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Ethernet Audio Cables - really??

Cereal Killer

Cereal Killer

432
Ethernet audio grade cables do they really make a difference and why?

Chatting on the Devialet website recently bout new firmwares and stumbled across 'tweakers corner'..... Some folk on there are claming they hear obvious difference between: AudioQuest, Supra, Meicord and not only this i do some research and find the audio rags have given some of these full support/5 stars and come recommended via proper review... i mean WTF?

I use some Postta CAT7 which i bought coz its flat, black and very flexible but still fully double screened and it was about £8 for a 1m run. Some of these i mention about go into the £200 for a meter or so...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZKH0Y7/?tag=pinkfishmedia-20

Are we getting into the realms of audiophile networks, switches and modems....? Should TIDAL start rolling out their own solid gold CAT10a quad shielded global network to realize MQA full potential?

And for those who dare try WiFi should they start wearing tin foil hats to stop the music fcuking with their auras?
 
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Read the Naim forum there is a thread called Network tweaks that makes setting up an LP12 look very easy.

I can see where a better quality cable with better shielding helps but an £800 Chord cable???
 
It’s just insanity. I cannot get my head around why anyone would ever think that this could make a difference. Oh, actually I can... Marketing!
 
It does not surprise me in the slightest. I mean, some people believe a mains cable can make a difference ...

Anyway, to satisfy demand, my colleague (forty plus year experience of data cabling for top tier technology companies) will be producing audiophile Cat 5, 6 and 7 cables. Each cable will be individually tested using a £10k Fluke tester and come with an individual test report. All cables will be 'burned in' for 72 hours using a constantly varying 'load'. Each cable will come in a silk bag inside a very fine wooden box. The cables will be hand made in the UK.

Price will be competitive with a top of the range cable cable costing no more than a few hundred pounds. We envisage a 'starter' cable could be available for around £80.

There will also be a 100% guarantee - if you can't hear a difference you'll be able to send it back for a full refund.
 
I would love to see the 'designers' of these so-called 'audio grade' ethernet cables stand up in front of the standards committee who created the ethernet standard and justify their 'product'.

I have read somewhere that some of these exotic cables barely pass the standard to be allowed to be sold as Ethernet cables.
 
yet again we have ''proof'' that the internet must be broken, and can not work. You must remember that that these Ethernet cables are not carrying data, they are carrying music. I must admit to finding certain categories of audiophile nervosa totally and utterly bewildering. It's just a computer network seems to have been forgotten.
 
Natara said:
I can see where a better quality cable with better shielding helps but an £800 Chord cable???
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Interestingly a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority was upheld against Chord's advertising on what seems to be "just" an Ethernet cable (link).

"The ASA considered that the claims in the ad were presented as objective claims that The Chord Company's cables provided better sound quality compared to other cables. Whilst we acknowledged the positive reviews from consumers and industry representatives, we considered that objective claims, such as "connecting a Tuned ARAY cable to the streaming device will have a dramatic effect" and "This can transform the sound of both WAV and FLAC files and the results with high resolution downloads are simply stunning", must be supported by objective testing which demonstrated that the cables provided better sound quality than other cables. Because we had not seen such evidence, we concluded the claims had not been substantiated and were therefore misleading."​

It seems that no objective evidence was forthcoming and it is left up to the consumer to decide if there is a difference worth £800 or not.
 
Same goes for very expensive servers, who claim these "avoid IT devices or computers in the audio chain". But these threads get nowhere. In a minute someone will come along and say what a massive difference these have made in their own system.
 
I can't comment on other producers but I can guarantee that the cables we will make will 100% meet standards - we wouldn't be able to issue a test report otherwise.
JensenHealey said:
I would love to see the 'designers' of these so-called 'audio grade' ethernet cables stand up in front of the standards committee who created the ethernet standard and justify their 'product'.

I have read somewhere that some of these exotic cables barely pass the standard to be allowed to be sold as Ethernet cables.
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I can't comment on other producers but I can guarantee that the cables we will make will 100% meet standards - we wouldn't be able to issue a test report otherwise.
 
John Phillips said:
Interestingly a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority was upheld against Chord's advertising on what seems to be "just" an Ethernet cable (link).

"The ASA considered that the claims in the ad were presented as objective claims that The Chord Company's cables provided better sound quality compared to other cables. Whilst we acknowledged the positive reviews from consumers and industry representatives, we considered that objective claims, such as "connecting a Tuned ARAY cable to the streaming device will have a dramatic effect" and "This can transform the sound of both WAV and FLAC files and the results with high resolution downloads are simply stunning", must be supported by objective testing which demonstrated that the cables provided better sound quality than other cables. Because we had not seen such evidence, we concluded the claims had not been substantiated and were therefore misleading."​

It seems that no objective evidence was forthcoming and it is left up to the consumer to decide if there is a difference worth £800 or not.
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We won't make claims that it sounds better, we'll leave that to the consumer to determine.
 
I was thinking about the genesis of audiophile Ethernet cables. A quick peruse of products designed for military aerospace came up with items that look very similar to how some companies describe their Ethernet products. I was wondering if there may have been some re-branding going on.

For example, in the Gore Aerospace catalogue we find networking cables with silver-plated copper and novel geometries where each individual pair is separately screened. The claim is "Gore’s Ethernet Cat6a cables are also 24 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter with greater flexibility and a tighter bend radius making routing easier in small spaces compared to the typical aerospace Ethernet cable design." That is probably very critical for cramped weight-sensitive environments. However for audio systems?
 
CAT6 ought to be enough for anybody, it handles 10Gbps (10,000Mbps) of throughput, the bandwidth required for a 24/192 file is 9.22Mbps, which is 1084x lower bandwidth than CAT6 can handle. You can pick up one of these for a few quid. Even old CAT5 cable has 100Mbps bandwidth, but for general networking I'd use CAT5e (1Gbps bandwidth) minimum, and not for sonic reasons...
 
I tried on of the Audioquest cinnamon Ethernet cables at £35 half the rrp I thought give it a go but there was no change between it and a normal cat 5 I’m afraid.
 
Of course it's all ridiculous but as long as people buy into the "sound quality meter" theory of hearing, it's inevitable. It's really neither there nor there whether the supposed cause is something that definitely causes a difference, but probably not much of one, or definitely causes a difference which you almost certainly can't hear, or almost certainly causes no difference. You will hear a difference. That's what hearing is like.
 
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Dozey said:
Perhaps they just had a listen and used the evidence of their ears?
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This is troublesome, as the brain is the thing making the decisions.

This was illustrated to me when I was doing an A/B comparison of my DACMagic against the Chord Mojo. Everyone said the Mojo was the dogs danglies and that the DACMagic was a bit ‘cold and bright’ sounding. Low and behold, I did find that the Mojo sounded more natural. More ‘musical’. The DACMagic seemed to be just that bit too sterile and bright sounding. There wasn’t much in it, but I could definitely hear the difference... Then cam the time for me to remove the DACMagic from my system. Oh... I’ve made a cock up! The input that I thought was the DACMagic was really the Mojo and vice versa. Shit!

I then tested them again without my expectation bias. I heard no difference between the two.

See, never get the brain involved!
 
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