Rock €400 plus seagate slim https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Portable-External-Creative-Photography/dp/B01LZHQTM5/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1521734780&sr=8-12&keywords=seagate+hard+drive
ipad endpoint and airpods 
Go to more gigs or pay for a DAP and a holiday 
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I didn’t really intend this thread to be about the benefits of SSDs or cables, and definitely not about whether $800 cables are “worth it” (for whom?).
My suggestion was that value for money is very difficult to determine, but that a decision about a purchase is easier when compared to another purchase, within the same category. This is the cost displacement theory I linked to above, which even helped me when buying a home in the New York area.
“Should I buy better cables or fix the crack in the windshield” is tricky. If you compare entirely across categories, then we are back in the universality of money, and spending vs. savings, near-term vs. long-term investments, selfish pleasure vs. family responsibility — those are important but belong in a different forum.
The first example I brought up (SSD, remote core, better DAC) was about dealing with the concern about electrical noise messing with the DAC, and three roughly equally expensive ways of dealing with that.
So pick you example, some thing that concerns you in the system; look at alternative ways of dealing with it; and compare them. And the comparison can in principle be objective — listen to the remote core vs. Nucleus with SSD. Or it may be subjective — “I like the simplicity of a self-contained quiet box in the living room like a cassette deck”, nobody can argue with that preference.
But it’s about comparisons, not value.
If you’re going to spend the $2k on option 1, 2 or 3 then 2 is by far the winner.
get the NUC out of the listening room. If you need to spend money getting network infrastructure from the NUC to your listening room factor that in. I’d also nuke the NUC and install ROCK (which I believe is free to you if you are a subscriber). If you need to spend money on another Windows computer to do all the other things you were doing with the NUC factor that in (and if you weren’t, no point in running Windows on a dedicated Roon core). And lose the “audiophile cables”.
For the listening end I personally would go for the Oppo UDP 205, which is what in fact I use for a Roon endpoint in my main listening system, and which also plays any kind of silver disk, video or audio, and nearly any kind of content you can put on your network or on a flash drive.
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Very frankly, I would not suffer disparagement of my hearing unless you could demonstrate yours by picking out the Ag vs. Cu in a blind listening test. No need to do it, just saying.
Amphion Argon 3S speakers, Amphion dual mono amps, Mytek Brooklyn DAC. I challenge you to find a better sounding system for under $15k. My hearing is fine - please don’t make accusations about someone you’ve not met it’s a little bit rude. My personal opinion is that spending anything over £5/m for an Ethernet cable is money down the drain. I should know I did it and I’ve learned from my mistakes.
Btw I haven’t said that expensive cables are worthless. I have spent £100/m on analog phono interconnects - no question. If you are listening to a digital source and the music cuts out for a fraction of a second or you keep getting network connection errors then I’d be checking that my digital interconnects are not defective and I’d consider replacing them… but not with uber-expensive ones.
In the past I have convinced myself that I can hear a difference with a new Audioquest ethernet cable or with the microRendu installed (a lot of my public comments on this are still on this community forum in various places). But then I made myself just stop and think about the science. And then I listened critically to my music again. And I now know that audiophile USB/ethernet cables are expensive because of (a) normally more expensive materials and construction used (but you don’t need them), (b) to recoup marketing dollars spent on adverts in mags/websites that also happen to profess to hearing an improvement in sound, and (c ) the prestige of owning that particular brand (like you would spend out on Armani). Audiophile USB/ethernet cables are a statement about the purchaser - they are not an upgrade to your system.
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Not sure why you brought up the value of your system, it doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things. If you need to know, my usher speakers cost $15k alone, which means nothing in this thread. When I had a system that cost less than $15k, I could still hear a difference in cables. I would sometimes audition a half dozen cables/interconnects and when I picked my favorite, I would perform the same listening tests with my wife and she could hear differences as well.
BTW: you are also wrong on the Ethernet cable upgrades. There are differences between a $5 patch cable and the newer AQ patch cables. It all comes down to how much you want to spend. Also, try listening to a fiber cable instead of a Ethernet patch cable. You’re going to need a couple of fmc’s but the outcome can be rewarding, depending on your internet connection. I have fiber to the house so I have a clean signal, whereas if you have copper to the house, you need to clean up the noise which a fiber setup can accomplish.
Somebody grab a shovel – because there is a lot of cock and bullshit piling up in this thread.
AJ
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Been there and done that with FMCs. Both of them powered by separate LPS. No difference. We shall have to agree to disagree. My point about spelling out my system was to make it clear that this is a very respectable set up not that dissimilar to that used by the pro industry to master albums in the studio. Very transparent system that cost me £3.5k. So not meant to be a willy waving exercise. And it is hooked together with kimber cable interconnects for the princely sum of £100 from the XLRs to the speaker cables to the ethernet and USB cables. It is the best sounding system I’ve ever owned (comparing to NAIM 200, KEF LS50W).
Aren’t the AQ cables shielded with shield connected to ground? In that case, you will get a different sound. Some may like it, others may not depending on that setup or preference. Ultimately not recommended. Floating both ends is suitable. Pick a decent Cat6 UTP (like Belden bonded - although not required) cable of the same length against the shielded AQ cable and do it blind or even by yourself and listen to a bunch of stuff where you can hear solo percussion in great details…that will clear it up. If you’ve played an instrument yourself, find a good solo recording of it and compare it with the shielded and UTP.
As for differences between UTP cables or floating shield designs, are there sound differences? IME there can be. Small consideration in another direction and nothing expensive required. This pattern held true with all of my network devices and combinations (3 switches [D-Link], 3 routers [Trendnet, Linksys, Hitron], even bridged ethernet connections between 2 Macbook Pros and network player). It very well may not exist in others setup or be audible, so just sharing my own experience with my gear and environment.
I found differences in sound based on the length. I did use a bunch of Belden bonded as a control since it’s more likely to maintain the same cable structure and electrical properties through its entire length. Regardless, in both Belden bonded and generic Cat6 Fluke tested cables, it still holds up.
I found differences in sound among the shorter cables. As the length got longer, they all started to sound the same and in general better (more correct) to my ears. I had stuff as short as 1 feet and as long as 50+ feet (in both UTP and floating S/STP). I initially avoided long cables for fear of picking up noise or radiating more, but it didn’t make any difference either way.
Just making each ethernet cable involved in the chain long made the sound correct for me. I’m not sure if it’s a signal integrity issue (signal reflection and not high return loss) or something else that may perhaps make the PHY work differently and if that generates more noise in return. They all work fine without dropouts and networking wise transferring data but sound a tiny bit different.
(…This is why it doesn’t surprise me that people find differences between different ‘fancy’ UTPs…because it’s the combination of not knowing the electrical properties of the cable coupled with the fact that these are all bought at short lengths. No one controls for length or think it’s important - at least not in the way of signal integrity, but rather keeping it short for ‘noise’ pick up purposes.)
I was using local playback with flash drive with WAVs as a reference on the BDP-1 to compare where the network side landed.
I’m done with ethernet cables. Long generic Cat6 UTP throughout does it for me. It’s all free for me, but if I had to go out and buy the cables, it would be $10 max for each piece. I keep mine rolled 30-40+ feet for each link…no problem. Top notch sound.
If you are one of those people that do notice a difference in sound between ethernet cables, may I suggest trying standard Cat 6 UTP for each active link and keeping it long. Listen to this for 2-3 days without changing or doing A/B. Listen and get used to the sound. Then go back and compare to whatever you had. This stuff can be had for very cheap.
Please try not to disparage others, simply because you disagree with them. The Forum Guidelines set out expectations in this regard.
Also 2 is the correct answer.
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When we are talking about AudioQuest and their cables it is good to know about how they cheated us about HDMI cables. See the blog post by Mark Waldrep. I am not sure we can trust anything this company claims, including their audiophile Ethernet cables.
http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=5540
A dangerous thread to jump into, but here goes… In my experience, there can be an SQ difference between cables - whether they be interconnects, speaker cables or power cords. I, personally, struggle to hear the differences and I’d likely fail any sort of blind test. But (and this is important), I have spent time with a few folks that have golden ears who can easily hear such differences and have easily done so in a blind test. I’m not sure that’s a gift or a curse, but it is true for some.
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This would be a first then. I suggest they donate themselves to medical science immediately.
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For me it is about finding the sweet spot on the feature/quality vs price scale. Just about every category of device has a curve that has a point on it where the cost begins to go up radically vs the incremental improvement in feature/quality. I choose items by comparing items until I find the spot that makes the most sense for me. Everything I own in my theater/music room catches the curve just as it starts to go up.
As for cables, what i have found is they also fall on this curve, but the noticeable reward for really expensive ones isn’t usually worth it for most consumers. The better quality cables benefit is offset by something else in the chain that could be improved more cost effectively. My recommend to friends is a cable budget of ~10% of overall system cost (some might say 5-15%). It’s a rough estimate, but if you are spending substantially more or less, you are probably not getting appropriate quality or are spending too much vs the rest of your system. Plugging a $1000 cable into a $50 amp is just not a good idea. I just spend $100 in acoustic room treatments and it made a much bigger difference in quality than any other component I have upgraded.
Either way, do your best to listen to the components in your room before you purchase or return them if they don’t meet your expectations. Then relax and enjoy the music.
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With some regret, I can’t walk away from this thread. 
Entertaining it is!
What disappoints me is that the manufacturers (or rather assemblers) of high-end digital cables don’t provide any specifications for their products. If I’m buying an amplifier I can check the technical specifications and compare sensitivity, impedance, output power, frequency response and so on.
Not so with these cables. They tend to come with broad claims that are substantiated only by user reviews. And often include misleading statements based on fact but irrelevant to the situation in which the cable is used. For example, “Solid silver-plated conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications, like Ethernet audio. These signals, being such a high frequency, travel almost exclusively on the surface of the conductor.”
The problem with these statements are that they are misleading. Ethernet audio is not what we have in our homes and skin effect is relevant to VHF and microwave frequencies not audio. A copper conductor is perfectly suited to ethernet. Likewise, a copper coated steel wire is appropriate for digital video.
It’s fine to make claims, but these need to be substantiated. If something is perceivable it is measurable.
And now for my favourite review on audiophile ethernet: “I’m removing a star because I inadvertently installed these backwards and immediately began hearing Satanic messages in my music. I sacrificed nearly a dozen neighbourhood pets before I realised the mistake. That said, the music sounded fantastic, but seriously. Would it kill them to put a warning label on these?”
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I once asked a dealer why the speaker cables he sold had directional markings when they carried an AC signal. He smiled tolerantly and said it was because the way the electrons moved first that mattered.
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Just like salmon returning to the River Shin. It’s hard work swimming upstream!
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