ETHERNET CABLES

Frankly, I find it amazing that there's so much focus on what could possibly go wrong with a 3-10ft network cable.  Considering the audio isn't transmitted at 1Gb frequencies, then even lowly CAT5 will suffice just fine.  Any decent network cable will do fine.  If one is to believe there is a sonic difference between network cables on a digital signal, then please explain how the signal didn't degrade to unacceptable levels through transmission from the storage server in Qobuz, Tidal, Apple, Amazon, etc., in the hundreds or thousands of miles to your streamer.

@rbmarsh Bingo, forget the miles upon miles of cable that's laid out, or the numerous amount of routers and switches it has to go through. Don't worry though, the 1 meter blue jean ethernet cable is going to clean it all up. 

When a CAT cable runs from a switch to a streamer, there's a situation very simple,  but complex to remove noise.

The switch and endpoint chassis are at different potentials, this is the same as for analog,  noise current starts to flow.

When shielded cables are used, the conductive noise travels far better than unshielded. The exception could be to bond both the switch and endpoint to the same ground, but several meters apart, that's not going to work. Don't use shielded network cables for audio 

Since magnetic fields and differential circuits are supposed not to influence each other, they do. The CAT cable by induction picks up noise from power cables in your house. Any of this noise ends up what you hear. Remove it, and the sound is clearer, since you're not listening to noise.

forget the miles upon miles of cable that’s laid out, or the numerous amount of routers and switches it has to go through. Don’t worry though, the 1 meter blue jean ethernet cable is going to clean it all up.

It sounds like we have some skeptics in this thread. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, unless I tried it, and heard the difference. I can’t explain it either. I’m not saying it works in all situations, or all in this thread have the ears and brain to notice the difference, but to the skeptics, I say if you have the equipment, and you already can hear differences and improvements when upgrading other cables, I say give it a shot sometime. I get the argument - "it’s just digital 0’s and 1’s, and one shouldn’t be able to hear any audio difference when using different ethernet cables."

The exception could be to bond both the switch and endpoint to the same ground, but several meters apart, that’s not going to work.

...or, to avoid ground loops, simply bond/ground at one end only.

The CAT cable by induction picks up noise from power cables in your house.

...hence the need for shielding, and tightly twisted pairs.

The Audioquest write-up is from the marketing department.

What? No! 😘

The first paragraph may have validity for analog signals but neither their long grain copper nor the polyethylene insulation will make an audible difference to a digital signal.

So then you’ve tried one, and not heard a difference in audio quality. OK, got it. It boggles my brain too, why changing out a little 3’ digital ethernet cable could in my case make an audible improvement. In talking with audio friends prior to purchasing it, they all said the same thing, "I doubt you will hear a difference," although the same friends said the same thing when I bought my first set of RCA Monster Cable interconnects a long time ago, and heard a difference in sound quality there too (maybe I need to seek out some new audio friends 😉). Remember, I’m just referring to like under $50 upgrades here, and still heard better sound when spending under $50. I’m not even referring to spending hundreds or thousands of dollars. Some may say just by plugging in new connectors, you may have wiped clean a connection. I say there’s probably some validity to your statement, because I know what an improvement can be heard through cleaning a connection can make, but this is not what took place in my little experiments that I just mentioned above.