6 ms·

So do Ethernet cables have their own sound?

24 points by sz4kerto 13y ago

sz4kerto 13y ago
Sorry for bringing the topic up again, but this might be the 'ultimate' article. "So do Ethernet cables have their own sound? This is no longer a question but a statement. The cable between switches is less important than the ones connected to the end points (NAS and/or streaming device), but a decent type like the AudioQuest Carbon is certainly worth the price in high end systems."
- dagw 13y ago
  My favorite bit (talking about a setup where your music server sound card is plugged directly into your DAC): "In that case only commands are send over the LAN and access to the internet is limited to metadata and covers. A decent CAT-5 like Pearl will be fine" So the author is at least willing to concede that spending much more than £30 for a 1.5 meter network cable doesn't add much to the vibrance, color and quality of the downloaded album covers and metadata.
andrewcooke 13y ago
love the racism(?) at the end - "We should have expected a famous cable manufacturer to make its best sounding cable the most expensive, but this is not always the case I can assure you. Sometimes cables are made more and more expensive for export markets and the increased price has nothing to do with sound quality." because only those dumb foreigners buy cables because they are expensive...
- lucian1900 13y ago
  "Foreigners" are not necessarily of a different race.
- dagw 13y ago
  fear of foreigners is called "xenophobia" not racism.
micheljansen 13y ago
Is this a particular strain of satire that I'm not in on or is this supposed to be serious? Genuinely can't tell.
radiowave 13y ago
Oddly enough I've heard of location sound guys using CAT5 cable to carry analogue mic signals back to the sound recorder, largely because it's cheap and readily available on location. Their impression was that it was basically fine, so long as you have decent transformers at each end. The audiophile folks would pass out cold if they ever learned about all the things that the signal goes through before it reaches their precious enclave...
- KaiserPro 13y ago
  Well its solid core, twisted pair(properly so) cheap and rated to 50Mhz. The main difference between expensive mic cables and cheap ones is the amount of string packed in to it to make it coil better. Most mic cable has a few tiny strands of copper flung together. More importantly they tend to carry a bit of capacitance, which means that when you run phantom power along it, it turns into a very dull microphone. (someone drops the cable there is an audible boing gernerated by the strands of the cable moving around.)
- sz4kerto 13y ago
  Using CAT5 as analogue cable is fine, it's a cheap, high-quality, low impedance cable. But this article is talking about TCP transmission, sadly enough :(
  - oakwhiz 13y ago
    Well, let's see: The increase in latency and decrease in throughput of a TCP connection from a single (improbable) occurance of a corrupted packet on a modern LAN is negligible. Even if these audiophiles are streaming raw 192 kHz 32-bit 5.1 surround audio, that only seems to be about 37 Mbps. Any network audio streaming program worth its salt will buffer some number of samples to accommodate minor interruptions. So "magic" aside, you're probably not going to be getting packet loss with a "regular" cable. If a cable is good enough for Gigabit Ethernet, it's definitely good enough for your ears...
  - radiowave 13y ago
    Right, though for a lot of audio guys it's a bit unnerving to be working with unshielded cable.
PinguTS 13y ago
Sorry to say, but that is complete BS from the technical point of view. May he should have talked to an electrical engineer first, before writing this BS. There are 2 things the quality of an Ethernet cable has an influence: jitter on the cable and signal quality in terms of that the Ethernet frame may be recognized as corrupted has to be repeated, which again comes down to jitter. Jitter is also introduced by the communication that goes on in parallel. As the Ethernet cable has no influence on the data itself (bit flips are covered by the CRC) there can be no influence at the higher layers at. If that would be the case you couldn't trust any communication at all.
- pdpi 13y ago
  You're preaching to the choir, mate.
zizzer 13y ago
I went back to part 1 and looked at his conclusion...it's painful to read. Here's an excerpt: "Beats me why music files differ, but they do! The only explanation I can come up with is that the zero and one values represent a lower and higher voltage in the cable and in the sender or receiver. This is actually an analogue signal when we look at it on a scope. We audiophiles agree that cables sound different with analogue signals, so why not with Ethernet data? Next, any interface for Ethernet has a correction circuit for errors. With many errors this interface has to work hard, that will result in a greater need for current from the power supply and the processor heating up. A bad cable, or one that easily picks up interference, introduces a lot of errors so that might be the cause of a change in sound quality. " An audiophile and his money are soon parted it seems.
ohwp 13y ago
When I first read the article I was thinking that analog audio was send over those cables. I could not believe the article is about digital signals. It's amazing how some people are fooling themselves.
bigB 13y ago
It would sound even better if he freezes the cable first :) Seriously though, i would have expected the author to have some basic knowledge of digital signals. Audiophiles are are different breed of people I guess.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
>AudioQuest proved to me that we still have honest manufacturers around the globe. That's got to be my favorite.
thu 13y ago
Notice the prices at the bottom of the article. This seems to be the product page for the most expensive one: http://www.audioquest.com/ethernet/diamond http://www.audioquest.com/ethernet/diamond
chrisBob 13y ago
Those are some beautiful cables. Perhaps nice cables make your music sound better the same way stickers make your car faster. They also make USB cables, and Best Buy will sell you a $125 iPod (30 pin) cable if you are interested. Really though: if someone makes 20x as much as I do each month, then why shouldn't they spend 20x as much on a cable. Isn't that the American Dream? This review is providing a service: helping to keep the 1% from feeling like idiots while they figure out what to do with their disposable income. Deep down they know it just looks nicer, but this lets them justify it. You know, like fine wine, or a Porsche (pronounced with an 'Ah' at the end).
jamesbrownuhh 13y ago
Can't trust a word of this unless we can be sure that the reviewer is using proper Audiophile-grade Ethernet switches. I hope they review some of those soon. :) Actually, surely the presence of two switches in the network has already fatally compromised the ease and sonic presence of the soundstage... Or other such bollocks.
GrinningFool 13y ago
Reminds me of: http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Cable-Version/dp/B000I1X6PM http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Cable-Version/dp... It's now discontinued, it used to be $1000 then $500. The reviews are priceless.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
Let's create a class on Coursera: Analog and Digital signals for Audiophiles
jstelly 13y ago
I'm glad to see all of the comments here. I briefly thought this article was written specifically to troll me personally.

24 points by sz4kerto 13y ago

Sorry for bringing the topic up again, but this might be the 'ultimate' article. "So do Ethernet cables have their own sound? This is no longer a question but a statement. The cable between switches is less important than the ones connected to the end points (NAS and/or streaming device), but a decent type like the AudioQuest Carbon is certainly worth the price in high end systems."

dagw 13y ago
My favorite bit (talking about a setup where your music server sound card is plugged directly into your DAC): "In that case only commands are send over the LAN and access to the internet is limited to metadata and covers. A decent CAT-5 like Pearl will be fine" So the author is at least willing to concede that spending much more than £30 for a 1.5 meter network cable doesn't add much to the vibrance, color and quality of the downloaded album covers and metadata.

andrewcooke 13y ago

love the racism(?) at the end - "We should have expected a famous cable manufacturer to make its best sounding cable the most expensive, but this is not always the case I can assure you. Sometimes cables are made more and more expensive for export markets and the increased price has nothing to do with sound quality." because only those dumb foreigners buy cables because they are expensive...

lucian1900 13y ago
"Foreigners" are not necessarily of a different race.
dagw 13y ago
fear of foreigners is called "xenophobia" not racism.

micheljansen 13y ago

Is this a particular strain of satire that I'm not in on or is this supposed to be serious? Genuinely can't tell.

radiowave 13y ago

Oddly enough I've heard of location sound guys using CAT5 cable to carry analogue mic signals back to the sound recorder, largely because it's cheap and readily available on location. Their impression was that it was basically fine, so long as you have decent transformers at each end. The audiophile folks would pass out cold if they ever learned about all the things that the signal goes through before it reaches their precious enclave...

KaiserPro 13y ago
Well its solid core, twisted pair(properly so) cheap and rated to 50Mhz. The main difference between expensive mic cables and cheap ones is the amount of string packed in to it to make it coil better. Most mic cable has a few tiny strands of copper flung together. More importantly they tend to carry a bit of capacitance, which means that when you run phantom power along it, it turns into a very dull microphone. (someone drops the cable there is an audible boing gernerated by the strands of the cable moving around.)
sz4kerto 13y ago
Using CAT5 as analogue cable is fine, it's a cheap, high-quality, low impedance cable. But this article is talking about TCP transmission, sadly enough :(
- oakwhiz 13y ago
  Well, let's see: The increase in latency and decrease in throughput of a TCP connection from a single (improbable) occurance of a corrupted packet on a modern LAN is negligible. Even if these audiophiles are streaming raw 192 kHz 32-bit 5.1 surround audio, that only seems to be about 37 Mbps. Any network audio streaming program worth its salt will buffer some number of samples to accommodate minor interruptions. So "magic" aside, you're probably not going to be getting packet loss with a "regular" cable. If a cable is good enough for Gigabit Ethernet, it's definitely good enough for your ears...
- radiowave 13y ago
  Right, though for a lot of audio guys it's a bit unnerving to be working with unshielded cable.

PinguTS 13y ago

Sorry to say, but that is complete BS from the technical point of view. May he should have talked to an electrical engineer first, before writing this BS. There are 2 things the quality of an Ethernet cable has an influence: jitter on the cable and signal quality in terms of that the Ethernet frame may be recognized as corrupted has to be repeated, which again comes down to jitter. Jitter is also introduced by the communication that goes on in parallel. As the Ethernet cable has no influence on the data itself (bit flips are covered by the CRC) there can be no influence at the higher layers at. If that would be the case you couldn't trust any communication at all.

pdpi 13y ago
You're preaching to the choir, mate.

zizzer 13y ago

I went back to part 1 and looked at his conclusion...it's painful to read. Here's an excerpt: "Beats me why music files differ, but they do! The only explanation I can come up with is that the zero and one values represent a lower and higher voltage in the cable and in the sender or receiver. This is actually an analogue signal when we look at it on a scope. We audiophiles agree that cables sound different with analogue signals, so why not with Ethernet data? Next, any interface for Ethernet has a correction circuit for errors. With many errors this interface has to work hard, that will result in a greater need for current from the power supply and the processor heating up. A bad cable, or one that easily picks up interference, introduces a lot of errors so that might be the cause of a change in sound quality. " An audiophile and his money are soon parted it seems.

ohwp 13y ago

When I first read the article I was thinking that analog audio was send over those cables. I could not believe the article is about digital signals. It's amazing how some people are fooling themselves.

bigB 13y ago

It would sound even better if he freezes the cable first :) Seriously though, i would have expected the author to have some basic knowledge of digital signals. Audiophiles are are different breed of people I guess.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

>AudioQuest proved to me that we still have honest manufacturers around the globe. That's got to be my favorite.

thu 13y ago

Notice the prices at the bottom of the article. This seems to be the product page for the most expensive one: http://www.audioquest.com/ethernet/diamond http://www.audioquest.com/ethernet/diamond

chrisBob 13y ago

Those are some beautiful cables. Perhaps nice cables make your music sound better the same way stickers make your car faster. They also make USB cables, and Best Buy will sell you a $125 iPod (30 pin) cable if you are interested. Really though: if someone makes 20x as much as I do each month, then why shouldn't they spend 20x as much on a cable. Isn't that the American Dream? This review is providing a service: helping to keep the 1% from feeling like idiots while they figure out what to do with their disposable income. Deep down they know it just looks nicer, but this lets them justify it. You know, like fine wine, or a Porsche (pronounced with an 'Ah' at the end).

jamesbrownuhh 13y ago

Can't trust a word of this unless we can be sure that the reviewer is using proper Audiophile-grade Ethernet switches. I hope they review some of those soon. :) Actually, surely the presence of two switches in the network has already fatally compromised the ease and sonic presence of the soundstage... Or other such bollocks.

GrinningFool 13y ago

Reminds me of: http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Cable-Version/dp/B000I1X6PM http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Cable-Version/dp... It's now discontinued, it used to be $1000 then $500. The reviews are priceless.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

Let's create a class on Coursera: Analog and Digital signals for Audiophiles

jstelly 13y ago

I'm glad to see all of the comments here. I briefly thought this article was written specifically to troll me personally.