'audiophile' switches

Do give the CatSnake 6a a couple of days, as I too felt not a great improvement when my first length of CatSnake 6a went in.

Did you get CatSanke with the floating shield?

Yes, floating…and it is there for good as I’m not planning to get into the crawl space again!

Don’t blame you.

Would still be interested to hear your thoughts after a couple of days though.

Hi WW,

Where I hear improvements is initially in the quality of the bass, is it clearer, can I follow it more easily?
Then, how is the music influencing me …am I relaxed? Or do I find myself feeling slightly up tight?

M

Did you bend any of the cables tightly to get them round tight corners?

I was conscious of trying to bend as little as possible, but 20 metres from an upstairs office to a downstairs listening room requires some bends. If any cable is intolerant to bends you’d think they would not sell it in long lengths as it’s inevitable it will not be straight.

I’m still going to try again removing the Cisco completely, but I’ve got a house full of people working from home at the moment, so need to find an opportunity where I can listen at the levels I like :grinning:

I’m not disappointed and perhaps there were subtle differences - and my comment that things were more maybe clearly defined was particularly aimed at the bass. After all I have a pretty good set-up and the law of diminishing returns applies. Had it made a big difference I’d have been shocked as that would imply Naim hadn’t done a good job designing the kit in the first place.

I find listening for differences quite tiring and unnatural, and subtle differences IMO become invisible when listening normally. So the take away for me is to stop looking for small improvements and enjoy what I’ve got.

Tight bends can affect the performance of the cable. The manufacturer should be able to supply a figure for the ‘minimum bend radius’ and you should try to stay above that limit.

I don’t think I have any bends that are “tighter” than the way it was coiled when I received it.

Typical MBR figures are around 4 or 6 times the external diameter of the cable, so you are probably fine.

Belden spec Cat-6A bend radius as 3inch (76mm) radius - 6inch (152mm) diameter

Being a broadcast cable the CatSnake is designed to be tolerant and resilient

Fair enough.

So to give a very crude approximation, these are the scales of SQ differences in my system:

  • Adding the 555DR PS to my 272:
    Score = +10 (i.e. a transformative, unmistakable positive difference).

  • Removing the ‘free’ telco-supplied ethernet patch cables and replacing them with BJC 6a, and also adding 3 Ciscos 2960s (the last 2 in PoE configuration) between the router and the 272:
    Score = +1 (ish)

So, yes, a subtle positive difference obtained in my case a series of incremental steps.

Its no more or less tolerant than any other ethernet w.r.t. bend radius abuse.
Has an extra PVC sleeve, Belden call it PVC upjacketed, thats why its more resilient than other cable types
Inside its 24AWG 7 stranded 4 TP & just as liable to performance degradation due to core deformation as any ethernet cable
Insistently the 1303E data sheet shows Min Bend Radius During Installation: 64 mm

Tolerant is a colourful word to indicate it is likely to be more forgiving of abuse generally and as well as with regard to curve radius.

As you say, it has stranded cables, which are more flexible than solid, and the upjacket which is softer and again more flexible although also thicker.

Having handled and installed both, I can say it is considerably more flexible and I would imagine kink-resistant than the thinner but bonded Belden Cat6a solid. In practice I have not kinked or damaged either.

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Well, 6 months ago I had a NAC 172, NAP150x, KEF R100 and a cheap old NAS so I’ve already gone +20! Perhaps that’s why a +1 is a little underwhelming!

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Hopefully people move to DNS-SD and we get rid of the need for multicast once and for all. See https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-homenet-simple-naming-03

This has generally been my findings with all this ethernet stuff, makes little to no difference in any of my systems.

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Has anyone tried adding a medical (IEC 60601-1) network isolator in series with the Ethernet connection to the audio equipment?
This increased electrical isolation from the rest of the network and wiring may make improvements for some.

Therefore on a sound per pound basis the addition of BJC 6a cables and Cisco 2960 switches (assuming they are pre loved) seems good value compared to the addition of 555DR.

Yup, definitely worth doing in my case.