Chord C-Stream Ethernet Cable (0.75 metres)

I bought this cable as an experiment as I am researching “do higher quality and expensive” cables make a difference to the sound quality of your equipment. Having to rest following a second heart attack I had time on my hands to try and improve my Hi-Fi set up for sound quality. I decided to try different cables as opposed to buying more expensive equipment. Starting with the streaming/Ethernet cable to connect to my computer. For the past few years I had been using an AudioQuest Pearl cat 7 cable (I guess this didn’t suit my set up) I changed this for a £5.99 cable from Amazon and it surprisingly outshone the Pearl it took away a vail and gave greater detail. Next I bought the Supra cat 8 for £40 and again the sound stage and detail improved noticeably.Now I am thinking how far do I go with this? Can the sound quality keep improving do I spend more money on another cable? because the quality of music presentation I am now listening too is at a totally higher level than I had previously heard I am experiencing more detail, greater sound staging, instruments have more individual spacing and resonance. Also, I began to question my Dac how good is this Dac can it deliver an even higher level of detail etc. or is it a case of “give me a higher quality signal and I will give you a greater musical experience. Well the answer was the latter, I bought this Chord c-series cable £40 from Amazon (which is Chords entry level cable) and it out performed all of the previous cables.None of the previous cables were wasted as I had the Pearl’s in lots of my equipment so they have been replaced with the other superior cables so I am benefiting from better picture and sound quality in those. Hmmm, what do I do next? Do I take a gamble and try Chords Clearwater £120 the Shawline £200 or even the Epic £500. Why Chord Company well if the sound quality of their basic cable greatly outshone the others then how good will their higher priced cables sound and can my Dac live up to them. After checking my bank balance I decided to skip the next two and purchase the Epic but I must say I wasn’t totally comfortable with this as my equipment is not what the Audiophile would call high end.The cable arrived and with great trepidation I connected it to my system, turned the system on and sat back and thought of the money I have spent when “oh my goodness” I was almost in tears my music which I had listened too for many years sounded simply amazing so much airiness, detail, clarity of vocals and wonderful musicality they sounded so involving.Before I got into streaming I listened to my CDs through an Arcam cd streamer player connected to the same amps and speakers.(I am not going any further as the next level is into the thousands of pounds and Chord recommend them for very high end equipment but for anyone who thinks that cables do not make a difference to your musical experience please do dedicated listening tests and you will be presently surprised)Is the cost difference between £40 and £500 worth the upgrade well it all depends on the quality of music you wish to listen too and the equipment you have. Now I am sure some of you reading this are asking what is this Dac and other equipment you did the tests on well you may well be surprised. The headphones where Focal clear MG, Hifi Man Ananda, Sennheiser HD 650 and Grado 325x. The Dac is Loxjie D50 the headphone amp is Topping A90, the streamer is a HP Spectre x360 computer dedicated to playing only music apps all other apps were deleted and connections both in and out have ifi audio silencers which I highly recommended, ifi Mercury 3 cable to the computer usb socket with a ifi audio usb silencer connected. The amp is Marantz and speakers KEF R3.I have since upgraded my Xlr cables and rca cables to Chord Epic which again have greatly increased my listening experience however, from this cable testing experience I found the Dac delivered every time but the A90 didn’t I felt that it was holding back on delivery then as a “get well’ present the “love of my life” bought me an ifi audio pro can signature headphone amp which is simply amazing it unlocked everything the cables and Dac threw at it.I have often thought as I am sure many others have of how does the music change as one progresses to higher levels of equipment etc. For me it presents its self with greater clarity both instruments and vocals, greater sound stage, instrument separation and detail, instruments seem to have more time to be listened too more note extension and some multi instrument music I listed too previously were so much comfortable to listen too and so much more revealing.I did not know when I started on this quest where it would lead me too (or how much it would cost) but for me it was worth every penny and I must say it has been a truly wonderful journey to be on and I wish you all a wonderful musical journey and if this review has helped you in any why then it was time well spent.To end the period of testing was over many months as I wanted to give the equipment and cables time to burn in (if needed) and for each to present its self through headphone and speakers. Naturally there are many super cable manufactures out there and I am sure they will do the job equally as good as the Chords. I settled on Chord company purely because their entry level cable was so impressive. I was told many years ago before ordering a bottle of wine at a restaurant first try a glass of house wine if you are impressed you will not need to spend a great amount on an bottle of wine.

Replaced a generic 24 AWG CAT 5e cable. Noticed a marked improvement in the audio details. Perfect for any streaming device.

Very pleased. The lead was used in conjunction with 2 other Chord C Stream cables to connect my Linn Hi Fi system to enable us to stream music

Use it for hi fi media.Far superior sound quality.

I felt compelled to write this review after being shown this cable, asked my opinion and seeing what is supposedly a professional review.An ethernet cable will not, indeed cannot improve sound quality. It may prevent stalls, buffering and skips although any half decent Cat 5e or better cable costing just a few pounds should do that, but it can't make your music sound better. There are audiophile websites and reviews will tell you otherwise but they are plain wrong (for a counter argument try this article - [...] - not impartial but at least based on fact rather than opinion). People report minor perceived differences - better bass, better dynamics (whatever that means) - and it simply can't be true because the cable you use does not affect the data transferred over it in a way that can be audible as anything other than pops, clicks, drop-outs, pauses, etc. You would do a lot better to spend your £50 on a book on data networks and network protocols so that you understand why these cables can't possibly work. However, I've given a brief explanation below for those that don't want to read up in detail.The companies that make these type of cable (AudioQuest are another) clearly have a vested interest in selling you these or even one of their 'higher end' cables and the top end price of their range makes this one look like a bargain, their top end cable costs £1900.00, that's right, not a typo, one thousand nine hundred pounds for a patch lead. The way they talk about them demonstrates that they are either trying to deceive people or have no idea how Ethernet networks and the data transfer protocols that sit above them work.Your music is stored in a file - MP3, AAC, FLAC, whatever you choose, on your NAS or computer or in some cloud service like Spotify or Tidal. When your streamer or computer or whatever else you use to play your music requests some music to play it is transferred as a file, not as sound. The file that is received by your streamer or other playback device is identical in every way, right down to the last bit, to the file that left your NAS or Spotify or wherever. Nothing has been added, nothing taken away. Your music is typically transferred from your storage device to your streamer using something like CIFS/SMB, some variant of HTTP or DLNA. The Ethernet protocols contain a lot of error checking and correction including a 32 bit CRC in every frame to check data integrity to make sure that what is sent is the same as what arrives. The file and data transfer protocols that sit above this (CIFS, DLNA, etc.) also have further layers of error checking. The odds that something is corrupted in transport and reaches the other end undetected are infinitesimally small and even if it did happen, you would hear a pop or a click or white noise or silence, not a small degradation of the sound quality.I repeat, it is impossible for an Ethernet cable to affect sound quality in this way. I've heard people mention jitter, that too is nonsense, jitter is a problem for circuit designers, it does not affect file transfer protocols. The cable designers state that their cables are directional. If that's true (and I sincerely doubt that it is, at least to any measurable extent) then they are no good for Ethernet cables as data transfer is inherently 2 directional, for each packet sent there is usually an ACK packet sent back in the other direction.A bad cable can cause packet loss, but as already stated that will be picked up somewhere in the hardware and software stack. Music streaming is such a low bandwidth application that you can happily run it on a 10mbit connection or wireless let alone a 1gbit connection, so 90% packet loss still wouldn't make any difference (though you really should fix that if you are suffering that much packet loss).Consider the fact that every day, all over the world, in hospitals, air traffic control, power stations and other such places, petabytes of safety critical data are transmitted over lengths of Ethernet which are much longer than those you run in your home, the cable costs around 25p per metre, and is often laid alongside power and other source of interference. No-one in these organisations pays more than a pound or two for patch leads and no-one suffers data corruption on the wire. Their data is transferred reliably and intact; it has to be.

Was a bit sceptical about the claims this cable would improve the performance of my stereo equipment. The improvement completely blew me away this is a massive improvement on the performance, my wife said it made the other Ethernet cable sound muffled This is easily the best 40pound you could spend on your equipment

Fast delivery and I am very happy to use it.Good quality cable.

Definitely an upgrade on 'bell wire'