Did you buy from a US dealer for the SR cable
Yes, if you Google Synergistic Research it is the one that comes up top of the list, high end ā¦
Very nice chap called Alfred and ships free to the UK and offers a trial period on most items.
Cheers
1 Like
we seem to be a lot to like noise shaping 
1 Like
They twists rate for short runs itās not so essential in my experience.
I found this chart for Fast Ethernet
https://tr1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2015/05/07/dfc2c6c6-f49c-11e4-940f-14feb5cc3d2a/twist-rate.png
ā¦ the key thing is at the connector end not to untwist more than you need, typically around 13mmā¦ which isnāt so hard to do in practice.
However the twists donāt define the characteristic impedance ā¦ so you can vary the density without much impactā¦ over shortish distances. If you seperate out each pair or shield each pair then the twist rate becomes largely unimportant.
One for the tinkerersā¦ just call it a āstreaming cableā and you will be well away
I wonder whether this really depends on the manufacturer. The Blue Jeans Cables people in an email told me that they use 24 AWG on their Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6a cables, all of which use solid wire Belden bonded pair cables. The difference seems to be in the twist rates for the former two and in the shielding as well for the latter. There is an interesting article on the Blue Jeans site about why Cat6a may not be a good choice for audio patch cables, however (vs 6). Iām just posting this for information. I canāt claim to understand anything about it whatsoever apart from what my ears tell me.
I noted this when I decided to move on from the false promises & mad money cables aimed at the āaudiophileā market.
I had every intention of going with BJCās because of their sensible applied engineering & also that they tested & published the assembled patch cable compliance results.
I was but off by the use of solid core, but could not determine if that applied to the Belden 1700 Cat5e only or the BJC C6 Cat-6+6Aās.
Whatever I chose MeiCord Opal Cat6 which has 24AWG (0.22 mmĀ²) but unlike BJC with a single solid core wire, they use a seven strand flex wire which to me seems a more sensible option for use as a patch cord. And like BJC MeiCord test & publish the cables for compliance using the same Fluke test as BJC
1 Like
It may well be that sounds better - the Belden cable used in the DesignaCable is a stranded construction, but also uses bonded pairs, unlike the Meicord AFAIK, and has a very thick protective sheath. The tech people tend to prefer solid cables as far as I can tell, but not for patch cables because that would be less robust in continual flexing from unpacking, connecting up, packing up and moving on etc. - however thatās not going to happen in domestic audio: when not going daft as I have comparing cables, they will be connected up and left in situ year on end.
2 Likes
Is there any experience with Nordost Ethernet cables in this forum,Iāll be glad to ear?
Always an interesting read these cabling threads. They are rarely, if at all, conclusive however. The various standards that a cable can be built to arenāt intended specifically for audio transmission. S-i-S makes very valid points when highlighting the differences between cabling types, itās not necessarily the case that 8 is better than 7 is better than 6 and each cable specification is defined with specific use cases in mind, usually equipment rooms and data centres or infrastructure installations.
I would suggest itās important to consider any cabling as part of a complete system. Your switch/router ports could be 100Mbit/s or 1000Mbit/s, then whatever flavour of cable in the middle ending at a 100Mbit/s interface on your streamer.
Thereās many reasons why a streamer would only have a 100Mbit/s Ethernet interface, anything more is unnecessary if nothing else!
The comments about how a cable can introduce noise on the signal path are important here as a cable can and will add a characteristic to the connection which can play a part in perceived quality of listening.
Thinking through the cable design logically it would seem to my mind to make sense that a CAT6 type cable would give the most benefits, other cable types would probably create more problems than solutions but could still āsoundā ābetterā to one individual vs another.
I find the topic interesting as I personally use Wi-Fi between my LAN and my Naim streamer, to my ears it sounds as good as Iād expect it to. Iām planning to run some Ethernet to it at some point just out of curiosity, the cabling to the Router is a faff though which is what put me off to date!
As and when I do that iāll more than likely just run a Cat6 cable through the floor using a drum of cable and terminate it off myself, reason being I can get it from work so itās a low cost experiment.
1 Like
I have a Nordost Blue heaven. It is better than the Audioquest Forest it replaced. Lower noise and more details.
1 Like
yes but itās 10 times more expensive vs the forrest. It would be interesting to know how it compares vs the similar price vodka audioquest.
Thanks but i point to audioquest vodka level i am currently using melco c1 and need to know which one could be a better upgrade for me,c1 is a good cable but never compare him to anything else
Any particular reason why you would choose Cat6, when Cat5e is technically up to the job?
Good question, and in reality possibly makes no difference at all however CAT6 does have better screening between pairs and a tighter cable twist so in principle, crosstalk interference is reduced, whether that helps with lower bandwidth audio transmission or not remains to be seen. I donāt anticipate it to be any worse than CAT5e however and as I have a 100m roll of it from work itās easy enough to put a run in and try it out. I think in comparison to alternatives which are best suited for structured cabling, longer runs or much higher throughput than I require, CAT6 is a good balance between ease of install, bandwidth support and ability to mitigate noise conditions.
I have to run a cable between floors and rooms as well so the run is probably about 15m in total between the switch and the streamer. Till now iāve relied on Wi-Fi as it was simpler and didnāt require drilling holes or doing cabling between rooms, to be fair that works fine, itās more a curiosity exercise in my case and as I have all the bits I need for free, something to try out and see if I prefer or not.
Everything else I have wired in today, including a Mac Mini Roon server, is cabled using pre terminated CAT5e, also from spares at work.
Iāll certainly give feedback as I try it all out, Iāve never been tempted personally to spend Ā£100ās on audio specific streaming cables from Audioquest, Chord Cables and so forth, for me if I can have it working well enough and sounding acceptable Iām happy, but then Iām not a tweaking obsessive. If others have time and finances to go that route and find good results then happy days all round.
1 Like
In the end, after several comparisons with my NDX2/XPSDR/HiLine I hear no differences between Supra Cat8 (~$50-60), Blue Jeans tested/certified Cat6a (~$18) and inexpensive ($5) Monoprice Cat6a cables.
Iām just going to use my Blue Jeans cables and sell off the Supra Cat8 (for the waste of money spent I concluded it is) and continue using my Monoprice cables for other connections on my LAN (where they work just fine).
2 Likes
The standards donāt always give a good idea of audio performance. In my system, the Blue Jeans Cat6 is better than their Cat5e, both using Belden bonded solid cables, but the Cat5e Belden CatSnake broadcast cables also bonded but stranded from Designascable sound much better than both.
No they donāt, nor should they. The conclusion here is probably that it comes down in part to individual tastes. One user could try a cable and like it whilst you or I might listen to the same system and not like it. Conductor material is another factor here, and also driving the higher cost of some of the streaming focused options, silver for example.
I guess my interest was evaluating if a particular cable design gave consistent results and without having to spend Ā£Ā£Ā£ to get an enjoyable listening experience. This is primarily on the basis of screening/shielding and grounding.
I also have 100m of CAT6 lying idle so thatās an obvious starting point in my case!
There are no standards for audio performance on ethernet cables for the very simple reason that ethernet cables donāt carry audio data. They only carry binary transmission packets. That data has no format. Itās just raw binary data with header info. Itās up to the hardware at the receiving end to reassemble/decode it back into digital audio. That hardware is error detecting (via CRC) and correcting (retransmission of bad packets).