Network Cables

[Teetertotter?]

@mtrycrafts, sorry to have ruffled your feathers.

 

[mtrycrafts]

@mtrycrafts, sorry to have ruffled your feathers.

You didn't. I guess I came across wrongly.

 

[Bobby Bass]

The lead article in the Absolute Sound email I just received was about cables. Here’s the bottom line. Only 400K+ for the starter set.

 

[lovinthehd]

Man that is some serious insanity, but typical for AS

 

[justinfalder]

My Cat 5e cables[internet] are from my Cat 5e modem outputs, to my TV, Satellite DVR, and Denon AVR, purchased from Cable Wholesale. My HDMI cables are ZesKit Certified, purchased from Amazon. Picture and sound quality, could not be better + speed.
No mess, no fuss, as they say.

Do you have any more cable stories? Sound nursk .

 

[highfigh]

Hello! I am new to the forum.

I do a fair bit of streaming and chanced upon some discussion/ads regarding network cables (e.g. CAT 5/6, etc). I have seen some of Gene's videos on digital cables and believe that he makes sense. That said, there are network cables out there for thousands of dollars. That doesn't make sense to me. The network signal needs to come to the house, through my modem, router, cable in the walls, and finally to my player. I do not see how spending a lot of money on a boutique network cable can make any difference at all. The ads seem to have typical subjective claims, without any objective data..

Is there a consensus of opinion? I would appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks

Fred

When cables costing thousands of dollars makes sense, worry about your sanity.

Cable standards are set with an eye toward future possibilities, but to be honest, the most advanced only matter when high capacity (speed and data ) is an absolute requirement. For streaming, Cat5e is just fine and it can do gigbit up to about 100 meters.

And don't bite on the optical connectors with gold plating- there's no electical connection from end to end, so that's absolutely unnecessary.

 

[highfigh]

Definitely cheap solutions available
Tester

Crimper

For just a few dollars more you can get some premium products. My tester wasn't cheap, but it is multi function including tone out.

Why the hell did you give me a thumbs down for my other reply in post 20?

 

[jinjuku]

When cables costing thousands of dollars makes sense, worry about your sanity.

Cable standards are set with an eye toward future possibilities, but to be honest, the most advanced only matter when high capacity (speed and data ) is an absolute requirement. For streaming, Cat5e is just fine and it can do gigbit up to about 100 meters.

And don't bite on the optical connectors with gold plating- there's no electical connection from end to end, so that's absolutely unnecessary.

CAT5e is 1/10/100/1000/2500/5000 to 100 meters (328 feet), 10000 to 145 feet.

BUT CAT5e really hasn't been a widely implemented cable spec for at least 15 years.

It's all 6/6A.

The real issue that no one from the delusional side of things will show or answer: 1Gbps Ethernet is a 125Mhz clock. You need to explain how anyone on earth can hear that or how it affects the DAC reconstruction filter.

Ethernet is 100% galvonically isolated.. Total air gap.

Then the last fact is we are playing from at rest data. Jitter has nothing to do with it because you are buffering. Tidal for instance will buffer your entire track. If you have 300Mbps Internet tidal will literally buffer the entire song you are listening to in about 1.5 seconds. You can literally pull the plug and the song will play back in it's entirety.

That means you need to be able to tell me when the cable is plugged in or removed. Because that 420 second track you started playing 3 seconds ago is already transferred and there is no network jitter to worry about.

 

[Golfx]

Bluejean cables has some informational articles as well as tested/verified cables for sale.

Is Your Cat 6 Cable a Dog? -- Blue Jeans Cable

 

[highfigh]

CAT5e is 1/10/100/1000/2500/5000 to 100 meters (328 feet), 10000 to 145 feet.

BUT CAT5e really hasn't been a widely implemented cable spec for at least 15 years.

It's all 6/6A.

The real issue that no one from the delusional side of things will show or answer: 1Gbps Ethernet is a 125Mhz clock. You need to explain how anyone on earth can hear that or how it affects the DAC reconstruction filter.

Ethernet is 100% galvonically isolated.. Total air gap.

Then the last fact is we are playing from at rest data. Jitter has nothing to do with it because you are buffering. Tidal for instance will buffer your entire track. If you have 300Mbps Internet tidal will literally buffer the entire song you are listening to in about 1.5 seconds. You can literally pull the plug and the song will play back in it's entirety.

That means you need to be able to tell me when the cable is plugged in or removed. Because that 420 second track you started playing 3 seconds ago is already transferred and there is no network jitter to worry about.

I beg to differ- it's not all 6/6a. You may be in the commercial/industrial world, but try to get people to drop $1K on residential cabling, even though they pay through the nose for ISP performance they'll NEVER use. Cat5e is used widely in resi because it works, it's better than most actually need and a lot of resi customers don't want to pay extra for Cat6/6E, even though they insist on paying for higher speeds and other BS that doesn't matter.

WRT content that's already where it needs to go- my internet has gone out at times and my Yamaha continues to stream for several minutes, even through more than one additional song. Customers are often confused by that.

 

[highfigh]

Bluejean cables has some informational articles as well as tested/verified cables for sale.

Is Your Cat 6 Cable a Dog? -- Blue Jeans Cable

Most cable from major sources shows the tested speed on the box.

 

[jinjuku]

I beg to differ- it's not all 6/6a. You may be in the commercial/industrial world, but try to get people to drop $1K on residential cabling, even though they pay through the nose for ISP performance they'll NEVER use. Cat5e is used widely in resi because it works, it's better than most actually need and a lot of resi customers don't want to pay extra for Cat6/6E, even though they insist on paying for higher speeds and other BS that doesn't matter.

WRT content that's already where it needs to go- my internet has gone out at times and my Yamaha continues to stream for several minutes, even through more than one additional song. Customers are often confused by that.

Probably. I don't do consumer networking.

For the home there is not effective difference between 5e and 6. CAT6 is better suited because in large horizontals with 100's of cables in a bundle you don't want vampire loading.

I just haven't seen CAT5e ran in the last 15 years.

 

[highfigh]

Probably. I don't do consumer networking.

For the home there is not effective difference between 5e and 6. CAT6 is better suited because in large horizontals with 100's of cables in a bundle you don't want vampire loading.

I just haven't seen CAT5e ran in the last 15 years.

While it's a cost-driven decision, large homes often need surprisingly large/detailed networks and that also needs ways to add/replace cables. It's great to try to future proof in the project design, but in resi, the formats aren't as stable as commercial/industrial AV, so HD over IP may take a long time to implement. Some companies have been offering it, but it's more aimed at commercial/clubs/bar/restaurant and that's where higher level category cable is needed. As I posted, people just don't want to pay for it, but they aren't funding MDU housing, large hotels, city infrastructure, airports, etc. In resi projects, it's not uncommon to hear "OMG! There are so many cables" and "What's that for?" when they see cable management hardware like the ladder rack or the type that looks like the bottom of a shopping cart.

The link shows what's happening and IMO, it should have come sooner, so HDMI wouldn't be the bane of our existance.

EVO-IP 2.0 - Vanco International

Delivering stunning 4K visuals, immersive Dante Ready audio, eARC support, Dolby & DTS downmixing, KVM integration, and more.

www.vanco1.com

 

[Teetertotter?]

Do you have any more cable stories? Sound nursk .

@mtrycrafts asked the same question back in Sept. I have to add that I discarded the Cat 5e, non shielded. I replaced with Cat 6a, shielded. lol I wanted to make sure there would be no outside interference, from disturbing the Netflix, 4K movies.

 

[highfigh]

@mtrycrafts asked the same question back in Sept. I have to add that I discarded the Cat 5e, non shielded. I replaced with Cat 6a, shielded. lol I wanted to make sure there would be no outside interference, from disturbing the Netflix, 4K movies.

You tossed perfectly good cabling just because you want to believe unshielded cable isn't capable of rejecting noise but in reality, any twisted pair wiring is able to do that, as well as cancel noise on the wires, themselves. It's called 'Common Mode Noise Rejection' and has been used since the 1880s, when noise on telephone lines became a big problem.

There's a lot going on between the network connection and audio circuitry- do you really believe the noise is passing through, unfiltered?

Did you use Cat6 ends with a metallic shield, or just the plain plastic ones? If you used the plain plastic ones, you're cables have shielding, but they aren't 'shielded' because the shielding isn't terminated to ground.

 

[Golfx]

Most cable from major sources shows the tested speed on the box.

OK, but why trust a mass produced package printed number. Hence why bluejeans sends a certificate of their testing inside the package with the cable.

You must not have read the article from blue jeans. It explains the issue quite well,

 

[lovinthehd]

OK, but why trust a mass produced package printed number. Hence why bluejeans sends a certificate of their testing inside the package with the cable.

You must not have read the article from blue jeans. It explains the issue quite well,

Third party testing still would have advantages, hopefully BJC has shown to be consistently honest?

 

[highfigh]

OK, but why trust a mass produced package printed number. Hence why bluejeans sends a certificate of their testing inside the package with the cable.

You must not have read the article from blue jeans. It explains the issue quite well,

Which article, the ones that tell about how they do things? Sure I have- I don't need certificates if I trust a brand but once I have a problem, they need to back up their products, unlike one that refused to honor the warranty on a cable that never worked.

I have been here since before the hubbub described by Blue Jeans' founder and have worked in AV/networking for a very long time- if the bulk cabling didn't work, the brands would die and distributors & contractors would stop buying it. The fact is, very little of the well known brands used by contractors, which are NOT purchased at retail, fails. Look at Blue Jeans products- I'm not saying anything they sell is bad in any way but they BUY the cable, ends, etc from manufacturers like Mogamii, Neutrik, etc and they don't actually make the parts, just the finished cables, AFAIK. That's fine, but they could never fill the orers for the country's contractors- that takes large distributors and at this point, most of them are under only a few corporate umbrellas. The Field termination isn't difficult at this point and aside from AudioQuest's component + two channel BS cable with 24ga center conductor, I don't know of anyone who has had problems with F, RCA, BNC or other connectors, although installing or rplacing ends on HDMI isn't usually possible because if the finicky nature of that crap.

 

[highfigh]

Third party testing still would have advantages, hopefully BJC has shown to be consistently honest?

I don't remember seeing anything bad about Blue Jeans cables, or company.

 

[jinjuku]

Third party testing still would have advantages, hopefully BJC has shown to be consistently honest?

When I've ordered there is a Fluke certification report included.

Panduit and Tripp-lite handle it a bit differently. They guarantee their cables will pass spec and replace it if they don't.