You lost me Martin ? Did mean add some text?

Thanks Martin but the eBay listings I can find are all not genuine Cisco and pale blue . I checked Amazon and they only have Cisco compatable not genuine Cisco cables. Will continue to have a look and see if I can find some genuine sellers .A company intelligentnetworking.co.uk looks to be a Cisco specialist and offering what looks to be genuine Cisco cables for £62 for 2M which is very much lower than some of the other ones I have seen . I find buying in this sector quite confusing as there does not seem to be the same rigour shown in products being sold being genuine . These at least are the right colour just not sure . Just checked this through to checkout before paying and it has indicated this price includes tax and free 2 to 4 day shipping which seems to be a very competitive price but is it too good to be true ?

Just bought the last one so lucky that is all I need and nothing like the price I have seen so a very good saving . Thanks Martin did not realise what you posted was a link but got there in the end and at that price it is not much of a gamble either .

It's impossible to know, Paul. I have approaching 10 SFP and cable combinations and 2 AOCs and they all sound different. You can't know from the spec how they will sound.

The Cisco sounds the best, is all I can say.

That looks like just a cable without SFPs. You will need to match it with single-mode or multi-mode SFPs depending on what type it is.

The Cisco is an AOC (Active Optical Cable) = cable + built-in SFPs.

Not as well versed in this as some but there is a belief that the sfp quality is perhaps the most important part of the link . Now these cables are not designed with Audio in mind they are networking cables and in the industry they are in speed and stability are the two main goals and often these come at a price of being noisy . There are low noise sfp units in the market and these are often used in things like clean rooms and the like were very low noise is desirable . Audiophile Digital Optical Technology produce ADOT sets for Melco dataswitches but can be used with others they have done work on sourcing both the Media Converters and the sfp . Compared to other units their kit as is often the case when HiFi comes in are expensive but I did check the sfp model they use for its figures and they are being truthful that it is a very low noise unit and nothing like the speed of some . My younger brother is an IT network magager for Mersey Health Region and I spke to him about this expecting the usual it will make no difference but instead was quite surprised that he said in the application I was using it the low noise would be far more important than the speed . He then sent me details of in his view the best sfp for low noise and at £1260 each I decided I would stick to what I am using . Perhaps of interest is my brother has a mainly Cisco back bone for his networks but says their cables are over priced and using alternatives often gets better and more reliable results . But remember he is not talking audio just networking and he did say audio requires very different things . So as Martin has said it is hard to judge any cable on its price but looking at the noise figures and going for the lowest you can find for a sensible price might well be a start .

Yes but in this case both myself and I presume Martin have bought it for much less than that and I am not talking a small saving . So is the retail price just a joke by Cisco so they can offer customers huge discounts or are the ones we have bought fakes ?

Not fakes, mine has the Cisco logo at one end and all the correct identifiers. The list price is not a joke, corporates pay these prices.

The reason for the low prices is usually excess or liquidated stock or previously used. Mine was in a sealed packet.

The point being made is that they are high quality items and also sound extremely good. I am glad that there is new-found interest in optical links. I did a lot of research early on to establish what works and what doesn't.

Well cisco cable arrived today there is no way of really telling but it certainly is either in mint condition or brand new . As mentioned all marked up as Cisco genuine part so now just have to turn everything off on the newtwork remove the current cable and put this one in its place . Means that there is no way to test the sound quality A to B but I trust the work done here that this is a very good cable and has made a very through cable switcher just say that is good enough . Will obviously come back and let you know if things do change . Does Optical Cable have a burn in time ?