Gustard N18 Pro Audiophile Network Switch Review

Gustard N18 Pro is an audiophile switch and here I’ll present my impressions that come from personal use experience, without dwelling on any theory and measurements. If that sounds fishy to you and you’re easily triggered by what you believe to be audiophile “snake oil”, then better skip this one. This is for the crazy ones with bat ears – so let’s start.

Build and Features

Gustard N18 Pro is made of thick aluminum and finished mostly to a high standard. This “mostly” is here because the upper lid’s edge on the back of the device is left rough and unpolished. You don’t look at it often, and you don’t touch it often either but we’re audiophiles, we complain about everything that’s not perfect. This minor complaint and joke aside – since the network switch doesn’t require any controls, the only thing you can find on the front of the unit is a lit Gustard logo that lets you know if the unit is powered on. The power switch itself and all ethernet ports are located on the back of the unit. There are five of those and some additional connections that we’ll talk about in a moment.

Aside from five LAN ports, on the back, we can find an external 10 MHz clock input and an SFP port. The last one is used to connect your DAC to the network using a fiber-optic cable. This way, a galvanic isolation of the switch from the rest of your network is obtained. You can use it with any SFP fiber-optic capable device, but if you don’t have any, Gustard has prepared an accompanying N18 (not Pro) that serves as the first device in line that’ll connect to the rest of your network and then connect to N18 Pro using SFP cable. N18 Pro is then connected to your HiFi setup. So this two-peace Gustard stack is isolating your system from the home network. Take a look at the image below to get a better feel of how that looks and what additional cables and connectors you need for this kind of setup.

For the purpose of today’s review, I have only tested N18 Pro as a standalone network switch that is connected to my home network using a LAN port. The rest of the setup was made by these components:

• LHY SW-8 network switch
• Audio Streamer: EverSolo DMP-A8, Volumio Rivo (fed by Allo Shanti LPS)
• DACs: Lampucera (DIY tube DAC similar to Lampizators), Gustard R26
• Preamplifier: Acoustic Invader Fulcrum
• Power Amplifier: Acoustic Invader Amp (IcePower 1200) x 2 in dual mono setup
• Speakers: KEF LS50, CSS Criton 1TD-X, and Spirit Wind by Jeff Bagby

Several good quality ethernet cables were used with this switch including Supra, Viablue terminated with Telegartner, and a few of my own DIY efforts. Every time I compared the results of this switch against others, it was by using the exact same set of cables so they couldn’t influence the relative differences that were observed.

Sound

Coming directly from no audiophile switch at all, the Gustard N18 Pro brings a noticeable improvement to the overall clarity. Each tone is outlined better and feels placed inside the soundstage with greater precision. Background feels darker and calmer, which improves the perception of soundstage depth, instrument placement, and pinpointing. The bassline feels tighter, the highs cleaner, and basically the whole sound feels like it went through some kind of deblur process. While this feels mostly like a positive change, there’s still one thing you need to be cautious about. By doing this kind of cleansing, N18 Pro shifts tonality towards a colder one. So be sure that your system has some warmth to spare or else it could be pushed towards the analytical side of things more than some would wish for.

Comparison

LHY SW-8 is slightly more expensive and has a slightly better finish too. It doesn’t have SFP connectivity or the ability to use an external clock, but it does boast eight LAN ports. The usefulness of different features is up to you to decide, I’ll focus on the sonic difference here. While SW-8 also improves the sensation of clarity and resolution, Gustard N18 Pro is doing that to an even higher extent. The trick is that SW-8 doesn’t influence the tonality as much so there is no shift towards colder and leaner sound. Here, all of you will have to decide for yourself what’s more important – greater clarity of N18 Pro or less tonal shift of SW-8. Think about what your system needs. If not sure, SW-8 is a safer option but if you have a bit of warmth to spare then N18 Pro may impress you more.

Conclusion

Audiophile network switches might be difficult to digest. They’re also something that you honestly shouldn’t think about if you have just started the HiFi journey. This is for people that are deep down the rabbit hole, with very resolving systems, with care and attention not only given to main components but also power supplies, digital transports, and cables. If any of these sound like snake oil to you, then you’re not there yet and this product is not meant for you – it’s really that simple.

It might be for you if you find yourself talking with your friends about the influence a power cable has on your amp or a DAC. If you talk about how one of your components preferred to be lifted on spikes while the other sounds better without them. But more importantly, if every time you think about a meaningful upgrade of your main components it would cost you thousands of dollars. Then you would probably appreciate what Gustard N18 Pro would bring to your system and its sound. It sure isn’t a night and day difference, but at such an advanced level where we try to squeeze every last bit of performance out of our systems – it’s more than welcome nonetheless.

NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS: If writing and filming HiFi reviews taught me anything is that some, usually less experienced, love to play web scientists and pull the words like placebo, expectation bias, double-blind tests, audiofool, etc. Please don’t waste your time, anger, and passion writing those kinds of comments because I will simply not approve them. Live and let live.