At Cardas there exist no length restrictions for Ethernet cables and therefore Jan Sieveking, owner of the German Cardas distributing company, ordered a 15 as well as a 1.5 meter long Cardas Clear for the review. Even for the temporary stay in my listening room, I made the effort to move four shelves out of their place, just to be able to lay the long Cardas right next to the Carbon - thus to avoid any room-related interferences that could affect the comparison.

Of course, I gave the two Cardas cables sufficient time to transport some data back and forth, before I gradually exchanged them against the Audioquest counterparts. First, it was the long Cardas' turn, which I put in charge of connecting the router to the Melco, which, despite providing a USB output and his own renderer, purely works in my audio chain as an audiophile network-based data storage system. Although not entirely recorded with acoustic instruments, I recently very much like to listen to "If You Look" from Arild Anderson's album If You Look Far Enough, given its wealth of information and its spatial effects. Thanks to the Cardas, Nana Vasconcelos' percussive sound carpet sounds by a fraction more clearly structured, and the interwoven brass nonetheless sounds more aureate than silver. And the tonal colours gleam somewhat warmer, too. Ralph Towner's spherical synthesizer sounds now billow a bit deeper into the imaginary space, and the kettledrums emerge with plenty of pressure, in spite of their supposedly greater distance to the listener. Very convincing! And, Ravi Shankar's mandatory "West Eats Meet" makes the Cardas capture me as well—primarily because of the energy within the drums and their precise positioning in the room.

I find it quite amazing that these differences are audible at all, given their relatively small dimensions in the overall sound. Since I ain't a profound network specialist, I cannot say whether only control commands, or music data, as well, are exchanged through the connection between the Melco and the router. If not, it would be important which cable in the end does pollute the signal less due to its design and shielding characteristics. But regarding the possible scope of immunization against HF contamination, firstly, a lot of effort is already put into the Melco. Secondly, there is the SOtM iSO CAT6 filter that operates between the Melco's Ethernet jack and the router. In simpler configurations, the positive effect of well-shielded Ethernet cables like the Cardas Clear should therefore become even more apparent.

However, the shorter connection between the Melco and the Aries Femto carries music data for sure. And so at this point the Cardas Clear is going to face the more than three times more expensive Audioquest Diamond. Within Keith Jarrett's "Wrong Blues," the latter is sounding a little bit more open in the highs and suggests a minimally larger space. Therefore, I assumed that it would also draw a more spectacular image with my reference recording that I use for testing spatiality, Patrice Herals' "Improvisation" from Le Concert De Parfums. But the Cardas offers such a homogeneous and coherent illusion of the refectory of the former monastery in Norlac that one doesn't miss the Audioquest's minimally deeper, but also somewhat dissecting presentation, for a single second. Well, at this point the Cardas Clear is getting dangerously close to the significantly more expensive Diamond. So, in some of the testing disciplines one finally isn't able to use the words "better" or "more"; it's simply a matter of taste.