Audiophile Ethernet cable bullshit: WiredWorld Starlight CAT8

[@FatMaul]

I know it’s been years since you’ve posted but I’d love to hear your take on audiophile Ethernet filters and usb isolators etc.

[@cosmiciceblast77]

I bought these similar ethernet cables, flat profile on Amazon just for internet connectivity and they caught fire and melted inside my motherboard like 5 years ago. I found out that they are like a Chinese / Asian knock off brand that uses aluminum wires coated with thin layer of copper. If my memory serves me correct the aluminum wire in the cable in that the aluminum itself it's not supposed to be in The Wire. It's is supposed to be pure copper not aluminum. The aluminum is more likely to burn and more likely because it is super thin and because it is made primarily of aluminum. They use this because aluminum is cheaper than copper the cost and is more risky. I was trying to buy a category eight ethernet cable and what I got if it was legit would only be a normal ethernet cable. After I return the products I realized that category 8 ethernet cable has extra shielding and extra thick and thus cannot be flat.

[@dravinevatoa9225]

Not as black and white as you make out. Which makes you as guilty as the super high end snake oil seller's, however there will always be a clear difference between your bog standard Amazon junk cable and a quality cable, highly sensitive electronics are greatly affected by noise and jitter etc.

[@tinytownsoftware3837]

It's pretty black and white when it comes to ethernet. Your 1 meter diamond studded ethernet cable is not going to matter if you stream your music across the internet. The data travels through hundreds, if not thousands of cabling and hundreds of switches and routers. And then there's the various protocols that ensure the data at the receiving end is 100% carbon copy of what was sent.

[@Xiefux]

i have this cable and i can hear a clear difference between this and a cheap one.

[@tinytownsoftware3837]

You're lying to yourself. Look up how data is sent over TCP/IP and you will realize that the ethernet cable does not matter.

[@AudriusN]

try it on network printer, the prints will be crispier.

[@cameronwilson8561]

I have been installing and certifying network cabling for 20+ years in all sorts of critical environments. From my own experience, there is a noticeable difference in performance between a $2 patch cable and a $10 cable, anything more than $20 is a waste of money. F/UTP has some advantages over U/UTP particularly in noisy environments. If you are installing these cables at home, try to use cables with factory terminated connectors as they will most likely perform better than a DIY termination. Crushing and kinking cables will definitely damage the cable, this includes using zip ties with too much pressure or even worse fixing the cable to a surface with a staple gun. Finally keep your cable at least 150mm away from mains power cables.

[@manardh7387]

People just cannot use the ears. Why ? Something happens with some cables, most audio listeners have played with it for YEARS. Meanwhile, listeners keep paying more and more money for the high end cables. OK, stop this denying noise !

[@willemjongman2989]

Great video. We need more critiques of such scams

[@ethernetsoundoff7257]

Thanks. Then entire boutique industry has a large scale failure to understand how asynch Ethernet works. That these systems are highly buffered. Using Tidal as an example: Start playback of a song in Tidal on your PC. Pull the Ethernet cable after 15 seconds and the track still plays. Did the sound improve when you pulled the plug? Did it get worse? Did it stay the same? Then you have 'reviewers' that hear night and day, readily apparent, easy to discern differences. So you have audio press that just lies and makes stuff up **cough** Stereophile Publications**cough**

[@PubstarHero]

@@ethernetsoundoff7257 Always nice to see people do this. I work as a Sys Admin and I do a LOT of networking. All the stuff I read just reeks of snake oil. But if you want to make some real money with me, lets design some fiber ethernet products and denounce using any copper wire due to EMF interference on even the best cables!

[@diegoruffilli1329]

Totally agree. Those are legends that some engineers tend to extends. I suppose high end audio is so low on the price now that they need esotheric problem and solution to keep this world very expensive. This work in pair with audio grade switch... Roon Raat stream works on tcp and there we have error correction. One big misconception is to think I need realtime in reproducing audio. That was a problem of SPdif and toslink for a large number of reason and for the ambition to use it on stage between mixers and effects and so on. But if I project a reproduction system in 2019 using realtime without error correction I must be crazy. I don't want to play a virtual instrument with ASIO over the network. I just want to play a bitstream that has to be perfect like the original. That said if I send a bitstream over tcp I have error correction and in a buffer on the endpoint I have the perfect bitstream. Only then I will apply timing. There's non timing at all before i reach the endpoint buffer. So there can't be jitter and I don't need reclock. Craziness. Let's just take care of powersupply which count and noise on apparatus. If someone is going to say that high end audio bit stream under ethernet over TCP need something is just lying or really have no clue of what he is talking about. From A to B in eth tcp I have the perfect bitstream. Point. Just don't use stream protocol without error correction cause this is just engineering faulty project in reproduction of high end audio files. I will need maybe 1 sec to start audio but that avoid thousands dollars in the middle for a problem that engineers have created. Useless.

[@davidperry4013]

A total waste of marketing and money is what audiophile Ethernet cables are. I call overpriced digital cables absolute horse ship. HDMI, USB, and any other digital connection are just dumb tubes and are just 1s and 0s. Durability is nice to have but wasting your money is not.

[@s18018]

I thought so too, until I replaced a cheap USB-A cable with Pangea audio USB cable. Better highs, imaging and dynamics on my desktop speakers.

[@tinytownsoftware3837]

@@s18018 Lol, absolute and utter bullshit. The USB protocol and HDMI for that matter ensure that the data transfer is a 100% carbon copy. There is nothing subjective, because it's literally part of the software. It sends a packet, the receiver verifies that the packet it received is exact based on an integrity hash. If you heard different, you're lying to yourself to justify your expensive purchase. How do I know? I'm a software engineer and have worked with the USB protocol. Same with network streamers. TCP will ensure data integrity 100% of the time. I could use a bunch of coat hangers for the various ethernet wires and it would work flawlessly, because it's all in the software.

[@twochaudiomg2578]

come to Mi. ill prove you dead wrong. just by listening. ill use my old cat 5 no switch, no clock just router to Audio Music . Then we listen to B

[@Philitron128]

That's fucking impossible lol. TCP/IP is error correcting. There is only on or off with this there cannot be a difference lol. It's all digital

[@mnoble247]

Where @ in Mi? I have an offer of $4000 to your $1000 that when blinded you can't tell.

[@tinytownsoftware3837]

Lol, nice try. As a network engineer I can tell you with certainty that your claim is 100% bullshit.

[@cossboss9778]

hi I'm a hardcore gamer and I want to know if there is a 100ft cat8 available that's is 100% certified to buy either online or store can you help me please thanks... keep up the good work!

[@mnoble247]

The CAT8 standard was just ratified a year ago. The spec for CAT8 runs out at 98 feet so I doubt you will find what you are looking for. CAT8 for a gamer will not net you an ounce of advantage in online gaming. I have a 315 foot generic CAT5e at $0.30 foot that had the same ping times (sub 1MS) and same transfer rate (107MB/s) as a $700 3 foot Nordost Heimdall II Ethernet cable that I ordered for evaluation. Both were able to transfer 280 GB of test files with 0 errors/0 retransmits.

[@cossboss9778]

well sorry but that's where your wrong my friend I had a 5 cat change to a 7A cat and let me tell you what a different it made my gaming specialty fighting and shooters every minuscule of a second matter. Everything matters that's includes TV's wire controllers and modems even configuration cpu gpu and fps fame rates put them all together makes the biggest different and I wont doubt if there's more too it... thanks for the tip anyways bye =0)

[@mnoble247]

Did you replace the cable outside your house, at the ISP? How about the backhaul link to their upstream provider?

[@TwskiTV]

Gamers or audiophiles... Which one is more drowned in bullshit marketing?

[@TwskiTV]

In audio, 75% of the times the bottleneck is the end link (speakers/headphones). In gaming, I would say that it's 99% of the time (end link = player, in this case)

[@s18018]

I can hear a difference in my audiophile USB cable. Dynamics and imaging is far better than cheap USB cable.