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

[RayDunzl]

Uh huh...

 

[BDWoody]

Coming from someone with vastly more credibility, authority and experience than myself may benefit those who are unaware of the potential/theoretical benefits of braided cables.

Wow...

Well, in a sense Paul is definitely expert in taking advantage of ignorance. Beyond that...

If you can't speak out of your own mouth, with those decades of engineering experience behind you, I think that's enough for you in this thread.

 

[voodooless]

Please make it stop

 

[Galliardist]

Yeah, but @BDWoody, myself and a few others asked a number of questions in his "desperate dealers thread" and were simply ignored... no answers forthcoming. All we got was a vague reference to our posts as being the cause of negativity in the thread... almost like we should simply be ignored. That is not a good start IMO and tends to show that this whole thing is a marketing exercise.

Let's not forget until last week Chris had been lurking without a manufacturer tag, dropping a few comments here and there about cables. Then when pulled up on it, suddenly changes his sig to 10% off for ASR members and goes into full "check out my cables" drive. I'll remain skeptical for the time being. Further, no power cable is going to show anything of note really...


JSmith

It would still be a bit rude to kick someone out of the forum while their products are in the queue to be tested. While I'm keeping an open mind on whether cables sent for testing do anything, I suspect there will only be more questions arising from the test results.

Unless, of course, his mains cables aren't certified. If he's sent them in, they should be marked shouldn't they? @amirm I guess you could settle that when you have time.

 

[fpitas]

Please make it stop

I have no idea if the whole thing has been an elaborate troll.

 

[Galliardist]

I'll let someone who has built a multi-million $ company and is considered by many to be an expert in his field and one of the people that I know you all admire and respect give an explanation.
Coming from someone with vastly more credibility, authority and experience than myself may benefit those who are unaware of the potential/theoretical benefits of braided cables.
I'm (sincerely) loving the fact that cables can generate so much enthusiasm and passion here!

Shouldn't an actual product with actual claims have the actual benefits, not potential/theoretical ones?

I strongly suggest that you use the search facility here, type in PS Audio, tick the title box, and do some reading. Start with the DIrectStream DAC threads. Products like those are exactly why ASR is as it is...

 

[fpitas]

they should be marked shouldn't they?

Yes

 

[voodooless]

Unless, of course, his mains cables aren't certified. If he's sent them in, they should be marked shouldn't they? @amirm I guess you could settle that when you have time.

I'm pretty sure they won't be UL-certified. If he's doing certification at Dekra in Arnhem I'm pretty sure that they do not do UL, maybe via a partner in the US. If getting CE is already hard, UL will be even harder. We've done all kinds of stuff with Dekra, from IPxx, CE, FCC to Atex and more via them.

 

[Astoneroad]

I'll let someone who has built a multi-million $ company and is considered by many to be an expert in his field and one of the people that I know you all admire and respect give an explanation.
Coming from someone with vastly more credibility, authority and experience than myself may benefit those who are unaware of the potential/theoretical benefits of braided cables.
I'm (sincerely) loving the fact that cables can generate so much enthusiasm and passion here!

Wow. If you're sincere about any aspect of this or previous statements... no doubts that you live in a world of wonder and miracles. Is that the sound of the heels of ruby slippers tapping... "I do believe in... I do... I do believe in..."

 

[fpitas]

I'm pretty sure they won't be UL-certified. If he's doing certification at Dekra in Arnhem I'm pretty sure that they do not do UL, maybe via a partner in the US. If getting CE is already hard, UL will be even harder.

In my somewhat limited experience, CE and UL are very similar testing. You can self-certify for CE, but to my knowledge UL will come after you if you use their name in vain. I'd be shocked and delighted if he had either.

 

[voodooless]

In my somewhat limited experience, CE and UL are very similar testing.

They are (in general), but since the UL approval needs to come from the US, that's always a detour, especially if the testing house can't do in themselves. They are also usually very busy, so getting a timeslot for tests can take quite a while.

 

[JSmith]

So no one needs to click on that or watch it;

gregory in miami beach florida writes to me and he says hey paul i know you have spoken about interconnects and the benefits of braiding the wires to reduce noise and interaction does the same apply for power cables will a three wire power cable benefit from this technique and will adding braided shielding also be a benefit i recently based on your advice upgraded my cables and have seen a great improvement in performance so thank you for the great content and information in your videos wow thank you sir uh yes the idea of braiding is a really good one and speaking of power cables i i'm back here this is behind the big infinity irs fives this is sort of the sausage factory back here oh i don't know if you can see it these are the new six um bhk 600s that we are they're still prototypes god they sound great anyway here i go um notice the cable notice the construction on it see how this is it's a three wire braid these are the audioquest dragons which in my opinion are so far to my ear the best power cable i have ever heard they're stupid expensive i mean yeah they're just stupid expensive there's nothing more you can say and i don't know anything more than i just wouldn't run this system without it once once i heard them they they make a huge difference so let's talk for a second about why braiding an audio cable or a power cable look i know the hairs in the back of thousands of people's necks are going up and like because i'm saying that power cables have a sound to them okay so can you just put that aside for one moment and let's just talk about we'll talk about audio cables years ago my good friend ray kimber started a company called kimber cable and it was based completely on the braiding of cables ray had built his own i think it was a four or five wire braid braiding machine and he's still to this day he braids his cables so why would we want to braid a cable well first off when you have two wires together in a long well it doesn't matter if it's long but when two wires in are running in parallel the longer they run in parallel the more inductance is created in the cable construction okay now inductance means that we lose high frequencies and they start rolling off it's axing like a filter that's adding what's a good way to put it it's it's adding resistance that is specific to frequency so as the frequency goes up so too does the resistance and in an inductor we use all the time and say a speaker speaker crossover so we use inductors those are big coils of wire and we do that to roll off the top end of something so for instance in a mid-range driver we would put an inductor to form a low-pass filter so that the mid-range doesn't go too high and that's because of that inductance now that's purpose full inductance we did that on purpose we would prefer not to have inductance in our cables whether they be power cables or audio cables we'd like not to have it but runs of wire and every xlr cable you've ever seen every rca cable they are long runs of parallel conductors sitting close to each other so now imagine a braided cable what do we have they're going like this they're at kind of like right angles to each other right boom boom boom so the point that they are in parallel is only right here at the little cross so when you braid cables you almost entirely eliminate the inductance of the cable and it really does make a good difference in the way it sounds is it the perfect way to do it no i mean we're using interconnects here that are not braided so it's six of one half dozen another pic picks your poison and choose which one you want but because we've talked about this before we pick our cables based on the synergy of the electronics and the speakers and how we do it by ear and that's a whole other topic we're not getting into that today but that's the idea behind braiding how it works and why it works and yes it works on power cables i'll talk to you later bye [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Anyone who was serious would not cite this...


JSmith

 

[BDWoody]

They are (in general), but since the UL approval needs to come from the US, that's always a detour, especially if the testing house can't do in themselves. They are also usually very busy, so getting a timeslot for tests can take quite a while.

I think it could be fun working on some of those tests. I bought a security safe some years ago and learned a lot about how they get tested and certified with whatever ratings they carry.

Here is a vault door that was submitted for testing. I wonder how much a test like this might cost?

 

[fpitas]

Anyone who was serious would not cite this...

Yes. I'm seriously thinking we've all been gulled, for some unfathomable reason.

 

[voodooless]

I think it could be fun working on some of those tests. I bought a security safe some years ago and learned a lot about how they get tested and certified with whatever ratings they carry.

Here is a vault door that was submitted for testing. I wonder how much a test like this might cost?

Depends on how much thermite they needed

Destructive testing is always fun!

 

[fpitas]

They are (in general), but since the UL approval needs to come from the US, that's always a detour, especially if the testing house can't do in themselves. They are also usually very busy, so getting a timeslot for tests can take quite a while.

You don't necessarily need UL here. But if anything bad happens it's very good insurance, because they will testify in court for you.

 

[voodooless]

You don't necessarily need UL here. But if anything bad happens it's very good insurance, because they will testify in court for you.

Well, CE is mandatory in the EU.

 

[SIY]

I'm not actually obligated to you or anyone else to provide any 'objective evidence'.

The what distinguishes you from all the other cable peddling scam artists?

No data provided to show the relevance of the fancy data cables for home applications. If they were being sold as eye candy, well, fine. That's honest. But as soon as the FUD comes out, we're in scammer territory.

 

[fpitas]

Well, CE is mandatory in the EU.

Yes, I've been employed towards that end at times. I recall the EU seizing large shipments when equipment is not marked, or when the self-certification turned out to be a sham.

 

[Koeitje]

Has anyone here conducted tests/measurements with regard to data packet-losses due to network queuing/congestion or external influences and if it has a quantifiable effect on QoE?

I'd be particularly interested to learn if cable shielding or geometry has a beneficial influence on whatever the acceptable loss threshold is. I understand anything from 5-10% losses are considered unacceptable for streaming applications.

Audio data transfer is such low bitrate that you are never ever going to notice. There is always capacity to stream lossless 192kHz at 32 bits. Such a stream is only 98 megabit per second. A random budget wired home network has around 800mbit per second of bandwidth to play with. Plenty enough to deal with any failed packets thanks to TCP/IP.

Plus you would be hard pressed to create enough external effects to have any effect on packet loss. You are not going to run into that at home.