- groundloops and leakage current loops may travel through cable shielding (compared with unshielded or floating shield designs)
- RF/EMI may (or not) make it’s way into the DAC via ethernet cable (for ethernet input DACs) and affect the analogue stage (again, for DACs that have ethernet inputs)
Because of the above two possible factors that may contribute to why ethernet cables may sound different (e.g. one ethernet cable that’s shielded end to end, where the shield is connected to the end connectors vs an unshielded cable or floating shield design), I’m actually trying cheap fiber optic conversion right before my DAC’s ethernet input. It’s cheap to try and Amazon has a 30 day return policy.
On the DAC-side fiber converter, I’m going to use an ultra short ethernet cable - BJC can make a 6-inch Cat6 cable.
I started this thread on fiber media converters last week if anyone is interested: