ETHERNET CABLES

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.

@dpop  I’ve only looked at a few ’high priced’ ethernet cables and gave up after finding each one was shielded.

Being cable manufacturers, they didn’t specify if one end only was grounded. Even if the cable is grounded at one end the shield resistance will come into play and it’s more or less mechanical protection. Now this is a problem for length say 10m and over.

Short cables may not matter much, less than 2m, now there you could bond the two chassis together to avoid shield current, but like USB cabling that high impedance noise is difficult to remove.

I use the DX filters in pairs for the ethernet from the router PC, to the EtherRegen, each time there’s a shielded cable, the sound is rough, stage height tanks, treble splashes, just a disaster. Consequently all ethernet cables are UTP, Cat5e. Often tempted to use exotics, but if they are shielded, there’s no improvement, so why bother.

each time there’s a shielded cable, the sound is rough, stage height tanks, treble splashes, just a disaster.

OK, that is what you hear, and I can respect that. You’ve already determined that shielded ethernet cables are not for you. I’m cool with that. To each his own.

My 3 TV ethernet runs are under 75’, and during their travels to and from, run next to AC power cables, of which I don’t criss-cross at 90 degree angles (which I’ve never done). That is the main reason I went with Cat 8 for those runs (earth grounding on one end only). I’m also used to working in high RF radio station environments, so cable shielding comes naturally to me, and I already know the benefits of it. In the case of my shielded TV Cat 8 runs, I’m more concerned with packet losses, as compared to sound quality. So in my case, I can’t offer much of an opinion when it comes to sound quality involving those long shielded runs.

In the case of my audioquest 3’ Pearl ethernet cable; that has a very short run from the AT&T fiber optical modem/router to my desktop 3’ away. I understand that now to be a Cat 7 cable. I don’t even know if the shield is earth grounded at the component level, so I can’t really put up an argument there either. I do know (which I’ve already mentioned ad nauseam) that upgrading it, made an audio improvement (when streaming) over the standard patch cable I was using.

In the radio station environment these days, studios are now being connected via AoIP (as compared to balanced analog years ago), and many times use shielded ethernet cables to do that. I’m not sure this would be done if using shielded ethernet cables degraded sound quality (but heh, that’s radio, and I’m not sure radio stations are concerned about high quality audio these days).