dgarrestson, what specifically is your concern about the validity of the findings? I think it significant that I listened to the aftermarket Ethernet cables placed only after the household wiring. Then, eventually I placed another segment of aftermarket Ethernet cable ahead of the household wiring as well.
imo, I demonstrated that similar to the situation with power cabling, the presence of a "weak" upstream element does not render downstream improvements null.
As to the validity of the sound quality for assessment, I submit two thoughts. I have been using the internet over power for many months now, and it has had no effect on being able to assess differences between other cables (i.e. IC, SC) and components. As to sound quality, both myself and friends who are familiar long term with systems I build have found recent rigs (since the household wiring has been in use) to be the best I have built. i.e. The use of the household wiring has not impaired my ability to build rigs as good or better than in the past.
When I originally moved to use the IOP protocol I was fearful that it would decimate the sound quality. As I have no way to conduct a direct comparison I cannot say that it has had little deleterious effect on sound quality. However, it has not prevented me from getting better performance from streaming audio than a couple years ago.
Hopefully this answers some concerns about the IOP setup in the review.
