Oavsett här är en högt aktad topp engineer vid namn Ted Smith sitt syn.
Han säljer INTE ethernet kablar, utan designer och byggar Dacs...
Ted Smith
I haven’t been reading this thread so some (or most) of this might have already been discussed.
Noise is the biggest culprit in Ethernet cables: the noise that’s near the frequency of the Ethernet signaling won’t be attenuated much by the transformers at each Ethernet connection.
Ethernet is complicated enough that you need a computer on each end - computers generate noise.
The higher the Ethernet frequency the more complicated it is to handle things so those computers make more noise.
There’s almost always a lot of noise in these frequencies coming from whatever your Ethernet source is.
The first thing is the DAC might be creating or reflecting noise back onto the cable and that noise along with any source noise might be affecting people’s systems via any groundloops (which are basically RF receivers) The (probably) very low level noise that’s picked up in any particular groundloop depends on the area of the loop. Bigger loops, more current noise is circulating in the groundloop.
The thing about RF noise is that any non-linearity in any connected circuit can modulate any audio frequency noise on the RF signal down into the audio band (e.g. a crystal radio, which is just a diode.) Guess what? Almost all of our equipment has diodes, transistors, etc. near the inputs and outputs. They, along with any other non-linear idiosyncrasies of a system can convert audio frequency modulations in any received RF into simple audio noise, perhaps right at the inputs, or perhaps it ends up modulating power supplies, etc.
How loud is this? It depends a lot on the system. My neighbor has a not well maintained simple stereo console. When you walk by it with a cell phone you can hear the cell phone pinging the towers, etc. Most of our systems are much better than that, but even low level noise masks details in our systems (or, at times, enhance details, e.g. dither)
Similarly the noise (conducted or radiated) that gets into the DAC’s case (including the Ethernet receiving computer’s noise) can be modulated down into the audio band at a number of places in the DAC - in many DACs the power supply just before the final gain (the DS’s output is a filter, so that helps a little compared to DAC chips, on the other hand one bit DACs are the most sensitive to jitter.) Any noise that affects the master clock via it’s power supply, it’s frequency control, etc. will cause jitter that directly affects the audio quality.
It’s much easier to just run some experiments with different cables than it is to predict how much effect any of this will have on your system. But using balanced connections (both for digital and analog) can help with ground loop noise rejection. Using star grounding of your components can help. Which outlets things are plugged into can change the area of the groundloops that go thru the AC power lines. I’m sure that some of you can affect things a little by being more careful with the layout of your interconnects (especially unbalanced interconnects), speaker wires, etc. Getting them too close together might cause unwanted cross talk (probably not), but having them way far apart may cause more system noise from received RF.
FWIW I’ve had plenty of guests who can hear the difference when I shut down WiFi in the room - still I hardly even do that and I’ve also got cordless phones, cell phones and all sort of other things that add a little hash into the system.
Also how I route my ethernet cable to my NAS has, at times, made a noticeable difference in the sound quality of my system. I lowered that effect a lot by keeping the NAS far away and keeping Ethernet cables as removed from my system as possible.