The Shunyata Research OMEGA-X-Ethernet Cable

@richardbrand 

Re-reading my yesterday's post, its tone now seems unduly harsh. The deleterious ambience of this thread must have gotten to me. Apologies.

@jrareform 

I do believe there is a reason companies spend their entire existence trying to solve these problems.  And it’s not just to sell a $3000 USB cable to someone so they can laugh about it.  They truly believe in the science behind their claims.  And have a ton of real world experience to back it up.  I won’t be buying any $3000 cabling. But then again I don’t have a million dollar system that may reveal these changes.

That is exactly the reason - Money. Businesses solve problems for customers and in return, they earn it.

But that doesn’t mean there was a major problem with said cables to begin with. The problems occur only in the very lowest rung of cables that would fail long term testing and in sensitive environments. 

System cost is one thing. The intent of the system is another. Truly transparent audio equipment is the only way to go forward with being able to actually hear differences like this. 

Vintage systems and modern systems alike can achieve astounding levels of transparency. The "engineering first" examples are what you want, not pages upon pages of marketing babble or heavy aluminum blocks being CNC milled to perfection.

Ask to see the internals - the proof is in the pudding. Amplifiers that cannot modulate electricity consistently enough to keep up with the signal have some of the cheapest surface-mount parts. On the other hand, all discrete amplifiers offer real heavyweight power and a much more robust sound.

Another thing to stay away from is excessively high SINAD, SNR, and extremely low THD. Global feedback in amplifiers when done with the intent to score well on the test bench with resistive loads results in worse transient response and lower fidelity overall. Amplifiers with carefully applied, local feedback are the ones that truly allow you to hear fine detail because the signal is passing through mostly unchanged.

Audio is first and foremost a time domain problem. If you can reduce the errors and timing irregularities, you improve how close you get to hearing the live sound, or the sound that was captured.

I would agree with most of your statements, except for the part about USB not being an "audiophile" cable.

@jrareform 

It doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. It just needs to prioritize careful isolation between the DATA and POWER lines (wires inside) good shielding/noise rejection. Adding  clip on ferrite cores to both ends of the cable will cancel out environmental noise as I said previously, which is a step in the right direction. I would recommend trying this inexpensive change first.

Ordinary printer cables will work, but you are better off buying something made for the purpose. Afterall, it’s what you hear.

@moto_man 

It is commonplace to hear those differences after you switch.

It boils down quite a bit to human psychology and how our brains work.

If you spend thousands of dollars on something you consciously or subconsciously expect to hear a difference.

The truth is, the cables were either doing something wrong that you heard as a positive change, or they were better than what you had used previously, which could have been very lousy cables.

Please make sure you level match and play exactly the same tracks when trying to determine if there is in fact a difference in cables.