Are my CAT5 and router my weak link?

I just keep thinking about all of the money I have spent for high end gear and their fancy connectors, etc. and want to know if a $120 router will be my weak link.

I doubt it. The physical separation between the router and the system would seem to make it very unlikely that RFI generated by the router would have any audible effects on the system. It is conceivable to me that differences in the risetimes and falltimes of the signals generated by different routers could result in VERY minor differences in noise conditions within the DAC, but I doubt that those differences would have audible consequences. Even if they did, there would be no reason to expect a more expensive router to necessarily be better in that respect, and it very conceivably could be worse.

Regards,
-- Al

I switched my freebie network cables over and heard a difference. One was clearly preferable to the others. So I demoed an Opal, was a sure improvement on all the freebie ones, so much so, I paid the £100 for it...

Yes maybe mad, but it was cheaper than mains cables, IC's and speaker cables I have...

Try a linear supply for the router..
I have two d-link boxes both now with linear psu's, made a small but noticable improvement.

The installation of just one MeiCord Opal cable made a nice improvement.

Now finding out the above affects sound repro, I'm hoping to run a dedicated pc with my Meicord just for music, cutting out the d-link boxes and two cat cable runs.

You may find this interesting:
http://soundcheck-audio.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/touch-toolbox-hw-and-network.html

Bryoncunningham.
Glad you liked the CAT 7!
It's funny although cables aren't supposed to make a difference the CAT 7 do. Funny my PS Audio PWD system has functioned better and better each time I jumped from CAT 5,6 and now 7. I have no explanation why. All the cable Gods here will never admit that it does.

In my own setup, I use an Ethernet Opto-Isolator that sits between the ethernet cable that feeds my "sterile" PC and the router that the cable connects to.

This device stops any electrical noise from traveling thru the copper conductors of the ethernet cable before it gets to my music server. Same concept as installing a dedicated circuit for your audio equipment, but for the LAN connection.

All the cheapo routers, NAS drives, ethernet printers..etc found in the home environment have no need to perform their function in a silent manner nor where they designed to do so. If you start to add up just the Wall Wart switching power supplies alone in the path between your PC and your DAC you begin to see an ugly picture form. Certainly the PC needs no additional help when it comes to generating noise so I feel anything you can do to help isolate it from the rest of this crud is a bonus.

Granted, the number of configuration choices one could pick from to setup a music server are fairly broad so some may be more affected by said noise than others and if you have done nothing at the PC level to help lower its own noise than all of the above may not matter anyway.

In my own setup I use a low power ALIX computer running Voyage Linux which only requires about 12 watts of power to perform its duties. I feed the ALIX computer power via an adjustable laboratory grade linear DC power supply. In my case this Opto-Isolator makes sense as the music server is already pretty clean from noise so any additional filtering is a plus. My DAC is also optically isolated from the Alix computer over its USB port Input (Ayre QB9).