Removing Noise the English Electric Way: EE1 Review

When The Chord Company unveiled the revived English Electric brand, they had just a single product: the 8Switch, an eight port ethernet switch made for streaming audio. Then they expanded with the larger 16Switch to offer more ports for users who needed more ports without sacrificing fidelity. Then came the newest addition to the growing family: The EE1. The EE1 offers a similar network noise isolation system as the switches, but is intended for one-to-one use between an ethernet source and its destination. The EE1 features galvanic isolation technology that blocks the high- and low-frequency noise present in an ethernet cable without hindering the digital signal. Using sophisticated heat sinks, all the unwanted noise and garbage frequencies are converted to heat and evaporate away, leaving you with a clean and noise-free pipeline for your audio system.

The Speaker Shack got their hands on an EE1 and put it to the test to see if it truly cleaned up their audio signal. Having already tried similar solutions, they knew there was certainly room for improvement; but could such a small package really make that much of a difference? The Speaker Shack fed music from a Bluesound Node 2i through a stellar Chord Electronics system comprised of a Hugo TT2 DAC, M Scaler, and BerTTi amplifier, to a pair of AVID HiFi EVO Four speakers. The system was linked up using Chord Co. cables, with the EEI sitting between the switch and the streamer using a Chord C-Stream cable. In the first test, "when the EE1 is introduced suddenly there is more snap to the percussion and vocals have a cleaner and crisper more defined sound". 

Moving on, they moved the EE1 around the system to find the optimal location for it to work its magic. Between the router and the switch, the EE1 showed marginal improvement; noticeable, but not as much as the first configuration. After a few more tests, it became evident that the most noise was entering the system between the switch and the streamer, which was also close to many other cables that could cause more interference. 

Giving it a 5-star Highly Recommended badge, the Speaker Shack had this to say about the EE1:

It’s clear that the EE1 placed in my system benefits with improved noise reduction and therefore better sound and also from the tests that I have done when placed strategically between the switch and streamer, when you consider that the EE1 is a tenth of the price of the S100 data switch that I reviewed this is an absolute no brainer and bargain and certainly worth investing in to improve your systems musical ability, multiples could be purchased to potentially give even greater improvements to your system and the sound that you hear. It proves it is an effective and worthy investment.

Read the full review over at The Speaker Shack

Try the English Electric EE1 yourself at the Participating Retailers