The Ansuz Acoustics PowerSwitch D2 is a deceptively simple product. At €5360, it’s a beautifully designed, very expensive network switch full of brilliant ideas and manufacturing acumen from the designers at Audio Group Denmark (AGD), Ansuz’s parent company.

A network switch is required to connect devices on a computer network and is essential equipment for streaming from a network music player such as the Aavik Acoustics S-280.

Ansuz sent me the D2 PowerSwitch to review. Streaming is my 3rd choice for listening (after vinyl and CD) and I’m a total ingenue re computer networking and the like—up ‘till now I’ve been using a bog standard “splitter” (a common name for a Network Switch) from Best Buy along with my Roon-based streaming setup. The splitter cost about $100.

Once again, my good friend Austin, audio salesman, audiophile, musician and setup man par excellence, gave me an aural lesson a few years ago on the importance of quality Ethernet cables. Karl Sigman wrote a superb Audiophilia review at the dawn of these upgraded cables and was pooped on from a great height by trolls and the like. He followed up much later with an equally fine review of another quality cable. He’s still using Wireworld Ethernet cables and I remember him calling me to tell me how much they improved his system. A few years later, Austin gave me the ethernet cable demo to end all demos and I was convinced.

You? No. No worries. Save your money and enjoy your sound. But, with a little aural research, I think you’re in for some big surprises.

Interestingly, the Stereophile correspondent at the October 2022 Toronto Audio Show commented “with the advent of network switches and better Ethernet cables, digital has reached a new tier of performance”. Yes, the upper tier is available in the here and now.

You can read some of my thoughts and a demo play-by-play in my Nordost Valhalla 2 Ethernet Cable review.

Back to the switch. AGD is very good at producing videos about its expensive products. Here’s a good one about the PowerSwitch—have a look before you continue the review. It’s very informative.

Ansuz is not the first to market with an audiophile-grade network switch but has now joined others such as Nordost, Melco, Synergistic and Innuos in producing these unique, high-end products.

My Use

Like all designer Michael Børresen’s products, he aims to reduce the noise floor to almost nil and to eliminate musical interference, the minutiae that continue daily to inhibit your hard-fought-for sound. I’ve reviewed several of AGD’s gear, most of which include what they call their “advanced tech”. Implementing this tech is a bit of an obsession for Børresen. And in his products such as the Mainz8 C2 Power Conditioner, the SORTZ and others, he’s succeeded brilliantly. Be sure to hear these technologies implemented in a musical setting at the next audio show or one of their many dealers. I’m guessing you'll be very surprised at the differences.

This elimination of noise is particularly important in a quality network switch. The Ansuz engineers found CDs sounded superior to their streaming attempts, so they decided to up their game and introduce a truly high-end network switch. Thus, the PowerSwitch attempts to eliminate all the noise inherent in ungrounded networks. The D2’s first job? Ground the incoming signal, eliminate the rest of the noise with advanced technologies, and finally control resonance with its composite construction.

Of course, all this research and brilliance costs money. The Ansuz products are beautifully designed and manufactured to a very high level. The €5360 PowerSwitch D2 is no exception. But with the SORTZ, Mainz, Darkz (review forthcoming), Sparkz, cables and many of the other AGD devices, they price/manufacture on a good, better, best philosophy. As such, listen, set your budget and go from there. So, a €5360 network switch is a luxury but you can start with the PowerSwitch X-TC (€2000), PowerSwitch A2 (€3200), my review PowerSwitch D2 right up to the PowerSwitch D-TC SUPREME at a mind-boggling €12,000.

I used Ansuz D2 Ethernet cables x3, the S-280 Streamer and D-280 DAC (review forthcoming) for the review. The D2 Ethernet cables and PowerSwitch D2 allow the cables to be run actively (see two photos below of the green cables). This review was run without the active cables. I’ll be listening actively during the upcoming specific review of the D2 Ethernet Cable. Also used were my MBL N51 Integrated Amplifier and Michael Børresen's remarkable 01 Silver Signature Loudspeakers.

My only D2 comparison was with my Best Buy splitter. I have not (yet) heard equivalently priced network switches.

The setup is simple. The D2 uses a standard power cord (I used an Ansuz D2 Power cable) with the D2 PowerSwitch allowing for 8 ethernet cables and 10 active inputs for the D2s low voltage power supply. I used one D2 Ethernet cable for the router, one for the wall and the other for the S-280 streamer. We were playing HiRes Qobuz files before we knew it.

Features and Specifications

Most of AGD gear's primary feature is implementing their “advanced technologies”. The D2 is no different. It gets the same composite casing, and, as you can see from the chart below, Active Square Tesla Coils, Dither Circuitry, Active Tesla Cable Coils and Anti aerial resonance. The chart below shows you the good, better, even better, and best models in numerical action.

Dimensions: 262x378x69 mm

Weight: 3.9 kg

Input: IEC C14 230/110 V

Output: LAN

Sound

The initial sounds from the Ansuz streaming gear were a revelation right out of the boxes. This was a streamed sound I’d not heard in my room, even outpacing the mighty Innuos Statement. Sure, the Roon Nucleus Plus and the MBL’s DAC “Roon Ready” card along with my splitter and AudioQuest Cinnamon ethernet cables I’d been listening to for a couple of years were functional and allowed me to sample all the new recordings in preparation for a full Audiophilia review or for use in equipment reviews. I enjoyed it, but always the sound was backup sound; my vinyl setups first, then the wonderful MBL N31 CD/DAC CD Player, then stream.

Ansuz catapulted the streamed sound into the MBL quality CD realm. Even better for access, use and convenience. My comparison is against a dyed-in-the-wool Red Book CD player; Jürgen Reis of MBL does not like SACD drives and writes about it at length on the MBL site. He’s Red Book only. And the sounds from this glorious CD/DAC emphasize his choice. So, a tricky comparison when up against 192 files and the like.

One very interesting comparison we tried with the streamer/PowerSwitch D2 against the MBL was Mischa Maisky’s Schubert cello album (originally on Philips) with Martha Argerich accompanying. ESOTERIC has created a remastering masterpiece with this SACD; glowing cello sound, beautiful acoustic and superb piano tone. And this was heard in my room on the ESOTERIC SACD playing through the Red Book layer. The comparison on the Aavik streamer was the standard Philips Red Book recording. The plot thickens! Both were sensational; I couldn’t choose one, but my wife preferred the Aavik/Ansuz combination, slightly. But here we had it, streaming at the level of the MBL CD player, one of the finest on the planet. The same result for a 192 Decca Mehta The Planets and the equivalent CD from the recently released Mehta Decca box set. This was Rolls Royce streaming. Musical equality with CD and vinyl. No more back seat.

A little calculation. The MBL CD/DAC is $15,400. The Streamer/PowerSwitch D2 combination is about the same.

So how did it sound with the D2 out of the picture? What is the PowerSwitch bringing to the party?

Well, lots. The standard splitter degraded the sound. Less dimensionality, less fulsome, a narrower musical path. Disappointing after the D2. The D2’s luxury and features really add to the overall musical setting. So the quiet flutes that begin “Saturn” in The Planets, sounded distinct and separate on the D2, congealed with the standard splitter. Timbrally, the D2 allowed me to hear the fourth flute differently from the rest (marked “bass” flute but it is actually an alto flute whose timbre is different than a concert flute—pitched in G, not C). Earlier in “Uranus”, the full whack of the timps was inhibited by the Best Buy splitter, gaining back their power, resonance and sonority with D2 in place.

There is no doubt that a silent network will allow more information from whatever streamer you use. It’s just that Aavik and Ansuz work seamlessly together. Combine them with the elevated performance of their D2 Ethernet cables, and you have a gold medal-winning streaming team.

Summary

This will be an interesting and exciting purchase for some of you. If you want a streaming end game and it’s your primary listening avenue, a D2 in your system with quality cables and a great streamer like the S-280 is a no-brainer. Its technology won’t dilute and will accommodate advances in network connectivity. And it works beautifully hand in hand with other Ansuz noise-reducing products.

€5360 is a lot of money for an audio product and you may consider it too much for what is a utilitarian audio product, but if anything, AGD has taught us the awful effects of noise in our systems. The D2 makes its very musical mark as a high-end streaming solution. Introducing their amazing line of network switches allows audiophiles to realize what is in your streaming setup and elevate its status to our other two favourite forms of listening. Very highly recommended.

Further information: Ansuz Acoustics