ETHERNET CABLES

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).

Hello Audphile 1

Thanks for your feedback. Do you have any idea where I can purchase this Supra Cat8 cable with the Telegartner connectors

Thanks,

Sam

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