Ethernet Cables

@lxgreen I read the Nordost paper and it is absolute jibberish. At no point do they mention even one quantitative measure or threshold of impact of any cable characteristic - impedance, capacitance, inductance RF sensitivity or any other measure. Nor do they discuss the fact that TCP/IP and USB are asynchronous protocols immune to timing issues. Or that TCP/IP has bit error correction so that any corrupt or dropped packet is retransmitted. They fail to mention perhaps the most salient point of all: 100% of streaming services are buffered by the receiver and played back out of the buffer after CRC checksums and packet order is assured.  Audio is a very light network load - a few hundred Kbits/sec to a few Megabits/Sec. All the packet buffering, error correction, and re-ordering is happening at 100 or 1000 Mbits/sec - at least 10X faster than the streaming service can throw it at you. So, yes it all happens in realtime and at line speed, and your network, wired or wireless is not breaking a sweat.

And if there is noise, RF (EMI) or whatever, like one might have in an industrial environment, shielding can help, and foil and braided shielding can help a lot,  but ONLY if a proper grounding scheme is implemented, and only if there's noise in the environment in the first place. Pro Tip: Plug&Play is not a proper grounding scheme. And if your line in is carrying RF, the only way to get rid of it is with an optical isolator (not an Ethernet surge suppressor), not a $500 cable.

"If the ethernet cable in your house negate any benefit from the Supra or ViaBlue cables, then all the people that assert that one cable or another makes the music sound better, are wrong. It also brings into question the whole aftermarket power cables industry."

Yes, yes it does...

@panzrwagn Well said.

Ethernet is not a waveform, and it cares not what type of copper it’s sent over; if it shows up intact, that is the best you will get. So it’s pointless to buy expensive ethernet cables if you hear a difference is purely confirmation bias.

If you want to know how many hops your data takes before it gets to your player, run a Trace Route C:\tracert Qobuz.com (or whatever your service) That data has traveled thousands of miles and run over MANY different networks before arriving at your home. Saying you can hear a difference between a 1' or 100' CAT5\6\7\8 cable is pure confirmation bias. You spent loads of money on it; you can listen to the difference by golly. That is not how ethernet works.

Sorry to see the ASR crowd has once again poisoned a well-intentioned discussion.  Note they’re quick to say Ethernet cables cannot possibly make a difference in theory, but yet they never bother to use their own ears to compare better cables to cheap crap.  I can’t imagine being an audiophile and not being able to trust my own ears.  Might as well just pick all your audio equipment out of a book because the numbers make sense to you.  That’s just incredibly sad to me and misses the whole point.  Whatever. 

@soix

I do think its rather kind of the Audiogon community to welcome panzer and other ASR/anti-ethernet-cable cultists. Imagine how lonely it must be for them when those who hear a positive difference refuse to consume their cool aid. It does strike me as odd though that are drawn to these discussions like a mot to flame…