Ethernet Cables

Cat 6a or Cat 8.

Cat 8 - better shielding. I highly recommend Supra CAT 8. 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/154374512353?hash=item23f1701ee1:g:5UwAAOSwB4NW07FZ

ViaBlue 7’s are much better than the 8’s I had.
Replaced my Supra USB too.

+1 @lalitk .
I followed his advice and am loving the improvement in SQ.

For the money Supra CAT 8

If the builder wired your house or office with standard ethernet cable in the wall, will using Supra CAT 8 or ViaBlue 7 from the modem or router to your system make any difference?

Just asking...

Monoprice Entigrade cat 8

OK, let's think this through...  What kind of ethernet cable is carrying the signal to the router and possibly to the internal switch in the house?  It's generally marginal semi-junk that is just sufficient to carry the signal.  Cheap copper.  

So what's the point in purchasing $500 ethernet cable?  Just use off-the-shelf cable that is rated above the speed of the connection.

@cdc2 
Just saying.....
If the ethernet cable in your house negate any benefit from the Supra or ViaBlue cables, then all the people that assert that one cable or another makes the music sound better, are wrong. It also brings into question the whole aftermarket power cables industry.

@tony1954

As it should.

Cat 6a/Cat 8 send data packets over TCP. There is no difference between a cable from monoprice versus a $500 cable. You are an idiot for paying $500 for a ethernet cable. There is no difference in sound quality because you're sending the packets over TCP/IP which has a built in retransmit if it doesn't get an ACK (acknowledgement packet). 

Can anyone really believe this bullcrap that extra copper in a cable is going to change the way something digital sounds? It's all ones and zeros. The $500 cable doesn't change anything about how TCP packets get transmitted through your network. Might as well replace your router and your switches as well because they  aren't built with enough copper. 

You can make a case that analog signals degrade and are affected by interference or attenuation (loss of signal across distance. Cat 5/6/etc have that limit as well, so does fiber, but if you're really concerned about signal interference, just buy STP (shielded twisted pair) cat cable that has foil that provides some cover. It's unnecessary for a home environment, but whatever.

If you are not sure the earth is flat or some other shape, buy the ViaBlue for 90 bucks and set sail for the Americas. I tried several Ethernet cables and conversed with lots of folks here and on other forums about Ethernet cables. I found in the less than $100 range that there are audible differences in every cable I tried and the ViaBlue was well liked by me and others as an all around cable. After you figure out the earth isn't flat with the ViaBlue, the challenges of finding the "perfect" Ethernet cable gets much harder and more expensive. In fact, contact me and I'll send you my Viablue to try, just send it back and report here if you heard a difference.

I challenge anyone claiming differences in ethernet cables passing packets.  There can be zero differences because a bit is a bit.  Bits just don't get dropped or we would not have communication over the internet.  

I have not tried a $500 ethernet cable but the very affordable Supra sounded better than the one that came with my BS Vault. Why does the last 6ft or so of a power cable make a difference when there’s 100ft or so of romex from the panel to the wall receptacle, plus miles of cable floating in the air between a substation and your home? Well, it does make a difference with power cords and I believe the cable is canceling out noise, EM/RFI and that same principle  is probably true with an ethernet cable. Not sure it makes sense wiring ones entire home with say Supra, but the last meter will make a difference. I come off the wall port to a switch then with a Supra to my streamer.

Nordost has a mini white paper on digital cables that tries to address the “it’s only 1s and 0s”

https://www.nordost.com/downloads/Digital%20Audio%20Cables%20-%20How%20Can%20They%20Make%20A%20Diffe...

If you buy an expensive Ethernet cable it’s obvious to all that the bits and the zeros are going to be bigger, shinier, faster and much better.
Cheaper cables pass cheap bits and bum zeros.
The same principle occurs with the transmission/receiving equipment.
AG 🇦🇺

I challenge anyone claiming differences in ethernet cables passing packets. There can be zero differences because a bit is a bit. Bits just don’t get dropped or we would not have communication over the internet.

I don’t think this is the real issue on this thread. The different ethernet cables are transfering bits from the source. No argument here.
The destination is the audio system and the intent is to prevent noise, mostly caused by RF interference, from getting into the audio signal.
The signal distributed from a cable company which hooks up to our modem/routers is full of RFI, some ethernet cables are better than others in transfering clean data. Supra CAT8’s conductors are individually shielded which helps reduce interference/ noise from being delivered to the destination.
The major source of this RFI in our homes is the router.
Using CAT8, I experienced a lower noise-floor from my streamer than when using CAT6.

Looking to reduce this noise further, I went to the source and added RFI/EMI filtering at the router. My streaming playback has been greatly improved.
Using an RF "sniffer" device indicates no RFI coming from the router into my audio system.

If they didn’t work, why would people spend $100s on Ethernet cables, and why would people make them. There must be something better about those expensive cables to justify the price. Also, maybe you can’t hear the difference but at least with one of those expensive cables you can relax and rest assured in the knowledge that at least your ethernet cable is not a source of degradation in your system. 

SotM Ethernet cable. Destroyed an AQ Diamond between my MSB Signature Transport and DAC

Sablon is very good in my experience, superior to other more well known brands, low noise floor. It’s only possible issue is it’s extremely stiff.

@lxgreen I read the Nordost paper and it is absolute jibberish. At no point do they mention even one quantitative measure or threshold of impact of any cable characteristic - impedance, capacitance, inductance RF sensitivity or any other measure. Nor do they discuss the fact that TCP/IP and USB are asynchronous protocols immune to timing issues. Or that TCP/IP has bit error correction so that any corrupt or dropped packet is retransmitted. They fail to mention perhaps the most salient point of all: 100% of streaming services are buffered by the receiver and played back out of the buffer after CRC checksums and packet order is assured.  Audio is a very light network load - a few hundred Kbits/sec to a few Megabits/Sec. All the packet buffering, error correction, and re-ordering is happening at 100 or 1000 Mbits/sec - at least 10X faster than the streaming service can throw it at you. So, yes it all happens in realtime and at line speed, and your network, wired or wireless is not breaking a sweat.

And if there is noise, RF (EMI) or whatever, like one might have in an industrial environment, shielding can help, and foil and braided shielding can help a lot,  but ONLY if a proper grounding scheme is implemented, and only if there's noise in the environment in the first place. Pro Tip: Plug&Play is not a proper grounding scheme. And if your line in is carrying RF, the only way to get rid of it is with an optical isolator (not an Ethernet surge suppressor), not a $500 cable.

"If the ethernet cable in your house negate any benefit from the Supra or ViaBlue cables, then all the people that assert that one cable or another makes the music sound better, are wrong. It also brings into question the whole aftermarket power cables industry."

Yes, yes it does...

 

@panzrwagn Well said.

Ethernet is not a waveform, and it cares not what type of copper it’s sent over; if it shows up intact, that is the best you will get. So it’s pointless to buy expensive ethernet cables if you hear a difference is purely confirmation bias.

 

If you want to know how many hops your data takes before it gets to your player, run a Trace Route C:\tracert Qobuz.com (or whatever your service) That data has traveled thousands of miles and run over MANY different networks before arriving at your home. Saying you can hear a difference between a 1' or 100' CAT5\6\7\8 cable is pure confirmation bias. You spent loads of money on it; you can listen to the difference by golly. That is not how ethernet works.

Sorry to see the ASR crowd has once again poisoned a well-intentioned discussion.  Note they’re quick to say Ethernet cables cannot possibly make a difference in theory, but yet they never bother to use their own ears to compare better cables to cheap crap.  I can’t imagine being an audiophile and not being able to trust my own ears.  Might as well just pick all your audio equipment out of a book because the numbers make sense to you.  That’s just incredibly sad to me and misses the whole point.  Whatever. 

@soix

I do think its rather kind of the Audiogon community to welcome panzer and other ASR/anti-ethernet-cable cultists. Imagine how lonely it must be for them when those who hear a positive difference refuse to consume their cool aid. It does strike me as odd though that are drawn to these discussions like a mot to flame…

Panzerkampfwagen has a thing against Ethernet cables. 98% of his posts are in this topic. Not exaggerating 

I asked the question on another thread here. How can an ethernet cable alter sound other than EMI and RFI rejection if properly constructed?