Most Important, Unloved Cable...

Not attempting to do anything but learn what you did. I can’t read your mind and know what you did in the past or even what a “custom”cable is? What is it? No reason to attack and be rude. Your test is still ambiguous to me and others as we have no idea what the custom cable is. Simple to understand my point here right?

We evaluated a claim: That someone hears a difference in cable A vs B regardless of anything else.

I’ve posted in this thread before what cabling I tested with in the past. More than once. Sorry about snapping about that.

Custom cable in this instance is General Cable CAT6A and Siemons industrial 6A terminations and Cryo-Treament.

Honestly it doesn’t matter what the cable is. I wasn’t testing the cable I was testing the claim. Later in the day (we did the bias controlled evaluation around 3PM) we were just exploring what each of us listens to. I had my laptop logged in with his Tidal account and playing music back and while talking just kept switching out cabling without interruption. He said he thought my laptop rendered any cabling changes moot. Simply couldn’t hear a difference because the entire track had been cached by Tidal.

Same for JRiver (I had the buffer set for the default 6 seconds).

So we had the discussion of: If you have two devices and one changes it’s sound character based on the cabling, and the other renders it moot, and the one that renders it moot sounds good...

The other issue we had in setup is that the AQ DBS RCA cabling was really touchy. I thought AQ had lifetime warranty only to find out the last cable he sent in for repair cost $150. The REPAIR cost $150, not the cable. Yikes. So I consider that part of the evaluation compromised. When you have to play with the cable where the jacket enters the RCA plug assembly to achieve full output I’m not sure how you could consider that optimum.

I’m willing to do this again if feasible. But really not willing to eat travel costs to do so. But man we had a good time. 

WGUtz knows a ton about property management/leasing etc. I probably asked him a million questions about the subject. Most likely to the point of exhausting him on the matter :-)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. One test means nothing. Blind test, ABA, AB, what have you. A test cannot prove anything, but it certainly cannot prove that there are no differences among cables if the results are negative. Too many things can go wrong, even when everyone is on the up and up and trying to be thorough, etc. Geez, even disrupting the connections when unplugging and plugging cables during testing changes the whole playing field. Come on, people! No offense to anyone testing but don’t try to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.

I agree with @geoffkait

I use a Cheap Terra Grand for $10. Will be trying Wireworld. Based on my experience it takes time to really appreciate system changes. I would say at least 3-5 days of various listening sessions. So I will give it a week or so before jumping to a conclusion.

All of of this is so system dependent as to make your test rather limited in conclusions. Nothing wrong with your test or trying, but what is true in that one system is often not perfectly transferable to another system. Just the way it is.

If I don’t hear an improvement I certainly won’t buy another ethernet cable. I will certainly report back here. I actually have an open mind about this, but I realize what I report back on is simply based on my set of ears and my system.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. One test means nothing. Blind test, ABA, AB, what have you. A test cannot prove anything, but it certainly cannot prove that there are no differences among cables if the results are negative. Too many things can go wrong, even when everyone is on the up and up and trying to be thorough, etc. Geez, even disrupting the connections when unplugging and plugging cables during testing changes the whole playing field. Come on, people! No offense to anyone testing but don’t try to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.

Lets start with some logic:

1. When normally hearing differences in cables a cable swap is required. So nothing is being done that already hasn't. 

2. One test and the outcome only has value for the claimant. I've said nothing concrete about anyone else. I have said this emboldens my belief that others would perform about the same. 

3. I can concretely say that in the system we had that you personally could not tell when the connections were changed. 

So what is your confidence level in your ears only evaluation?