340 euros / m vs 20 euros for BJ . It’s what I mean expensive.
I didn’t found that there is a correlation between price and sound for the Ethernet cables. It’s not my point.
It’s just a summary of the members here using Ethernet cables: 8 think that expensive cables ( fancy boutique) are not useful. 15 find that fancy Ethernet cables ( vodka and more expensive) are « sounding « better than cheap ones.
That seems to be a simple illustration of what I describe above in the ‘type 4’ distribution,
i.e. psychological effects are dominating the physical effects.
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Have you counted the ones that do not find a difference?
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No, because like in the Brexit vote, they can be ignored! 
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I would not categorise the listening experience as a psychological effect…
It’s an experience, taste, preference…
You can count me, also. I have tried Cinnamon and BJC - and can find no difference at all over bog-standard cables.
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But subjective evaluation is subject to psychological effects (I trained as an organoleptic tester, so I know how difficult to eliminate the effects of psychological biases).
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Cinnamon is not in the high price range I mentioned. ( vodka and more in my list).
Well, that is your particular imposition of a threshold. There are people who claim an improvement in sound from the cinnamon.
It’s not an evaluation Xanthe. I report only the preferences of the members. They all compared their existing cables vs past cheap ones.
I agree. I choosed expensive at the level of vodka. However I saw only Cinnamon and Meicord as cables in the medium price range ( 50/ 100 euros per meter). So I preferred the extremes, from cheap to really much more expensive.
The problem is, most of those boutique cables are unobtanium for a lo of us. And in my system, the BJC sound so much more natural and neutral than either of the lo-price AQ and Melco boutique cables I have kicking around (and I’m going to order a BJC 6a to compare to my Ghent Belden 6a Catsnake JSSG360 outer shielded final cable to streamer).
Yes, I believe the Chord Music probably sounds better, but so would a climb up the Naim ladder in boxes, and I know where my money would be spent if I had it. For those whom money is not an issue, then I say why not? If you’re running a 500 system, and have reached the top of the ladder, then the Chord Music would just be a new step built on. For us mere peasants, the BJC cables have been a nice surprise. I’m only kicking myself because they’re literally down the street ten minutes and I didn’t do this a long time ago!
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I have never tried very expensive cables - and would not fork out such large amounts of money in order to try them. If someone were to send me some examples to try, I would do so, but not otherwise, as I don’t have that much money to, in my expectation, waste.
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Perhaps BJ cables are all you need. I will report soon. If the BJ sound better vs my vodka and diamond, I have wasted my money. ( maybe 40% per cable if I sell them). I hope not…but will report honestly.
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OK fine then we are agree, you haven’t attempted an evaluation of your data, I have.
You are making no evaluation of the data as to whether expensive cables are better, my evaluation of the data indicates…
Overall, for the observed population, psychological factors in the estimation of quality seem to be of slightly greater importance than physical factors. While there is some (understandable) psychological correlation between price and quality there is no definitive physical correlation between price and quality.
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Xanthe, many thanks for this clear explananrton, albeit somewhat theoretical and speculative.
Your explanation about how the same ethernet cable can produce a different ‘sound’ with different Streamer/DAC combinations could go some way to explain why there are differences of opinions about the same ethernet/streaming cables, together with an individual’s personal preferences, not to mention expectation bias and different noise environments.
There are clearly a variety of influences on the ‘effect’ an ethernet cable has on the sound from a particular system in a particular noise environment, and bizarrely the design and construction of the cable itself may be a minor influence.
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It’s not actually that speculative, it’s a conclusion based on my experience of designing audio amplifiers and dealing with the ultrasonic spuriae output by early CD players.
These ultrasonic frequencies are a form of RFI with particular, specific frequency distributions - a problem not dissimilar to the effect the tuned circuit of an Ethernet cable has on the analogue electronics in a DAC.
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and then perhaps ‘expectation bias’ can be directly correlated with the cost of cables in the tests.
You may not agree, but it is a possibility or maybe one factor in the equation.
Edit: - just noticed that Xanthe got here before me in an earlier post.
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But Saffron is much more expensive…
Sorry! I’ll get my coat.
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You are in the second list, preferring not expensive cables.