Here's the associated hardware not as a diagram. Both CAT links remained plugged into the router. I just reseated their ends in my Window PC. Though I paused Qobuz during each swap, its connection still interrupted. I had to relaunch the player. That conveniently re-opened to the same track, even a pause marker had I left one. With Ethernet's otherwise instant-on protocol, I didn't have to reset the main connection as USB would have demanded. Swaps came off quite fast and furious. And the verdict was a surprise. Despite my battery-powered Audiobyte reclocker as the PC's Internet gatekeeper, the two cables did not sound alike. Speakers and headphones told the same story. The SOtM was leaner and crisper, the Furutech warmer and softer. Et voilà, c'est ça.

Noting the difference—or none—is a reviewer's first assessment. The next is magnitude. Then comes assessing whether the difference is better/worse or just different. Let's start with the last. I'll call it just different. It depended. For really complex music of many intersecting layers—Jospeh of Arimathea's many-colored coat—the SOtM aesthetic provided greater clarity and separation. For simpler music, Furutech's presentation added some mass and density to feel more corporeal. As an either/or situation, this wasn't about any universal advantage so just different. As to magnitude, I'd call it equivalent to analog interconnect differences I described in my last such review between older Crystal Cable Ultra and brand-new Grimm Audio SQM wires: subtle but repeatable, meaningful in the moment but easily assimilated. You'd be happy either way an hour after the last A/B. My far earlier upgrade from generic Electric Avenue CAT5 to SOtM CAT6 had still been about clearly better.

Today's change from CAT6 to CAT8 was about just different. Frankly, even that surprised me. I suspect that in a scaled-up context of big speakers and more sophisticated ancillaries like we have them in two other systems, the relatively small difference magnitude of my desktop would have expanded. I simply can't predict whether it would have flipped into better/worse or remained just different. To know required two 30-meter runs which I didn't have. If you owned either one of my two 6-meter specimens and asked me about the other, I'd tell you not to bother. You'd hear the small difference but a day later, would have forgotten all about it. Of course if you do 4K streaming video, things might be very different. That's just not my bailiwick.

Sometimes then, that's how the cookie crumbles. You realize that what you already have is plenty good enough. You're home-free. If money still itches to be spent, look elsewhere…