English Electric HiFi

[Broucek]

My wonderful HiFi dealer recently moved from central London to near where I live. I called in to say hi just before Christmas; it was very quiet so they played me for a laugh a demo system they had on tempory loan and which cost about the same as a 1 bed flat around my way . Sound quality was insane but I don't play the lottery.... (The person they'd borrowed it to demo to ordered two, one for each house!)

Just before I left, almost as an afterthought, they offered to loan me a "widget" to purify the data entering my streamer via an ethernet cable (I stream lossless/hi res music from my own collection stored on a NAS drive). "Try it and let us know" was the message.

I was a bit sceptical ("ones and zeroes") but it did offer a meaningful sound upgrade on the streamer that's a long way from the router (via powelrine adapter) and made no difference to the streamer plugged directly into the router.

What I'd missed was that the product is made by English Electric! Clearly no meaningful link back to THAT EE but the dealer was quite excited when I went back to pay and explained the railway link (their premises backs onto the ECML).

English Electric - 8Switch | Audio streaming switch for higher quality music

English Electric Audio Streaming Switch - High quality music audio streaming. Groundbreaking technology for audio artisians. Call +44 (0)1980 625700

englishelectric.uk

 

[D365]

I was similarly intrigued when I came across the 'English Electric' name on a domestic freezer.

Who owns/licences the name now? I assume that it was spun off from GEC years ago.

 

[JamesT]

I was similarly intrigued when I came across the 'English Electric' name on a domestic freezer.

Who owns/licences the name now? I assume that it was spun off from GEC years ago.

The link @Broucek posted says "The Chord Company", there are trademark applications for English Electric dating back to 2014/15 for "Chord Central Ltd" https://www.trademarkelite.com/uk/trademark/trademark-owner/Chordcentral Limited/1357967
I suspect there's no actual link back to the previous companies, if you stop using a trademark then it can lapse and anyone can take it up.

 

[m0ffy]

These devices aren’t usually worthwhile as Ethernet devices already have decent noise rejection and galvanic isolation, however, your network is going to have some additional noise caused by your powerline setup, which is better solved by getting rid and running a cable (or going wireless).

 

[Broucek]

These devices aren’t usually worthwhile as Ethernet devices already have decent noise rejection and galvanic isolation, however, your network is going to have some additional noise caused by your powerline setup, which is better solved by getting rid and running a cable (or going wireless).

Would ideally run a cable but not easy in my home. The streamers definitely sound worse wtih WiFi for reasons that I don't understand...

I've always thought "smoke and mirrors" about this kind of thing but the box offered a noticeable improvement for a few hundred quid. To get a similar improvements from the electronics would have cost a lot more. (And to avoid confirmation bias, I did a double blind test based on the astonishing hearing of Mrs Broucek!)

 

[gazthomas]

These devices aren’t usually worthwhile as Ethernet devices already have decent noise rejection and galvanic isolation, however, your network is going to have some additional noise caused by your powerline setup, which is better solved by getting rid and running a cable (or going wireless).

This product seems like "snake oil" to me.

 

[dosxuk]

I've always thought "smoke and mirrors" about this kind of thing but the box offered a noticeable improvement for a few hundred quid. To get a similar improvements from the electronics would have cost a lot more.

A cheap cable off Amazon (or other cheap shop) and your time to install it would be cheaper still and have the same result. If you are actually hearing a difference, then it's almost certainly related to your powerline connection - which are ropey at the best of times.

 

[Flying Snail]

This product seems like "snake oil" to me.

You'd be hard pressed to find more gluttonous consumers of snake oil than audiophiles.

 

[m0ffy]

This product seems like "snake oil" to me.

These devices aren’t nearly as egregious as audiophile switches (usually a cheap unmanaged switch in a flash box), but if you need electrical isolation above what the interface already has, you have a bigger problem. In this case, I’d wager an issue with the power line adaptors, or just placebo.

I run networks in some extremely electrically noisy environments, just using commodity network equipment, and all within expected error and packet loss figures. Audio traffic isn’t anything special - the streamer in this setup will be buffering the audio before playback and, unless it's a live broadcast, will have plenty of time for error correction.

 

[Ashley Hill]

I was similarly intrigued when I came across the 'English Electric' name on a domestic freezer.

My parents used to have an English Electric oven back in the 1970s.