The other factor that none of these cable & switch tests are considering is cable screen grounding;
Do the testers consider this ? or maybe more to the point is do they actually know about it & the potential consequences
I asked the question a few days ago, but no one responded.
Did you have all STP ethernet cables connecting the 2x Cisco shrouded ports & the same to the streamer & NAS, that raises the question is how many earth (ground) points did you have on the network.
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I bought 2 BJC 6a in September iirc and happened to get very good clear clean transparent sounding results in my system, replacing really cheap cables.
quite a few others around here got good results with the 6a.
But there is a screening issue that MikeB raises that interacts with your system, plus many other factors that mean it’s impossible to say in advance which might be best in your system.
They charged me about 15 squid for courier at the end of the purchase process - cables arrived 3 days later.
There is not a screen grounding issue with BJC Cat-6A as their RJ45 plugs are not metal shrouded, its these shrouds that make the screen electrical connection from end to end & between other network components. (see pic showing metal shrounds)
BJC Cat-6A has what they call a passive screen
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I am still really struggling to understand these sound differences in the context of a buffer?
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It’s not the delivered data (in the buffer) that is being affected. It’s the environmental changes caused by having a cable connected to your system.
See this:
The buffer will reduce the effect of jitter, but RFI conducted into the streamer / DAC via the Ethernet cable will couple through the PSU and EM coupling effects and will still influence the analogue electronics.
The electrical characteristics of the Ethernet cable act as a RF tuned circuit and influence the frequency distribution of the RFI entering the streamer / DAC.
And, presumably, disconnecting the cable during replay should reveal any EM or other electrical interference during the time that the buffer continues to operate.
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I always wondered about this. Wouldn’t the ‘noise’ have already propagated into the DAC/streamer buffer even if one pulls the cable?
But the noise would not be buffered - all that is in the buffer is the digital data. The noise can only affect things after the Digital to Analogue conversion. Changing the data within the buffer, or anywhere before the conversion will result in random changes to the music - changes that could not be described in terms of soundstage, or better/worse bass or treble, or lifting or dropping of veils or any other item of clothing. The changes to the bits in one word would have little or no relationship to the bits in another nearby or adjacent word.
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I ordered the BJ 6a on Monday afternoon and they arrived Thursday lunchtime. They sound considerably bettr than my Designacable Belden Catsnake and Blue Jeans Cat5e cables that I was using before
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The noise isn’t in the digital domain, if it were it would be data corruption.
As @Beachcomber says the analogue noise only acts in real time, not delayed through the buffer.
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The AQ vodka sounds much clearer today - raspiness has gone, but there is more of a ‘hissing’ on vocals at the end of words they are singing - almost like a slight whistle - which I guess is brightness - will give it a couple more days as does sound different to yesterday, part of me just wants to leave it as can’t be bothered faffing to find the perfect Ethernet cable 
maybe I’m a fool for spending £170 on an Ethernet cable (which was a discount!), but at the moment willing to take the hit to forget about it 
sounds okay today. If I order the BJC and they’re not as good gonna be a pain to return them. Plus I’ll have to order the 6 and 6a, then will be obsessing over which ones better. Then two of them for either side of the Cisco switch. So 4, and run them all in. Happy enough now…sort of… until tomorrow… 
Need minimum 100 hours to burn in…
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If you’re tempted, I’d say definitely forget the 5e.
I gave the damn Vodkas near on a month to run in and they did improve. It was like watching Trump mellow.
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I suspect they probably do - by default.
They obviously recommend Naim cables for analogue connections and very possibly (and this is just my educated guess) they do not believe that choice of digital cables and switches matters a great deal.
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That was my understanding at the factory visit … yeah as long as its gigabit…that was my view until I changed cables and switches omg… a very big difference…on a black box scale…
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They prefer to say they don’t believe. Until they will produce some…
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I was concerned … as they were demoing the statement - and obviously you need to hear it at it best … to my mind it must be being held back … and by a significant margin…
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And with a single PSU on the ND555. Perhaps the idea is to say: that’s the baseline.
That would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it, given that none of their streamers are gigabit: they all run 10/100 Ethernet inputs?
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