Most Important, Unloved Cable...

Geoff,

Can you answer a simple question or not?

What happens to the SQ when the Ethernet cable is removed and the music still plays? 

"I still don’t have an answer to the video I made where I removed the Ethernet cable and the audio still plays and nothing changed about the quality of it"

"What happens to the SQ when the Ethernet cable is removed and the music still plays?"

@jinjuku,

The whole crux of your tiresome argument is that you can’t discern any audible difference between a $5 or $300 Ethernet cable. Well you’re not going to cause laptops are not designed to use as a dedicated source for high fidelity audio. No video or argument is going to convince or sway your opinion. I am sure you have heard the term ’garbage in garbage out’.

As @shadorne so eloquently conveys in every discussion, you can’t improve the sound from a faulty and badly designed component with cable upgrades...upgraded cables or any other tweaks are like band-aids to faulty components.

You read earlier, grannyring heard the audible differences in his tricked out Sound Science Music Vault computer,

"I changed my ethernet cable from a Cat5, if I recall, to a shielded CAT 7 and liked the change. Again, more relaxed and natural sounding. Less of that digital glare we sometimes hear. The USB cable used made a significant sound quality improvement/change. I ended up with the Curious USB cable. I tried several and the sound quality differences were easily discernible. The Curious cable was the most full bodied and relaxed and met my personal subjective sound quality needs"

May be you should conduct a A/B test with pair of Belkin Ethernet and USB cables vs. Wireworld Starlight Ethernet and USB cables on a decent dedicated audio server. You may be able to hear the audible improvements cables on 1's and 0's. 

Take the advise of your buddy shardorne and ditch your crappy laptop. You can also read up on tons of discussion on Computer Audiophile forums on how everyone’s is trying whole bunch of band-aids to improve the sound from a laptop which only tells me one thing.....consumer laptops are not ideal for bit perfect audio nirvana let alone conducting A/B cable tests :-)

Here is another one: why do the numbers in your bank account not get confused because your bank uses cheap cable?

@willemj 

Did your banker say that they had to use cheap cables cause you want free checking account? 

Lalitk,

Can you answer one simple question, when the cable is removed and the audio still plays what happens to the SQ?

Why is this such a difficult question for subjective folks to answer?

That is indeed the crux of my argument:

If I came out and you couldn’t see your setup, only hear it, assuming you are using quality components with adequate buffer (and a lot of them do) would you be able to tell when the cable was removed but the music still played?

Stop the tap dancing, realize the non real-time nature of networked audio and attempt to answer the question.

Bottom line there is a reason you aren’t and because it’s a tacit admission that your understanding about how networked audio works is fundamentally flawed.

Is there an intellectually curious or honest subjectivist here that would be willing to actually trust their ears (and I mean ears only)?