Ethernet cables and tidal dropouts and a solution that has stopped the dropouts and made music more musical

Posted by: redalphabet on 05 November 2017

I have been pondering an audiophile ethernet cable and started out by buying an Audioquest Cinnamon Ethernet cable which bettered the bog standard computer one, I had plugged into the Naim streamer. It lowered the real body of the music without restricting the bandwidth of the music, subjectively - obviously better music.

After fiddling around with the system, I accidently touched it to another CAT cable I had coming out of the router, but not noticing this, I started listening to streaming music. That's when, for the first time, Tidal dropouts started! I switched to Iradio and Spotify and nothing, no dropouts. I thought initially I was finally plagued with the Tidal issues everyone complains to Naim about and blamed Naim in my head for crappy software - like i've been conditioned to by the forum.

As a loyal Naimy, I had a look around the back of the system and noticed that the streaming CAT cable was touching another CAT cable, I parted the two and the Tidal dropouts stopped, which is insane, seeing as the two cables are shielded.

If someone can explain why this issue plagues Tidal specifically then please do - but clearly it has to do with some latency issue on the server end of Tidal.

Anyhow - the shielding of ethernet cables isn't sufficient to stop cable crosstalk, which one can hear, and ineffective shielding is sufficient enough to destroy the data packets sent from Tidal to Naim when streaming Tidal, when two streaming cables are touching. Thats how crappy Tidal back system is, because if two cables merely touching can cause dropouts ANYTHING can, which is seriously miserable to comprehend.

I also had a touch of hardness on the Audioquest cable, along with the ineffective shielding - So I grabbed some plain old kitchen foil and wrapped it around the Audioquest and found that a 100% cover of its length actually 'Tuned' the cable and killed high frequency sibilance on the system and thus the hardness.

This Sibilance must be noise travelling down the cable from the router. It means that the 1's and 0's argument is destroyed because the argument does not account for noise in the transmission of the 1's and 0's which does affect music reproduction when the 1's and 0's are converted to music by the dac but clearly noise on the cable does not affect the transmission datacenter style data!

I decided that too much 'Tuning' had taken place as the last bit of 'air' had been removed from music when streamed - so I cut back the Tin foil shielding at the Naim streamer end by about 1/3 of the total length of the cable and the sparkle came back but none of the sibilance, nor hardness.

The long and short of this is that a Tin Foil shield for the Audioquest ethernet cable I use is essential for quality music playback - but that also - 1 meter of tinfoil actually affects sound quality - which in itself is bizarre.

Shielding streaming cables with Tin foil works, but like anything else, you've got to have the ears to hear it and a system that can resolve it.

Regards.

Posted on: 05 November 2017 by garyi

Well on this premise I am knackered, I have 43 ethernet cables touching in the main trunk on the way into my switch and I can only assume data centres, do not infact exist.

As for wrapping cables in foil, I think you could find a better use for that foil, hat perhaps?

Posted on: 05 November 2017 by james n

Posted on: 05 November 2017 by Hmack

Have you tried comparing tin foil from Walmart & Publix? Which do you think sounds better?

You should have saved this post for April 1st.

Posted on: 05 November 2017 by Eloise

You’ll probably find that the reverse is actually true. That the Audioquest cable is actually a POS, not to standard, cable which is causing interference. Considering most Cat 6 is unscreened and works at upto 10Gb (for upto 55m) and doesn’t have issues with crosstalk.

Just as likely as the idea that a Cat 6 cable can “improve” audio quality while stopping Tidal working!

But if you’re happy...

Posted on: 06 November 2017 by james n

In all seriousness now, i'd take a look at your network setup and check all is well. Are all the cables secure and properly terminated and not bunched in with mains cable ? If you are fixing issues by wrapping the cables in foil and you're getting dropouts with cables touching then i'd suspect you've got something amiss in the existing cabling / setup that needs correcting. I'd check all this out before playing around with 'audiophile' network cables.

James

Posted on: 06 November 2017 by Dozey

Interesting findings - thanks for posting Redalphabet.

Posted on: 06 November 2017 by ChrisSU

We need photos!!

Posted on: 06 November 2017 by Mike-B

I guess if aluminum foil has appeared to fix your Tidal drop out problem, then OK go for it, but I dare say it won't work for all.

There is a resemblance of logic in it: the building regs for power & ethernet separation (as applied to large buildings such as office & industrial installs) It shows separation distances in trunking together with combinations of screened and unscreened cables. However the last 15m for 240v & <32 amps (i.e. typical home environment as opposed to a data centre) - then no separation is required between power & ethernet wiring.

That said going back to the regulations, I have screened power & unscreened ethernet & have ensured that the short 2m section where they run together is separated by the regulation spec of 20mm.

Maybe a bit OTT, but it was easy to do & why not. Do I get Tidal drop outs ??? No

Posted on: 06 November 2017 by Huge

Mike, that's just your OCD! (there's a bit of it in all good engineers!).

(Good thing you don't have to have everything arranged alphabetically or you'd have to have CDO!)

Posted on: 06 November 2017 by Mike-B

Huge posted:
Mike, that's just your OCD! (there's a bit of it in all good engineers!).
(Good thing you don't have to have everything arranged alphabetically or you'd have to have CDO!)

Alphabetical !!! lord preserve us, the illogical sporn of the devil. I do it all by numbers.

Posted on: 06 November 2017 by Huge

Mike-B posted:
Huge posted:
Mike, that's just your OCD! (there's a bit of it in all good engineers!).
(Good thing you don't have to have everything arranged alphabetically or you'd have to have CDO!)
Alphabetical !!! lord preserve us, the illogical sporn of the devil. I do it all by numbers.

0X43 0X44 0X4F

Posted on: 06 November 2017 by Mike-B

Huge posted:
0X43 0X44 0X4F

Syntax correction: Ox43 Ox44 Ox4f ............................ enough, a touch too much thread drifting.