Great points Danny. I guess there is an assumption that people considering these like in this thread have everything else in their system sorted or they are just simply interested in this topic and in learning (I’m in the latter ground).
I don’t think any of this discussion is “help! my system sounds crap and I need an expensive cable to fix it!”.
At least I hope not !
Cheers mate.
And just to be a little cheeky (but respectful), I’ve seen photos of and listened to speakers that are marketed as being able to solve these issues associated with the environment and there weren’t any messy cables around and it didn’t do much for me…
Runs for cover 
My only point being there is no absolute right way to get best performance from our system. We all continue to learn and listen and enjoy hopefully.
Sorry for not being clear. I was rerferring to a different guy that makes LPS that costs multiple times more than Uptone LPS-1. I did not read John’s posts before, if he also told people to replace all their switching power supplies on the whole network with LPS, I didn’t know about that.
I understand where you are coming from, regarding the theory of why cables transmitting digital signals shouldn’t make a difference, ‘bit perfect’ is ‘bit perfect’ right?
However I have had to put that the one side and deal with the fact that they do. In fact, once you are sat in the sweet spot generated by your speakers & the reproduction equipment, every change made makes a diffference to the sound you hear. Whether it is the placement of a speaker by a few millimetres, the support under any piece of equipment or anything in the room around you. Your music is generating music, Just like a musicial instrument in a studio or a concert hall. You have to stop thinking about the theory and listen.
Now I have wrestled with the theory, having studied Electronics to BEng level, so theory of movement of electrons & ‘holes’ through materials under charged conditions, skin effect, diitigal transmission protocols including UDP, TCP/IP, token ring.
I have worked in the industry for the last 30 years, designing & working with all nature of computer systems, big & small, chip gate & microprocessor level, clocking/reclocking, implementation of the OSI 7-level stack communication system, and systems that process many transactions per second and deal with millions of transactions a day.
However, they are not making music, Hifi systems may be processing bits at high processing rates, but the system, as a whole is - sit in your sweet spot and listen, make changes and listen again. Then, please, don’t forget to sit back and enjoy the experience and emotion reaction that listening to music gives.
One look at the (S/PDIF&comms) cables Meridian deems worthy of shipping for use with a pair of €10K speakers instantly cured me of cable nervosa. 
Yes, it is often a matter of compromises (setting up an audio system in a room where a family lives) and priorities (limited options for placement and treatment). Room Correction goes a long way, but is difficult to set up properly.
My Dirac filters preform miracles, but took a long time to get right. While measuring is easy enough, tuning the filters requires long, hard listening: the real effects become clear only in relaxed, ‘normal’ listening conditions (over the course of days or sometimes weeks) – not in a quick series of A/B switching. It also requires a brutal honesty in interpreting your system’s sound – since you can do anything you want setting up the filters, there’s no bias involved. In the end, I set up correction up to 180Hz and use a little S/PDIF reclocker at the end of a 2m cable. I’ve been very happy with this setup for many months now.
As for ethernet: I’d like to keep it as simple as can be. My (internet provider supplied) router is fine at routing and DHCP, but I keep the weak WiFi disabled. My Airport Extreme is a great wireless access point and a fine switch, but a lousy router. Together, they’re great. My network cabling is a mix of Cat6 for the main (in-wall) stretches and whatever my company is using for patch cabling.
I tend to gravitate to blue though. I like blue.
Similarly, the power cables that ATC supplied with my SCM100ASL’s dispelled any inkling to concern myself with such things. Personally I find black sheathed CAT6 does the trick for me because it disappears in the background with all the other cables connecting my system components.
Truth be told though, as long as there are those that swear blind they hear differences, there’ll be others clamouring to help them part with their money. That I don’t take issue with…but don’t go around selling it to others as a universal truth. There are believers and non-believers…that is all.
As good as any reason.
I think people believe added on ‘costume jewelry’ makes a difference because -
My guess is most would be reluctant (or too exasperated) to post, since audiophiles generally don’t like what they have to say on the matter, so they get accused of having bad hearing and/or crappy hifi kit. 
Interestingly there are a few papers I’ve come across about specifications required for PSU’s being installed as part of experimental kit at CERN. SMPS unless from specially approved vendors are not generally allowed/advised. It’s also worth noting this is generally only advised for sensitive analogue equipment and not for digital equipment.
I haven’t actively been involved in scientific experiments since my degree, but I do think CERN might know a thing or two about sensitive analogue equipment. They also tend to publish data. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any published data from John Swenson or many others that talk about similar things. I’m not saying that means what John says isn’t true, but I’m just saying some claims have been made along the lines of “X adversely affects EVERY Ethernet PHY” that as far as I can tell have never been measured or proven in any device, let alone a large selection, and certainly not all. When there’s a product sold that ‘fixes’ the problem there’s obviously a conflict.
I couldn’t find any CERN papers discussing Ethernet cables…
Being a cable sceptic beyond using well engineered cables I surprised myself today.
At a Car Boot Sale I found a Russ Andrews YellO cable which I paid £2.00 for. Perhaps I should have haggled…(this looks like an original one)
Anyway, after checking it out for safety and fitting the 5 amp fuse supplied by Blue Sound I connected it to my Pulse 2. (The condition is perfect, the plug pins are shiny like new)
I have to say I thought it sounded better immediately, a bit of a surprise there and I still think it sounds better. I have been playing MQA material most of the day. I am now watching TV with it.
The sound stage seems bigger, wider, fuller perhaps.
This may be placebo, it may also be bunkum. I am making no claims. Am I going to switch it out again? Nope. It’s like I got my Meridian F80 back and all for £2.00.
This is the primary problem in these debates about cables, especially digital ones. Humans are imperfect machines that have incredibly complex subliminal processes and as such it’s impossible to ‘prove to yourself’ one way or the other. Unfortunately, very few people are willing to accept they’re human.
That’s why we need companies that make these products to prove they work, explain how, and share the data for verification.
You spent £2 and are happy, but some people are spending literally thousands on cables that they have no concrete evidence that they do anything.
Do I think they do? I’ve no evidence to say either way, but I know where common sense leads me. Certainly I have heard subtle differences in digital cables in the past - when I tried really, really hard. Today I assume there were in fact no differences because I’ve read plenty of scientific studies since that seem to show pretty clearly when we try and hear things, we do. This isn’t just in the audio field.
Well… resting the quality difference aside… If the cables are in the closet, it doesn’t matter … but…
If the cables will be visable in your gorgeous hifi setup, I don’t mind paying extra for looks (sane amount)… I mean… compare grey standard cables with audioquest cinnamon
I’ll pay for the look, period.
However I don’t have CAT cable in my system anymore. It’s all wireless now.
With that end in mind, I don’t mind paying a bit more than is strictly necessary either. But a cable braided in any sort of fabric like Audioquest’s Ethernet cables, regardless of how nice they look new, would be grey from accumulated dust and pet fur after a month in my house.
I like the Cat-6 cables from AmazonBasics: They’re cheap ($5.04 / 5ft) and black, and it’s impossible to go wrong with a black cable.
Here’s my $02 for this topic: if it is in fact true that this cable is “optimized for sound, not for speed”, it must be hideously flawed to the point where it is interfering with data transmission and altering the sound in a way the manufacturer likes. You could save your money, buy the cheaper Ethernet Cat6 or Cat7 cable that does not alter the data transmission in any significant way, and tweak the sound in a much cheaper and more predictable way to achieve the same results.
I’m sure someone will eventually discover that wireless sounds better when the “bad dielectrics”–the (mostly) nitrogen in the air are replaced with helium If they’re quietly listening to music they could ignore the fact that everyone in the room talks silly.
These same people object to the “bad dielectrics” in their carpets or floors, so have their speaker cables elevated on pricey little poles.
Disclaimer: I once survived a graduate physics course in which the professor was bound and determined to cover all of Jackson’s “Classical Electrodynamics” from Chapter 7 to the bitter end in one semester. One problem in particular on dielectrics was returned to the class for reworking, because it wasn’t done to the expected level of mathematical rigor. So when people talk about dielectrics who obviously haven’t done the homework I bristle.
Didn’t the super-luminal neutrino discovery at CERN turn out to be a cable problem?
There are people who claim cheap Toslink cables “sound bad” too.
I researched the claim of wireless sounding better than wired as advocated by some people on the basis of lack of ground loop (or whatever electrical noise). Although there are cases with particular devices that people find that WiFi sounds better, there are other cases that the opposite is true, i.e. LAN sounds better than WiFi. So this is setup and device dependent (as with many audio things).
But since this is Roon forum and people here are using Roon, LAN is of course much more robust and stable than WiFi.
Toslink optical conversion usually adds more jitter than coaxial.
I agree that would be the more likely explanation. Nothing to do with the cable.
The general idea of LTI (linear time invariant) systems introducing jitter is that rounding the waveform increases the time interval over which logic levels 0 and 1 are ambiguous.
I don’t want to come off as an “objectivist objectionist”. I still very much enjoy playing records, and often find they have a certain magic not found in digital reproduction. It could very well be due to nostalgia, or euphonic coloration or both, but I enjoy them anyway. I draw the line, though, at spending big bucks for digital products designed to sound different by deliberately distorting the digital waveform (wittingly or not).
I feel the same way about spending big bucks for an amplifier whose designer is ideologically opposed to Zoebel networks and more big bucks for an inductive speaker cable that makes it sound so much better. Easier and cheaper to buy stuff that was properly designed in the first place.
