And I fully concur that things like power cables and speaker cables, unquestionably make a difference, although power cables and conditioners as a matter of course have a larger impact in the US than the UK, simply because the quality of our electical supply in the UK (in the main) is far cleaner.
But I’m not arguing that cables make an impact in any shape or form, I fully agree.
But when it comes to digital networking, it’s an entirely different matter.
If you were on ethernet, and there’s that much noise being generated down the ethernet cable to the point it’s influencing the sound, you have to understand what’s happening there. It’s not the digital data that’s altering, as again, that would be rejected by the receiver as a corrupt packet.
So the only possibility left is that it’s analogue noise. But ethernet is shielded, so either it’s ethernet passing through a HUGE noise generator like a microwave or something, which you just wouldn’t do, but that’s an issue with the cable routing, or it’s poor shielding on the cable, or a switch in the path or something. But no half decent equipment would ever generate that kind of noise, only a defective unit.
Or it’s the source injecting that noise into the data packets, in which case, you need to sort out your source as that shouldn’t be happening.
When my daughter switched power cords on me, I could tell which one was in becuase I am very familar with my system. Some were quite obvious. But I could not tell any difference among ethernet cables. Some cables/power cords make more differences than others. Ethernet makes the least difference in my system.
When I replaced the Shunyata Omega USB with the Silnote Ref. USB, even my wife from upstair in a different room came out and asked me what did I do to the system. It made that much difference!
One thing about blind test, I believe all senses are connected. If you blind-test the basic food ingradients or vegetable, you would be surprised that often you cannot even tell the difference from one to the other. The blind test will mask not just eyes, but will mask other senses somewhat too. That has been my experience.
During blind tests, the music became less involving, and the cables just sound different, not necessary better.
That would suggest that the previous cable was just really poor quality and probably not up to USB standards, not particularly that the Shunyata was extremely good. If you got a half decent professional IT USB, that’s built to standard, I’m betting it would equal the Shunyata at a fraction of the cost.
Cheaply made USB cables don’t isolate the power conductor from the signal conductors on a USB, that’s not built to standard, a cable like that would introduce a lot of noise from the 5V line. But that’s just poor design, not built to USB specifications.
Silnote Ref. was their top-of-line USB cable, some considered it to be an excellent sounding cable.
Yeah, but that’s my point, if they just put in a properly specced USB cable that met standards, they’d probably find it sounded better if you’re saying the Shunyata was that much better.
Unfortunately there’s so much trash on the market, very few cables are actually designed to standard, most don’t isolate the 5v line.
Remember, absolutely no cable can improve sound, that’s not possible. All they can do is limit degredation of signal on an analogue system and of course noise, or limit noise on a digital system.
A USB cable designed to spec doesn’t carry noise on the data path, and a properly designed DAC that’s being fed by the USB would always galvanically isolate the USB input anyway, so noise would be eradicated from being output to the Amp.
We have no disagreement there 
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Some of us don’t believe that a made to spec digital cable has a sound.
I’ve had my usb cable for about 15 years, Chord-C, it was a give-away in a blister pack on a hifi magazine. So think £3 and a free magazine.
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May be British electricity is different. In Bay Area I can hear different “sound” from “designer” digital cables whether they are USB, HDMI, or ethernet. Fiber optic? I’ll find out.
The power has already been through multiple power lines, fuses, and powered a modem and a master switch. The data comes in through a fibre exchange. None of which changes when I’ve changed digital cables and occasional changes have never made any difference for me.
I’ve mostly used my chord C-usb, fibre optic, a couple of BJC 6a and AQ Pearl 6a, because it’s well made and you can get it off the reel. The Pearl conductors are thicker than generic CAT 6a, which makes it easier to crimp.
Cables make a big difference for me. Even with a very constant power supply in Germany and a PS audio power plant. Just like speaker cables and connection cables. The Ethernet cables also have their own sound signature. The switch also has an influence, as does the linear power supply, the power cable on it and the fuse. An Audioquest Diamond Ethernet has a similar sound signature as the Dragon HC cable. In terms of price and performance, a solid core link-up cat 8 Ethernet cable cannot be beat. Musically with a warm note and rich sound. For me on the same level as an Audioquest Vodka, maybe even a little more musical. The smallest Audioquest Ethernet cables can’t keep up. They are missing something or they discolour. The best sounding Ethernet cable I’ve heard and use between switch and streamer is the J-cat lan signature gold. Unlike the Audioquest Diamond, it doesn’t have the noticeable discoloration of Audioquest’s PSS Silver. For me, the PSS silver has its own sound. An MCS or OCC Silver has a much more neutral sound. The J-Cat plays more neutrally than the Diamond, with much more room in all directions. Dynamic but much smoother than the Diamond. I’m still using a Furutech NCF Ethernet cable. Price-performance tip for high-end cables. Neutral with very good resolution, slightly slimmer in the bass. I have the Furutech in front of the switch together with the link-up via LAN Isolator. The mix results in a very neutral cable. I’ll tackle fiberglass next. I also think there are differences in the modules, converters in terms of noise, etc. The fiber optic cable will also make a difference. Single node should be better suited for hifi. The choice of material for the glass fiber core will also be decisive. With Toslink there are also plastic or glass materials. Greetings Andrew
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Totally misunderstanding how digital signals over fibre works. There is no noise, can’t transmit electrical frequencies, unless glass or plastic have magically garnered electrical conductance. If there’s noise it’s being generated when the packets are created, has nothing to do with fibre.
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Correct. The fiber optic cable cannot be disturbed. If there is noise and interference, it is caused by the converter and the modules.
Not correct, they don’t process the packets in any way, that’s done by the bridge or the DAC at the other end, it’s impossible for anything past the bridge to inject packets as would need a processor to do so. Noise is an analogue signal which would have to be packaged into the digital data stream, so can’t happen after the packets are created.
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FYI, I found this article quite interesting
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That reads like complete nonsense.
In my system I have
- my server and streamer/DAC hard-wired with 40m of fibre.
- one CAT8 to my AV location, which is future-proofing for the simple reason that the cable run is inaccessible. There is also fiber from that location, so I do not have to use the CAT8.
- everything else is CAT6a. The long ones are AQ Pearl at about €5/m, there’s a very long €20 generic one 50m to an outbuilding, some shorter Pearl and a couple of Blue Jeans. The Pearl is self-terminated.
This supports 5 Ubiquiti access points, around 100 IP addresses, including multi-room audio consisting of almost 30 units operating up to PCM 24/192 wirelessly. We are often streaming UHD TV as well as all the other stuff in an automated house.
I have never had any issues whatsoever with AQ Pearl CAT6a, which you say:
CAT8, on the other hand is so massively over-specified in terms of data rates for audio that it is laughable. It’s like buying a private jet to get milk from the corner shop. To the contrary, it has downsides, besides wasted cost: it plain doesn’t work with some equipment, and it has a drain cable that needs to earthed, and if it isn’t you can get ground noise through the connection.
If you want better shielding, for example you live in a power station with a very high RFI environment, you can get AQ Pearl CAT7 for €12/m. This compares to your AQ Diamond at about €800/m.
Not that there are misunderstandings. I had tried various Audioquest Ethernet cables. But don’t use any of them because I think they’re overpriced and there are better alternatives. If you don’t want to spend a lot, a Linkup Cat 8 from Amazon is the best choice.An other tip is Viablue.
A Furutech ncf is very nice. In my opinion, the king of Ethernet cables is the J-cat Lan signature gold. Glass fiber has the edge for longer distances and connections.
Greetings Andrew
[LINKUP - [GHMT & DSX8000 Zertifiziert] Cat8-Ethernet
https://amzn.eu/d/b1oJt1c)
https://jcat.eu/product/signature-lan-cable/
Yep, that’s not to do with fiber though.
But all those issues, are generally down to poor equipment, or packet prioritisation not set properly on the router
For audio quality over ethernet to degenerate to the point it affects the sound in a home environment, there’s something very wrong with some part of your network (router setup causing packet loss) or very outdated equipment that needs replacing or the clock on your transport is messed up. Or as @stevensegal correctly says, there’s some serious issue with microwave or radiation in your environment.
The IP issues with jitter or packet loss that are actually caused by the network is nothing to do with the cabling (unless it’s not proper cabling that meets CAT standards), unless you’re talking about huge distances like over 100m. Those jitter issues are generally experienced in office blocks where they’ve got mismatched switches and routers that are decades old attributing to issues.
If you’re really experiencing much improved sound quality with a different ethernet cable, it suggests whatever you were using previously was not a proper CAT compliant cable and the power line wasn’t isolated from the DATA cables.
The sound signature CANNOT change unless the packets sent are unpacked by a processor, then modified with the different sound wave, and then repacked into digital packets and sent back down the network. Otherwise it’s only noise that could be sent down the network. A cable could isolate that noise, but it’s not the cable that’s the thing that’s worth spending money on, it’s where that noise is being generated that you need to fix.
If a sine wave deteriorated to the point it looked more like a saw tooth wave as they suggested in their point about capacitance, A/ it’s a ridiculously poor cable that you shouldn’t be using, B/ that level of degradation would cause the packet to be dropped as the signature wouldn’t match, so the DAC would request it was resent.
I found I have CAT8 going to a couple of my access points. The 10m cable I bought cost £13, the Linkup starts at 25m and costs £203. So the Linkup costs 6 times the price. I’ve not had any problems with these cables or the access point performance. I note this Veetop cable has 12,215 ratings, Linkuo has 2.
There is a massive amount of talk bought digital cables that only relates to analogue.
That article was a typical bit of scare-tactics designed to sell very expensive Nordost cables.
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