[watchnerd]

In yet another case of "there is a sucker born every minute", Wireworld has a new "audiophile" Cat 8 ethernet cable.
 
It is described thusly:
 
"The first of its kind, the Starlight Ethernet utilizes an innovative new conductor geometry that supports higher transmission speeds for the most lifelike reproduction of streamed music and video. Patent pending Tite-Shield™ Technology improves the most critical parameters of digital signal transmission thereby increasing speed and fidelity over standard ethernet cable design."
 
So let's get a couple of things straight:
 
1. Generic cat 8 already supports 10 gigabit ethernet. This stuff goes faster than that?
 
2. Most home networking equipment tops out at 1 gigabit ethernet ports.  Is this Wireworld cable going to make my home-based 1 gigabit networking faster, too?
 
3. Increasing my home networking speed is somehow going to make Netflix and Tidal internet feeds faster, too?
 
FWIW:
 
1 meter of Wireworld Starlight Ethernet = $210
 
$207 of generic Cat 8 = 250 feet = 76 meters
 
So it's 76x more expensive....
 
The comments on the contest thread make me want to laugh/cry:
 
http://www.audiostream.com/content/wireworld-starlight-cat8-ethernet-cable-sweepstakes#izr750bPVwzuBZSF.97

 

[chaos215bar2]

Cat 8 goes well beyond 10 Gb/s considering it's rated for about 30% more bandwidth than Cat 7, which already supports on the order of 40 Gb/s over 50 meters or 100 Gb/s over 15 meters.
 
The only way this will make any difference for audio use is if the source is extremely sensitive to line noise over an ethernet connection, which I really hope it isn't if it's priced high enough that someone might consider this cable. Even then, I can't imagine what might be downstream of this cable that wouldn't negate any possible benefits.

 

[watchnerd]

  Cat 8 goes well beyond 10 Gb/s considering it's rated for about 30% more bandwidth than Cat 7, which already supports on the order of 40 Gb/s over 50 meters or 100 Gb/s over 15 meters.
 
The only way this will make any difference for audio use is if the source is extremely sensitive to line noise over an ethernet connection, which I really hope it isn't if it's priced high enough that someone might consider this cable. Even then, I can't imagine what might be downstream of this cable that wouldn't negate any possible benefits.

 
My Raspberry Pi + HiFiBerry Digi Pro (total cost ~$90), running Roon Bridge, can handle 24bit/192khz PCM streams over plain ole 1 Gigabit ethernet with zero errors.
 
I can't imagine why you would need anything more.  Audio bandwidth requirements are laughably small.

 

[sonitus mirus]

I think the long-term future will be wireless with everything from data transmission to perhaps even power.  It is not as much about convenience as it is about money and control.  We will continue to see improvements and breakthroughs in technology where the providers no longer have to pay to have technicians out and about for installations, maintenance, and repairs.  
 
Corporations are investing significant amounts into this technology and early testing has already begun in some regions.
 
http://fortune.com/2016/12/06/verizon-5g-test-small-towns/
 
At some point we humans (hopefully) will look back at our very early methods for transmitting data via physical cables across great distances and think to ourselves how crazy that must have been.  We're really just getting started.

 

[watchnerd]

  I think the long-term future will be wireless with everything from data transmission to perhaps even power.  It is not as much about convenience as it is about money and control.  We will continue to see improvements and breakthroughs in technology where the providers no longer have to pay to have technicians out and about for installations, maintenance, and repairs.  
 
Corporations are investing significant amounts into this technology and early testing has already begun in some regions.
 
http://fortune.com/2016/12/06/verizon-5g-test-small-towns/
 
At some point we humans (hopefully) will look back at our very early methods for transmitting data via physical cables across great distances and think to ourselves how crazy that must have been.  We're really just getting started.

 
Cablephiles will never buy into that.

 

[tonykaz]

Dear Mr. Watchnerd,
 
How do you avoid getting Banned? , you're such a wonderful Bubble-popper.  
 
I haven't looked at Head-Fi for a goodly while ( busyness with the Bernie Sanders project ). 
 
Schiit  ( Stoddard & Baldr )  have banned me from their sites despite me loving a few of their designs ( Amps but not DACs ).  I own 5 Schitts ! 
 
Well, you make the most exciting reading on this entire Place, I come here looking for your stuff.  ( kinda remind me of NwAvGuy ).  
 
Bob Katz has and is reporting on his new Dynaudio M5P suppa Mastering Monitor System vs. the Audeze 4s.    All on Tyll's Innerfidelty.  Katz created and own's "known" music Standards and seems to possess a critical ear.  
 
AtomicBob is down with Heart Issues, he just sent me a nice note, he's resting and trying to survive.  Sooooo, you're on your own here, I'm not and never was in your class! 
 
Tony in Michigan 

 

[watchnerd]

 
Dear Mr. Watchnerd,
 
How do you avoid getting Banned? , you're such a wonderful Bubble-popper.  
 
I haven't looked at Head-Fi for a goodly while ( busyness with the Bernie Sanders project ). 
 
Schiit  ( Stoddard & Baldr )  have banned me from their sites despite me loving a few of their designs ( Amps but not DACs ).  I own 5 Schitts ! 
 
Well, you make the most exciting reading on this entire Place, I come here looking for your stuff.  ( kinda remind me of NwAvGuy ).  
 
Bob Katz has and is reporting on his new Dynaudio M5P suppa Mastering Monitor System vs. the Audeze 4s.    All on Tyll's Innerfidelty.  Katz created and own's "known" music Standards and seems to possess a critical ear.  
 
AtomicBob is down with Heart Issues, he just sent me a nice note, he's resting and trying to survive.  Sooooo, you're on your own here, I'm not and never was in your class! 
 
Tony in Michigan 

 
Good to hear from you, Tony.
 
I love any review by Bob Katz.  As chance would have it, I'm shopping for a new set of living room speakers and Dynaudio is at the top of my list.  Sadly, while the Evidence M5P  might be within my price range, it's definitely not in my space range (SF real estate being both pricey and small).
 
I'm currently thinking of going with one of the Dynaudio pro monitors, either the new LYD 7 or the outgoing BM6 MKIII, depending on how I feel about the practical vs religious issues of DSP crossover/Class D amp vs active analog crossover/AB amp.  And what that means for using an R2R vs DS DAC.
 
Either way, I'll use the speakers with the Argossy 360i speaker stands, which brilliantly combine 2-channel cord management with built-in IsoAcoustics isolators.

 

[chaos215bar2]

  I think the long-term future will be wireless with everything from data transmission to perhaps even power.  It is not as much about convenience as it is about money and control.  We will continue to see improvements and breakthroughs in technology where the providers no longer have to pay to have technicians out and about for installations, maintenance, and repairs.  
 
Corporations are investing significant amounts into this technology and early testing has already begun in some regions.
 
http://fortune.com/2016/12/06/verizon-5g-test-small-towns/
 
At some point we humans (hopefully) will look back at our very early methods for transmitting data via physical cables across great distances and think to ourselves how crazy that must have been.  We're really just getting started.

The trouble with wireless is, there's a fixed amount of bandwidth available to be shared by all devices and services operating in a given area, and the only way to get around this is to place access points (be that Wi-Fi, LTE, or something else entirely) closer together, reducing their power output so they don't interfere. Even now, completely saturating the available 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, Wi-Fi struggles to reach 1Gb/s of realistic throughput — something trivially achieved by wired technology that's ubiquitous and nearly two decades old.
 
Yes, I think that any ISP with the infrastructure in place would love to see internet access go fully wireless, but not for the reasons you propose. Wireless offers a great opportunity to bypass some of the regulations (in the US, anyway) surrounding wired internet access and to charge hefty overage fees on meager data caps — unless of course you use the provider's own content store, which will naturally be exempt from caps.

 

[sonitus mirus]

 
The trouble with wireless is, there's a fixed amount of bandwidth available to be shared by all devices and services operating in a given area, and the only way to get around this is to place access points (be that Wi-Fi, LTE, or something else entirely) closer together, reducing their power output so they don't interfere. Even now, completely saturating the available 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, Wi-Fi struggles to reach 1Gb/s of realistic throughput — something trivially achieved by wired technology that's ubiquitous and nearly two decades old.
 
Yes, I think that any ISP with the infrastructure in place would love to see internet access go fully wireless, but not for the reasons you propose. Wireless offers a great opportunity to bypass some of the regulations (in the US, anyway) surrounding wired internet access and to charge hefty overage fees on meager data caps — unless of course you use the provider's own content store, which will naturally be exempt from caps.

 
Yes, we are rapidly coming to a point where cheap solutions are no longer available.  It's about money and control, for certain.   There hasn't been any real breakthroughs yet with regards to bandwidth limitations, but eventually it will happen...long-term.  Probably not in 10-20 years, but we are trending towards a more wireless world, and at least both the corporations and consumers share in the demand, even if the goals are not necessarily aligned.

 

[tonykaz]

DSP & Class D,  
 
This stuff seems to be "Standards" for the Recording Industry, with Mastering being the lone hold-out ( or semi-holdout ).   All the Genelec stuff is Class D, isn't it? 
 
Anyway, B&O are about to release the Finest Loudspeaker ever made : BeoLab90 with 8,200 Class D Watts of Amplification and a dozen drivers pointing in every direction, they control Room interaction with processing of some sort. This is the ugliest thing to ever come out of a Scandinavian Design Studio, phew.  
 
"Religious Issues",  that's a good one.   We've become a religion of sorts, with plenty of aspiring High-Priests.   The "Church of Audiophilia".   See, this is the exact sort of thing that gets 'me' Banned and you get away with.  
 
After all these decades, I've discovered the finest Amplification : the 6dj8 & 6sn7 from Russia, they can put lipstick on not-so-good music and make it sound lovely.  Too bad they have such short lifespans and can sound so different from the exact same tube made on a different date.  The Neurotic & Psychotic World of the Audiophile. 
 
Thanks for writing back.
 
Tony in Michigan

 

[watchnerd]

 
DSP & Class D,  
 
This stuff seems to be "Standards" for the Recording Industry, with Mastering being the lone hold-out ( or semi-holdout ).   All the Genelec stuff is Class D, isn't it? 
 
Anyway, B&O are about to release the Finest Loudspeaker ever made : BeoLab90 with 8,200 Class D Watts of Amplification and a dozen drivers pointing in every direction, they control Room interaction with processing of some sort. This is the ugliest thing to ever come out of a Scandinavian Design Studio, phew.  
 
"Religious Issues",  that's a good one.   We've become a religion of sorts, with plenty of aspiring High-Priests.   The "Church of Audiophilia".   See, this is the exact sort of thing that gets 'me' Banned and you get away with.  
 
After all these decades, I've discovered the finest Amplification : the 6dj8 & 6sn7 from Russia, they can put lipstick on not-so-good music and make it sound lovely.  Too bad they have such short lifespans and can sound so different from the exact same tube made on a different date.  The Neurotic & Psychotic World of the Audiophile. 
 
Thanks for writing back.
 
Tony in Michigan

 
On the pro side, Genelec, JBL, Eve, and Dynaudio have all moved / are moving to Class D with DSP crossovers, although often with analog XLR inputs.  ATC, Adam, & Focal are still in class A/B; we'll see how long they remain that way in the future.
 
I don't know how the R2R DAC guys feel about DSP crossovers.  On the one, many of them use a DSP chip to implement their filters.  On the other hand, would the act of shoving the analog output of an R2R DAC into a SD ADC cause all the "goodness" to be undone?

 

[tonykaz]

"Goodness being Un-done",   
 
I wonder how much goodness is there to be undone.   
 
I don't have the hearing ability to differentiate between one of Bob Katz's Pro DACs and an MSB Analog DAC, much less a Schiit Yggy that Jude ( of this site ) owns and I heard at the Ann Arbor headphone meet. Seems to me like I'd need an Electron Microscope ( for Audio listening ) to pick-off any salient differences. 
 
I'm not at all concerned by most of this stuff, I look for gear's ability to trigger one of Tyll's Eargasms, Sennheiser & Schiit Amplification deliver a good enough high ( buzz ) to satiate me.  Even greater highs would only serve to addict me into not being able to function as a "normal" working citizen and loyal husband. A much more affordable solution would be to go back to a fifth of 5'Oclock Vodka at 5 AM ( eye opener ). 
 
In a way, I feel for those R2R guys trying to Sell Analog in a Digital World.  We should be see'n a Slogan popping up :  "Make Audio Great Again" from these guys.  Instead we are see'n quad-DAC chipsets in our V20 LG iPhones.  Digital has an insurmountable Gravitational Force, Analog is evaporating ( or already has ).  Still, it's worth reading and following along as these things encounter the gigantic shift in global demands. 
 
The Genelec 8020s ( all versions ) are quite wonderful, they don't sound digital ( at all ),  I imagine the DynAudio stuff is equally good.   
 
I just discovered 3M lapping paper ( 261X ) [size=x-small]in 30micron down to .3 microns , phew,    25 microns is 1/1000"    The point being : 3M is reliable in their product description, you can trust what they say.  Who do we have in Audio that we can trust ? Maybe Sennheiser , maybe Genelec, maybe Focal and maybe a few others but none like we can trust 3M.  [/size]Phonak might be as reliable as 3M.
 
[size=x-small]I'll have a closer look at the DynAudio stuff, you bright lads might be onto sump'n ![/size]
 
[size=x-small]Best Regards,[/size]
 
[size=x-small]Tony in Michigan  [/size]

 

[watchnerd]

 
 
[size=x-small]I'll have a closer look at the DynAudio stuff, you bright lads might be onto sump'n ![/size]
 

 
Dynaudio has been around since 1977, first as a driver maker, then in studios, and now in homes and cars, including the supercar Bugatti Veyron.  I'm surprised you hadn't heard of them until recently!

 

[tonykaz]

Dynaudio,  
 
I have heard of them but never worked with anything but their drivers.  Besides, I haven't felt the need, the little Alum. Genelec stuff has worked well for me.  Hell, Genelec probably has Dynaudio drivers for all I know or care.   
 
I'll be interested in Dyn's active speakers, now.   
 
Tony in Michigan 

 

[ChrisIsAwesome]

$1950 for their 'platinum' hdmi cable here in australia.
Surely no one has ever bought one... can peple with that much money to spend possibly be that stupid?
:angry_face: