Ethernet Cables

I have not tried a $500 ethernet cable but the very affordable Supra sounded better than the one that came with my BS Vault. Why does the last 6ft or so of a power cable make a difference when there’s 100ft or so of romex from the panel to the wall receptacle, plus miles of cable floating in the air between a substation and your home? Well, it does make a difference with power cords and I believe the cable is canceling out noise, EM/RFI and that same principle  is probably true with an ethernet cable. Not sure it makes sense wiring ones entire home with say Supra, but the last meter will make a difference. I come off the wall port to a switch then with a Supra to my streamer.

Nordost has a mini white paper on digital cables that tries to address the “it’s only 1s and 0s”

https://www.nordost.com/downloads/Digital%20Audio%20Cables%20-%20How%20Can%20They%20Make%20A%20Diffe...

If you buy an expensive Ethernet cable it’s obvious to all that the bits and the zeros are going to be bigger, shinier, faster and much better.
Cheaper cables pass cheap bits and bum zeros.
The same principle occurs with the transmission/receiving equipment.
AG 🇦🇺

I challenge anyone claiming differences in ethernet cables passing packets. There can be zero differences because a bit is a bit. Bits just don’t get dropped or we would not have communication over the internet.

I don’t think this is the real issue on this thread. The different ethernet cables are transfering bits from the source. No argument here.
The destination is the audio system and the intent is to prevent noise, mostly caused by RF interference, from getting into the audio signal.
The signal distributed from a cable company which hooks up to our modem/routers is full of RFI, some ethernet cables are better than others in transfering clean data. Supra CAT8’s conductors are individually shielded which helps reduce interference/ noise from being delivered to the destination.
The major source of this RFI in our homes is the router.
Using CAT8, I experienced a lower noise-floor from my streamer than when using CAT6.

Looking to reduce this noise further, I went to the source and added RFI/EMI filtering at the router. My streaming playback has been greatly improved.
Using an RF "sniffer" device indicates no RFI coming from the router into my audio system.

If they didn’t work, why would people spend $100s on Ethernet cables, and why would people make them. There must be something better about those expensive cables to justify the price. Also, maybe you can’t hear the difference but at least with one of those expensive cables you can relax and rest assured in the knowledge that at least your ethernet cable is not a source of degradation in your system.