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$340 Audiophile Ethernet Cable Tested
An anonymous reader writes: Ars Technica has posted a series of articles attempting to verify whether there's any difference between a $340 "audiophile" Ethernet cable and a $2.50 generic one. In addition to doing a quick teardown, they took the cables to Las Vegas and asked a bunch of test subjects to evaluate the cables in a blind test. Surprise, surprise: the expensive cables weren't any better. The subjects weren't even asked to say which one was better, just whether they could tell there was a difference. But for the sake of completeness, Ars also passed the cables through a battery of electrical tests. The expensive cable met specs — barely, in some cases — while the cheap one didn't. The cheap one passed data, but with a ton of noise. "And listeners still failed to hear any difference."
As long as bits are not irrecoverably lost, how is it going to sound any different?
Jitter, the relative timing of when bits arrive. Audiophile tests led to its having been identified as a measurable problem in S/PDIF installations, which led to use of a circular buffer to mitigate jitter. True, S/PDIF is connection-oriented, and networks using Ethernet are packet-switched with such a buffer being implemented in the network stack and in the application. TCP in particular retransmits packets corrupted by noise. But if the retransmitted packet doesn't arrive in time, emptying of the buffer causes an audible interruption. And if the buffer is enlarged to prevent this, this can affect perceived responsiveness in interactive applciations such as music production and video games.
They did it because that's how the company that makes the cables describes their test environment. They claim "clear unmistakeable" improvements in the audio quality in the setup Ars used, but only if you plug the cable in in the correct direction (denoted by an arrow on the connectors).
In fact the company claims that they determine which way to face the arrow by plugging the cable in and listening in both directions and choosing the best.
I read the internet for the articles.
I was an audiophile, worrying about the last 0.00001% THD and IM and noise and everything else, until a transducer Engineer (read: a professional who designs microphones and speakers for a living) casually mentioned that the very best, cost-is-no-object, hand-assembled microphones and speakers distort at least several percent.
Each.
Which means that no matter how great the ELECTRONIC portion of your signal path, the beginning and end have distortion measured in numbers with nonzero digits to the left of the decimal point. Doesn't matter how clean your electronics or special magic cables or whatever are, they can't remove the distortion that's already there in the original signal (unless your source is purely electronic) nor prevent your speakers/headphones from adding even more right before you listen.
After that, I paid attention mostly to noise floors and ignored everything else. I keep a lot more of my money and I have a lot more self-respect because I know I'm not wasting said money imagining that I can hear something that I cannot.
It's your money, spend it how you like.