Just went backwards with the digital front-end....

[Puma Cat]

Today, I got two Blue Jeans Ethernet Cat6A cables in today, as well as a TP-link Ethernet Switch. The Blue Jeans cables were bought to replace the cheap, generic Cat 5e cables I was using to connect the Mac Mini to my AT&T U-Verse Pace router in the bedroom, and the for the Ethernet over Power adapter in the dining area. I should point out that the Ethernet cable for the bedroom Ethernet over Power adapter is now also conncted to the new Ethernet switch with the same cable that was connected to the Pace router.

Anyhoo, I replaced the generic Cat5e Ethernet cable that was going from the Mac Mini in the bedroom to my AT&T Pace router with a Blue Jeans Ethernet Cat 6A cables, now going to the TP-LInk Ethernet switch instead of the Pace router's Ethernet ports, and also a Blue Jeans cable in my dining room area from the EoP Adapter to the Fiber Media Convertor, and the sound quality is absolutely horrible....ghastly. Its hard, thin, ringy, strident, harsh, edgy, utter garbage.

The night before last, with the Shunyata Alpha USB and long run of fiber in place, my system sounded absolutely amazing: smooth, sweet, full-bodied, open, airy, fully extended with superbly natural highs, and fleshed-out, musical, and overall, just gorgeous with beautiful midrange and finely defined and articulated bass. I even wrote to MasterLu about it.

It is now so bad, it literally drives me right out of the room; I can't stand it.

It could be the TP-Link Ethernet switch, it could be the cheap-*ss LPS for the Ethernet switch, or it could be the Blue Jeans cables. At this point, I just don't know. I put back the generic Cat5e cable in my dining area connecting to the FMC, and its better, but still not as good as it was the night before last. Whether or not its the Blue Jeans cable, the ethernet switch or its el-cheapo LPS that is the root cause still remains to be seen, I'll be able to determine once I go back to my previous configuration.

So...I now have to go back to the original setup, and make systematic changes one at a time, and find out what changes caused a superb-sounding digital front end to go from sublime to absolutely ghastly.