Hi Lee, the internet switch gave me much better SQ improvement than the Ethernet cable.
I use the Nordost Qnet with the Qsource and it’s a must have. My cables are the Nordost blue heaven from the wall to the router and then the red down from the router to the switch and then to the Bartók Apex.
But not that all my loom of cables are the SRX with the Galileo SX power cell from Synergetic I will test the top of the range Ethernet cables to ear the diference.
I believe the switch in my system made a bigger difference as well but you really need both.
Q:Do better ethernet cables matter?
A:Yes
I wonder if the Pro audio industry (the ones that make the recordings we listen to) obsess over internet cables in their Ravenna or Dante based systems?
Sound on Sound covered Ethernet for Audio back in 2017 with an excellent comprehensive history of Ethernet’s use in Professional Audio systems. It was linked here on dCS a couple of times before, well worth a read if you haven’t see it before.
They don’t call Ethernet cabling specifically, but I think it’s generally quite well accepted that there’s zero chance of any data integrity issues, and the only possible factor is noise, which is quite easily mitigated with solutions costing $100s of dollars instead of the thousands or 10s-of-thousands being aggressively promoted by specialist consumer Audiophile Ethernet Cable, Switch, and Server vendors.
Again, you have to remember the pro audio world, including recording studios, don’t really care about sound quality unless it’s not serviceable.
Not unlike the audiophile community, there are those who do care, but its on an individual basis and the degree to which they care varies.
No one who cared about sound quality could churn out so much brick-walled over-compressed garbage.
Each ethernet cable sounds different and the expensive one does not guarantee or necessarily sound better thus it is good to trail and error.
This topic has been covered extensively. Andrew, dCS engineer, on this forum:
Partially true but I have tried a bunch and my favorites are generally the expensive ones.
Do the ones you prefer generally have anything else in common, any technical design attributes perhaps?
Yes, the two I like use silver and some devices to lower noise.
Ah, so they’re cables-with-devices rather than “just” cables. Thanks
If you consider MIT and Transparent as cables-with-devices then I would say they “could” sound different than “just” cables.
I wouldn’t normally use this terminology of course! I just wanted to understand the mechanisms by which one network cable might sound different from another. Shielding is the most obvious of course, as in Cat 8 vs Cat 6, and filters of various types would be another. I’m not sure I can see how silver conductors might make a difference in an asynchronous digital cable in the same way it might in say an analog(ue) cable or even in a synchronous digital like SPDIF but am always willing to be enlightened. 
Most better cables have noise reduction built in these days. Shunyata has their TAP modules. Synergistic has their UEF modules. A lot of power cables have some form of line conditioning included…
I think most are skeptical about digital cables because they think of them only carrying ones and zeros. But a more insightful way to look at it is that noise is riding on the cable and lowering that noise has a beneficial impact on the sound.
I couldn’t agree more.
There will be people who are skeptical about cables making a difference, even the network switch makes a difference in sound as well.
Indeed, though I am repeatedly surprised by how many people have quite an expensive one but don’t know where to install it for maximum impact.
It’s not a cable though which is the focus here.
Agreed. The network switch I have made a noticeable improvement.