I just did another ethernet experiment that I posted over on Naims forum thought would put it in here
Well after a whole morning and bit this afternoon. I am done with my experiment. I ended up only doing 6 in the end and dropped one of the cat7 cables as I ran out of time and was getting a little tedious. So these where what I tested
- 1.5m Blue Jeans Belden Bonded Cat5A - my standard cable
- 1m DesignaCable Belden Catsnake Cat5a - bought for the challenge
- 2m No name CAT 7 - was in my currently unused pile
- 1m No name Cat6 - was from work
- 1m Van Damme TourCat 6a - bought for the challenge
- 1m WireWorld Starlight - bought for the challenge
All cables have been in use they are not fresh out of the packet, not that I actually believe this makes any difference and from what I heard of the Starlight the first day it sounded the same today, same for the Van Damme, CatSnake etc.
All cable where plugged in to the cisco and I used the same route and port every time.
I chose three tracks to listen to in the same order with each cable :
Laura Marlings - Soothing from Sempa Feminia , the bass and percussion on this track is just so good it always gets the foot tapping, it also has subtle nuances hidden away that are easily lost. Lauras voice is also stunning and rich.
Sufjan Stevens - Chicago from Illinoise , there are so many layers going on this track and with its mix of brass and strings is just lovely to get lost in. I used this as towards the end there are layered vocals that are not always easy to make out.
Spiritualized - Come Together from Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space . A great rock, blues number that wigs out in all the right places mixing gospel choruses, brass and fuzz. Again this track has a lot going on so not always easy to flow if sounds bad.
To say this was difficult is an understatement, there really is not much in it and its not easy to really hear that much of a difference n some tracks. There was definitely no clear night or day difference, they all sounded good, none sounded terrible or broken. But they did have subtle differences.
Oddly they all performed about the same for the first track maybe a few had slightly tighter bass or the bass sounded a little more forward, and others accentuated some of the more hidden strums but it’s so subtle. But no clear favourite hear at all I would be happy with any of them.
Moving on to Chicago my second track and here things start to show up a little more. Its a track that can be bright. Hear the BJC, Catsnake, Wirewold and the Cat7 sounded much better and smoother than the cat 6 and Van Damme. The cat6 was a tad brighter but had much more bass presence, something the others all lacked. The Van Damme whilst not bright lacked something maybe a little sparkle. The Wireworld was a tad brighter than I would like but brought something else out in the midrange that was appealing. The catsnake, cat7 and Wireworld did a really good job of bringing out one of the main rhythms and the overlapping vocals at the end where much clearer with with Wireworld and Catsnake. Its really hard one again to pick which was better here.
So on to the last track Come Together. Well this is where it got really interesting and its this song alone that’s really broke the pack up and left only two in the running as they ended up handling it better than the others, which where a bit dull for this track. Again none of this is night/day new box type difference its subtle and I bet if I was not focusing as hard I would not notice. The Catsnake and the Wireworld however did seem to rock with the music far better, so much more musical, increased separation, more distinct solid bass it sounded more alive and less compressed to. But one clearly brought the guitar to the front and centre after the first chorus as it wigs out. Now its still not a massive gap between the Wireworld and Catsnake but the Wireworld clearly won out on this track for its representation of the guitar being clearer and more forward.
I returned a few times to Wireworld and Catsnake cable and played the tracks again and again. And its just so tough to choose an outright winner but just on the one track alone its the Wireworld. Now whether this difference is worth £200 extra is up for debate. Personally I don’t think it is I dont think it wins out clearly on everything I heard and at this increase it really should. Not sure if I will keep it just yet I have 55 days left to decide. The Catsnake and all the rest will stay as they are all good in their own right and cost less than the Wireworld all together.
I decided to also take readings with REW using a frequency sweep so their is some empirical evidence that each cable does seem to have different influence on the audio signal thats output. You can clearly see from the images below the Wireworld has a significant bump in the sensitive frequencies, this maybe why it sounded better for the guitar in this case. The others track quite similar overall with the catsnake and the cat7 also having slightly different boosts in the sensitive area.
One more thing is that dressing of the cables had 0 impact on anything sounding any different. this was my last experiment with all of them, on the floor over other cables touching other cables, made no change.
And then after that exhausting test an hour later I put on the new Jeff Goldblum album to relax to with the Wireworld in place. I have had to put in the Catsnake instead as it was just too bright and the piano sounded off. So I now conclude there really is no overall winner in all this ethernet lark They all seem to work differently with different music not one cable to rule them all which is just crazy.