Ah gotcha. That makes sense
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Sorry Mike but I think you are just plain wrong here.
The computer science 1âs and 0"s science you are citing my be 100% correct for data processing and is there sufficient data integrity to process that data.
But this is high end hifi and in audio EVERYTHING matters. Your digital music is as good as the weakest link. Look at forums like CA, Head-Fi or any high end audio manufacturer and youâll find loads of people whose experience is that better cables made a positive difference. Thatâs not expectation bias or snake oil marketing. Itâs the experience of many knowledgeable and dedicated audio fans.
My 300 buck USB cable made a huge impact. The science says it shouldnât but it did. My 100 buck Audioquest ethernet cable also made a difference.
Adding Fibre Optic made a significant improvement despite the fact ethernet is already has galvanic isolation.
Iâm citing my experience here. Not theory.
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You are dead wrong about Ethernet based on the papers by Siemons, T.I. and the testing Iâve done backs this up.
IF and itâs a big if, your equipment is susceptible to itâs output being altered by a 1 or 2 meter (out of 100) Ethernet cable then send defective equipment back.
Ethernet is a non-realtime system. In correctly engineered systems you can pull the cable and still listen to the music play. You have buffer (two on the NIC), most likely an I/O buffer on the PCIe bus, DMA buffers in RAM, Application buffer, back to PCIe, to a buffer for bridging PCIe to USB, then to a buffer in the DAC where audio clocking is finally placed on the data.
I have $2000 to your $500 that you canât do it once Iâve compensated for your knowledge of what is in the system.
Itâs delusion pure and simple.
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I really donât get it. While flying to Mars, doing brain surgery, GPS, Smart Phones and a lot of other really difficult things science gives us good results, but in a simple thing like audio, science fails?
Sorry, but this is a fruitless discussion, like discussing evolution with a bible belt redneck.
Iâm out.
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Yep, we can send high resolution images of Neptune and Pluto low bit rate, high jitter, wireless but audio over 20 foot of cabling nowâŚ
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I come back to MQA. If the blue or green light glows we have Authenticated MQA where the Analog of the studio is equal to the Analog being rendered.
It either is or is not correct. I achieve this with basic cables.
Why do you need lights to know if MQA is working? Shouldnât it just sound worlds better?
Seems a good time to revisit Sean Adamsâ âaudiophile checklistâ (one of the slimdevices (squeezebox) founders and designer of the Squeezebox âTransporterâ. A classic!
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You donât need lights but the light is the Authentication part of MQA. If the file is corrupted, the light will not show. So in this context and nothing to do with the sound quality or otherwise of MQA, the light means the file is perfect. So it is my contention that fancy cables are not necessary in my system. Iâm not saying they donât change the sound in a way some may find pleasing in their particular system, I expect it depends on your audio end point.
Sotm claim their latest generation audiophile lan cable ($1,100) has adjustable âfiltersâ - so you can have a smooth sound, or a more aggressive treble, or somewhere in between.
The iSO-CAT6 Special Edition that newly combined with dCBL-CAT7 cable is configured with 3 kinds of network cables offering respectively different sound characteristics with high quality, which allows the user organize own unique customized audio system selecting bright & splendid tone, moderate, mild & comfortable tone.
https://www.sotm-audio.com/sotmwp/english/portfolio-item/dcbl-cat7/
Make of that what you will. Iâm a scientist at heart so always find these claims inconsistent with logic, yet it seems people do hear differences. Surely if it were purely placebo there would be at least 50% of purchasers flooding the internet with balancing claims that they do nothing? Yet from my time on the forums far more than half the postings appear to show them being beneficial.
Genuinely interested in the debate about whether itâs real or imagined. The most technically plausible argument Iâve heard is the ânoiseâ isnât anything to do with the transmitted digital signal - that all arrives intact as per any properly specced cable as discussed above -Itâs âother crapâ that carries down the cable and past the small transformers in the Ethernet adapter. Itâs this âcrapâ thatâs meant to somehow sully the sensitive DACs otherwise good name, and I have to say there seems to be at least some degree of credibility here, in the logical sense. Iâve no idea and live without expensive Ethernet cables just because I canât bare the thought that Iâm getting fleeced for something my minds doing - Iâve definitely experienced confirmation bias and this aspect of our brains isnât made up! Youâd be a fool to ignore it, but yet I canât help thinking there might be some truth otherwise it would be one of the worlds biggest deceptions! (Which is of course possible).
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-Itâs âother crapâ that carries down the cable and past the small transformers in the Ethernet adapter. Itâs this âcrapâ thatâs meant to somehow sully the sensitive DACs otherwise good name, and I have to say there seems to be at least some degree of credibility here, in the logical sense
Well heck since we are talking about logic: On a good playback system with multiple seconds of buffer have someone randomly pull the cable say over 10-tracks. You would have to guess when the cable was pulled.
You are either hearing the cable or you are hearing the data played back out of buffer.
Again Iâve got $2000 for any of the:
Surely if it were purely placebo there would be at least 50% of purchasers flooding the internet with balancing claims that they do nothing? Yet from my time on the forums far more than half the postings appear to show them being beneficial.
I mean itâs such a slam dunk is it not? Darko, Lavorgna etc have just crowed about the âreadily apparentâ and âeasy to discernâ differences.
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Well, not quite - you could be hearing the data played out of the buffer while the DAC was being affected by realtime noise coming on the same cable. But yes, your theory of pulling the cable out certainly seems to be logical. I wonder how many people with exotic cables try this test?
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I recall a few people in the early squeezebox days doing such tests (pulling cable) to test certain assumptions about feedback from cables, etc⌠But the âtrue believersâ could always come up with alternative explanations. For example, thereâs the (in)famous âThe Absolute Soundâ article that says something along the lines that one can tell the difference between two lossless files played on the exact same system simply because the two files were copied using different windows operating systems. Mind you, they carefully documented that the two lossless files were bit identical, etc. When I saw reports of this belief I didnât know whether to laugh or cryâŚoh the humanity. 
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[quote=âhifi_swlon, post:94, topic:26874, full:trueâ]I wonder how many people with exotic cables try this test?
[/quote]
and there seems to be a lot of overlap of the group of people with audio exotic anything and those that believe it is not possible to do an ABX or other double-blind test. In my day job, Iâm quite familiar with scientific tests documenting all sorts of perceptual and judgment biases. But it seems that even though these can be well documented in rigorous studies using medical doctors, astronauts, scientists, judges, and other domain experts, the strange case remains of the âaudiophileâ who is seemingly immune to confirmation bias among other things. Heck, even their wives in a different roomâwho donât even care about this stuffâoften wander in asking what was done as it sounds so much better. (or at least they report this âwife in the other roomâ phenomenon frequently!) 
My guess is itâs a combination of a few things then.
Since the experience of âhearing a differenceâ is obviously real, it is quite a powerful sense and when faced with accusations of it being âimaginedâ probably many people mistake this for some sort of assault on them personally rather than it being something that happens to us by design. Unlike the visual sense where we can compare two things side by side, listening is more complex as we have to use memory. And then there are companies and reviewers telling us to true. So even in the minds of the (some of) the scientifically astute thereâs some doubt since others have heard it. And perhaps somewhere along the line in some circumstances on some kit there is an audible difference for some valid reason?
One day Iâll take part in some sort of study - it would be really interesting I think.
I believe people are almost always being very truthful in reporting what they hear. The mind is a powerful thing. Heck, some people get well from taking the placebo pill!
p.s. donât get my posts wrong here. Iâm happy for people to spend their own money on anything that brings them joy. I know I spend a lot of my money on things that many people think is a waste. Different strokes for different folks as they say. But I canât help but question things that fly in the face of the way things actually work (TCP over ethernet for example). Otherwise, people visiting forums would think, âheck, there is unanimous agreement here, so they must be right!â
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But the question remains? Does it sound better, or does it sound different? AND can you describe and/ or articulate what is better or different?
Not sure my hearing is refined enough. If it sounds good, I like it. Not to mention, some listening days are better than othersâŚYMMV.
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Please note that every comment I have made concerns TCP.
There is an ounce of true to claims of differing quality of UDP is the transport mechanism. That is because UDP is designed to allow for dropped packets.
But the fact is that RAAT uses TCP as of build #234. Any previous testing that had been done is now invalid. And until someone can present the peer reviewed results of a double blind test, I will stick to the conclusions formed from 20+ years of network engineering experience
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I donât disagree. But to start with, Iâm always happy with a simple double-blind (or at least single blind) test of whether there is a difference. If one canât pick out a statistically significant difference over a reasonable number of trials, then the rest of your point doesnât matter. I agree that some such tests are more difficult to do than others (but certainly tests on cables and power supplies are easy to do double blind). Iâve personally been very surprised at my own judgments in the past when I thought something sounded âbetterâ when I knew what I was evaluating, but couldnât reliably detect which was which in a properly performed double blind test.
Hi, in the case of ethernet input DACs is it possible that different ethernet cables may (or may not) âsound differentâ due to different shielding designs and the amount of RFI picked up that may go into the DAC and cause interferences inside the DAC, especially in the analogue stage, and therefore cause differences in sound?
So one etherent cable that rejects RFI better than another cable may result in a different sound? Mostly for an ethernet input DAC.
Only asking. I donât know the answer sadly 