Firmware 1.1.1 and client tool 0.4 download
The same package reposted to my DropBox
These switches have made a few waves recently and I've been excited to try them out. It would help get my foot in the door of digital audio while still keeping my setup fully auto-switched. And auto-switching is a state I value highly.
I decided to acquire 2 configurations and run them through some tests.
The first has 7 toslink inputs and a single toslink output. I expected for my ongoing setup to be mostly toslink. The resistance to interference is just so appealing. So the 7->1 all-toslink unit was intended to be my no-nonsense workhorse unit.
The second unit was going to be my "swiss army knife" going for maximum flexibility. It has 4 toslink and 3 coaxial inputs, along with 1 toslink, 1 coaxial, and analog stereo outputs. I expected this unit to be more of a tool for occasional use.
The units performed flawlessly in my first round of testing where only one source is active at any given time.
For my second set of tests I wanted to stress the port priority system a bit to see how it behaved. I plan to leverage the priority system daily by leaving an analog stereo to digital audio converter on the lowest priority port that's responsible for keeping analog-only consoles represented in my setup.
The advertised behavior is that lower numbered ports have priority over higher numbered ones. But will fall back to the lower priority source if the higher priority one isn't sending a valid signal for a while. And that final caveat is where I got mixed results.
EDIT: I was originally confused about an unadvertised feature called "Zero Packet" (silence) detection that was giving me unexpected results. That confusion is hidden in the spoilers
Spoiler
The 7 optical unit seemed to reject signals more readily than the mixed input unit. But still always in cases where it's plausible that the signal is invalid. Notably during PS2 or XBox boot sequences. The one unexpected rejection came from sitting at the selection menu in an SD2SNES.
This isn't the end of the world for my intended setup. It just means I'm listening to analog converted to digital rather than digital end-to-end. But it certainly is annoying that I would be missing out on a quality bump.
The mixed input unit performed flawlessly for the same priority contention tests. The status lights indicated that it never doubted the validity of a higher priority signal for even a moment. A big thumbs up for that unit in my intended scenario. Instantly seating it as the new workhorse unit.
Whenever I eventually go past 4 toslink sources. I believe I will be able to leverage the 7 toslink switch daisy chained into the mixed unit and still get the results I want as long as the 7 input unit only has 1 device active at a time. I have not yet tested this behavior.
This isn't the end of the world for my intended setup. It just means I'm listening to analog converted to digital rather than digital end-to-end. But it certainly is annoying that I would be missing out on a quality bump.
The mixed input unit performed flawlessly for the same priority contention tests. The status lights indicated that it never doubted the validity of a higher priority signal for even a moment. A big thumbs up for that unit in my intended scenario. Instantly seating it as the new workhorse unit.
Whenever I eventually go past 4 toslink sources. I believe I will be able to leverage the 7 toslink switch daisy chained into the mixed unit and still get the results I want as long as the 7 input unit only has 1 device active at a time. I have not yet tested this behavior.
I was able to contact the beni_skate and get a piece of configuration software that allowed me to disable silence detection and get the switches working exactly the way I wanted them to.
Overall I'm really happy with these switches and they'll let me dip my does into digital audio while staying firmly planted in the analog world as well. Definitely worth consideration if you're looking at digital audio.
I shot video of my tests if anyone wants to see the behaviors directly. I apologize in advance for the poor sound quality. I have no aspirations of being a regular youtuber and it shows in my production values.
https://youtu.be/2fiI6rd_42Q
