Forgive my ignorance but this is a genuine question. In a discussion about audio cables making no audible difference, provided they are basic but we'll built and suitable for the job required, gauge, shielding etc, a friend said well Cat 6 cable allows much more data through than Cat 5 due to more copper and better construction, why can't 'improved' audio cables do the same.? I guess the requirements of data transfer are completely different to audio requirements. Can someone give me a simple answer please.?? Always trying to learn, but often feel way out of my depth on ASR. Thanks.
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Cat cable
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Any cable can carry vastly more “data” than just audio frequencies.
Cat 6 uses 250 MHz bandwidth to transmit 10gbps (for each pair). For audio, we just need 20 kHz… go figure..
.. that’s about 10000 48kHz 24bit Flac stereo streams simultaneously..
Cat 6 uses 250 MHz bandwidth to transmit 10gbps (for each pair). For audio, we just need 20 kHz… go figure..
.. that’s about 10000 48kHz 24bit Flac stereo streams simultaneously..
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Apesbrain
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Exactly. An ethernet cable needs only to get the data undisturbed from point A to point B. If it fails to do so, the audible consequences are clearly audible as glitches and drop-outs. Networks have built-in error checking and redundancy to minimize transmission errors the effectiveness of which can be easily measured. CAT cables have long had sufficient bitrate to handle your typical 16/44 FLAC stream; starting with CAT5e, the highest bitrate formats are also no problem. Digital audio cables behave in a similar way but can be subject to timing variances, i.e. jitter. Modern digital audio rendering equipment have an internal buffer to collect incoming data and meter it forward at the precisely correct timing.
Analog interconnects and speaker cables behave in a different way carrying current, not data. It is therefore believed that their construction can have an audible effect on the transmission. Many reasons have been hypothesized for this including the EQ/time smear effect of various metals used as conductors, the geometry of internal windings, and materials used as insulators. I think reasonable people can disagree on whether they've ever heard this demonstrated as it can be very subtle and subjective. I have heard a speaker cable have an effect on the sound of a speaker. I don't think I've ever seen an objective set of measurements confirming the effect, however.
Data connections are about throughput, among other things. Different specs enable different levels of connection.
Audio cables are signal connections. They operate within specs. Overengineering does not change what they do to more than 100%, there is no next level to get to.
What better audio cables can do is last longer, shield better, have better plugs. Nothing wrong with quality cables. But this is neither very expensive nor anywhere near the ridiculous overengineering some try to sell at high multiples of any reasonable price.
One can run audio, analog and digital, over 6 quite successfully (and I do).
I can record 22 channels in 48Khz/24 bits over an USB 2 interface, which is several orders slower than 10 gbps. What do we learn from this: once the bandwith of a digital connection is sufficiently high a higher bandwidth won't make anything better, especially not the sound.
EERecordist
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Add to all the good answers.. Transmission lines have very good mathematical models in electrical engineering. Common types are coaxial shielded. It turns out twisted pairs are good transmission lines, especially when paired with balanced differential transmitters and receivers. So in the absence of electromagnetic interference, they work well for line-level audio even without shielding.
Cat 7 has not been standardized. But it is commonly 4 individually foil shielded twisted pairs and 1 drain wire. Some people use that for audio. You will see shielded RJ45 connectors on a set of 4 XLR breakout boxes at each end.
Cat 7 has not been standardized. But it is commonly 4 individually foil shielded twisted pairs and 1 drain wire. Some people use that for audio. You will see shielded RJ45 connectors on a set of 4 XLR breakout boxes at each end.
Yup. AES72.
oldsysop
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Does though. If trying to fix issues that don't exist, esoteric speaker cables will impact signal transparency negatively.
Aure
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Hello, a simple diagram showing the different Ethernet cable categories should help put things into perspective. I'm running Cat 6 throughout my home network.Forgive my ignorance but this is a genuine question. In a discussion about audio cables making no audible difference, provided they are basic but we'll built and suitable for the job required, gauge, shielding etc, a friend said well Cat 6 cable allows much more data through than Cat 5 due to more copper and better construction, why can't 'improved' audio cables do the same.? I guess the requirements of data transfer are completely different to audio requirements. Can someone give me a simple answer please.?? Always trying to learn, but often feel way out of my depth on ASR. Thanks.
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Nothing is ever that simple, I run 2.5GbE quite happily on the CAT5e I flooded my house with almost 20 years ago and CAT6 is rated for 10Gbps on runs under 55m
Aure
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Good evening from France, and thank you for sharing your very interesting experience. It would have been extremely useful to me in a discussion I had on a previous forum about how CAT8 supposedly "crushes everything" in terms of musical fluidity... but anyway.Nothing is ever that simple, I run 2.5GbE quite happily on the CAT5e I flooded my house with almost 20 years ago and CAT6 is rated for 10Gbps on runs under 55m
Does this presentation of the different cable categories turn out to be inaccurate or merely theoretical? That being said, if your actual speeds are higher than the advertised specifications, I would worry even less about the Ethernet cable category when it comes to audio.
Err what? I have no idea how all this cable stuff for 'esoteric' networking keeps going on...
Cat 5e is pretty common and cheap, and there unlikely to be a normal house where a cable run is so long that you can't run 1 or 2.5 Gbps easily. In context, a CD quality FLAC probably needs 800 kbps, which you can almost do using nothing but wet string. If you like to run 10G, then fine, get cat 6, I'm sure the internet will keep up
Cat 5e is pretty common and cheap, and there unlikely to be a normal house where a cable run is so long that you can't run 1 or 2.5 Gbps easily. In context, a CD quality FLAC probably needs 800 kbps, which you can almost do using nothing but wet string. If you like to run 10G, then fine, get cat 6, I'm sure the internet will keep up
The 2.5GbE (or 5GbE) Ethernet standards didn't exist when CAT5e cabling was standardized. CAT5e supports 1GbE up to 100m, but I would not expect 2.5GbE to work reliably over that distance. The longest run in my house is from the attic to the garage, which is about 20m. I have a similar length between my study and attic, but that runs 10GbE on OM3 fibre.
The main difference for us (music listeners) is that Cat6 has no protection against external electromagnetic interference. I bought 25 m Ugreen F/FTP Cat 8 on Ali for my home network. The price difference between 7 and 8 was insignificant, so this is my choice.
There are several protocols to transmit audio over Ethernet, See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_networking
Some just use the Ethernet cable as an audio cable (AES 72). Other protocols like Dante and AES 67 put the audio inside TCP/IP packets on Ethernet, so it can be routed via standard Ethernet switches and routers.
Some just use the Ethernet cable as an audio cable (AES 72). Other protocols like Dante and AES 67 put the audio inside TCP/IP packets on Ethernet, so it can be routed via standard Ethernet switches and routers.
Irrelevant for moving IP packets containing audio on a LAN.
CAT6 uses twisted pairs of wires with differential signalling, what do you think this does?
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