Which with Ethernet is both directions…of course.
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My ethernet went down and I replaced the cat6 to my nd555…initially on switchon it was not good immediately apparent… after about a week it settled to pretty good… the cinnamon was the same…it simply started at not bad and ended up wow…
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To enter in to the testing I just ordered in a belden cat5e catsnake and a Van Damme cat6e from designacable, princely sum of £20. These I will compare to a standard unbranded Cat6 I got from work, BJC cat 5e that’s in use in my system and whatever else I can lay my hands on in the house. I think I have a cat7 somewhere to. This will be from 2960 to Atom.
As ever a great read Gary😎
Just so, & as said so many times before.
I’ll admit to a touch of this madness when I first bought my MeiCord, Cat6 (UTP)
MeiCord say the cables are not directional (no surprise there then) but to try it yourself & maybe you might find a preferential direction & I did experiment with just the 4m run from switch to NDX.
However as the MeiCords have wire management guides in their RJ45 plug design - a black one for the CW twisted pair end & white for a CCW twist, so its easy to ID the cable twist direction & to maintain the same twist rotation all along the NAS-Switch-NAS run. Did it make any difference ? … but at least it has some logic.
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I’m sure Naim are just as fascinated with this cable directionality themselves, especially if they reverse an earth wire in one of their boxes or something. I’m pretty sure they’ve said this themselves in one way or another in the past. It’s a phenomenon that no one can truly explain but just know that it’s real and is there. Like gravity.
Gravity is easy to explain. The Earth sucks. 
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Apparently they listen to the wire and decide which way sounds best, and that determines how they are marked up.
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It’s beyond the point of no return here, as the Vodkas have left the building with their new owner. While he was here, we listened to a few choons, as you do. On one of them, a rather odd buzzy sound was no longer present and despite being pretty loud the sound was more relaxed and yet just as engaging. A bit less edge of the seat perhaps, but overall the best I’ve heard with this system. I get the impression that the AQ is emphasising some bits that maybe shouldn’t be emphasised, rather like speakers that throw bits at you rather than keeping everything as a coherent whole. Impressive, but ultimately a bit too much. It depends what you like I suppose. There is no right or wrong, no better or worse. The cash from the AQs funds the new base for the MW block, so it’s all good.
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And maybe there Xanthe you have hit on why there is such disagreement over the enhancement (or otherwise) a particular Ethernet/streaming cable makes.
We are listening to the same cable, say an AQ Vodka between say switch and streamer, but our individual combinations of kit and, for want of a better phrase, noise environments, are all rather different, producing different effects from the introduction of said cable.
This could explain why these types of threads go on endlessly and occasionally with some rancour and often little consensus.
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In principle I don’t know 100% percent yet. And normally I would ask again for the chord music for a couple of days,…but restructuring at work with the related uncertainties…, make me being cautious. Might get the AQ Diamond and pause a bit…
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The upgrade to Diamond is still somehow maneagble. It’s better and loses the initial issues after a longer period of listening.
Hi all!
Music Lover checking in…
Head about this thread from a friend.
I guess I was one of the first persons owning Linn KDS (2007?) and me and a long time tweaking partner started testing various items.
We found out that EVERYTHING matters in digital. We wasn’t prepared of that…
What ripping SW you used, the settings, the DVD/CD-ripping hardware, the table the ripping device was sitting on.
The NAS impacted both the sound and musicality. Same with the network switch and cables.
And YES, ethernet cables are different, some more musical than others - and of course they have a direction.
All this has been verified in double blind tests. Including some Linn Sales representative and senior staff.
We can debate from a technical point of view all day long about whats possible or not but why?
It can be heard.
Rock On!
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Horses For Courses. …and I deleted my post by accident. Bloody iPad.
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Well said sir. Fear not the varying opinions. Enjoy your music
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Good summary - and you are right to call a distinction between optimising your home LAN for reliability and optimal functioning, and using consumer home network audiophilia like boutique unmanaged switches and streaming cables for analogue EM noise shaping.
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And of course one need not preclude the other. Indeed, I would have thought the former a prerequisite of the latter.
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Absolutely unbelievable,.what a recommendation 
.
And all hundreds and again hundreds,.possibly thousands,.who during these three years experienced a great soundquality raise,since @anon4489532 and Simon-in-Suffolk introduced the Cisco 2960 on the forum.
They seem to you to completely ignore.?
Below,.one of my posts at the beginning of the thread.
And this is how most people perceive their Cisco when they connect it in the system.
“• I installed a Cisco WS-C2960-8TC-L in a friends music-system this weekend that was.
He didn’t see what I did,.so when I started playing,he asked if I had changed the signal-source too.
So great was the difference in soundquality this time,.in that music-system with this Cisco.”
Great to read what the new member @Music_Lover writes,.he seems to know what he’s talking about.
Strange that nobody in the “Spec-tech”-gang has commented,.because he seems to have tested with professionals,and knows what he’s talking about.
I share his conclusions to 100%.as opposed to what TiberioMagadino has written in the whole thread.
/Peder🤔
Did not know HP did switches, some reasonable refurbished ones on the net. Have you tried vs a Cisco, if-so, what one?
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The Cisco just happens to be the one that Simon recommended on the basis that it worked well and the sonic results were better than some others, such as the little Netgear. I’m sure there are better switches out there and if someone was to do endless listening tests I’m sure they’d find it. The Cisco is a tried and tested example and that you can get one for under fifty quid has got to be good.
It’s important to keep an open mind and not to become obsessive about this.
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