But it is not audio travelling through the router or ethernet cables.
Seriously unplug the end going into your amp or bridge or what ever do daddy you have it plugged into, hold it up to your ear, hold your breath, you will need to be real quiet for this bit and see what you can hear. Report back.
You can shake your router like a maraca and the bits won’t bounce around I promise.
You haven’t realized that digital signals of all stripes are analogue signals with biphasic coding. The range of analogue problems always still spplies. You can’t wish away noise and noise transmission by handwaving at digital logic. Noise issues are not expected to affect the accuracy of the digital packet information (although it can induce timing issues). Noise is conveyed to the replay system by means other than packet accuracy. Talk to digital or mixed signal desigers for an extensive introduction to noise transmission paths.
I’m off to nail mine to the wall just in case. I’ll use a gold plated one of course
Oh, I’m pretty sure you’d notice inaccurate packets in any great frequency 
Believe me they’re far more important than what you decide to put your router on. I’m slightly concerned that you have some kind of structural integrity issue with your house.
Yes, of course you’d notice inaccurate packets if the noise or distortion were so severe as to change the recognition of binary transition points. Computers and wifi work fine with these routers and the audio doesn’t have audible drop outs or glitches so it’s not distortion of that magnitude. Nevertheless, replay systems and hearing are sensitive to a wide range of noise sources and timing accuracy. My house is fine, at least normal 
Mmhm okay… i guess networking and electronics are to difficult to understand for me, worked in the field all my life but hey you know best.
I will give my dog a good walk to the edge of the world and watch a teapot through my telescope while i am there.
Nothing to learn here but bollocks, never mind 
I am out of this one…
PeterD,
Try designing in audio electronics. Part of these arguments comes from people with backgrounds in networking who are unaware that audio components and hearing are sensitive to a different range and scale of issues than the ones that affect computer networking. And people from that background will demand, in the face of easily audible evidence to the contrary, that it simply cannot be true.
True but still not relevant, that’s just the digital equivalent of skin effect in speaker cables.
There can be many phases used in digital signals, not only 2 (e.g. 256-QAM). Let’s be more careful with terms.
Data transmission in the digital domain is asynchronous and then buffered. There are no induced timing issues.
I have a nice tube of audiophile adhesive I can sell to you for a relatively reasonable amount 
Only if it has precious metal flakes in it.
I am fairly expert in digital audio processing chains. There are many points in data processing in the digital domain where timing (jitter) is a significant and audible problem. Asynchronous USB for example does not prevent a range of computer noise, manifesting generally as jitter, from reaching a playback system’s DAC, although it most certainly helps to reduce it.
By “binary transition points”, you mean when a zero turns to a one. If that gets changed, the packet fails to checksum and has to be retransmitted. Enough failures and the packet gets dropped.
I’m not sure what you mean here, if it’s not flipping bits there is no “distortion” to occur. Are you expecting a bigger one or something less than zero? You do appear to be conflating analogue and digital here, noise and distortion don’t affect a digital signal transmitted over ethernet period. Noise might accompany it. I fear I’m just trip trapping over a bridge here.
Jitter: “slight irregular movement, variation, or unsteadiness, especially in an electrical signal or electronic device.”
Not relevant in the digital domain because the data is buffered. Data arrives at the DAC, piles up in the buffer, and is then converted to an analogue signal. Sure, if there’s jitter on the analogue side you have a problem, and should probably consider buying a better DAC, but it isn’t an issue prior to the conversion.
Not entirely correct as clock jitter can be an issue for data, but not really relevant in ethernet networking.
Yes but how the data gets there is also dependant on a clock (a different one and again not really relevant to ethernet)
That is the point of this thread - ‘do router and ethernet cables affect sound quality’.
Wikipedia’s definition of jitter is quite relevant …
In electronics and telecommunications, jitter is the deviation from true periodicity of a presumably periodic signal, often in relation to a reference clock signal. In clock recovery applications it is called timing jitter.
The key point is that data transmission over ethernet does not have a ‘presumably period signal’. Timing - assuming the packets turn up in a timely fashion - is totally irrelevant.
I would have thought this would be quite easy. Spend £20 on a CISCO 2960 plug in and see if it makes a difference?