Most Important, Unloved Cable...

Thanks Al. I should say I replaced an old unshielded Cat 5 cable going through several junction points and terminations with a straight run of the double shielded Cat 7.  No mystery I hear better sound quality on my streamed audio based on your post. 

First let me say that all of you are welcome to spend money on what ever makes you feel good, however, the science does not add up.  

What does an ethernet cable do? It caries TCP & UDP packets (which are 1s & 0s) from source to destination, these packets are built with headers & payload/data which is more 1s & 0s.  If packets dont make it to destination TCP handles retrys, if this did not work all of us would have problems with our connections to our network providers.

In a typical TCP/IP stack, error control is performed at multiple levels: Each Ethernet frame carries a CRC-32 checksum. Frames received with incorrect checksums are discarded by the receiver hardware. ... Packets with mismatching checksums are dropped within the network or at the receiver.

So if there are real network issues you get packet loss which in audio is a gap in sound because the DAC runs out of bits to process into sound.  Changing a ethernet cable COULD reduce packet loss, so could a better switch (or current firmware on the switch) but it will NOT change the 1s & 0s (which are what a DAC uses to create audio) to better 1s & 0s.  It also does not matter if the payload is audio or video so the same side effects occur, loss of packets ie 1s & 0s if a cable is bad or not the correct cable for the task.  How many of you stream Netflix or video via Apple TV, this is built on the same tech, for that matter everything on the internet is built on the same thing, TCP and 1s & 0s.  There is no such thing as a better 1 or 0 (a "better" cable) that enables a DAC to create a better sounding audio sound.  

I build & trouble shoot network and data storage issues for a living, if I use the proper cable rated for the bandwidth, ie 1g, 10g or 40g, I do the same for my home network where Stream digital 100% of the time, I build & test my own cables using CAT 5e because CAT 6 wires are so stiff and hard to work with and I only have a 1gb wired network.

The shielding alone will help in noise reduction. I think this is one area of improvement in my particular case. Best $15 I ever spent is all I know without a doubt! 

I received the Tera Grand double shielded cat7 cable on Saturday and it is really a nice sounding cable. I think I like it better than the Supra cat8 I was using before as the Tera Grand seems to be much more natural sounding while still having great detail. For $10-$15 depending on length from Amazon, it’s a great deal. Both the Supra and Tera Grand to me have been far better performing than the Audioquest Vodka I tried.

Thanks grannyring for the heads up!

azbrd: Thanks!!!  One of the most clearly written, intelligent posts I've seen on the subject of digital A/V information transmission.  You cannot make up science.  Those that are "hearing" a better quality sound (especially via ethernet/HDMI/USB) are unknowing victims of "expectation bias."  That is, if you spend money (especially a lot of money) on what you consider an "upgrade," you WILL hear better sound whether it actually exists or not.  

I recently bought a slightly used Oppo 105D disc player.  The seller threw in 5 Wireworld Oasis 1 meter RCA cables for 10 bucks.  The current version of the Oasis one meter cable sells for $110.00 each on eBay.  I usually use Monoprice RCA connects.  Used a couple of the Oasis cables to run from the Oppo's Sabre DAC outs to my Pre-Amp.  Sounded freakin' awesome...just like the Monoprice connects.  Had I spent spent $220.00 on those two Wireworld RCA cables I'm sure it would have sounded even better.  See what I mean??