Mnyb;683801 Wrote: > I'm with gary here , there really is no plausible cause and effect for > cat6 cable sounding better. > The odds are in favor of a cognitive effect of some kind . > > screened ethernet cable is not always good thing ( cat 6 can be that ) > then there is risk of conecting the ground planes of the router/ switch > and your hifi. The difference between cat5 and cat5e/6 is in how the design supports higher and higher throughput. Exactly like garym and Mnyb are saying, data integrity is maintained irrespective of cables.
I think people sometimes forget that all the way from the file on the HDD through the entire digital chain in to the DAC of the SB, there is built in fault tolerance. Weather you have cat5 or even cat7 will not change the the data bits in any way shape or form. This is true also for wifi, since the same protocols are used to secure that all bits arrive without errors, I guess bit perfect is the term used... Errors MAY of course occur, and that is where we see a difference between the cable types. A cat5 can typically support up to 100mbps without errors, which by the way is several times more than required for transporting music. Cat 5e and higher allows for even higher bit rates even at longer distances than normal house wiring. The key point however is that any errors that occur are fully corrected, typically by retransmission. So the more errors you get, the lower the actual data rate becomes (negotiated by the protocol). If the throughput becomes too low, mostly experienced with wifi, it can be heard through silent periods in the music. But never ever is there a degradation in the actual data due to any errors regardless of wifi or cable! Thus any effect heard can in fact only be cognitive as you say Mnyb. I wouldn't worry at all, your cat5 is more than able to handle streaming of all your music regardless of bitrate. You will most likely be able to stream even HD video without issues if you wanted... Cat5 can actually also be shielded, but signal to noise ratio in home eth cabling is generally so good that it is not required. There is no heavy machinery with large electric motors or similar to produce the type of EMI that creates problems. Having to pull the cable a long way together with electric wiring may be an issue and potentially requires shielding though (depending on cable type and throughput requirement). For extremely low level signals like from the TV antenna, shielding is a must. One thing that I don't fully understand however, are the references I find about issues related to grounding via cables. In cases where the equipment has a ground connection (via power cable), they are abvously already "connected" right? But any manufacturer of audio equipment would make sure that proper galvanic isolation is maintained would they not? In the case of the SB, or any (most consumer at least) router/switch, there is no grounding pin so I guess it could potentially be so that shielding would create that connection. But then again the signal wires of the cable provide galvanic connection as well, although it ends at the Rx/Tx buffer in the SB does it not? And since the SB is not able to ground the shield (from lack of grounding) it has to leave that job to the transmitting party, as it should (if I read recommendations correctly). Hence the shielding in the SB should be left "open" without any further connections inside it. If it is truly so, I don't know, but if it is there is no risk in using shielded cable either, right? In the end, since most patch cables people use are Unshielded, the connection is broken anyway. Thus we end up only with the in wall cable between the patch panel and the connector at the listening location being shielded, no problem with that either! -- Gblenn ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gblenn's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=22759 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=92030 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
