Cat 5 - 6 -7 or 8

All joking aside, I heard 6 is the ticket, although I can’t say why? Just heard.

erik_squires - Hey Erik, "Whatever works for your length and bandwidth, but I recommend shielded near the gear. 1 GigE is plenty of bandwidth for audio"

Whatever all that means (to techie for me) ya gtta link?

He's saying Cat 6 is great. :-) I went to it.. I love the terminal end tightness, the ribbon design with a tough outer skin and increased DL and UL speeds..

Sound?

It is faster 5X on the average from a fancy Cat 5 my Kids gave me.. It sounds better because of that.. I ran 3 new runs, best 100.00 spent here in a LONG time.. Really pleased. 15,25,35.00 dollar cables..  15,25,100 foot runs..

regards

Either Cat 5e, or Cat 6 are plenty fast and I recommend shielded around audio gear.

Best,

Erik

Cat8 can produce ground loops between connected components through the unshielded metal plugs. Otherwise it all depends on connectors, shielding and quality of copper used. I have good experience with cat6 Meicord Opal. Also using an EMO filter for galvanic isolation helps