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Post by pauld on Feb 24, 2019 12:23:29 GMT
I recently bought one of these MeiCord Ethernet cables from a friend, and have to say it has made a lot more difference than I’d expected. Previously I used a Chord Ethernet cable which was significantly better than a stock cable, but this MeiCord cable is even better. So what’s the difference? It has opened out the soundstage, a bit like removing a veil from the speakers. Everything appears tighter and the music flows better. Seriously surprised by this.  |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2019 7:59:31 GMT
OK, I'll bite - how on earth can an ethernet cable change sound? Its TCP/IP so either the signal gets there or it doesn't (so it'll be resent). The entire rest of the internet doesn't need to use special cables and the data rates involved in music are tiny compared with video etc..
That sounds more like the two pieces of kit have poor or no noise suppression and its the shielding that's actually helping, but that's down to poor kit design as opposed to an improvement by the cable.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Feb 27, 2019 8:24:58 GMT
Anything computer audio related usually goes over my head but your analysis seems to be true and yet also show how the sound improved
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Post by savvypaul on Feb 27, 2019 8:44:30 GMT
I have the Meicord here. Bought some when it first came out. Couldn't tell the difference between that and the 'bog standard' cable that came out of my PC spares box. It's fitted behind the skirting boards now, though, and I can't be bothered to take them off to sell the cable, lol!
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Post by dsjr on Feb 27, 2019 9:13:25 GMT
Amazing how 'the soundstage' seems to open out so much better with each cable and tweak. It must be hundreds of feet wide by now.....
I'm genuinely not being sarcastic, as I was once 'highly tuned' into this kind of thing and 'heard' all manner of stuff - and then I started studying the rudiments of the psychology playing in these situations and it all kind of fell into better perspective for me.. These days, I listen to the music mix and how the players are interacting with each other and the 'sound quality' kind of falls into the background. Each to their own...
A nicely made ethernet cable will give pride in ownership and will be pleasant to handle, so of course it'll be 'better.' As for sonic changes, there's a digital 'window' where these things either work or they don't I gather and unless the router or NAS is crap to start with, it *shouldn't* make any difference to data flow at all - digital cables ARE NOT analogue audio ones!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sure Paul's 'new' cable is well made with nice parts and that will be enough for a very short run. One school I worked at had hundreds of feet of ethernet cables with repeaters from main servers to the staff room and remote 'IT' rooms, yet I got wonderful sound when listening to BBC radio iPlayer.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Feb 27, 2019 11:27:45 GMT
Amazing how 'the soundstage' seems to open out so much better with each cable and tweak. It must be hundreds of feet wide by now..... I'm genuinely not being sarcastic, as I was once 'highly tuned' into this kind of thing and 'heard' all manner of stuff - and then I started studying the rudiments of the psychology playing in these situations and it all kind of fell into better perspective for me.. These days, I listen to the music mix and how the players are interacting with each other and the 'sound quality' kind of falls into the background. Each to their own... A nicely made ethernet cable will give pride in ownership and will be pleasant to handle, so of course it'll be 'better.' As for sonic changes, there's a digital 'window' where these things either work or they don't I gather and unless the router or NAS is crap to start with, it *shouldn't* make any difference to data flow at all - digital cables ARE NOT analogue audio ones!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sure Paul's 'new' cable is well made with nice parts and that will be enough for a very short run. One school I worked at had hundreds of feet of ethernet cables with repeaters from main servers to the staff room and remote 'IT' rooms, yet I got wonderful sound when listening to BBC radio iPlayer. I’m sure you will have done the same, Dave, but I’ve often done through a few tweaks that have each brought an improvement. The I’ve gone back to the bare system without the tweaks and not noticed anything missing. Sometimes it’s even sounded better. I’ve also had speaker cables that have been a huge improvement, then gone back months later and found I preferred the originals, or one I’d previously rejected. Reliability of ones perception is something I don’t take for granted anymore. |
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Post by dsjr on Feb 27, 2019 11:37:37 GMT
Amazing how 'the soundstage' seems to open out so much better with each cable and tweak. It must be hundreds of feet wide by now..... I'm genuinely not being sarcastic, as I was once 'highly tuned' into this kind of thing and 'heard' all manner of stuff - and then I started studying the rudiments of the psychology playing in these situations and it all kind of fell into better perspective for me.. These days, I listen to the music mix and how the players are interacting with each other and the 'sound quality' kind of falls into the background. Each to their own... A nicely made ethernet cable will give pride in ownership and will be pleasant to handle, so of course it'll be 'better.' As for sonic changes, there's a digital 'window' where these things either work or they don't I gather and unless the router or NAS is crap to start with, it *shouldn't* make any difference to data flow at all - digital cables ARE NOT analogue audio ones!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sure Paul's 'new' cable is well made with nice parts and that will be enough for a very short run. One school I worked at had hundreds of feet of ethernet cables with repeaters from main servers to the staff room and remote 'IT' rooms, yet I got wonderful sound when listening to BBC radio iPlayer. I’m sure you will have done the same, Dave, but I’ve often done through a few tweaks that have each brought an improvement. The I’ve gone back to the bare system without the tweaks and not noticed anything missing. Sometimes it’s even sounded better. I’ve also had speaker cables that have been a huge improvement, then gone back months later and found I preferred the originals, or one I’d previously rejected. Reliability of ones perception is something I don’t take for granted anymore. I've had this so many times are you surprised I'm cynical?
I don't mean to patronise, but I've taken this journey since the early 70's and been fooled and surprised so many times I've lost count. I STILL listen with my eyes where wires are concerned and although I can't hear any damned difference between them, in my non-NVA stuff I'll always use the poshest looking cable I have (not really posh, but chunkier and with well fitting plugs) over say, the thin and very flexible Van Damme Plasma 75 ohm cable which 'sounds' just fine to me. I even have a 1mm thick screened cable which is very fine and frail, terminated with the cheapest gold plated and otherwise 'soft plastic' phono plugs. It offers quite low capacitance I believe and it 'sounds' absolutely fine!
I have various USB cables, but the one I use from the workroom PC to the DAC via one of those twenty quid USB/SPDIF converter boxes, is the one it came with, chunky, well screened through its blue transparent jacket and with a ferrite on the end. 'Sounds' fine to me when I use the computer as audio source!
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Post by sq225917 on Feb 27, 2019 12:50:15 GMT
Sanity prevails.
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Post by pauld on Feb 27, 2019 16:56:52 GMT
I haven’t got a clue how it does it, but in the context of my system and room, the MeiCord certainly makes a substantial difference over the Chord cable I was using previously.
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Post by sq225917 on Feb 27, 2019 20:28:39 GMT
Maybe one of them is broken
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Post by pauld on Feb 27, 2019 21:19:33 GMT
Or maybe not. The Chord was better than a stock cable I used previously. The MeiCord is just better than Chord.
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Post by sq225917 on Feb 28, 2019 14:51:02 GMT
If they sound different then by definition one must be broken.
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Post by macca on Feb 28, 2019 15:26:08 GMT
IIRC there's a thread on ASR where they measured some cables and they were passing different levels of distortion. None of it was in the audible range but they weren't behaving identically. I've had a look for it but can't find it at the moment.
I think the 'bit's are bits' argument forgets that we are listening to the output, not viewing it on a screen or printing it off. So potentially we can have audible noise/distortion products transmitted along with the digital signal.
If that were not the case then all digital transports would sound the same when clearly they do not.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2019 16:28:24 GMT
IIRC there's a thread on ASR where they measured some cables and they were passing different levels of distortion. None of it was in the audible range but they weren't behaving identically. I've had a look for it but can't find it at the moment. I think the 'bit's are bits' argument forgets that we are listening to the output, not viewing it on a screen or printing it off. So potentially we can have audible noise/distortion products transmitted along with the digital signal. If that were not the case then all digital transports would sound the same when clearly they do not. The point here though is that its sending a TCP/IP 'packet' between two computers. That means it either arrives intact (bit perfectly) or it's resent. So the issue here is noise rejection at the receiver - by that I mean stopping any noise passing through the entire device to the actual outputs. Its not distortion of the data, it's separate and not rejected. So other than screening of the cable and a receiving device which doesn't filter that noise there's no real justification for an ethernet cable making any difference at all - the 1's and 0's simply arrive correctly or not at all. The digital transports argument isn't the same (unless they use ethernet...) as most squirt a very analogue square wave down a bit of coax. So if the square wave isn't very square, or it's noisy, the receiving device won't be able to distinguish a 1 from a 0 resulting in distortion of the resulting sound (depending on which bit is broken you may or may not notice it, not all bits are equal). I'm not sure what error correction (if any) there is in SPDIF but I can understand how the quality of the square wave might well be affected by both devices and the cable (especially as termination is so important - they should all be BNC to get the required 75ohm termination). |
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Post by pauld on Feb 28, 2019 16:34:24 GMT
If they sound different then by definition one must be broken. Why? Can’t one just be better than the other, like everything else in Hifi? |
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Post by dsjr on Feb 28, 2019 16:47:57 GMT
If they sound different then by definition one must be broken. Why? Can’t one just be better than the other, like everything else in Hifi? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but ethernet cables aren't 'HiFi' at all. Do the digits know if they're audio or video or just plain old fashioned data? They either work or they don't and really, that's all there is to it I gather.
As I was told by an IT engineer, data isn't streamed out like playing a record or CD, it's spat out in chunks quite often and re-constituted at the far end into something the remote data 'receiver' can utilise. There's copious error correction too I believe, FAR more than 'CD' offers and the data speeds available far exceed that needed for purely audio or video streaming.
So many differences in domestic audio are placebo's - honestly, they are... We're not talking speakers here, or rooms, or even some of the worst Class A or Class D amps, which often have a tone all their own, but pure innocent digital, which as I said, don't know what the eff they are until decoded in the DAC. The receivers in the DAC aren't intelligent either, as all they do is receive and pass on to the DAC chip. if the cable isn't passing the digits along cleanly, you'll get glitches and drop-outs and if the DAC is error correcting too much, this should be inaudible unless it's badly designed, or as Simon stated above, one of the cables or one of the gear items is broken. Sorry to do this, but 'digits' seriously don't know what they are until they enter the DAC chip itself... Anything 'audible' is most likely in the audio buffers after, which designers can tune to sound in different ways, as different digital filters are audibly benign to a large extent it appears.
It's been drummed into me so much - 'Digital' is NOT in the slightest like analogue! Sure there's rf issues with some inappropriately designed gear, but ethernet cables are designed to run for tens of metres quite often without losing the datastream. There are so many decent suppliers of lengthy ethernet cables and if you didn't know what you were listening to, I seriously wonder if you'd tell a difference then? I've had so many experiences like this, I'm becoming more like macca every year - EEK!!!!!
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Post by pauld on Feb 28, 2019 16:53:45 GMT
Ok you all think I’m mistaken and I think you’re all wrong, that’s fine we can have differences of opinions, I’m happy that I heard a substantial difference, oh and I’m an IT Consultant, so understand the 1’s and 0’s discussion.
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Post by macca on Feb 28, 2019 16:58:24 GMT
CD players do not send data in real time either, not the way a record or tape deck does, but I agree they do not work the same way as TCP protocol. The principle remains the same, the data either transmits perfectly or you get an audible drop-out or glitch.
Nevertheless I don't see why noise cannot piggy-back on ethernet in the same way as it can via sp/dif bearing in mind that we are not talking about audible distortion or glitches in the sound here, we are talking about a subtle but noticeable improvement from one to the other which would be consistent with a lower level of noise being transmitted by one of the cables.
Granted it would be better if Paul had compared the cables blind and level matched since subtle differences are often due to failure to level match or subconscious cues, but if we take it as read there is a real difference then there must be a reason.
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Post by dsjr on Feb 28, 2019 17:34:19 GMT
CD players do not send data in real time either, not the way a record or tape deck does, You sure about that guv'nor? CD players usually have no buffering I believe (some portables do) and the data off the disc is sent straight to the DAC chips I always thought as read off the disc and with the minimum of error correction (not sure if modern stuff interpolates missing data now as they used to). |
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Post by sq225917 on Feb 28, 2019 17:59:55 GMT
Theres a tiny buffer in the Reed Solomon stage but the data exiting that to the dac is indeed realtime.
Ethernet has no power unlike USB. Just four data pairs, two each for send receive up to 100t,
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Post by macca on Feb 28, 2019 18:04:23 GMT
CD players do not send data in real time either, not the way a record or tape deck does, You sure about that guv'nor? CD players usually have no buffering I believe (some portables do) and the data off the disc is sent straight to the DAC chips I always thought as read off the disc and with the minimum of error correction (not sure if modern stuff interpolates missing data now as they used to). Yes, the read data has to be clocked in the DAC before DA takes place otherwise you'll get distortion due to jitter. |
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Post by dsjr on Feb 28, 2019 18:14:53 GMT
You sure about that guv'nor? CD players usually have no buffering I believe (some portables do) and the data off the disc is sent straight to the DAC chips I always thought as read off the disc and with the minimum of error correction (not sure if modern stuff interpolates missing data now as they used to). Yes, the read data has to be clocked in the DAC before DA takes place otherwise you'll get distortion due to jitter. I understood the timing bit with the clock and so on, but there's no 'buffering' normally I gather as in computer data, which ethernet is a part 
I just remember in the very old days of Windows 98SE transferring a track and watching whatever the software was, literally grabbing any old chunk of data it could get in almost random order and it being compiled in easier to read order more or less at the end... memory's not good, but a software chap who was doing this for me tried to explain.
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Post by macca on Feb 28, 2019 18:34:28 GMT
You can get none-portable cd players that buffer but it's just a gimmick.
Error correction doesn't interpolate data, it reconstructs the exact wave form that is on the disc. If it fails, you hear it as a drop out i.e silence or a screechy type sound.
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Post by sq225917 on Feb 28, 2019 18:39:46 GMT
First it reconstructs the data from the redundant pairs in Reed solomon, if that's not possible it guesses and interpolates, and if the data gap is too big for that, 220 bits plus, then it glitches, pops, farts, stutters, whatever.
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Post by dsjr on Feb 28, 2019 18:58:42 GMT
My Meridian MCD-Pro had flashing lights when errors came up and also when it was 'interpolating' the data and I did have an Alan parsons disc where this second 'interpolation' lamp flashed every revolution of the disc in addition to the error correction lamp. Too long ago now, but I seem to remember that by the late 90's, the error correction in players took a step back as discs were routinely being made outside of the red-book standards, so that if these discs were out of spec, the typical machine got stuck, jumped or otherwise refused to play them properly.. Anyway, I found this - archimago.blogspot.com/2015/02/measurements-ethernet-cables-and-audio.html#more |
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Post by pauld on Feb 28, 2019 19:11:56 GMT
Going slightly off topic there. All I can say is that I am very impressed with this cable which has made a clearly audible difference to my system.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Feb 28, 2019 19:13:36 GMT
Going slightly off topic there. All I can say is that I am very impressed with this cable which has made a clearly audible difference to my system. S’all that matters AFAIC |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2019 19:19:39 GMT
Exactly, Westie. F#ck what others say/think.
S.
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Post by sq225917 on Mar 1, 2019 18:05:40 GMT
Yes, that's right F#ck the science that gave you ethernet in the first place. F#ck that transfer protocol that sends data in chunks with checksums and resends any bad chunks to guarantee 100% data integrity all the time, F#ck that transfer protocol that only has data wires and no separate power line to mess the data up, F#ck that science that buffers every single bit of that data locally to the dac chip on a phy layer totally abstracted from the rest of the transfer protocol.
Yes, F#ck them because they bothered to read about the data protocol and learn what can and cant possibly affect the transmitted bits of data.
F#ck them because they landed at the logical conclusion of user expectation bias.
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Post by pauld on Mar 1, 2019 19:09:32 GMT
Yes, that's right F#ck the science that gave you ethernet in the first place. F#ck that transfer protocol that sends data in chunks with checksums and resends any bad chunks to guarantee 100% data integrity all the time, F#ck that transfer protocol that only has data wires and no separate power line to mess the data up, F#ck that science that buffers every single bit of that data locally to the dac chip on a phy layer totally abstracted from the rest of the transfer protocol. Yes, F#ck them because they bothered to read about the data protocol and learn what can and cant possibly affect the transmitted bits of data. F#ck them because they landed at the logical conclusion of user expectation bias. Aha but was it expectation bias or something being broken? Personally I don't care whether you believe there was a difference or not, I believe there was a substantial audible difference and that is all that matters, surely? |
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