Most Important, Unloved Cable...
So what do you make of this interview, taken from another thread, in the context of the current discussion? http://www.davidgilmour.com/press/2005/march/TapeOp_March05.pdf It is a rather long but good read on a number of levels. Seems the studio manager and engineers are convinced they hear differences related to different signal, digital (even the most important, unloved one) and power cables, different cable orientations and swear by good power conditioning. They apparently determined this through careful listening and experimentation, and it guided decisions on significant investments by the studio owner. Here is a short video of the same studio space with the owner. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UqP32CeQuUw Thanks to @maplegrovemusic and @shadorne for bringing these links to my attention. kn |
I have a question regarding Ethernet cables, aside of what all of you are discussing. My cable has to be about 50’ from my computer to my pre pro or DAC. does the length of the cable effect the sound quality?, ( as in HDMI too long is not inherently good)The standard is 100 meters/328 feet. A solid PHY can drive it ~380 feet with out BER starting to show up. That’s for 1GBe (~110 MB/s or 1 CD every 7 seconds). Crusty old CAT5e is good for 10GBe at 37 meters with a lot of switches (~1250 MBs/ or 1.7 CD’s every second). In my testing of 315 foot generic CAT5e (Hypertek) at $.30 a foot and a 3 foot Nordost Heimdall II at $233 a foot (so 7000% more expensive) on a both a server/client computer to USB DAC and server computer to $4000 Cary Audio DMS-500. No one when blinded could tell a difference. When I recently went out to WGUTZ in Denver and he listened blind he only hit 60%. So basically a coin flip. Otherwise he was positive of differences. The generic cable was a 100 foot $13 flat ribbon style from Amazon. His was ~20 foot custom, cryo treated, with Siemons industrial terminations. |
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granny! It is not that "we" cannot hear the any difference, it is because there is no difference (that matters). Cables/wires cannot "upgrade" the audio program. All they can do is preclude outside interferences or influences that might "leak into" bargain basement low quality connects and change the audio signal passing through it. If you have a significant noise or distortion issue, expensive cables aren’t going to fix it. I chuckle when you guys say: "Oh I changed to such and such exotic wire and the improvement was breathtaking." Breathtaking? Really? "We" hear no difference over basic good quality connects because physically, logically and scientifically significant improvements are not possible. You hear the difference because you desperately want to.😉😉 |
dynaquest4, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I was projecting what I perceived as jinjuku’s (and your?) priorities. Your most recent post supports that perspective. As for durability, I can and have made power cables with hardware store parts that would pass current after decades of hard use, but did not sound as good as some more exotic designs. Your statement is sweeping compared to your specific knowledge of recording engineers intent. |
I haven't seen anyone be a proponent of junk. Bottom line is $1/foot for a certified Ethernet cable from Blue Jeans is all you need to get the most out of your streamer. $232 a foot more is not going to buy you a single iota improvement. The fact is you can do 10GBe (1250MB/s) over 15 year old CAT5e up to 37 meters on a lot of swtiches now. I could theoretically transfer my entire 2000 album collection in seconds. |
dynaquest4, yeah, I guess that is why they use $few a foot power cables in all major recording studios. Or maybe not... http://shunyata.com/2015/04/01/grant-samuelsen-visits-astoria-studios/ and this, referring to a specific Shunyata power cable: ”The Anaconda Alpha wasted little time in becoming a power-line reference used by major music and film studios, electronics manufacturers, reviewers, music producers and mastering engineers. Studios such as Sony Music (Japan) and Philips (Crest National-US) adopted the Anacondas for reference playback and mastering. World-renowned mastering engineers Doug Sax and James Guthrie also endorse and use the Anaconda Alphas, as do Record Producer Rick Rubin and a host of other industry luminaries.” I realize this statement is part of a sales pitch, but I was in a relatively low rental rate basement recording studio recently and even they were using high end cables. When it matters, at least some of the folks that are laying down what we are listening to at night want every advantage to get the sound they are after in the final product, and $few a foot wire apparently doesn’t give them what they want. I tend to agree based on my experience that the right premium cables, power, analog and digital, make a positive difference in my playback systems. Again, YMMV. |
jinjuku, yes, of course a digital signal is handled completely differently by the sending and receiving device compared to AC power supplies. The analogy is very broadly drawn here. My point is regardless of the type of signal or how the signal is handled at either end, if something bad happens to it in the wire, or it does something bad to a signal in adjacent wire in your system, it can affect the overall sound coming out of your speakers or headphones. Your point does argue for better implementation of devices and error correction in data reconstruction - and perhaps why optical toslink should not be the first choice for digital data transfer - but I don’t think your point obviates the need for good cabling. Maybe we agree on that. |
knownothing sez: "A quality Ethernet cable, or analog interconnect, or power cable keep signals intact and in their appropriate lanes in a cluttered environment around your gear, so you deliver as close to the initial output at the other end of the cable as you can get without picking up or transferring interference from or to other cables or gear in the vicinity." Exactly! And a "quality cable" needs not cost more that a few dollars a foot. Spending more makes them look prettier and more impressive but does nothing to improve, enhance or increase the quality of the sound. |
The same argument has been leveled against power coming in off the grid and how could a high quality power cable in the last couple of feet “rescue” an already polluted AC source.While I agree the same argument has been leveled, the people the level the same points about a power vs Ethernet don’t know what they are talking about. Unlike power, every port that data passes through is a reconstruction. |
@azbrd I am going to guess that the OP is not using the high quality Ethernet cable to deliver the last few feet of Internet service, but rather to transfer data locally stored on a server to a DAC or some other limited local data transfer. The same argument has been leveled against power coming in off the grid and how could a high quality power cable in the last couple of feet “rescue” an already polluted AC source. All that said, I think this logic misses the mark. A quality Ethernet cable, or analog interconnect, or power cable keep signals intact and in their appropriate lanes in a cluttered environment around your gear, so you deliver as close to the initial output at the other end of the cable as you can get without picking up or transfering interference from or to other cables or gear in the vicinity. I have found that the better I tame possible problems related to non conservative signal delivery between equipment, the better and bigger difference I notice in the next upgrade in another part of my system cabling. YMMV. |
I just upgraded my home ethernet service from 20Mb to 40Mb and had an interesting talk with the installer. As he was testing the new connections he mentioned all the splices & switches that exist between my home and the CO and the effect they have on the overall performance I will see. I mentioned the fact the some people believe that spending big $ on fancy CAT 6/7 cables for their audio systems and he laughed & could not figure out how those cables could possibly have any impact on anything. The real fact is there is so many switches & splices upstream from your home that no single cable could compensate for it, TCP and its built in error corrections and retries is what does that. |
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Goodness, GK...methinks thou doth protest too much. I suspect that given a chance to guess which cables were which on your own system in your own home in a fair and impartial method...where you were not able to know which were which, you would decline...deep down knowing that there was a very good chance you could not pick out your own "best performing" cables from two or three others of much lesser quality (e.g. MonoPrice). It's never going to happen so you may certainly continue to spout your pseudo-science. |
jinjuku Why Pink? Quite offensive, I’d say. : ) Don’t color shame my Invisible Pink Unicorn Buddy. He’s having a hard enough time with the naysayers that would like some evidence other then my and a few 100 thousand other peoples say so. >>>>>>Yeah, right. Voting is real scientific. 😀 On the other hand I would not be surprised if there were 100 thousand who are somewhat hearing impaired 👂🏻and/or all thumbs. 👎🏻 Jujistu I can leap tall buildings in a single bound but it wouldn’t be scientifically significant even if you asked me to prove it to so I don’t bother with it. Need a rather large N of people jumping buildings for my claim to be even relevant. >>>>>>That’s quite a silly argument. Kind of what I’ve come to expect from naysayers, if I can speak frankly. 😁 |
Why Pink? Quite offensive, I’d say. : )Don’t color shame my Invisible Pink Unicorn Buddy. He’s having a hard enough time with the naysayers that would like some evidence other then my and a few 100 thousand other peoples say so. I can leap tall buildings in a single bound but it wouldn’t be scientifically significant even if you asked me to prove it to so I don’t bother with it. Need a rather large N of people jumping buildings for my claim to be even relevant. |
shadorne Geoff, The onus is on the person making wild claims to provide proof. If someone else says it is a scam then those making the wild claim should simply provide proof to the contrary. That is how science works. Jinjuku should have been challenged and easily proved wrong a long time ago( if any of the wild cable claims were the least bit true). Those who are justifiably skeptical do not have to provide proof that the wildest claims are indeed bogus. Every significant leap in technology comes with a repeatible demonstration to convince others of the new scientific discovery. >>>>>>Uh, give me a break. This is a hobby, not some pretend science project or peer review or any such thing. There is no audio Oversight Committee and we don't follow AES rules or any such thing. I'm afraid we are on our own. There is no onus on anyone for anything. Not for the claimants not for the naysayers. That’s in your head. That’s what naysayers have been using for decades trying to win the same argument. No one has to prove anything or back up claims. They don't even have make claims or provide explanations. Those are all old wives' tales. maybe some people are skeptical in the real sense of the word, you know, they actually investigate things and are curious about things, but most here are just pretending to be skeptics. They're actually pseudo skeptics. No offense intended. |
Nothing is being claimed as a scam. I understand the fundamentals of how Ethernet works. I've tried out three boutique cables vs one that I made. 1 person here had the intellectual humility to simply hear without knowing what is in situ. All I'm asking for is someone, anyone, provide some proof as to their ability to hear these differences and have that difference follow the expensive cable. It's not to much to ask. I was just having a drink with my buddy the Invisible Pink Unicorn the other day talking about the audacity of people not believing me and the 100's of thousands of people that know him. I understand that while you may not be able to see my Invisible Pink Unicorn buddy, it's only because either your eyes, your glasses, or both suck. He exists, you just need to believe me. |
