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Most Important, Unloved Cable...

Ethernet. I used to say the power cord was the most unloved, but important cable. Now, I update that assessment to the Ethernet cable. Review work forthcoming. 

I can't wait to invite my newer friend who is an engineer who was involved with the construction of Fermilab, the National Accelerator Lab, to hear this! Previously he was an overt mocker; no longer. He decided to try comparing cables and had his mind changed. That's not uncommon, as many of you former skeptics know. :)

I had my biggest doubts about the Ethernet cable. But, I was wrong - SO wrong! I'm so happy I made the decision years ago that I would try things rather than simply flip a coin mentally and decide without experience. It has made all the difference in quality of systems and my enjoyment of them. Reminder; I settled the matter of efficacy of cables years before becoming a reviewer and with my own money, so my enthusiasm for them does not spring from reviewing. Reviewing has allowed me to more fully explore their potential.  

I find fascinating the cognitive dissonance that exists between the skeptical mind in regard to cables and the real world results which can be obtained with them. I'm still shaking my head at this result... profoundly unexpected results way beyond expectation. Anyone who would need an ABX for this should exit the hobby and take up gun shooting, because your hearing would be for crap.  
douglas_schroeder
jinjuku's avatar
jinjuku
226 posts
 
Can you give me the current topology of your networked audio?

The reasons for the switch. For one I’m taking a page out of a setup where there is Router<>Switch<>Switch<> Endpoint.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/174991-increasing-the-sound-quality-of-your-music-by-switching...

The Cisco is going to allow me or even one of your friends to swap out just at the endpoint device to minimize error.

Let me firm up my schedule and how much time would you need playing around with this prior to evaluating blind?

I can suggest two methods:

If your player has enough buffer just queue up tracks and the cable can be changed/unchanged(that is same cable removed and plugged back in) out at a random interval.

Or

Setup a looping track or a snippet of a track with a 15 second interval track between and the possible swap would happen then.
jinjuku's avatar
jinjuku
226 posts
 
To be clear I'm proposing Source<>Switch<>Client 

That would be like: Tidal<>Router<>Client
wgutz
85 posts
 
It is all good, my setup is simple. I'm sending my cable to Blue Jeans to make sure it meets the 6A standard. Not sure if 15 seconds is long enough to figure much out, so perhaps we can do some full tracks too. You want to know the cables are equals in potential performance and this way we can know. Bill
t_ramey
632 posts
 
You guys gonna have any fancy high dollar ethernet cables on the list for the challenge? Or how about a cheaper Supra cat 8?
wgutz
85 posts
 
Well t_ramey, why don't you send one out to me. As far as I know, we are comparing the Blue Jeans 6A to my home terminated Western Electric 6A, which I like slightly better, even if it did cost me 10X+. 

Jinjuku thinks all similar capacity cables sound the same by a sort of definition of how Ethernet works. 
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