The shield is always connected to both sides. but unless you have shielded jacks it does not matter, most audio and networks do not. And yes only one side is used to ground...
For audioquest that isn't true. They only connect the shield on one side the begin. They do have shielded connectors as they are from metal. The router I use has shielded jacks, but even with a router with unshielded jacks there was a difference between the cables one side shielded and both sides.
Also think about the shielded jack in the PWD. A connection with the shield and the PWD was decreasing SQ
A very intriguing description. What do you mean by this?
With that I mean the music is disturbed by noise. There is no rest in the music. That is how we call it in Holland, but there's probably a better translation.
restless means ‘unsettled’ - it is generally not a good connotation.
no rest could mean that energetic or flows.
So they are somewhat different, no?
OK - so you are going to try expensive ethernet cables. I think a cable is generally about as good as the contacts it makes with the equipment - so why don’t we see audiophile OEM makers of ethernet ports - they really are a crappy connection. Further, has anyone tried cleaning ethernet contacts to see if it sounds better?
restless means 'unsettled' - it is generally not a good connotation.
no rest could mean that energetic or flows.
So they are somewhat different, no?
OK - so you are going to try expensive ethernet cables. I think a cable is generally about as good as the contacts it makes with the equipment - so why don't we see audiophile OEM makers of ethernet ports - they really are a crappy connection. Further, has anyone tried cleaning ethernet contacts to see if it sounds better?
Thanks I try to remember!
For what concerns the ethernet cables I'm done testing. For the last three years I tried many many setups with different cables different brand, lenght, 5 or 6 different switches, different powersupplies for the switches, without a switch at all, about 6 different computers etc, etc. So for myself I know what is good in my setup. And I ended with a few euro1.5 meter cat6 utp cable. The expensive cables are good as well, but the can be overwelming too.
I recently bought an empirical audio off ramp with all the goodies including a dynamo PSU.
It is USB to several outputs . HDMI, rj45 and coax . As I have Paul’s good HDMI cable . I also bought Steve’s rj45 cable $400.00. Anyway the cable is about 1.5 feet . In emails to Steve the cable is what was pictured above cat7shieleded . The length according to him mattered and there was sweet spots in particular lengths . The lengths are sizes he sells. I am primarily a headphone guy . And as such differences are quite easy to here with them. Speakers however gives you far better staging as such some of the improvements we may hear are not always just better as clarity but other special cues. I just spent a good some of money on my new office speaker system . It will show case all Paul’s items and at least two headphone amps. I plan to do some critical testing and I will be posting what I hear for all.
wijnand said: With that I mean the music is disturbed by noise. There is no rest in the music. That is how we call it in Holland, but there's probably a better translation.
Thank you! I understand exactly what you mean.
alrainbow said: It will show case all Paul's items and at least two headphone amps. I plan to do some critical testing and I will be posting what I hear for all.
Fun!
Coincidentally, I am listening to my Woo Audio WA5 300B headphone amp this very moment.
I am currently breaking in a set of 1.5m AudioQuest vodka Ethernet cables.
I can state with assurance that they ARE directionally ‘sensitive’. D’oh
And thus far they do seem to remove yet another layer of veil. How much will have to wait until they are fully ‘settled in’ and then I’ll swap them out for my ‘standard’ Cat-7 cables to determine if and how much of a change they actually do make.
But I gotta say $340/each for 5’ ethernet cables is a difficult ‘pill’ to swallow. I don’t EVEN think I’ll entertain $1200 for the same length diamond cables. Well unless I win the lottery or suddenly become an instant millionaire…
Ok so these cables are following the same break in timetable, just like the power and interconnect cables did. Which is curious, at least to me, since they are delivering packets of digital music, not analog signals nor ac power (analog voltages).
johnjen said
Ok so these cables are following the same break in timetable, just like the power and interconnect cables did. Which is curious, at least to me, since they are delivering packets of digital music, not analog signals nor ac power (analog voltages).
JJ
This is a common conceptual misunderstanding.
Ethernet cables transfer analog voltages.
Simply put it is decoding of voltage levels that determines the ‘digital’ content.
Yes this is true and digital circuits are really analog in origin etc.
But the point I was making is that the digital signal does not vary in amplitude nor current outside of the square wave, wave form and it’s frequency spectrum, which is far outside of the audible spectrum. And that digital signals are quite ‘fixed’ or repetitive in distinction to ‘analog’ signals.
IOW digital signals represent much more of a limited range of parameters (voltage and current and frequency) than ac mains or the analog music signals do.
So what I found curious is that ‘fixed’ signals (digital) and continuously varying signals (analog) both seem to break in with very similar patterns in terms of amount of time and how the sound morphs during the break in process.
Which I find interesting because it implies that the type of signal doesn’t seem to matter, but the # of hrs of carrying those signals does…
Elk said
Nicely explained, JJ, and an interesting observation.
Thanks!
But I think there is something else going on with cable/accessory break in besides hrs.
What it is, I have no clue.
But to have a WA-Q chip stuck on the breaker box back panel make ANY kind of a change, let alone one that follows a similar pattern to devices that are in the voltage path, let alone signal path (digital and analog) is a head scratcher for sure.
So I just completed the break in on a set of AudioQuest Vodka Cat-7 cables. These cables use a 10% silver cladding over copper. It took over 600hrs to get them to settle in. Yow baby…
The benefits are noticeable as an increase in Small Signal Dynamics and once fully acclimated more inner detail, everywhere. These results aren’t huge nor smack yerself upside yer head obvious, but there is an improvement none the less.
Now how this could be I have no idea, after all bits are bits, right? Except, I guess some bits are more equal than others. Er sumpt’n…
I’m now breaking in an AQ coffee USB cable (it has the same 10% silver content) and I will compare these 2 paths of digital bit delivery to the PWD when it has fully broken in. I hope it doesn’t take 600hrs…
Yeah it is a bit nutty, especially since these cables are just delivering the digits and bits which get majorly fussed with down stream after their delivery.
As for the cost’s, well these are not cheap cables but no where near the cost of the high priced units. Even so ≈$350 for a 5’ chunk of digital cable just gets my eyes ta twitch’n and with a facial tick added just for effect…
But fortunately the cat-7 cables are on loan so if they don’t measure up I can return them as fully broken in and ready to go to their new home. Which is rather fortuitous I must say…
johnjen said
Yeah it is a bit nutty, especially since these cables are just delivering the digits and bits which get majorly fussed with down stream after their delivery.
As for the cost’s, well these are not cheap cables but no where near the cost of the high priced units. Even so ≈$350 for a 5’ chunk of digital cable just gets my eyes ta twitch’n and with a facial tick added just for effect…
But fortunately the cat-7 cables are on loan so if they don’t measure up I can return them as fully broken in and ready to go to their new home. Which is rather fortuitous I must say…
JJ
For cables in general there is more to it than just the bit perfect issue.
The cable capacitance may alter the signal shape (e.g. square wave). People also argue about phase shift, latencies amongst other things. Impedance matching is also important.
My experience with cat. cables is that the more it complies with standards, the better. The audiophile cables sometimes has bulky connectors that doesn’t even fit the RJ45 ports when adjacent to each other and the cable providers don’t even have the general knowledge about standards (which you pay $$$$$ extra for!). The grounding is also questionable. If the cable grounding is done right it might be that your connected devices still cannot benefit from this. These things really pi$$ me off. I am about to replace mine with the ones from Blackbox that has a connector locking mechanism. The colours also make them easy to keep track of. They are not expensive either.
This stretches my memory a tad bit but I did run into a ground loop using the cat7 cables because they do carry ground along with the data bits.
And since then my cable cooker can now cook ethernet cables which can make an even greater net effect than the silver wires themselves.
IOW along with conductor material, shielding etc, ‘treating’ the dielectric/insulation has as much and perhaps even more of an effect on the overall SQ than these other factors.
And since than other tweaks have greatly overshadowed what tweaked cat-x cables can deliver.
Such is the way of discovery of SQ improvements.
