Top Audiophile Ethernet Cables - any comparisons?


I just set up my new streamer with which I stream music from my mac mini to my dac. I use a dedicated network switch which connects the streamer and mac mini directly without going through the rest of my LAN.
I exchanged a standard CAT 7 cable on one leg of the connection with Audioquest's Forest Ethernet cable. There was a small but clearly audible improvement. From the reviews on the Web I conclude that the top cable by Audioquest (Diamond) would give the biggest improvement of all Audioquest Ethernet cables. 

Now my question: Has anyone compared the Audioquest Diamond with any other top cable by another manufacturer, e.g. Purist Audio, Cardas, Chord, ...? I live in Switzerland and have no dealer who can give me several of those cables to try. Thus, before spending a lot of money, I'd like to hear any opinions.

Thanks a lot for any replies!

By the way, I use a network switch that was modified for audiophile purposes (AQVOX). The difference to an off-the-shelf switch is tremendous!
belcantor
Hi jinjuku: Did you guys audition/compare any high end Ethernet cables to the generic cabling you brought over? Did you audition Gordons cable?
We did:

Custom 5 meter cable with Siemons industrial connectors

30 meter CAT 6 from Amazon

5 meter BJC

3 meter Best Buy Insignia.

The ears only evaluation was the custom 5 meter and the $13 30 meter.

@jinjuku,

Which one of the above cables you would consider a high-end or $$$ cable?


The objectively expensive cable is any cable that cost the most. That would be the 5 meter cable William had his friend Gordon (really nice guy BTW) make. But it only spec’d to CAT5.

The objectively best performing cable is the BJC cable since they come with validation of their adherence to the standards body that writes the spec.

I’m keeping in mind this is a singular session but it was using their equipment. When I had my two machines setup for client server and running JRiver I was randomly swapping while playing back and showing William that. This moved the conversation forward because we were able to talk about 1. Are we actually listening to the cable 2. Or are we listening to cached data?

The conversation went something along the lines that, from Williams POV, that you’ve transferred data with a good or bad cable then the stored data is only that good or bad. I posited then what happens if I setup two folders and transfer a 24/192 file over using one cable and then another cable. Would the files sound different or the same. I think he opened up to the reality, and yes it IS reality, that if they hash out to the same MD5 then they are indeed the same.

I discussed with him how CRC32 works and even on his own laptop, even though we’ve been swapping out cables while playing, that with the NETSTAT -e his laptop had received well over 4GB of data, 0 receive errors and 13 send errors, and 0 discards.