Ethernet cables

Calvin - if you buy this Ethernet cable, which seems to modify the data, don’t use it as part of the network you use to make the payment online, will you!

Or is this cable so miraculous that it can tell the difference between the packets of data that carry your financial data from the packets that carry your audio data, and will let the former pass through unmodified, but will change the latter?

The digital data is not changed. It works better because it lets in less interference. Read what I wrote. Sound quality is impacted by "a variety of interferences including data-induced jitter, other process-induced jitter, (and) common- and differential-mode electromagnetic noise." While you’re at it, you might benefit from looking up ’Dunning-Kruger Effect’

@calvinandhobbes

I was trying a jib at the bits-are-bits crowd. I recommend an EMO-EN-70HD filter with a short Meicord Opal cable to the DAC and concur with everything you say

@antigrunge2 All good. I do find the comments of the bits-are-bits crowd to be amusing in their absolute conviction in their correctness due to their lack of knowledge. (kind of like the Flat Earther of audio). In all fairness, I don't expect everyone to hear a difference between cables, but if people are going to argue based on theory, let's at least have all the facts on the table.

Switching one Cat6 cable for another of the same rating or higher should have no difference at all if you don’t have a serious fault somewhere in your system. If your streamer/dac or whichever unpacker the cable is connected to can’t filter the tiny amount of interference you get over a short run in a gentle environment like a house you’ve got a serious problem in your system. The whole point of Ethernet and its protocols is to keep the data the same and to ignore the noise. The problem is not the cable. That recommended filter is a sticking plaster covering a problem you need to solve - basically, if the amount of interference you are experiencing is defeating your hardware, you need new hardware, not a new cable.