… & whats it called ???
I thought about asking that out of pure curiosity, but I decided not to bother as it’ll be pure random chance if it works better or less well in anyone else’s system! 
Yes agreed, but it might be another to add to the sub £90 list that has not been considered before.
I’m giving the BJC plenty of time to run in Pierre. I won’t do a serious comparison for a few days yet (and we have two very young grandchildren here this weekend who are causing absolute chaos while their parents are at a wedding).
Nervous breakdown time 
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I haven’t read every post on this thread but simply scanned it. Overall I’m a bit confused regarding optimal switch,Ethernet cable,placement relative to streamer, far vs. close by etc.
Wouldn’t it be useful if Naim published guidelines for optimal setup given they must have optimized this to test their streamers and hence already have the information. They must see us struggling with this topic.Any discussion regarding this @Richard.Dane
I suspect Naim don’t want to get caught up with a lot of this nonsense. Their network players work fine with a standard network setup as it is and most of this is icing on the cake anyway. Quality music playback has a diminishing audience so advising people they need to spend black box levels of money on cables and be careful how they support their Network switch is probably not the best way to go. A bit of sensible advice around network setup (as Linn do) with a few subtle hints of gains to be had with some experimentation may be in order.
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I wouldn’t worry too much about this. The impact of specific switches, different types of ethernet cables and length of ethernet connection is in my opinion small or negligible. You may find subtle differences, but those differences (in my opinion and in each of my systems) are not significant in comparison with say, the differences between different streamers or streamer/DAC combinations.
I expect quite a few people on this forum and thread to disagree with my opinion, but it is the one that I hold.
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Makes sense but that implies minimal gain if any in SQ since you would think that they would like for their patrons to get the most out of the equipment.
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It’s a fine line though. While this is probably accepted practice on an internet forum, your average buyer wanting to buy a Naim network player would be put off by the supposed fiddling needed to get it to sound good. I think Naim have a good position here already…
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In general I’m a boxes-before-cables person. Some cables give a better bang-per-buck than others, and once the boxwork is sorted then your ears + budget can explore. There’s no given absolute, despite wha is said here.
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Exactly! My intent was not to promote any individual patch cord but to support your original premise regarding situation/equipment dependency rather than cost dependency. I tried several patch cords that I had lying around which included an unbranded one and some from Buffalo, AMP (Tyco), Belden and IS707 by NEO/Oyaide. It was the last one (which cost between £40-45 several months ago) that yielded positive results. The patch cords were installed between the NAS and the switch as none, except the Buffalo are long enough to run between my switch and the streamer. None of them have any form of testing certification unlike the BJ cables mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
I am not sure what the conclusion is except to recognise the unpredictability of the outcome and that an expensive Ethernet cable might well be outperformed by a much cheaper patch cord in any particular system.
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FR, it’s an idiom
- To get ahead of somebody in a competition
However, it wasn’t a Blue Jeans cable.
Rgds
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The winning cable seems to have a solid OFC core plated in silver, which is quite fancy.
What cable do you use between switch and streamer?
Often people have their switch nearer their streamer.
Previously two AQ Vodkas between the NAS/Switch/streamer and a Chord C Stream between the UnitiServe SSD and the switch.
The switch and the NAS are close to each other and about 1.3m away from the streamer.
I’m interested to hear more about the Blue Jeans/ AQ Vodka comparison
I thought these pictures would be interesting. I was looking at my pile of cables and low and behold…
BJC, Belden GX10 Cat6a, not shielded … May have to try vs my AQ Vodka.
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I was also going to mention to try the BJC in both directions. I’ve always oriented my cables ( if not marked ) with any lettering pointing in the direction of the signal flow, ie from NAS to Router.
Good idea.
I always put them in the direction of the writing, but there’s no reason why the ‘noise shaping’ might not be equal in each direction.
Why Rick, why did you do that?
I suppose in the context of this thread its not the most crazy thing, but we are all aware are we not that data is travelling both ways?
lol.