Hi-fi Ethernet cable - does it help with network streamer?

[antcollinet]

digital betterizer box

Lol - pinched.

 

[Nutul]

(...) upscaler or other digital betterizer box get's tested, some digital interconnect/patch cables can be included as a sideshow in the review

This nails it down once and for all. :-D

 

[fpitas]

While it's plain somebody is selling products under the OP's umbrella, I do wonder if the persona @ChrisCables is an AI bot scooping and disseminating our free opinions being shared here.
Tin foil hat? I have a custom Faraday helmet I seldom remove.

Or more humorously (and far more creepy) he just linked to that site so he could yank our chains here.

/I'll see your paranoia and raise you

 

[fpitas]

It's beginning to look like we'll never find out what advantage there is to braiding a power cable. My theory is it confuses the noise.

 

[Nutul]

My theory is it confuses the noise.

That, although difficult, too, to demonstrate, "sounds" already like an improvement to me...

 

[kemmler3D]

It's beginning to look like we'll never find out what advantage there is to braiding a power cable. My theory is it confuses the noise.

Everyone knows that once you hit higher voltages, the noise electrons are being pushed around too fast to make it around tight corners, so that's not far off. It's just science.

 

[Jinjuku]

Let's not forget that music is buffered. Take JRiver and setup a 1GB buffer. Setup a 10GBe network. I did for testing. I took a 16/44.1 CD and concatenated the entire album into one track. I was getting 332MB/s on a low end Celeron 3050 system. Started Playback in JRiver and in the 3 seconds that it took me to unplug the network connection the entire file was buffered and a 47 minute playback ensued with no network connection.

I had a believer in cable using Tidal. Tidal will cache entire songs. He queued up a 10 minute song. I waited 30 seconds and pulled the cable and asked him how it can possibly effect the sound? Song played for another 9:30 seconds and he couldn't tell when his 'cryo' treated cable was plugged in or removed.

 

[fpitas]

I waited 30 seconds and pulled the cable and asked him how it can possibly effect the sound? Song played for another 9:30 seconds and he couldn't tell when his 'cryo' treated cable was plugged in or removed.

OK. That's funny!

 

[Jinjuku]

Ok. Lets leave the primary function of a network cable (transferring data) aside for a moment because I agree in principle with all that's been said so far.
Let me put my question a different way and maybe it will become clearer for some who are getting a bit frosty in this discussion;

Could EMI/RFI be quantifiable as a residual, contaminant audible effect on the resultant audio output signal dependant on the type of network cable used?

Texas Instruments did a study on your EMI/RFI. They flat out said below 30MHz, and this is on older CAT5 (not even e), is noise immune below 30MHz.

To take your misunderstanding further: You should be able to plug a streamer in (they most assuredly run Linux) and if you can install iPerf generate full line rate data transfer and with no music playing measure the voltages coming out of your DAC.

 

[antcollinet]

I waited 30 seconds and pulled the cable and asked him how it can possibly effect the sound? Song played for another 9:30 seconds and he couldn't tell when his 'cryo' treated cable was plugged in or removed.

Nice

 

[voodooless]

how it can possibly effect the sound?

Classic! It goes to show that most people don’t understand computer science at all.

 

[wwenze]

Classic! It goes to show that most people don’t understand computer science at all.

But it's those who don't understand computer science that are currently earning the most in "tech" roles.

Want to see me do an example? "The reason you cannot feel noise or the effect of the cable during the 47 minutes of playback with the cable disconnected is because there is no internet activity during those 47 minutes. However the moment you connect it back, data flow resumes first with a massive transfer and then periodically once every X ms, and it is that activity that generates noise and jitter. An analogue would be battery/capacitors and AC power - Your laptop is likely quietest with an IEM when running on battery using its temporarily stored charges. But you need to connect the AC adapter eventually and suddenly you wish you had a quieter power supply, no?"

 

[Galliardist]

But it's those who don't understand computer science that are currently earning the most in "tech" roles.

Want to see me do an example? "The reason you cannot feel noise or the effect of the cable during the 47 minutes of playback with the cable disconnected is because there is no internet activity during those 47 minutes. However the moment you connect it back, data flow resumes first with a massive transfer and then periodically once every X ms, and it is that activity that generates noise and jitter. An analogue would be battery/capacitors and AC power - Your laptop is likely quietest with an IEM when running on battery using its temporarily stored charges. But you need to connect the AC adapter eventually and suddenly you wish you had a quieter power supply, no?"

Ah. I work as a tech in an IT support team, and none of the people here would argue such things (unless sound was brought to a point where it was stuttering or ceased with CPU and disc activity close to 100%).

You are confusing techs with audiophiles. Stop it. In the real world, most of us wouldn't even think low level noise in playback from a laptop is a problem, anyway.

 

[antcollinet]

But it's those who don't understand computer science that are currently earning the most in "tech" roles.

Want to see me do an example? "The reason you cannot feel noise or the effect of the cable during the 47 minutes of playback with the cable disconnected is because there is no internet activity during those 47 minutes. However the moment you connect it back, data flow resumes first with a massive transfer and then periodically once every X ms, and it is that activity that generates noise and jitter. An analogue would be battery/capacitors and AC power - Your laptop is likely quietest with an IEM when running on battery using its temporarily stored charges. But you need to connect the AC adapter eventually and suddenly you wish you had a quieter power supply, no?"

Did you not noitice the bit where:

Song played for another 9:30 seconds and he couldn't tell when his 'cryo' treated cable was plugged in or removed.

Noise and jitter from ethernet has no audible impact on what comes out of your DAC. And even if it did, a fancy cable can't stop:

data flow resumes first with a massive transfer and then periodically once every X ms,

Nor can it mitigate the impact of those events.

 

[Beave]

Did you not noitice the bit where:


Noise and jitter from ethernet has no audible impact on what comes out of your DAC. And even if it did, a fancy cable can't stop:


Nor can it mitigate the impact of those events.

He was imaging the thinking of an audiophile who believes this stuff. He wasn't suggesting it was real. That's why he put it in quotes.

 

[Keith_W]

Let's not forget that music is buffered. Take JRiver and setup a 1GB buffer. Setup a 10GBe network. I did for testing. I took a 16/44.1 CD and concatenated the entire album into one track. I was getting 332MB/s on a low end Celeron 3050 system. Started Playback in JRiver and in the 3 seconds that it took me to unplug the network connection the entire file was buffered and a 47 minute playback ensued with no network connection.

I had a believer in cable using Tidal. Tidal will cache entire songs. He queued up a 10 minute song. I waited 30 seconds and pulled the cable and asked him how it can possibly effect the sound? Song played for another 9:30 seconds and he couldn't tell when his 'cryo' treated cable was plugged in or removed.

How do you set up a 1GB buffer in JRiver? I had a look at my settings, and I only see "Memory Playback" where I can load the entire file into memory. Is it the same?

(I am using JRMC 31).

 

[voodooless]

no?

No..! I hear no difference plugged in or out, network in or out, wifi or cabled. The function of the DAC is to filter out all kinds of noise, not interact with it.

 

[antcollinet]

He was imaging the thinking of an audiophile who believes this stuff. He wasn't suggesting it was real. That's why he put it in quotes.

Then Poe's law applies. Emoji needed. Like this :

I'll admit - I did miss the intent of the quotes.

 

[Nutul]

It looks to me the uneducated people think simply that noise is noise.

I'm in the IT since the early 90's; I've tried several times to explain that noise in the LAN connection may affect the data, not the audio such data transports: you either hear the music, or you don't (extrapolating, let re-transmission of IP packets out for now); there is no way you can hear it distorted due to such noise.
But the hard-core keep repeating: "if you don't hear the difference then your system isn't resolving enough".
I let it be, now, it's a waste of time.

 

[tmtomh]

But it's those who don't understand computer science that are currently earning the most in "tech" roles.

Want to see me do an example? "The reason you cannot feel noise or the effect of the cable during the 47 minutes of playback with the cable disconnected is because there is no internet activity during those 47 minutes. However the moment you connect it back, data flow resumes first with a massive transfer and then periodically once every X ms, and it is that activity that generates noise and jitter. An analogue would be battery/capacitors and AC power - Your laptop is likely quietest with an IEM when running on battery using its temporarily stored charges. But you need to connect the AC adapter eventually and suddenly you wish you had a quieter power supply, no?"

I get what you’re saying here - network activity can create noise. But I see two issues with your description here, and both are very important for answering the question you’re addressing.

One is jitter. My understanding is that network data gets reclocked at the destination. So you either get audible dropouts and clicks/ticks from a defective, unreliable connection, or you get zero audible impact - there’s nothing in between those two extremes when it comes to jitter over the transmission medium.

The other is your final sentence. You wish you had a quieter PSU if the noise injected into the data stream by your current PSU actually makes its way out of the DAC. And as noted by several folks above - and demonstrated by tests run here by Amir and by many others online, this is not a problem with almost any DAC.

The only DAC I can recall being subject to such a problem is the old Schitt Modi 2, a DAC that cost less than the price of any USB “cleaner” or battery power setup you might buy to fix the issue.

So the answer is to just buy one of the 99+ % of DACs on the market that don’t exhibit this problem.

There are certainly sometimes audible power-related issues with ground loops, and noisy computers do sometimes transmit audible noise (sometimes triggered by mouse clicks or other I/O activity), which can indeed manifest over a direct USB connection.