It’s time for some hard truth - Aqvox 'Audiophile' Network Switch

Every industry has its fair share of people and companies aiming to perfect the craft... but that aim has lead to a number of shady snake oil solutions that don't actually improve anything. Today, we look at one of those.

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:41 What is this thing?
2:57 Their claims
6:14 Testing their claims
11:09 Teardown
15:04 Why it doesn't work
17:39 Why people are still buying it

[gackaret]

It makes the zeros more round and the ones stand straighter - for safety and audiophile reasons.

[pistolstarpaulkimble]

Worked in high end audio for 12 years, been a record producer for 35 years. One of my favorite things in the studio, is to have a red button that lights up when you push it. Whenever people are whining about something, I'll push the red button and ask them if they like it better now. 95% of the time, the answer is yes. The red button is connected to nothing of course. Audio perception is a minefield for placebo and psychoacoustics. Given how powerful suggestion is to psychoacoustics, it's pretty easy to get away with snakeoil. All that being said, if you believe something is better, did you get your monies worth?

[ruthvenmoon]

I've heard it said that audiophiles don't use gear to listen to their music, they use music to listen to their gear.

[CretvMG]

In the early 1980s I was an audio engineering student. My prof drilled into us over and over again "If it sounds good it is good". That practicality has served me well. Train your ears, listen critically, then ignore all marketing hype. Go with your ears. If it sounds good, it is good.

[macleod]

I used to do car audio competitions. One time I was tuning and had my eyes closed while I adjusted a setting so I could concentrate. I was increasing a certain frequency and could hear I was making it better. Then opened my eyes and saw I forgot to push a button and I wasn't adjusting anything. Psychoacoustics is a very real thing. People think they should hear something, so they do. That's where the good reviews are coming from and that's where these snake oil audiophile companies make their living from.

[kylosalvesen]

Me, looking at the thumbnail: wait, how can a network switch be a scam?
Me after Linus uses the word audiophile: ahh yes

[sonderheppo]

Record both. Overlay them. Reverse the phase on one Recording. They will most definitely erase each other completely.

[nathanwilliams]

Linus, I used to work for a company who would hire a homeopathic "environment cleaner". She would come in to our office and put little holographic stickers on all of our computers and electrical outlets that look remarkably like the ones inside this switch. They were supposed to "clear the air of harmful EMF waves" and "block unwanted interference". I bet that's what those illuminati stickers are.

[celloninja]

I'm 100% sure that those weird triangle pattern stickers/buttons that were glued in everywhere are the real "special sauce", aligning the energy flow for increased audio clarity by magic or some crap. I wish I were kidding.

[radekwroblewski]

About 25 or something years ago (damn, I'm old) I had this teacher who was also an audiophile. He claimed, that golden CDs sound better than the regular ones, simply because they're golden. We (electronics students) tried to explain, that it is a digital signal, 1s and 0s, it doesn' matter if it is saved on a golden disc or one made of birdcrap - as long as it is readable it will be identical. Like talking to a brick wall. That's when I realised that you can sell any crap to an audiophile for loads of money and he'll just defend your product better that you'd do yourself.

[linzkirk]

I have worked in high end audio my while life, servicing and installation. I have seen a lot of snake oil products. So totally agree with this. Especially the part about digital audio. I remember when audiophile USB cables came on the market. And the sales rep saying, there and 1's and 0's and then there are 1's and 0's. Trying to signify that some 1's and 0's are better than others. NO. they are a f**king 1 or a 0. The only difference a digital Audio cable make is if they are so poor Quality the will give drop out causing error correction, even to the level of jumpy cutting out audio. This is also why companies like meridian use cheap PC CD mechanisms in their high end CD players, because it makes no difference, the difference is all in the quality of D to A conversion. Thank you for this video I constantly feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall trying to explain this to people. its all aimed at the type of customer that gets constant ID-ten-T errors

[thesweeney]

Everyone saying "it's just 1's and 0's" doesn't know what they are talking about. This genuine, audiophile quality switch actually changes the Font so the 1's and 0's LOOK different and therefore SOUND different.
If you really want to hear the difference you have to use audiophile-level headphones such as Beats by Dre. He's a Doctor so he knows what he's doind when it comes to these things.

[apollolux]

I love "audiophile" videos like this because they always remind me of the legendary article from years ago about people claiming to be audiophiles not being able to tell the difference between "premium" speaker cables and _coat hangers._

[modl]

As an audio engineer I can say that with anything branded as "audiophile" gear there's a 90% chance it's bollocks. Speaking of, audiophile content is a neverending source of memes for us.

[Ohverture]

As an audio electronics engineer, whenever anyone shows me shit like this I'll always ask "Ah, but have they sucked the oxygen out of it?"

[yerrie]

most of the time we network engineers have to debunk a lot of nonsense but you explained the layer 2 part very well

[PratosKS]

Having worked with network equipment for years, this is hilarious.

[dalestewart]

Probably 30 years ago, or more, the editor of a HiFi/Stereo magazine made the remark, "An audiophile is someone who listens to the equipment, not the music." So true.

[jrstf]

I had a friend that paid several hundred dollars for a power cord for his amplifier. We all know that audio sounds better when the amplifier is powered by a twisted cord as long as you get the correct number of twists. He also suspended all his cords on glass bottles so the floor wouldn't corrupt the signals as much. He ended up returning the power cord because he couldn't hear the difference with his setup. Not for a moment would he have questioned others who claimed an improvement for their system.

[fender]

As someone who for a long time built network switches for home automation/AV it makes me so happy to see you review this. I had to argue with the people roped in by this for the longest time.