Sonore microRendu - Ethernet Cables Observations, Considerations & Commentary

[soares]

2 hours ago, Sator said:

I should add that my microRendu, bought as part of a closing down sale of the Australian distributor, is shipping tomorrow. I have high expectations given the glowing reviews for the product. Naturally, if I am over the moon about how it performs I might well consider upgrading at a later phase to the Signature Rendu, but given my geographic situation, one always tends to want to test the water with entry-level products first.

Buy it without reserve. Consider also acquiring a good PS.

[Sator]

1 hour ago, soares said:

Buy it without reserve.

 

So you'd buy it if were shipping to you from Australia? I bet you a million dollars that you wouldn't.

[barrows]

6 hours ago, Sator said:

Oh my, I just discovered this:

 

http://www.sonore.us/USBcable.html

 

You do offer USB cable! $845 USD for 0.75m. That's well over 1k in Australian dollars (we tend to run on parity to the Canadian dollar) especially if you consider the import duty. If I got that I would be spending "thousands" on audiophile cable. LOL.

 

Now, if only you could offer a similar top-notch Ethernet cable.

Yes, the Sonore USB is quite good.  One can spend a lot more on a USB cable (see Nordost Valhalla or Crystal Cables top model, whoa!).  While I do believe in spending some money on a USB cable, I have not yet been convinced for Ethernet cables, as these two formats have radically different approaches to sending data.  USB is a packetized serial data stream with no error correction, and is only pseudo differential, with a ground connection and power connection-this makes it quite sensitive to cables.  Ethernet is a packetized data stream with error correction, uses fully differential signaling, and no ground or power connection.

After testing a bunch of USB cables here I ended up with the Nordost Tyr, as no way could I justify even testing the Nordost Valhalla (although people I trust have told me it is very, very good).  I chose the Tyr before the Sonore USB was developed, and  I did this testing because I need a really good USB cable to get the most out of the Signature Rendu SE.  The Sonore is very good as well, of course the Nordost Tyr is ~$1500, so quite a bit more than the Sonore.

 

We recommend and endorse Blue Jeans Cable CAT 6A for use with our products.  This is a high quality, made in the USA Ethernet cable with solid core conductors, bonded twisted pair construction (insuring proper impedance and that all wires have exactly the same propagation delay), and each length is tested for performance after termination.  One can be confident that with this cable Sonore products are performing as designed, and we use this cable in our own systems, and at RMAF the last three years we had a demo room there.

I am not suggesting that there could be no improvement with "audiophile" Ethernet cables, but I suspect that such improvements, if they exist, will be small.  As a product developer, I usually do not have a lot of time to test Ethernet cables, as I am busy testing and developing new hardware products.  I would like to the test some "audiophile" Ethernet cables sometime, but the opportunity has not presented itself to this point.  Be careful about reading reviews of Ethernet cable tests: make sure the standard cables used for comparison are at least good ones of known performance, there are plenty of Ethernet cables out there os Chinese origin which do not meet specification.

[soares]

3 hours ago, Sator said:

 

So you'd buy it if were shipping to you from Australia? I bet you a million dollars that you wouldn't.

Sorry, it seems that I misunderstood your post. I thought you were worried with the added value of having a mR in your chain. My apologies.

[Sator]

4 hours ago, barrows said:

Yes, the Sonore USB is quite good.  

 

We recommend and endorse Blue Jeans Cable CAT 6A for use with our products.  This is a high quality, made in the USA Ethernet cable with solid core conductors, bonded twisted pair construction (insuring proper impedance and that all wires have exactly the same propagation delay), and each length is tested for performance after termination.  One can be confident that with this cable Sonore products are performing as designed, and we use this cable in our own systems, and at RMAF the last three years we had a demo room there.

 

1

 

I am a little surprised that you'd recommend a USB cable that costs $895 for 1m but a $15.75 for 3 foot/0.9m Cat 6a Ethernet cable:

 

https://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/data-cables/index.htm

 

I assume that is the right page on the Blue Jeans website.

 

As for the usual debates as to whether there is a difference between Ethernet cable (assuming their construction is up to scratch), it's the usual thing, isn't it? If you observe something but you can't explain it, does it means it is an artefact or does it mean you lack the knowledge to explain it? So the debate goes round and round ad nauseam.

 

Reviews like this one consistently report significant subjective differences between Ethernet cables:

 

https://audiobacon.net/2017/07/09/sotm-iso-cat6-special-edition-the-flavors-of-audiophile-ethernet/

 

But as you say, they don't include an acceptable "negative control". The cheap/generic cables they report as being substandard haven't been tested to ensure they are built to the correct specs and are underperforming just because they are substandard/below spec. 

 

As for Nordost, sadly my impression that they are terrible from a price/performance point of view. Take a look here at this blinded test:

 

https://nordost.com/images/review-images/review-pdf/15-hifiplus_issue34.pdf

 

The Valhalla only scores 10% higher on aggregate score than Chord cables that cost about 1/5th of the price. It is in keeping with my own one-off experience with Nordost cables, where a Heimdal 2 cable underperformed drastically compared to rivals that cost 1/6th and 1/2 of the price. Nordost promotional material is full of overhyped marketing babble far scantier on meaningful technical details than most rivals. There's a nice Schiit audio parody of this:

 

"made from only the finest 6-nines Unobtanium™ alloy, molecularly assembled in our Alternate Universe™ reality-distortion tesseract field, using a secret geometry reverse-engineered from crashed UFOs, painstakingly smuggled out of Area 51 by deep-cover operatives. Performance is further enhanced by the use of a QuantConnect™ quantum-entangled pair of transmission interfaces, held at absolute zero by our exclusive Stasis Field™ technology. The cables are then wrapped in NanoAeroCap™, a nanotechnology-enabled aerogel anti-capacitance insulation system, featuring Fractal Interleaved Geometry™ to create negative inductance for maximum audio transmission quality."

 

http://www.schiit.com/products/pyst-cables

[barrows]

My experience of the Nordost Tyr USB cable is based specifically on listening to it, not hearsay or reviews of someone else's experience.  I tested a lot of well regarded USB cables against it, and it came out as my favorite.

I really could care less what other's experiences are, although there are plenty of good reports out there as well if you care about such things.

 

As far as Nordost cabling goes in general, i totally disagree with your point of view.  They are one of the few cable companies which actually produce cables based on science, and one of the few cable companies which actually publish specifications for their cables: Capacitance, Inductance, and speed of propagation.

 

As far as Schitt goes, I respect those guys, but they did release a basically broken DAC for sale, The original Yggdrasil, and then offered upgrades to improve upon it. 

[iiDexii]

I'm baffled, after reading Audio Bacon and Hifi and musik and forums I upgraded from a freebee thin generic cat5 to affordable Supra cat8.

 

I mostly stream Spotify "very high quality" Netflix and youtube.

 

This Ethernet is connected directly to Sony UHP-H1 bluray.

 

Spotify is so much more detailed, and Netflix surround sounds great!

 

I always thought that Netflix and Spotify was supposed to sound dull and less...

 

But not, got alot of trouble posting the results to a Norwegian Facebook hifisite.

 

But the faith in zeros and nulls and cheapo clocks is great it seems..

 

Only 30 bucks with mail.

 

Almost want to try AQ cinnamon also, since it's relative affordable..

 

Ethernet almost makes more sense than than other connectors... Because it has more functionality..

 

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