Increasing the sound quality of your music, by switching from Cat 5 networking to Cat 7

When it comes to listening to music, almost every aspect of an audio setup affects how the music sounds. Obviously, the speakers or headphones are the most important variable, closely followed by the amplifier, but the interconnecting speaker cables, interconnects, and power supply also play a significant role. If you have poor quality cables running from your computer or amplifier to your speakers, the music will sound bad. In today’s world, though, where streaming music from the internet or NAS is now the norm, there’s another variable that you need to watch out for: Your Ethernet cables. According to some new research, the quality of your networking cables really does affect the sound of your music — though, here in the ExtremeTech bunker (which has a surprisingly high density of networking specialists), we’re not sure if his claims hold up.

René van Es, over at The Ear, is an audiophile who has been testing audio equipment, speaker cables, and interconnects for decades. He claims that, back in the ’70s, he was one of the first people to write about the differences in speaker cables — and now, he’s researching the difference in Ethernet cables.