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Playing with cheap ethernet cables

Chemistry.
There is a forum where the owner likes to make his opinions known and he became enamoured of mains cables. For him mains cables were the way to reach new levels of musical pleasure. A certain vendor was part of this commitment to mains cables. Almost everyone who posted to that forum heard mains cable joys or kept silent. Then one day the vendor lost the favour of the forum owner and quickly mains cables ceased to be the way. Now people are selling their exotic mains cables.
Human behaviour is interesting
 
whatsnext said:
Chemistry.
There is a forum where the owner likes to make his opinions known and he became enamoured of mains cables. For him mains cables were the way to reach new levels of musical pleasure. A certain vendor was part of this commitment to mains cables. Almost everyone who posted to that forum heard mains cable joys or kept silent. Then one day the vendor lost the favour of the forum owner and quickly mains cables ceased to be the way. Now people are selling their exotic mains cables.
Human behaviour is interesting
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Certainly is.
 
suzywong said:
I hope you are not trying to bring “engineering” into this discussion. :eek::eek:
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Maybe I didn't explain myself well :)

I didn't mean to measure the cables, because that would only give us impedance, resistance, capacitance values, etc. (electric properties) for each cable.
What I was suggesting was to record "the sound" (directly from the DAC or whatever equipment is being used) into a computer soundcard, for instance, using different ethernet cables.
Even with no professional gear, I believe it could be measurable with enough detail and data to check for differences.

In my opinion, because of the way streaming works (and I believe we are talking about streaming - correct me if I'm wrong) there is no way for an ethernet cable to change the sound - unless there is something wrong with the cable or the equipement.
If so, how could we trust Spotify, Tidal, Youtube, TV, etc., with hundreds of Km of cables between us and the source?
 
Cables threads always end up like this everybody has there own opinion at the end of the day all Bruce's is saying is that to him he definitely hears a difference and if anyone fancies a bit of playing around for not much money why not give it a try end of. If you don't believe it skip the thread no harm done.
 
Cereal Killer said:
I think this is something the OP should add, peoples OPINIONS/EXPERIENCES DO MATTER ... otherwise why does this forum even exist!?!
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Well actually there is loads to talk about. stuff like turntables, cartridges, speakers, some amps, vintage stuff where there are differences and things to learn. But in this case there are none. If anyone can prove there are they will be up for a Nobel prize and I do not exaggerate because if the error rate can be sufficient to be audible it is a very dangerous situation. For one thing I really wouldn't get on a modern aeroplane!
 
I'm bored at work today so tried a little experiment. I wandered around the factory and got hold of 14 different patch cables (9 Cat5e and 5 Cat6A) of various lengths 1m-30m, termination type, manufacturer and age (actually they're all pretty manky so probably years old).
Got 2 laptops and connected them together using just 1 cable so that I could see if data transfer speed was affected by the cable. I used a 3.3 Gbyte file to do the testing.
Every cable transferred the file in around 50 seconds (give or take a second due to me trying to work a mouse and a stopwatch at the same time) so doing the maths:

3300000/50 = 66,000 Mbytes per second

66,000 x 8 = 528,000 Mbit/s or around 50% theoretical transfer speed - a pretty decent real world transfer speed!

In conclusion, any old cable will do for data transfer and it's bandwidth far far exceeds anything required for audio.
 
belivers vs non belivers

Do cables can sound different?

- O, yes, yes, I heard it myself.
- No, no way, no possible because it is not possible.
 
Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind
I'm in love
I'm a believer, I couldn't leave her if I tried…
 
booja30 said:
At the NYSE, there is one datacenter for the trading firms and their servers, and then a separate, more secure datacenter for the NYSE servers. They are large, physically separate datacenters. The length of cable from the customers servers to the NYSE servers is on the order of hundreds of feet IIRC. Many of the customer servers are initiating trades based on algorithms, without operator intervention. In these cases, there are issues if some machines are 'closer' to the NYSE servers than others. For this reason, all connections between the customer servers and the NYSE servers are exactly the same length, even if it means having coils of unneeded cable.

For more information, there is a very interesting Radiolab podcast about the subject of speed, and it specifically describes this setup (click on 'Million Dollar Microsecond' to skip to the part about the NYSE:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/267124-speed

PS - I see this was already explained earlier, but the podcast is still fascinating.
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That is genuinely fascinating. Cheers.
 
Andrew Williams said:
Cables threads always end up like this everybody has there own opinion at the end of the day all Bruce's is saying is that to him he definitely hears a difference and if anyone fancies a bit of playing around for not much money why not give it a try end of.
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This is not true at all.

This is how he started his opening post:

It is popular to answer a question about ethernet cables to advise people to avoid the designed-for-hifi cables and just get a cheapo cable, provided it is terminated correctly and functions. So I thought I’d try a few cheap cables and see if there is any difference in the sound, not really expecting there to be any difference except perhaps between shielded and unshielded.
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If anyone wants to try a Cat 7 and Cat 6 cable, both 3mtrs long are welcome to a couple I have going spare - £10 including postage for the 2
 
Andrew Williams said:
Cables threads always end up like this everybody has there own opinion at the end of the day all Bruce's is saying is that to him he definitely hears a difference and if anyone fancies a bit of playing around for not much money why not give it a try end of
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Not all because the most objectivist of us agree that phono cables make a big difference (MM load capacitance) and that speaker cables can be used as an inefficient tone control
 
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