English Electric EE1

There’s a huge difference in price depending on which Sarum you talk about. A Super Sarum is no where near in performance or price of Sarum T for example.

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This is of course Sarum without the T, would have been much more expensive otherwise. The most important thing, however, is that I am super happy with how it performs :ok_hand::innocent:

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Curiosity pure and simple.

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Glad you’re enjoying it.

That’s what music is for!

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Apologies, poor attempt by me to continue the earlier joke by @frenchrooster. Don’t recall if it was in this thread or a different one.

My Chord Sarum cable is 1000mm.

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lol
I’m keeping my eyes on you and Frenchrooster

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I just got through a home audition with a Chord Sarum T streaming cable. Its performance fell short of a £50 BJC. Shocking really, for a cable that retails at over £5k!!

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Agreed. I went as far as trying one of the Sarum’s. Designacable 6a (floating) is all that’s required imho.

G

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I was using a DesignaCable CATsnake 6a (floating), on the final connection to my Naim Streamer until recently. It has now been replaced with a Shunyata Research Sigma which improves performance in most areas, but only slightly. Given the cost of the CATsnake it is a real bargain. I was shocked by the underperformance of the Sarum T. Chord make some great cables including lower end streaming cables, but at the higher end they are IMO vastly overpriced, given their mediocre performance.
The SR Sigma has removed the requirement for an ee1 in the final link of the streaming chain. It is now further up the chain and the benefit is marginal, if any.

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I note you didn’t get on with a PhoenixNet either. Both it and Sarum T are highly revealing so the fact that you actively disliked them strongly suggests an inadequate or sub-optimal system set up. The added fact that you can’t hear any difference (good or bad) with the EE1 in place tends to support this.

Why not post some detailed pictures of your system and the combined might of the Forum could probably help you get a far better sound than you’re currently experiencing. If you’re not too far from me, I’d happily come and have a listen.

It was a bit of a surprise though that you went to the trouble of demo-ing the Sarum T after you’d already told us that your contact in Chord’s service dept said he didn’t think there’s any difference between C Stream and Sarum or Music.

But hey, you probably dodged a bullet, particularly as your dealer was going to charge you nearly 3 times the normal retail price! Which dealer was that btw? I’d want to keep well clear. :smile:

It’s more or less a crap shoot as to whether or not a particular digital cable will have an effect on the SQ of your hifi that you prefer.

So the correlation between the price and SQ effect of streaming cables is relatively low.

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Dave, I note you do not have a Naim Streamer. This is after all a Naim forum not Linn or ANother.

The SarumT was 5 meters in length. Suggest you look up the RRP. No dealer is ripping me off and the Chord representative I had a discussion with appears to be very honest indeed. I am at liberty to test value for money with my own ears.

Some of your suggestions particularly on PinkFish have been very helpful. Chord kit is generally superb, but can also be over priced and average based on my listening tests. I am more than happy to support UK based companies, but they are not necessarily at the leading edge in all areas. If you are happy with your set up, great but please do not belittle others who do not subscribe to the ‘Chord’ for everything mantra. That is quite simply ridiculous.

I would say buy CATsnake and save yourself a bundle or consider top end Shunyata or AQ streaming cables.

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Can CATsnake be bought in EU or UK only?

DesignaCable in Nottingham will make a length up for you at a very reasonable price. Don’t forget to specify ‘Floating’ on the order form. They ship to the EU and International. Hope this helps.

Compared any cables against Supra CAT8? I’m looking for upgrades from wall to router to EE8 so need around 5-6m total and Catsnake could be a good option. Never liked BJC and preferred Supra CAT8 over it.

From wall to router, use floating design. You don’t want the wall socket to be electrically connected to the rest of the setup. Any unshielded U/UTP ethernet cable or shielded with floating design will prevent this.

I use BJC elsewhere but from router to streamer, I have Supra CAT8.

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Would you not be concerned that cat 8 has a shield and metal connectors and it potentially will transfer noise through its shielding?

You can buy Ethernet cables that don’t carry the shield connection through the plug, ensuring that they don’t connect to the port. Alternatively you can buy connection blocks which break the shield. One of these with a male connector into your streamer and a female connector for the cable would do it, although why you would need Cat8 to stream music us beyond me.

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Yes, that is puzzling!

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Actually no, not between the switch and streamer. The noise floor in the setup is already so low and Holo Red is very well isolated. Between the wall socket and the switch I use BJC to avoid introducing noise and crap which travels through the tens of meters of in-wall cabling. I have Netgear GS108E switch, which has measurably one of the lowest noise floors around. Alpha Audio has measured bunch of switches and GS108E performs even better than many audiophile switches. I also use LHY LPS25VA linear psu for it instead of the stock SMPS.

I bought Supra CAT8 because I needed one more ethernet-cable and didn’t want to make order to BJC for the sake of one 1m cable. Shipping from US, customs etc. So I decided to try Supra, which is widely available in Finland and costs very little in the context of audiophile cables. It works great and I actually couldn’t hear any difference between it and BJC (between the switch and streamer) so it stayed there and I used the BJC elsewhere.

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