ETHERNET CABLES

I'll summarize my experience as accurately as I can.  This is over a 15 month period.  I am using an Ayon Stealth DAC and Transport.  Together they sound killer.  They create a large expansive soundstage with more detail and resolution in CDs than I ever thought possible.  I could have almost thrown out my turntable.  Well, not really but you get my point.  Then I added a ROON based music server.  I ripped all of my CDs to FLAC files.  Once I got a better USB cable I could not hear the difference between my Server/FLAC files and the CD playing on my transport.  My transport upsamples to DSD128 via I2S to my DAC.  My music server is USB to my DAC.

I started streaming with an ethernet (CAT7) cable from my router direct to my music server.  44.1/16 files streaming had some smearing, less detail/resolution than the CD and I found the highs somewhat harsh and grainy- worse in the middle of the day.  I'd say that I had to stream a 96/24 file to get the equivalent sound of my CD player or FLAC files.  Next I added a network bridge powered by a linear power supply.  Things improved some but it was clear that 44.1/16 files streaming were still lacking.  

Then I added the Fiber Media Converters just to try it out.  I have a 15 foot long optical cord.  I didn't even try the FMC's with their wall warts.  I went to linear power supplies straight on.  This is the way to go.  For me, 44.1/16 files streaming are very close to CD now.  Streaming Hi Res sounds fantastic and very close if not indistinguishable to downloaded hi res files.  

Nightime listening is still a bit better sounding than during the middle of the day but the difference is smaller now.  But that can be true for vinyl as well.

i tried to buy the sonore optical module last winter but after waiting 4 months I gave up on it.  I'm happy with my set up now and have no further plans to change things.

Here you go. HTH:

CAT8 is 22awg - the thickest wire of the CATs and therefore arguably the best durability.  It also has optimum shielding and twists but maybe not much if any different from CAT7.  It is by far the fastest but that speed is not needed in a home environment so the only reasons to pay more are for the extra copper and the shielding.  

@kennyc

What you are saying is technically incorrect.  The data is encoded, such as using PAM constellations, meaning the digital signal (1 and 0) are converted to a multilevel signal such that each transmitted symbol represents more than one bit.  As the signal is transmitted over the channel, it starts to appear as an analog signal due to the nature of high speed transmission and the channel.  This can be seen as eye diagrams.   The data does not ride or sit on an analog signal.  Just the opposite, the data is the signal.  Upon receipt at a receiver, the voltage of the signal is detected at specific time and that voltage is compared to numerous thresholds.  The signal is then re-created based on the voltage value in relation to the threshold to re-create the PAM signal.  For example, if the threshold are 0, 1, 2, and 3 in a PAM4 system, and if the received value is 1.1, then the signal is re-created and a 1 value is output.  The noise or timing error that causes the received signal to be 1.1 instead of 1 does not have any impact after slicing (quantization).  If the received signal is 1.4, it is sliced to 1.  If the received signal is 2.7, it is output at a 3 from the slicer.  Again, that noise or timing error does not have any impact.  The signal is recreated and the noise discarded.  The PAM4 signals are then decoded back to 1s and 0.  This is a good link to read.  

Best of all, the bit error rate of the home ethernet networks is amazingly good.  There are CTLE, FFE, DFE that all clean up the signal to correct channel degradation.  Plus, there is error correction such that each packet includes a error correction data that is used to detect and correct errors. And if, in the very rare instance, an error is not correctable, the packet will be resent and filled into the buffer of the streamer.  A typical bit error rate is 10 to the minus 13, which means that for every 10,000,000,000,000 bit sent, there is 1 error.  People do not hear this.  

Even if there were issues (which there are not) between the steaming source, which could may be an another city or state, and your streaming box, the last 3 feet inside your house is the least of your worries after the likely awful path the data has already taken for the miles or hundreds of miles to get to you.  And, over ultra short 3 foot link, there is so little signal degradation that we should not even be having this conversation.  I encourage anyone to correct any technical errors I have made to advance the conversation and improve the accuracy of this forum.  

It never ceases to amaze me how digital experts ignore RMi/EFI and ground level distortion. The issue isn’t at all about lost bits but rather about these distortions affecting timing and the subsequent D/A conversion. That’s why cable shielding and the quality of the conductors (dependent on purity of the metal) have such a big influence, The more distortion is travelling along the cables the harder the subsequent error correction circuits have to work, which in turn results in additional timing errors, not lost bits! And accurate timing is crucial for transmitting the spatial and attack and decay information in the analogue domain.