Talk to me about CAT 6 in wall cable

Cat 6 is fine and excessive.  I mean, you should probably do this for new installations, or 6a, but audio and even video streaming is so light on bandwidth that it’s all overkill these days. 

You should also check the lenghts involved.  I think Cat 6 only does 10G in short distances, so if you want 10G in the future (which would support hundreds of high resolution music streams at once) you want to get 6a.

It is so easy to buy a ’better’ cable for all the trouble of running it.

+1 @elliottbnewcombjr ;  cables with the same spec come in different wire gauge, insulation and connectors.

For a few bucks more I went with this Linkup 22g :

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087C9VZHT?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_4&th=1

Note LinkUp makes 22 and 28g  cables...

My last house had Cat 5 run to every room except the bathrooms and we never had a problem, so you should be just fine with Cat 6.

 However, I have been told that with a mesh network I risk drop outs and loss of signal! 
 

@daveyf 

I have been using EERO mesh for years. Not a single dropout or loss of signal. Yes there are mesh networks that aren’t great. Eero is no issues 

From the Ethernet perspective either is fine. Any packets lost due to noise or anything get retransmitted and error corrected. Ethernet is not S/PDIF. Bandwidth is several orders of magnitude bigger than ever needed for audio data. Your SO watching Netflix in the next room or kid playing World of Warcraft consume 100 more bandwidth than any Tidal stream.

If DAC is in the same box with the streamer there may be some concern with noise coming via Ethernet leaking into analog stage. But that may be rectified by optical isolation stage.