REPRODUCED FROM HI-FI+
end DACs because they are among the most ac urate available. Also on show are isolating transform ers and heavy shielding around the four portsbecause these portsare prone to sharing any EM I that gets into them . Apparently the sturdy ethernet sockets were selected to work with the substantialplugsfound on CAT7 cableswhich are a lot les flim sy than the plasticky ones on m ost ethernet. Asthe AnsuzX-TC switch thatIreviewed lastm onth was in the system when the PhoenixNetarived it seem ed an idea to contrastthe two,a contrastthat did notdo the Innuosanyfavoursto be honest.So I leftitin the system fora weekand found the results to be increasingly engaging and revealing, when Nuno explained thatittakesseveraldaysforO CXO clocks to become thermaly stable the penny dropped and Iwentback to com paring itwith the Ansuz. This tim e things were very diferent, now these two switches were very hard to separate in term softhe sound quality they alowed the restof the system to deliver.Thatsystem consists ofa BT router,AirportExpres ac es point,Innuos Zenith SE server, AURALiC ARIES G2.1 stream er and M etronom e Le DAC converter.W hen you add in the factthatIneed to connectm yPC to the networkvia the switch you’l realise thatfourports were never going to be enough.In the end Iused a Cisco 2960 switch for the router, PC and ac es point connections and hooked itup to the inputon the PhoenixNet. “It’s safe to say that the PhoenixNet is a first clas network switch” Unlike m any network switches, the PhoenixNet usesa powertransform er W hen Iputthe Ansuznextto the Innuosaweeklater things had changed quite m arkedly, now it was dificult to say which was the m ore neutral and transparentofthe two.Theysound diferentwith the Ansuz giving a slightly more three dimensional ac ountofthe m usicalbeitone thatcan seem alitle pum ped up nextto the calm erpresentation ofthe PhoenixNet. The result seem s to be the sam e
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