Chord Shawline Streaming Cable

Start with the objection, because it is correct. If a network packet arrives with an error, the checksum fails and TCP asks for it again, and the file that reaches your streamer is bit-for-bit the file that left the server or the far end of your broadband connection. That is what the protocol is for. So anyone selling a network cable on the grounds of data accuracy is selling something you already have, for free, from a five-pound patch lead.

The argument for a cable like this one is a different argument, and it is worth stating precisely rather than hand-waving about "digital". The lead running into your streamer is not only a data path. It is a physical conductor, several metres of it, connected at one end to a switch or a router — a device with a switch-mode power supply, a clock and a processor inside it — and at the other end to a box containing a digital-to-analogue converter and its own reference clock. High-frequency noise and common-mode current travel that path very happily. They do not corrupt the data. They arrive inside the chassis of the most timing-sensitive component in the system, and that is a different problem, addressed by shielding and by the geometry of the pairs rather than by error correction.

Individually shielded pairs

The Chord Company's construction for Shawline Streaming is high-speed silver-plated copper conductors, with the twisted conductor pairs individually shielded from one another and a further overall shield around the lot, insulated with FEP. The individual screening is the part worth noticing. Twisting a pair rejects interference arriving from outside; screening each pair separately also stops the pairs interfering with each other, which in a cable carrying signals in both directions at once is not a theoretical concern. It is more work to build and it is the reason a cable like this is not simply an office patch lead in a nicer jacket.

Contacts and plug bodies

The signal contacts are 24ct. gold-plated. The plug surround is over-moulded and shielded zinc, with a non-compression strain relief system — which matters more here than it sounds, because network plugs are the connector most likely in any hi-fi system to be unplugged, re-routed and pulled out from behind a rack in a hurry, and the retaining tab on a cheap one is a well-known point of failure.

Technical Specifications

Who Is It For?

Anyone whose streamer is connected by cable rather than wirelessly, and particularly anyone who has put a small switch beside the hi-fi rack and fed it from the router elsewhere in the house. The link that matters most is the short one from that switch into the streamer, because it is the one that ends inside the audio chassis. The longer run back to the router is doing a less sensitive job, and there is little point buying a good cable for it before the last leg has been dealt with.

If your streamer is on Wi-Fi, none of this applies to you and no cable will change that. If it is on ethernet and the system is a step or two either side of this one, the Chord Clearway Streaming Cable sits below it and the Chord Epic Streaming Cable above. Same range, different connection: the Chord Shawline USB handles a server feeding a DAC directly. The full range is on our Chord Company collection page.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

Network audio is the part of a modern system where the sensible advice changes most often, and it is worth a conversation about the whole path — where the switch sits, what powers it, and how the streamer is fed — rather than just the lead. Sometimes the cable is the right next move. Sometimes it is not, and we would rather tell you that than sell you one.

A streaming cable is easy to swap and easy to judge, so our home evaluation service is the practical way to settle it in your own house and on your own network. When you get in touch, you'll be speaking with Dave, Chris and Tim at info@martinshifi.co.uk, call 01603 627010, or WhatsApp on 07554 687137. You can read more about how we work on our Why Martins page. We are at 85–91 Ber Street, Norwich, NR1 3EY.