Ethernet cables in for audition

[crwilli]

Stephen, i appreciate you are focused on the second leg of an Ethernet Connection. The short route from your fiber receiver to your PC/Streamer.

From all your investigations with Ethernet cables, what do you think is the best (value for money and SQ) for the long first leg? Eg an 8 meter long run?
Craig

[Jack in Wilmington]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Well, after a good 6 days or so of burn-in 24/7, I put in the Supra Cat8...

Man, this little cable is wonderful! It's is a very nice-sounding cable, indeed. Very detailed but not at all etched, edgy, or spiky. it presents an incredibly layered and complex presentation that is really very nice. The presentation is not quite as spacious front-to-back and "fullsome" as the AudioQuest Cinnamon or Vodka, but it actually has more, and a finer layering of, detail. The micro-detail, microdymanics, and timbral shadings of this cable are really quite impressive and musical as all get-out. I hear filigreed and sublte little musical details and timbral shadings I don't hear on any of the others. Its like going from a 240 dpi JPEG digital photograph to a 300 dpi TIFF file, using digital photography as an analogy. It has an overall sonic signature and "body" that reminds me of wood-bodied phono cartridges, in in particular, my Sumiko Pearwood Celebration II that was on my Rega P5.

For $54, man, this cable is a winner! Big thumbs up!

I liked your review of the Audioquest Cinnamon and I ordered one from Audio Advisor. I plan on installing it between my Seagate Personal Cloud and my router.

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by crwilli

Stephen, i appreciate you are focused on the second leg of an Ethernet Connection. The short route from your fiber receiver to your PC/Streamer.

From all your investigations with Ethernet cables, what do you think is the best (value for money and SQ) for the long first leg? Eg an 8 meter long run?
Craig

Hi Craig,

Good question. Maybe the Supra Cat8? I'm using a run of fiber for this long run; its much cheaper and it sounds better than a long run of Ethernet.

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by Jack in Wilmington

I liked your review of the Audioquest Cinnamon and I ordered one from Audio Advisor. I plan on installing it between my Seagate Personal Cloud and my router.

Should work well there.

[John49]

Thank you, Puma Cat for confirming I chose well with Supra Cat8! I went with Supra as I had many years of great sound using their speaker cable bought directly from the late Tommy Jenving, the owner of the company at the time.

[eziggy]

Quick question on Ethernet cables. Where do you upgrade the cable for the biggest impact? Wall (router) to switch, switch to streamer, or both?

[For The Love of Music]

Originally Posted by eziggy

Quick question on Ethernet cables. Where do you upgrade the cable for the biggest impact? Wall (router) to switch, switch to streamer, or both?

Depends on your setup and budget:

Simplest answer;

HiFi; Switch to Streamer

Whole house; modem to router / switch.

Goal;

There’s many ways to do this, and you really can move the system performance needle when you go from start point to finish or finish to start point. Switches, optical filters or boxes, power supplies really change the game. If you dig around there’s a lot of recent postings.

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by For The Love of Music

Depends on your setup and budget:

Simplest answer;

HiFi; Switch to Streamer

Whole house; modem to router / switch.

Goal;

There’s many ways to do this, and you really can move the system performance needle when you go from start point to finish or finish to start point. Switches, optical filters or boxes, power supplies really change the game. If you dig around there’s a lot of recent postings.

This is all excellent advice. I agree and its consisent with my experiences as well. Fully agree on the priority for the Ethernet cable(s).

[Banter]

Recently I had the opportunity to audition 3 ethernet cables on my Aurender A10 streamer-Dac combo(Tidal) as well as Apple TV (Youtube Prime). There was this run of the mill Belkin Cat 6 cable, AudioQuest Cinnamon and Audioquest Vodka.
To my ears and my friends, higher end Vodka sounded mellow, better instrument separation, more details etc.. Basically, very pleasant to listen to. Both being in IT field this was not possible or not explainable logically.
So, we asked my wife to listen to these cables. She preferred higher end Vodka every time. So, there were now 3 people who preferred the sound of the higher end Vodka. All 3 of us went thru blind testing.

We took this experiment further – we disconnected the cable couple of seconds after the song started playing – it just played rest of the song from the buffer. Plugging in inferior cable during this time did not make a difference. So, it appears the “better” cable downloads a superior or “better sounding bits”! This I can not explain. Just relaying what we heard.

What also was puzzling was that we got mixed results if we did not power off the Aurender A10 before trying another cable. It seems Tidal just “patches” up whatever was in the buffer. (In this case we were playing the same song).

We also found it was best to power off the Aurender before switching to another cable. Same was evident with Apple TV using YouTube Prime. Both seems to have large buffer.

We can not explain how a last 6 feet of digital cable makes a difference – but hey, we heard it!

I would imagine we would have got similar results from any manufacturer's higher end cable.

Yogi.

[Puma Cat]

Hi Banter,

The reasons that we can hear differences in Ethernet cables is not with respect to their abilit to deliver signal, its their ability to deal with all the different types and classes of noise that gets layered on top of the signal. More on that later in a separate reply to this thread, so stay tuned.

Regarding the AQ Vodka, your experiences were very similar to mine.