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Comment by iamhamm | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I didn't follow this correctly, but I thought it was implying the filtered power supply was improved audio of streamed audio. If so, how could an analog power supply have any impact on the bits in a digital audio stream?

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It literally can't, if the thing you comparing against also isn't dropping or corrupting packets. It's a straight up scam.

When feeding audio over a digital connection to a DAC which takes timing directly from the input stream, bad timing (eg. from optical cables rather than coaxial, and conceivably bad power supplies could cause it too) can lead to sample duration inconsistency and jitter. In the case of a network switch, it's a straight-up scam.

Also power supply hum (60hz it higher for switching supplies) can induce interference in the player's output signal. I'd use a filtered power supply for any player, but not necessarily the network switch. ("Ethernet offers galvanic isolation by design. All connections are transformed coupled.")

For optical cables, is that a PCM-specific thing? Something like Dolby Digital over Optical has to be run through a decoder in a way that seems like "sample duration inconsistency" would either result in total failure to decode parts,or simply be not an issue.

Of course (with a few dollars worth of parts) the DAC could pretty easily buffer and re-clock the data stream with a precision clock if you're not worried about adding a tiny delay. I've seen this done in some DACs on the USB stream.

Audiophiles' answer to "how could <x>" is always "it just can"

The knowledge of how much you spent on equipment alters the subjective experience of listening.

Quite literally, I'm sure!

It most likely has no impact, just like most (if not all) equipment targeting audiophiles.

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