teknorob23
Member of the Trade: Network Acoustics
two penneth.. i've tried quite a few budget to highend cables, Supra cat 8, audioquest vodka and tellurium Q black diamond and i've made my own using Viablue silver plated solid-core cable. They all sounded noticeably different from one another when used in my main set up which is a pretty resolving system. On my office Imac with RME DAC and genalec monitors the differences were much harder to pick-up. The TQ cable made by the far the biggest improvement and the improvements were comprehensive across most aspects of the presentation. The supra cable is also a signifcant step up from a standard network cable, but it sounds muddy compared to the TQ and AQ vodka. The biggest areas of improvement i can here is in the mid to top end where definition improves significantly with better cables. There is also a noticeable graininess when you switch back to a lesser cable. But the TQ cable is stupid expensive, so i decided to have crack at making my own, not from scratch (yet) but using Viablue's bulk cable, but not the stranded version they use in their own, instead i went with solid core silver plated copper. I tried to makes of plugs, telegartner which are used in most high end plugs and LinkUP which are very similar diecast construction but which have gold plated contacts. The results have been very impressive, the cable is considerably better than the Supra and i would say on a par with the AQ vodka, which has touch better extension, but its marginal. Its not as good as the TQ cable but it cost me about £40 to make a 1m cable as opposed to £780. I am using a cisco switch which is better than my old TP link, but i am interested to try the SOTM one as soon as my dealer can get one as i'm sure this will have an even bigger influence than the cables. I can strongly recommend the viablue/linkup DIY cable, its easy to make and the performance is outstanding for the money.