I work at the fire department. I can confirm there is such a thing. I’ll get pictures next time if you need proof.
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Day 3 thought: I felt like the SW-10 Pro pretty much closed the gap between streaming and playing from my local Roon library on the MU1, to the point where I did not care what the source was. The SW6 actually got me a good part of the way there where Qobuz streaming no longer sounded so bland and lame.
With the Tempus, I swear streaming might sound better than local files. It’s hard to be sure but I have some Qobuz purchased tracks that I can compare with the stream, and I really think the stream sounds better now…
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Are you using the SW10 pro with the stock internal SFP’s ?
Are you using the SW10 pro with the stock internal SFP’s ?
Yes…
I found all my switches improved both streaming and local files. Playing the same source from streaming and from the internal SSD, I found they sounded the same with SW-10pro in the system. I also have a Muon Pro and a Shunyata Omega ethernet between the switch and MU2. They still sounded the same to me.
It is interesting that Tempus improves your streaming more than files.
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It’s splitting hairs at this point but there’s something about streaming via Tempus that sounds very organic. My files sound the tiniest bit flatter and more recessed by comparison. It’s literally just disk I/O vs. network I/O but I long since gave up trying to explain any of this beyond “meh, noise/jitter characteristics?”
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@tzvi i just tried some pop/rock and can confirm that Tempus is still superior. If anything the gap is much more audible than with classical - it’s way punchier and more dynamic, especially in the bass. I refuse to use that 4 letter acronym the Brits love, but Tempus is incredibly snappy and helps close the “foot-tapping” gap with vinyl. Going back to SW-10 Pro almost feels like turning the volume down by 1dB and putting a higher capacitance interconnect between your preamp and amp - everything is a bit duller. Only case where SW-10 might be preferred is if you need that sort of filter in your system.
Sorry.
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Sounds like in your opinion the Tempus is the winner.
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Sounds like in your opinion the Tempus is the winner.
Yes I would say so fairly confidently.
I just did a quick run with Tempus, SW-10 Pro and no switch at all, feeding the Muon Pro going to the MU1. Test track was Brahms Piano Quartet (Harmonia Mundi 24/96 off Qobuz).
I started listening with the Tempus, then took any switch out and went straight from the wall (which goes to my Ubuiqiti Pro Max PoE switch via a short run of CAT6). It was not as radical a change as I was expecting after using the better switches for a few months - just a bit blander with a slight bit of haze over everything. The leading edges of notes and outlines of instruments are what suffer the most, and that’s pretty critical for conveying the life of a performance.
Next up was the SW-10 Pro. I was a bit surprised it didn’t sound that different from the wall. It is better - a bit firmer, a bit less haze - but on this recording it was pretty subtle.
I then went back to the Tempus. It’s still subtle, but the snap and clarity were back. In this situation, it was surprisingly a bigger jump from SW10 to Tempus, than from the wall to the SW10. If i were to rate the “presence” from 1 to 10, where 1 is the wall and 10 is a good shaded dog Living Stereo played on my Kuzma rig, I’d say the SW10 got me to a 2 and the Tempus gets me to maybe 4 or 5 with a good hi-res recording like this. Still a long way off from vinyl, but closer.
It was a good (if obvious) reminder that we are in very subtle refinement territory here. It’s easy to get excited over tiny improvements since at this level, everything matters, but they are pretty tiny. But I’m also now questioning how much impact the Muon Pro is having in the chain… I was a bit skeptical at first but I have to admit y’all might be right, MP should be the first step and then switches are more icing on the cake…
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in my system, LHY SW-10 pro has made an obvious improvement, and it is not subtle. It is placed between the streamer and the satellite without another switch. I have had three switches in the past, and their improvement was more “subtle”, but not SW-10 pro, it made me feel more upgrades in streaming is unnecessary for the time being.
Of course, Tempus or Nordost Qnet7 may be even better. But I feel the good is good enough now.
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That’s how I felt about going from wall to SW6, then SW6 to SW-10 Pro. But that was before MP. More so than other upgrades, I feel the networking side is extremely fickle with recordings, varying conditions and of course system and psychoacoustic variables. It’s an exhausting and not very fun thing to evaluate, even worse than cables…
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Just to make things even more fun/maddening, Amazon is dropping off a DLink unmanaged 2.5G switch that I will try with the Tempus power supply… that probably warrants a whole new thread…..
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To bring LHY SW-10pro to an even better level, I replaced the internal transceiver on Audio side with a Finisar 1475, and I also put an AM M2 fuse to it. Last, the ground post is connected to a Xangsane grounding box.
Talking about cables, they make difference on switches too. Crazy!
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No need to be sorry. I appreciate your analyses.
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That’s why I ordered the DLink. I want to see if it’s the PSU that matters more than anything else, a la @straightwire using a $2k PSU on his router.
I also obviously need to reconcile my latest observations with my original SW-10 Pro comments where I concurred that it was a big big upgrade over SW6, which in turn was a big upgrade over no switch…
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As @straightwire said in a previous post, I’m looking for the cleanest vocal edges possible. My system has reached a really really good level and when I hear clean vocals it’s like “now that justifies the spend”. Problem is in the same track I may hear what sounds like perfectly natural vocals when it’s primarily vocals, add in more and more instruments and the vocals may become less natural more raspy.
Yesterday I was told the list price of a Tempus now is $5335 including tariffs. I did order one and fortunately was able to get it for less than list.
Thanks @taww and @dchang05 for investing time and money researching these switches.
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Congrats! Based on your criteria, I’m confident you made a good choice. 
“Edges” that give voices and instruments definition are exactly where the Tempus really excels IMO. (Side note, I have to say getting a good vinyl rig has really helped me identify how to improve my digital setup.)
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What makes the evaluation harder is that the music filtered through the switch could be stored in the streamer/dac for a period of time. I was surprised when I turned the power off on the switch, the streaming music was still playing and the SQ was the same too. In fact, the music would continue to play for a long time. So, my guess is the streamer must grab the data and save it to play later. I am not a tech guy so I could be totally wrong.
So, I learnt that I need to leave the new device in the streaming chain for a few hours to make sure I was not listening to the old stuff.
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No wonder the Tempus outperforms the 10 Pro. It’s considered by many the best and most natural sounding one out there.
Though what definitely might be a very interesting approach is to tweak any switch with a great power supply like the Origin or a Farad Super6.
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I believe that’s just the usual buffering. I don’t know the specifics of Qobuz’s streaming protocol, but the typical approach is to download as much data as quickly as you can to fill your buffer, and then just keep topping off the buffer. This is purely asynchronous of the actual playback. I don’t know how big the buffers are typically, ChatGPT tells me Naim uses 50MB which would be maybe 20s of lossless compressed 24/96. That’s roughly how long my MU1 will keep playing.
Netflix et al are the same - that annoying Netflix splash screen with the loud “ta-dum” sound when you start playing anything is just buying time for them to fill up the buffer. It’s why when you resume a movie in the middle, you see the 0-100% buffering indicator, but you don’t when you start a brand new video.
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