The two most important factors in HiFi performance are system effects and environment.
To my mind, ancillary hifi gear can make components and speakers, as a system, sound ideally better or at least different. By ancillary gear, I’m talking about things like cables, equipment racks, power products, and Ethernet filters and switches. The mistake some people make when ‘examining’ ancillary gear is to look at them in isolation, as if a cable or Ethernet switch has a sound in and of itself, which is like thinking we can learn everything we need to know about why people love their pets by looking at tails.
Writing about ancillary hifi gear can be tricky as well because it’s easy to describe and worse ascribe changes in perceived sound to a cable or switch when what we’re actually hearing is our components and speakers performing in, ideally, a friendlier environment. Let’s call these system effects.
Then there’s the environment. When talking about hifi, the environment includes the room, potential noise from outside the room (like jackhammers and sirens for city dwellers), power, and electrical noise in the form of Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and Radio Frequency Interference (RFI), all things most people who own a hifi contend with more or less whether they recognize it or not.
Imagine testing binoculars by looking up at the night sky from Times Square and also from a hilltop in Vermont miles from any light source and concluding the binoculars work well just some of the time for stargazing, which is surprising because they tested perfectly in the lab. This is the way some people look at hifi, as if the environment it lives in is irrelevant when it has a larger influence on what we hear than any component or speaker measurement in isolation can tell you.
Another danger when reviewing ancillary gear is to assume it will have the same impact on any system in any environment, which by its very definition cannot be the case. On matters of accounting, I am of the opinion that it’s worth keeping in mind the ratio of money spent on components and speakers versus that spent on ancillary gear. For me, this ratio begins to make sense pegged at 3/1 (or higher), i.e. spend at least 3 times as much (or more) on the component or speaker as on things like cables and Ethernet switches.
Which gets us to the Silent Angel Bonn NX Network Switch & Genesis GX Word Clock, which in our definition fall into the ancillary hifi gear category. As I hope you can see from the photos, these are very nicely made units that put some components to shame. The Bonn NX Switch up top in both pics (above and below) offers 8 gold plated Ethernet inputs along with your choice of running its own internal clock or attaching to an external 25MHz word clock very much like the Genesis GX sitting below. The Genesis offers 4 gold plated Word Clock outputs, with 2 at 10MHz and 2 at 25MHz, and comes with the appropriate BNC terminated cables for connecting things up. Both are wrapped in a galvanized steel / aluminum alloy chassis that comes in black or silver that sits (stands?) on 3 stainless steel Resonance Control Feet about which Silent Angel writes, “Crafted of solid, high purity stainless steel, Silent Angel’s Resonance Control Feet damp mechanical energy from both internal and external sources, reducing mechanical and electrical noise, static electricity, etc. The result is improved dynamics and an increased resolution of fine detail.”
Here’s some of what Silent Angel has to say about the Bonn NX Network Switch:
Silent Angel employs an uncompromising approach towards designing and executing electronic circuits. Isolating, filtering and reducing noise preserves the integrity of the source and delivers a pure signal to connected components. As with all Silent Angel products, our objective is to ensure the device operates at a stable system voltage, sends precisely timed packets and reduces extraneous output noise. We have found that even the smallest enhancement can slightly improve sound quality and the implementation of many small enhancements can unleash the ultimate potential of High Resolution Streaming Networks. Bonn NX is the culmination of everything we have learned about engineering Audio-Grade Network Switches: it delivers the highest sonic performance currently available.
And the Genesis GX Word Clock:
Compared with “Stand-alone” word clocks, built-in word clocks share system resources (power supplies, etc.) with other components, all interconnected on the same circuit board. There are many situations that will interfere with the clock signal, such as electrical pulses caused by changes in system loading, interference with other electronic components, noise from the network and jitter effects caused by the system. That’s why a stand-alone word clock source is essential: less interference to the clock source ensures the purest clock signal possible.
The promise, if you will, is improved component and system performance, the result of less noise and jitter effects.
To my mind, the best ‘test’ for these claims is to put the Bonn and Genesis into a system and listen over time which is exactly what I did. I test drove the Silent Angel combo with the review Volti Audio Rival SE speakers (more info) driven by the Thöress EHT Integrated Amplifier (more info) or the Triode Evolution 300 Integrated Amplifier (more info) with the review Merason DAC1 Mk II (more info) or Barn resident totaldac d1-unity (review) fed from the review Auralic ARIES G2.2 (more info).
The comparison was with the Barn resident $24 TRENDnet 8-Port Gigabit GREENnet Switch with both switches fed from the Barn’s Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 Router with equal lengths of AudioQuest Diamond Ethernet cable. By swapping the AudioQuest Diamond Ethernet cable that connected to the Auralic AIRES 2.2 (full system details) from one switch to the other, I could listen for differences without missing a bit. I also connected my Roon NUC server to the Bonn NX Network Switch and the TRENDnet as well as the generic Ethernet cable that connects to the Barn’s B-Side and the Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC/Streamer (review) which was playing with the review Viva Solista integrated amp (more info) driving the DeVore O/96 (review).
For this review’s listening notes, my methodology was to hot-swap the Silent Angel gear in and out, when out the TRENDnet switch was in, fast enough for the music to continue playing or if I fumbled the handoff, I just had to hit “Play” on my iPad running Roon as soon as I sat back down. A/B, in/out. I spent a few weeks with the Bonn NX Network Switch / Genesis GX Word Clock in the system before sitting down for some serious A/B’ing.
I will say up front when considering spending $7598 on ancillary hifi gear, I want to hear a clear and distinct improvement. Essentially a night and day difference or it ain’t worth the scratch, imo. Here’s what I found: the Bonn NX Network Switch and Genesis GX Word Clock’s impact on system performance were not for the better. I’m going to highlight a few specific tracks, not albums, to zero in on the sonic impact the Silent Angel stack offered and if you so desire you can listen along if so moved.
Aldous Harding’s “Party” from the album of the same name has been a go-to test track for some time as it offers an array of well recorded (wonderfully weird) voices and instruments that slowly build and unfold like a horror movie. With the Silent Angel stack, “Party” sounded more spatially condensed, more tightly packed which to my way of hearing meant a loss of air and space in and around the notes lessening dramatic impact. The voice of things like Harding’s wonderful vocals, electric guitar, bass clarinet, drums, etc. also sounded a bit muffled as if their full harmonic palette was foreshortened.
Devin Hoff’s 2021 album Voices From the Empty Moor (Songs of Anne Briggs) casts a wonderful array of singers as accompanists to Hoff’s “basses” and one of my favorite pairings is with Sharon Van Etten. A simple duo, albeit with layered Hoff on basses, this is another peach of a recording as dynamic as all get-out. The music is superbly lovely too. I’ve listened to this track on countless systems in a number of rooms and I’ve heard Van Etten live a few times so I ‘know’ this recording as well as my backside knows my easy chair. As was the case with “Party”, the Silent Angel stack brought the overall sound image in, making it feel more condensed and less spacious while taking some of the life-like bite out of Hoff’s bass. In a word, the Silent Angel stack seemed to smooth things over making them softer, perhaps silkier, but less engaging to my way of hearing.
“Ring My Bell” from Einstürzende Neubauten’s lovely 1992 album Tabula Rasa is a short (1:03), sharp, shot of a track that unfolds in a vast space in every dimension. At about the 1/2 way mark (0:31), a small ball drops and rolls around. Bear with me. This little ball tells me a few things about the system reproducing it, namely its ability to present scale, size, space and density or to put it plainer, I can follow that little ball on its exacting journey stage left and its ensuing roll as well as tell its relative size compared to the larger clatter and (God-like) voices of Etsuko Sakamaki-Haas and Blixa Bargeld. Once again, the Silent Angel stack made “Ring My Bell” sound smaller and more condensed, smoother, but less distinct in terms of the various voices involved. Overall, less exciting.
I don’t see the point in going on with more specific examples as the results with the Silent Angel stack were consistent regardless of the music in play.
As I said, when considering spending $7598 on ancillary hifi gear like the Bonn NX Network Switch and Genesis GX Word Clock, I want to hear a clear and distinct improvement. As detailed above, this is not what I heard in Barn and I preferred my system’s sound with the $24 TRENDnet 8-Port Gigabit GREENnet Switch in it.
The most prominent changes in overall system sound brought by the Silent Angel stack was a smaller/more condensed, smoother, and less distinct presentation. For me, these changes lessened music’s ability to startle and delight while altering the voice of familiar instruments making them less familiar. You may be wondering how (or why) an Ethernet switch and Word Clock can impact system performance in this way, and I only have guesses. The same kind of guesses we make when finding positive changes.
Addendum
I sent a preview of this review to my contacts at Silent Angel and their US Distributor which, as you can imagine, caused some concern because my findings were pretty much the opposite of those found in other reviews of the same Silent Angel gear. The long story short, I agreed to receive replacement units and give them a try.
I went through a similar process as with the original units, trying the SA switch and clock with additional digital gear that now included the review sample Grimm MU2 Music Player (more info) that is a server, streamer, and DAC all-in-one, as well as re-trying the Auralic ARIES G1.1 with the review totaldac d1-trinuity (more info) and Mola Mola Tambaqui as streamer and DAC. The larger system picture also included the Audionet HUMBOLDT integrated amp (more info) driving the review Vivid GIYA G3 Series 2 speakers (more info).
And my findings did not change—with the Grimm MU2, ARIES G1.1/totaldac d1-triunity, and Mola Mola Tambaqui, adding the Silent Angel Bonn Switch and Genesis Clock in place of the TRENDnet switch made music sound more restrained in terms of the sound image and timbral richness. Regardless of the music in play, adding the SA gear closed in the sound while removing it opened things up to more fully bloom.
I am as puzzled by these findings as anyone but I spent weeks of time listening, swapping, A/B’ing, re-A/B’ing and even enlisting the (trusted) ears of two industry friends and we all heard more or less the same thing.
Silent Angel Bonn NX Network Switch: $3899
Genesis GX Word Clock: $3699
Company Website: Silent Angel
US Distributor Website: Specialty Sound & Vision