I really wasn’t planning to write about this any more, but the What Hi-Fi? journalist who believes in magic has doubled down, explaining in detail the testing process and why he is convinced that it works.
His explanation includes things like “We run all cables overnight if not longer,” the myth that all hi-fi gear has to be “broken in,” even digital cables. And he admits that the tests aren’t blind:
We’ve experimented with blind testing over the years but it’s not part of our standard review process for any products.
And, regarding Ethernet cables, he says:
I understand what’s being said. But, I’ve recently been part of a listening session where, in my opinion, I heard differences between such cables, so I can’t really agree.
This is just sad.
Let’s assume there’s something going wrong with an Ethernet cable, and some packets get lost. It would – at its worst, with a lot of packet loss – sound like a damaged CD. You’ve probably had a few, where you get noisy clicks when playing an old, worn CD. That’s the worst that could happen.
So imagine the difference between, say, a cheap Ethernet cable, and a very expensive one. The most difference there would be is a lack of errors, which wouldn’t manifest as clicks in an Ethernet transfer, but probably very, very tiny dropouts. (The cable itself does not manage error correction, but the TCP/IP protocol used on data networks does.)
I actually can’t find any reviews of Ethernet cables on their site, but I did find some of USB cables. Here’s one for a £50 USB cable:
The gains in low-end body and punch, midrange spaciousness and detail, and high-end smoothness alone are significant.
This is simply bullshit. If there is zero packet loss because of this more expensive cable, at best the music will sound exactly the way it sounds at the source. If there is packet loss, there may be some dropout, but no loss in “spaciousness and detail,” or “high-end smoothness.”
The best way to understand this is to read this Cnet article, Why all HDMI cables are the same. Geoffrey Morrison explains – and shows with pictures – what happens if there’s something wrong with an HDMI cable. You can see the sparkles in the images with bad cables; this is what you’d get from a bad USB or Ethernet cable, and you can imagine that it would affect music. As the author says:
If you’re paying more than $5 for a 2-meter HDMI cable, you’re overpaying.