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 L

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...