Which Ethernet car shall I get to go from Router to Unitiqute2? I’m baffled by all the different specs and ra ge of price, so a link to a decent no frills one would be great!
Thanks in advance
Get one that is long enough and made well. Excel do very good value ethernet cables.
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I would just go for any certified Cat5e UTP (unshielded) cable. I would avoid the extremely cheap ones you see on ebay from unknown sellers, just go for a decent supplier. I find Cable Monkey pretty good.
Then, if you really want to disappear down the rabbit hole of streaming cable comparisons, you have something that works as intended against which to compare them.
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Spend the little extra and get a Blue Jeans Cable Cat 6a. Huge thread on all of this nonsense on here already. I’ve tried a few and the BJC on my office UQ is the best.
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If you want a straight recommendation, get a Cat 6A from Blue Jeans Cables in Seattle. They are great cables, sound good and are very well priced. If you order from their website they arrive in a couple of days. I’ve swapped from a £300 wire to one of these for a tenth of the price and it’s better in my opinion.
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Setting aside the recent hysteria surrounding BJC, originally heavily promoted by Nestor Turton/Tiberio Magadino across the web-a-sphere, a few 272 users round here have settled on them in preference to the more expensive range of AQ cables. To be fair, most have not really explored the options particularly extensively, but, who knows, they may suit you.
Personally, I found them a bit clod-ish, lacking subtlety, missing detail, character and depth but really, unless you’re prepared to spend a lot more, they may well be sufficient. At a modest price level, I’ve found Chord C-Stream and Meicord to be pretty good, certainly better than BJC in my experience. But, hey, you do get a sort of certificate thingy so you’ll think you’ve got an extra GCSE. 
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Agreed, superb cables and sensible prices.
These are Connectix cables.
Connectix are a manufacturer.
Another excellent cable assembler is Blue Jeans Cables.
Belden is the manufacturer.
There is some disagreement, but the BJC and Connectix Ethernet cables measure better than most, if not all, audiophile Streaming cables and I found them more reliable. The difference in sound is quite small and I doubt I could reliably pick individual makes out of a line up.
I prefer plastic connectors over metal ones as I feel they are minimising the chances of the patch lead acting as an aerial.
I’d go with a BJC cat 6a unless you’re set on wasting money on more expensive non-spec boutique cables that result in inferior SQ. 
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Just to put things in perspective, a 3 metre long certified Cat5e cable from Cable Monkey costs £1 + VAT. The BlueJeans equivalent is about 10 times the price. It might not look as sexy as a fancy Audioquest or Chord streaming cable, which might cost 100 or 1000 times as much, but I think it still begs the question as to where you draw the arbitrary line between a decent cable and a boutique/audiophile cable.
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Chord Music, 10 meters, of course. Without hesitation !
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There are two current threads devoted to this very subject: Ethernet Switch and Cables Mania, and Blue Jeans Ethernet Cables.
From them you will see that the answer is clear as mud. More specifically it will depend on your streamer or renderer+DAC, on the rest of your network, on your ears, and possibly on the electrical environment of your house.
Initially at least I suggest going for a well-made ethernet cable that is guaranteed to meet the relevant (e.g. Cat 5e) specification, in a colour of your choice. if it doesn’t sound as good as you think it should, or you are of a tweaking kind, or you have money burning a hole in your pocket, try any or all of those mentioned in those threads.
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My Muso-2 which I purchased in July of this year, came with a VANDESAIL Cat 7 Ethernet cable. I decided to replace all my Cat 5e with the VANDESAIL Cat 7 product. If there was any difference in SQ it was not obviously to me. However I am very pleased with the build quality of the VANDESAIL and it’s very affordable via Amazon. The maker says they are Fluke tested and passed but they provide no proof document.
+1 on the recommendation for Blue Jeans Cable. They guarantee it’s in spec and test every cable they sell with a certificate stating so. That’s all you need. The so-called audiophile ethernet cables are BS. These are data cables, not audio cables.
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Pity that they do not offer any flat cables?
I’m using chord c stream which is a step up in music from previous qed one
Another vote here for the BJC Cat 6a full loom. A pair of jeans and a Vodka is also good if you require more detail, flare and intensity (edge of seat experience), depending on your mood swings of course, but for a no nonsense solution, the BJCs won’t disappoint.
So if you add vodka you get flares? Maybe two would give you bell bottoms.
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Well one could try with both platforms I guess…
Hey Nigel,
Maybe you were a little too hasty in selling off your Vodka so quickly? With BJC Cat 6a everywhere else in the chain apart from Vodka to streamer? I‘m finding this collaboration quite delightful indeed. In fact very nice.
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It’s fine, and sounds great. Listen, decide, move on.
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