Almost ridiculous difference

God help us all.

As a 5m vodka cable costs £690, and my cat 6 cables cost £2.42 each, they jolly well should be better. But somehow I doubt it. But then, I put a Powerline on my SuperUniti and it sounded a lot better. My dealer suggested some £70 Ethernet cables, and I thought they were expensive.....

If I got suckered into spending 650 quid on an ethernet cable, then I would hear a real great difference, of course.

The problem for me in the digital domain, is it gets there or it does not. If it gets there then you hear sound, if it does not, you don't.

That was my view too. £2.42? £70? £690? Durr.....

Sorry to say that : technically impossible if you know how ethernet / tcp works! But a £650 cable will cause no damage to the network...

It is also techically impossible if you don't know how ethernet/tcp works.

That's one huge leap based on no auditioning. I'm glad it turned out favourably for you and I wish you all the best with them.

We spent some time auditioning Vodka at home and based our final decision on what our ears appeared to be telling us. Which makes me unqualified to comment further based on deafness, an obviously broken system and the fact that I actually have listened to them.

No, no and no.

next somone will be telling us they have bought out a Chord tuned Sarum ethernet cable ....

Tog

Jonas

great you found this source of improvements, enjoy it.

just ignore the remarks from these bits-are-bits dogmatics, they still have so much to learn about what (beside the bits) also matters for playback in the digital domain.

It's just a shame they are always so quick to bash other people with their dogmatic views.

Cheers

Aleg

According to the above posts, therefore, digital cables do not make a difference in SQ simply because they use a protocol (tcp in this case) that guarantees that the bits and bytes arrive at the other end. But... S/PDIF is a data link layer protocol and as such should not make a difference in SQ too.

Similar discussions have arisen re mains cables... why should they make a difference in audio SQ ?  etc...

Theory is one thing, what you hear is another... in the real world at least.

IMHO of course.

Yea well in my opinion, I have hundreds and hundreds of metres of ethernet cable rattling around my house. But hey I am sure the last metre will make all the difference.

Audiophiles are making nerds laugh, sit in the corner and feel ashamed.

... That's maybe why nerds aren't audiophiles...  And hey, if it isn't written somewhere then it can't be true... LOL

If you can hear a difference there is a difference. If you can't there isn't. Interesting though subsequent discussion may or may not be, monody else can tell you what you hear, any more than you can tell them what they can hear.I've seen various postings far and wide which according to my beliefs and views seem ridiculous. But experience has taught me otherwise. It's very simple to check in the case of AQ Cat cable. Although I expect that the majority of posters in this thread have yet to do so.

Hey - someone also told me the earth isn't flat - which quite frankly is ridiculous and I should know because I can see that it obviously is flat ... I mean come on guys just because some nerds have written a book about it ... I can see it for myself with my own eyes...

Don't get me started on the fake moon landings but have you see the ethernet pixies who steal bits from low quality cables.

Tog

Jonas, good stuff. Anyone telling you it's about bit and bytes is clearly not a knowledgable engineer in this area.  The cables at the physical level are just like analogue cables, and all the issues of reflections at the connectors, earth currents, common mode  RFI, cross talk and many more come into play. If your receiving equipment has sensitive audio circuits it almost certain there will be a degree of coupling through some means or other.

This is one of the reason why I carefully RFI choke my Ethernet leads, and use shielded erhernet cable near my audio equipment, as well as keep my DAC seperate from my Ethernet interface. Others use inline decouplers that I hear are very effective

So it's great you have found a solution for you, and yes you can pay to buy a product to short circuit the trial and error if you are not sure what is going on.. There is nothing wrong with that... 

But there is no mystery or magic, just physics.

Simon

Or you could buy £2000 worth of LPs.

well nice to know.

the issue is that many cheap ethernet cables do not reach the minimum standard of a cat 5 cable.

but hey if it works then it works. i.e. if the cheap cable works, then fine by me

and if your expensive cable is magical, then it's your money and your ears

it's not an issue of truth or not.

basically there is a bit of spending fatigue.

how much more are we supposed to spend to get good sound.

Jonas, I hope you don't think my post was being rude. I've only discovered streaming recently, and was hoping to get away from the expensive cable malarkey. It sounds as though you still have the ordinary cable from the router to the switch, and are using the AQ cables from the switch to the Hifi boxes. I've been investigating these cables and there are cheaper ones too, such as the Pearl, Forest and Cinnamon. I could afford a couple of those if they make a difference - did you try them, or just the posh ones? Like I said, a Powerline makes a difference, so these may well do too.

I think you need to accept a certain divergence of opinion in any human discourse; essentially this is how were learn and I see no problem with having an opinion or judgements challenged by others. I think you are being a little naive in believing that because you have chosen one route others here will automatically agree with your views or that those who don't are bullies. A sense of humour is a valuable defence when dealing with other people and essential in any professional capacity that requires you to regularly test your ideas in front of others. If you think this forum is tough try going through "peer review".

Personally I doubt that an ethernet cable will do very much to improve the sound of a streamer and that spending £600 on one with a fancy name is necessarily a wise choice. I may well be wrong, and others whose views I respect in this forum may disagree with me but I have yet to be convinced. 

People disagree - get over it and enjoy the sunshine.

In the meantime I've got ethernet pixies to catch.

Tog

I agree with Tog on this; divergence and debate is normal, especially when things can be subjective.

What is more difficult to accept is when (negative) blanket statements are given in a presumptuous manner, in particular when they are given without having tried what is being denied, which of course is not everybody's case.

I have tried an "audiophile" USB cable; SQ was increased.

I have a Meicord OPAL ethernet cable; SQ has mildly increased.

I use an Acoustic Revive LAN-Isolator RLI-1; SQ has definitely increased.

My point of view of course, but at least I have tried them.

Followed by the predictable back peddling and fudging.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean my rude reply to be construed as rude or to come off like an ignorant prick". And "You obviously don't understand the basic rules of debate" Plus "When I implied you were stupid, what I actually meant was...." And so on.

If it quacks it's a duck.

Enjoy your system Jonas.

‘I can understand what you’re saying, but in this case you’re simply wrong!’

Gilad Tiefenbrun 

As I said - a sense of humour is always handy Harry - last time I looked we were discussing ethernet cables not how to end poverty.

Tog

I've never seen a demonstration of a streamer at the factory or a dealer using anything other than run of the mill Cat 5 cable. But that's not the point.

I had forgotten the other methods of digging deeper, such as minimising the topic under discussion because it's hardly the end of the world, and the supposition that in order to appreciate a positive side of rudeness you need some sort of sense of humour that only seems to be possessed by the lucky.

Threads on this topic tend to go the same way and usually crop up every other month. I don't know why people who have ears on experience bother to share their findings.