Best Lan/Ethernet Cable?

[-E-]

UTP Cat6/6a works fine, but if you can swing it, STP Cat6/6a certainly helps over areas where you may have significant EM interference.

You do not need a managed switch. In fact, never have I walked into a home of anybody and said "jeez, you need a managed switch here..." Get a nice router (with built-in WiFi is fine) and then drop that to a decent gig-e switch.

The "audio" grade ethernet cables are absolute and total snake oil, plain and simple. The key thing about a Cat6/6a cable is how you terminate them. Even a few mm of additional de-twisting of the pairs will significantly drop your speed.

[Rayooo]

Originally Posted by Vesuvius

UTP Cat6/6a works fine, but if you can swing it, STP Cat6/6a certainly helps over areas where you may have significant EM interference.

You do not need a managed switch. In fact, never have I walked into a home of anybody and said "jeez, you need a managed switch here..." Get a nice router (with built-in WiFi is fine) and then drop that to a decent gig-e switch.

The "audio" grade ethernet cables are absolute and total snake oil, plain and simple. The key thing about a Cat6/6a cable is how you terminate them. Even a few mm of additional de-twisting of the pairs will significantly drop your speed.

...but my audiophile friend told me HP switches sound better. and using link aggregation improves the sound stage significantly..so I had to go managed.

OK, for the record, I'm kidding, totally. Will shut up now, I promise.

[MyPal]

Originally Posted by Rayooo

....and the funny part (or maybe the sad part) is that in many cases... that would/could have been a serious post!

I think the most important thing people should take away from this thread is that a dedicated switch is the most important link to getting the best performance out of your home network. The rest, including whatever patch leads are on hand will like get you full duplex 1GB speeds without too many packet resends.

Using shielded CAT 6a is more for the benefit of minimising noise to your sensitive HiFi. Sure you get peak transmission performance even up to 10Gb if you have that switching infrastructure & equipment to connect at those speeds. When it comes to HIFI, I don't know of anything that is 10Gb ready anyway.

E...I suppose a managed switch is overkill & demands expertise to set it up right. But if you are inclined, the low price differential can be worth the effort for some installations. Eg. multiple IP CAMS where VLANS & QoS could be of benefit.

Generally conscious about punching my keystones at home with tight twists all the way to the claw post too. I've pulled wall plates & seen some terrible terminations as bad as 50mm unravelled from the entire mech!

[MyPal]

Originally Posted by Rayooo

...but my audiophile friend told me HP switches sound better. and using link aggregation improves the sound stage significantly..so I had to go managed.

OK, for the record, I'm kidding, totally. Will shut up now, I promise.

I suppose if you have a multi-purpose NAS that can be LAG'd, your HP managed switch would do the serving trick fine but nothing is going to sound any better.

[bvdiman]

Apology on my part.. Should have stated more clearly from the beginning that this cable is not going to be used as an internet router, rather, one which will be interconnecting an Accuphase DP-900 (transport) to the DC-901 (dac), or "HS-Link" in their term. As this will be the 'sole' link responsible for carrying all signal and datas ie.music, DSD, clocking etc., I'm led to believe that it is 'crucial'.

What they come with standard is more than a decent piece of wire, but having read reviews and heard from other fellow owners, as Toga also attested, that replacing them would reaped further significant improvement in sound. Hence my curiosity, leading to this thread. I don't mind splurging for this piece as long as the benefit is real, as I will only be needing a 1.5m-2m length of it at most.


Thanks for all the thoughtful responses so far guys..

[Masterlu]

Pretty serious link, I most certainly would get "The Best"

[MyPal]

If you are going to splurge, you may as well pick up a shielded CAT6a cable as well for comparison. Please let us know!

[TOGA]

Yep, I use AR with my Accuphase 900/901 too.
And I would like to try AIM too, or AudioQuest Diamond.

But I don't know how many separate conductors the HS LINK use.
We might waste many wires inside LAN cable using it as HS LINK.

Toga

[junker]

I use white Cat 7 cable from Amazon. It's cheap, heavy, with more twists and shielding. Works great. Cat 6 or even 5e should be fine for at least 1 gigabit.

And by shielding I also mean emission when you are getting into 100s of MHz. Ethernet has a checksum in the header of every packet. Any problems and the packet is resent. Even with 5e I had no errors in a bajillion packets.

[essjay]

Originally Posted by Rayooo

...but my audiophile friend told me HP switches sound better. and using link aggregation improves the sound stage significantly..so I had to go managed.

OK, for the record, I'm kidding, totally. Will shut up now, I promise.

does running spanning tree help with country music resolution and timbre?

Does running QoS help with PRAT?

hey it has to be asked