highe rates won’t affect sound quality; the demands we place on our network cables even if using hi-res material can easily be accommodated by all of these categories of cable. Our interest lies purely in the ability of the cable to reject noise as this may impact sound quality.

If we were reinstalling our own network, we’d probably go for Cat 8. It’s not only shielded overall but the pairs of conductors are more tightly twisted which makes them better at rejecting noise - this noise rejection is what gives Cat 8 cable the ability to support much higher data rates than we use in audio. Note how, as with the network switch, we audiophiles seek to exploit a side effect or by-product of the original purpose, this time of the cable’s design!

Firstly, the shorter the better as there is less opportunity for the cable to pick up noise on the final run from switch to streamer and on to the DAC; we include 0.5m and 1m Cat 6 with all our products, the latter in case physical constraints like rack space mean 0.5m isn’t enough.

Secondly, you should avoid using a shielded cable with metal plugs in which the shield is grounded at both ends which will allow the noise to pass along the shield to your streamer - so avoid stock CAT 6A, 7 or 8 cables. Surprisingly few shielded cable manufacturers state explicitly whether their cables are grounded at one or both ends.

Finally, do check out our own RakuStream+ cable which is triple-shielded but the shields are grounded at only one (the switch) end. This is getting hugely posotive feedback. It offers all the advantages of shielding with none of the drawbacks.

All network switches simply take in, briefly store and then distribute packets/frames of data – digital in and digital out – and this simplicity of purpose is precisely what makes them a powerful tool in reducing RFI noise; in using a switch to improve sound quality, we are exploiting a side effect of this digital purpose called galvanic isolation. The ultimate goal is to minimise the amount of RFI noise which, via your streamer, reaches your DAC where it can affect the analogue circuitry and negatively impact sound quality. Some of this noise is environmental and the design (casing etc) of the streamer and DAC will play a role in minimising ingress, but it is also readily transported on the conductors and/or shield of an ethernet cable. With a Reki Audio SuperSwitch installed just before your streamer, a tiny fraction of the RFI reaching a network switch on the input ethernet cable will be forwarded on the output ethernet cable; it goes much much further in its design (see How Hard Can It Be?) and is much more effective than a standard network switch.

One day we might discover the name of the music lover who found out, perhaps by accident, that a network switch just before the streamer has far more of an impact on sound quality than if it were installed just after the router: whoever you are, we salute you!

Basically, no; there is certainly no need with a SuperSwitch. Let’s think for a moment about how this practice might have arisen. If you have a basic switch which takes out say 80% of the incoming noise, adding in another identical switch after it will get you to 96% reduction; in a lot of systems, that difference will be audible. In some highly resolving systems, adding a third may offer a further (albeit marginal) improvement in sound quality. Likewise, a passive filter may make a contribution to sound quality if placed between a basic switch and streamer.

But repeat the experiment with a Reiki Audio SuperSwitch and it will be a very different story. While we’ve yet to find a way of accurately putting a percentage on the noise reduction it offers, empirical evidence suggests we’re talking very high 90s vs that 80 per cent. In an exceptionally resolving system in a particularly RFI-noisy environment and to highly sensitive ears, adding in another SuperSwitch may indeed be audible… but for most of us this is highly unlikely to be the case.

Basically, the better the switch, the less impact cascading will have.

The same applies to filters after the SuperSwitch. Many customers already had a filter when they bought their SuperSwitch. Having experimented, every one has reported either that the filter adds nothing to the SuperSwitch (presumably because it has no noise to deal with) or actually sounds worse than the SuperSwitch on its own (presumably because it is adding some noise back in). This applies to filters at a wide range of prices.

Tempted by the idea, nevertheless? Well perhaps you should consider introducing a very different technology. The Reiki Audio Optical Bridge uses the clean power of light to offer no-noise connectivity and is a compelling alternative technical approach to mitigating RFI noise. In rethinking optical connections for audio purposes, we have applied many of the same principles you’ll see in the SuperSwitch, but we have also paid particular attention to the choice of SFP transceiver module (many SFPs are known to be noisy in their own right) and to the SFP port into which it inserts. We apply additional copper-shielding and additional EMI absorber to this port (while sustaining adequate heat dispersion) to ensure that any circuitry-induced noise does not negate the benefits of optical connectivity. If you want to try cascading then, the ultimate solution must surely be to install an Optical Bridge before your SuperSwitch. The former will do the heavy lifting, and the latter has much less work to do and does it extremely well. We have customers in N America and Asia who have successfully combined these products, always with the SuperSwitch Master being furthest downstream = closest to the streamer.

We use sorbothane rubber feet for their excellent properties, selected for the weight of each item so that they neither fully compress nor do not compress at all. Each of the PRO power supplies can comfortably take the weight of the SuperSwitch or Optical Unit (header device) it is powering and stay within effective operating range; indeed both halves of the Optical Bridge can sit on one of the PSUs. However, we would not recommend stacking 2 PSUs as this might bottom out the lower set of feet, making the equipment more susceptible to vibration.

In the post-streamer digital (bitstream) world, some people have expressed concerns about signal reflections in cables shorter than 1m. However, the RakuStream and JundoStream operate in the ethernet domain where date packets move around asynchronously, with error correction etc; signal reflections are simply not a concern with ethernet transmission.

The cables we provide as standard with our SuperSwitches and Optical Bridges are 0.5m and 1m Cat 6. As these are unshielded, the shorter the cable the better (though any length is of course better than a typical shielded cable where the shield is grounded at both ends and can act as an RFI conductor, undoing the good work of the switch).

We have listened ourselves to our 0.5m, 1m, 1.5m and 2m versions of the directionally grounded RakuStream and JundoStream. We can hear no difference amongst them, and this is hardly surprising given the effectiveness of their shielding. Buy whatever length you need with confidence!

Similar to above, we wanted to offer customers the option to incorporate a simpler, cheaper and slightly lower performance unit initially and/or upstream and then to upgrade when funds allowed. But we have only ever sold just one Standard unit, perhaps because an additional £45 for an iPower 2 was such a no-brainer. Removing the Standard units from individual sale allows us to further simplify our store.