Wireless connections or Ethernet cables won’t have a “sound”. It’s all digital data being transferred via tcp packets on the wire, then reassembled and passed on to the next layer in the OS. Send, receive ack. Either the data gets there or it’s resent. You may have excessive resend packets on a bad network port or NIC, but the sound will remain the same. If the node2i firmware drops music quality if the bandwidth is limited, there’s a problem that will impact sound. The node2i isn’t going to fill gaps in the missing packet data with best guess. This is all handled on a lower layer. (Been reading packet data professionally since ARCNET).
High end cables are suspicious. Think the copper cables used in your electronics are special? Or even inside your loudspeakers? Nope. Funny seeing someone hook up $2k speaker wire to a speaker that just uses a simple 16 gauge copper wire internally for the drivers/crossovers. Or the $1k power cable that’s plugged into a $3 wall socket that’s wired with the cheapest copper that home builder could buy. Buy a quality shielded interconnects with sufficient gauge for the distance between components. The same with speaker wire.
High end cables are suspicious. Think the copper cables used in your electronics are special? Or even inside your loudspeakers? Nope. Funny seeing someone hook up $2k speaker wire to a speaker that just uses a simple 16 gauge copper wire internally for the drivers/crossovers. Or the $1k power cable that’s plugged into a $3 wall socket that’s wired with the cheapest copper that home builder could buy. Buy a quality shielded interconnects with sufficient gauge for the distance between components. The same with speaker wire.