6 ms·

This is, of course, ridiculous. Still, there's logic to it: find some mass-market component that is used in a luxury service, and provide a high-end alternative

This is, of course, ridiculous. Still, there's logic to it: find some mass-market component that is used in a luxury service, and provide a high-end alternative. The kind of idio^H^H^H^Hcustomers who want luxury certainly don't want it contaminiated by something from Walmart, regardless of the actual quality. It's the same reason as for those gold-plated cables for audiophiles.

tmuir 12y ago
Gold plated cables actually serve a purpose, although the average consumer does not have a need for them. In a studio environment, where cables are frequently plugged and unplugged, the gold plating protects the contacting surfaces, extending their lives.
- Alupis 12y ago
  Are you sure? Gold is one of the most soft/malleable metals used to plate connectors? (I know it's one the best best conductors). And we all know, there's no difference between the $150 hdmi cable and the $5 hdmi cable except cosmetics and perhaps some better shielding. They're all digital connections, so the signal/bits are either there or are not.
  - nathanm412 12y ago
    It's also extremely stable and won't corrode, rust, or tarnish over time.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    I really hope the $150 cable has much better manufacturing and inspection. Obviously that doesn't mean they're worth that much, but still.
    - Alupis 12y ago
      You'd be surprised. The $150 hdmi cable is likely manufactured alongside the $5 cables in the same factory, then just sold to different brands (Monster vs. Store-brand). It's fairly common... Samsung makes almost all the parts of the Best Buy store-brand TV's... they're essentially a slightly lower-grade samsung tv with the store-brand slapped on and sold cheaper.
      - kenrikm 12y ago
        Also why the Dynex TVs usually get pretty good reviews. I used to work for a Grocery Distributor.. Most of the time store brands really are just the name brand repackaged.
      - qwerta 12y ago
        I too often encounter cheap Ethernet cable which only works at 10Mbps because maker saved money on wires.
        Alupis 12y ago
        lol, where are you buying cables? You can lose half the wires (2 pairs) and still pass 100Mbps easily.
        qwerta 12y ago
        University IT, local cheap supplier, about 10 years ago.
  - jrockway 12y ago
    > They're all digital connections, so the signal/bits are either there or are not. Absolutely not true. There is quite a lot of engineering behind making an HDMI or Ethernet cable work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line And, there are plenty of ways to mess it up and make a cable that only sort of works. TMDS, the signaling mechanism that HDMI uses, does not have error correction codes. It does do some error detection by using 10 bits to transmit each 8 bit message and declaring some of the binary representations "invalid", but if the cable does not work well, you will get visual artifacts. (I was surprised when I saw this; little specks of green among blacks while I was running an HDMI cable very close to its maximum bandwidth. One video card I tested refused to output anything, but another was happy to send a signal that was corrupted by the cable.) Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_signaling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_signaling
    - Alupis 12y ago
      Again, the bits are either there or they are not (corruption). I don't see your point, because it seems to back my earlier point.
      - rayiner 12y ago
        "Digital" is a fiction made possible by the heroic efforts of hardware designers. In the real world, every interconnect is an analog system. In "digital" interconnects like HDMI that don't have error correction, you can get artifacts before you lose the picture entirely.
      - jrockway 12y ago
        Bits are there, but the bits that come out of the video card may not be the bits that the TV sees. Like another comment says, it's all analog once you're outside of the computer, and the conversion between the two is not perfect. What digital signaling does is fix some common failure modes of analog. The signal is balanced, so it's more immune to picking up and emitting noise. The electrical signal only has two defined states, so if you degrade the signal in some way (attenuation, noise), you'll probably be able to pick the right state. But, you don't get infinite ability to do that, only more. Eventually, the two states become indistinguishable, and then you can't tell which bit was transmitted to you. (But you can't tell that you can't tell, so you start picking bits at random.) If we take this to the logical extreme, your argument implies that you can build an infinitely long cable with an infinitely tiny amount of material.
- louthy 12y ago
  I'm not an expert, and absolutely willing to be proven incorrect here. But I thought that gold was a better conductor, and that's why they're better for audio cables (less resistance). Surely the fact that gold is a soft metal would be a reason to not use it for reasons of 'extending lives'?
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistivity#Resistivity_of_various_materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistivity#Resistivity_of_var..., copper has a lower resistance per meter than gold. Gold, however, is much more resistant to oxidation.
  - seventytwo 12y ago
    Silver > Copper > Gold > Aluminum for conductivity. Gold is used as plating for anti-corrosion/tarnishing and wear, as the other user pointed out. It can be pressed extremely thin and still act as a good coating, so it's not really all that expensive.
    - GregBuchholz 12y ago
      At warm temperatures. Aluminum is a superconductor below 1.2 Kelvin.
      - nsxwolf 12y ago
        Not likely to encounter those temps in the studio.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Gold has more resistance than metals like copper. Its usefulness in electronics comes from the fact that it doesn't corrode or oxidize.
  - q3k 12y ago
    Copper is 1.68×10−8 Ω·m [1], while gold is 2.44×10−8 Ω·m [2]. [1] - Douglas Giancoli (2009) [1984]. "25. Electric Currents and Resistance". In Jocelyn Phillips. Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. p. 658. ISBN 0-13-149508-9. [2] - Raymond A. Serway (1998). Principles of Physics (2nd ed.). Fort Worth, Texas; London: Saunders College Pub. p. 602. ISBN 0-03-020457-7.
- mikeash 12y ago
  I'm mildly surprised that I can't find any audiophile cables with actual gold-plated or gold wires.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    You can probably find silver clad copper though, that combination is fairly popular because it is used in HF gear due to the skin-effect.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Pear Anjou: http://www.pearcable.com/sub_products_anjou.htm http://www.pearcable.com/sub_products_anjou.htm > ANJOU interconnects employ ultra high purity (99.99%) solid gold conductors. It is extremely important for interconnects to maintain a smooth, impurity free conductor surface to maintain signal integrity. Both copper and silver conductors corrode in air over time creating a thin layer of either copper oxide or silver sulfide. Both of these contaminants have vastly different electrical properties from their metallic counterparts, which will cause signal distortion in interconnects. All dielectric materials, including Teflon, are permeable to oxygen, which means that over time, the copper or silver conductors will become damaged. This is especially problematic at the termination ends where heat is frequently applied from resistance welding or soldering. Etc etc.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      Excellent. I was careful to phrase my comment to only be about my ability to find them, since I was sure they must exist somewhere. $1,600 for a meter-long gold cable is actually not bad, aside from the fact that it's pointless.
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  I don't think that's true. The connector's plating isn't going to make it more durable, that has a lot more to do with the materials and design of the connector. Gold plating's biggest benefit is that it won't corrode like other cheaper materials. Conductivity is good too, so you get both.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Zinc plating is just as effective, and much cheaper!
  - zafka 12y ago
    I don't think that is true. Consider that IC manufacturers use gold plating on pins and connectors. If Zinc was just as effective, I think they would use it instead. I know zinc protects steel as a sacrificial anode, I am not sure if it does as much for copper.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      As the size if the pin decreases and the frequencies go up the advantages of gold plating relative to the increase in price look better. Quite possibly there is a point where this balance tips over in the favour of gold. Zinc is not used in a sacrificial sense here, just as the main contact surface. There is gold in a few more places in a CPU, typically the bonding pads surface and the wires connecting them to the pins. It is quite possible the skin effect is at play here and that gold's superior resistance against oxidation is what gives it an edge. (we're talking GHz after all!).
- joblessjunkie 12y ago
  There are no gold plated connectors in a typical studio (exceptions for amateur home studios purchased from Guitar Center). Most cabling in a studio is bulk copper wire from a giant spool, permanently soldered in place for reliability. The only plugging happens at dedicated patch panels, which in my experience are old repurposed analog telephone patch bays that look as old and corroded as they are. Gold connectors are for home enthusiasts with money to burn. The practical effect of the platings are so far below the noise floor (vs ground loops, EMF, amp noise) that it's irrelevant for audio work. I've never seen a gold-plated XLR cable, which is usually the first link in every studio recording chain.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Gold plated XLR. By Neutrik which is a reasonable brand. Your point still stands though - no one actually uses these. http://www.neutrik.com/en/xlr/xx-14-series/nc3mxx-14-b-d http://www.neutrik.com/en/xlr/xx-14-series/nc3mxx-14-b-d
DanBC 12y ago
But the high end drink chiller exists, and it is called "whisky stones" or similar.
- bcbrown 12y ago
  Those are bunk. The cooling power of ice comes from the phase change from solid to liquid, which absorbs a ton of heat. The temperature change from 25 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit is minor in comparison. Whiskey stones do not change phase, and so they have a much smaller amount of heat they can absorb, and I haven't found them to be very effective for chilling a drink to 32 degrees and keeping it there. There's no dilution, but that doesn't matter to me as much as the temperature.
  - dkersten 12y ago
    So, I didn't know what they were so looked them up. According to some of the reviewers on Amazon, the purpose of Whiskey stones is not to chill your drink, but rather to only very slightly chill whiskey below room temperature. That is, as one of the reviewers says, they are great for their very specific purpose and useless for everything else and they are not an ice replacement. So, they're not bunk - they just weren't designed for your use case. Of course, as another reviewer suggests, a cheaper way to chill your whiskey by a degree or two would be to put the glass in a fridge for a minute ;-) (Then again, someone else comments saying that "You don't want to chill your glass, because the moisture will effect your whiskey. You're still exposing your whiskey to the moisture (water) as the glass warms.")
spindritf 12y ago
This is, of course, brilliant: find some mass-market component that is used in a luxury service, and provide a high-end alternative. Many of those things should be considered entertainment, they're conversation pieces. People with a few bucks to burn buy them to have something (very neutral) to talk about for fifteen minutes.

tmuir 12y ago

Gold plated cables actually serve a purpose, although the average consumer does not have a need for them. In a studio environment, where cables are frequently plugged and unplugged, the gold plating protects the contacting surfaces, extending their lives.

Alupis 12y ago
Are you sure? Gold is one of the most soft/malleable metals used to plate connectors? (I know it's one the best best conductors). And we all know, there's no difference between the $150 hdmi cable and the $5 hdmi cable except cosmetics and perhaps some better shielding. They're all digital connections, so the signal/bits are either there or are not.
- nathanm412 12y ago
  It's also extremely stable and won't corrode, rust, or tarnish over time.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I really hope the $150 cable has much better manufacturing and inspection. Obviously that doesn't mean they're worth that much, but still.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    You'd be surprised. The $150 hdmi cable is likely manufactured alongside the $5 cables in the same factory, then just sold to different brands (Monster vs. Store-brand). It's fairly common... Samsung makes almost all the parts of the Best Buy store-brand TV's... they're essentially a slightly lower-grade samsung tv with the store-brand slapped on and sold cheaper.
    - kenrikm 12y ago
      Also why the Dynex TVs usually get pretty good reviews. I used to work for a Grocery Distributor.. Most of the time store brands really are just the name brand repackaged.
    - qwerta 12y ago
      I too often encounter cheap Ethernet cable which only works at 10Mbps because maker saved money on wires.
      - Alupis 12y ago
        lol, where are you buying cables? You can lose half the wires (2 pairs) and still pass 100Mbps easily.
        qwerta 12y ago
        University IT, local cheap supplier, about 10 years ago.
- jrockway 12y ago
  > They're all digital connections, so the signal/bits are either there or are not. Absolutely not true. There is quite a lot of engineering behind making an HDMI or Ethernet cable work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line And, there are plenty of ways to mess it up and make a cable that only sort of works. TMDS, the signaling mechanism that HDMI uses, does not have error correction codes. It does do some error detection by using 10 bits to transmit each 8 bit message and declaring some of the binary representations "invalid", but if the cable does not work well, you will get visual artifacts. (I was surprised when I saw this; little specks of green among blacks while I was running an HDMI cable very close to its maximum bandwidth. One video card I tested refused to output anything, but another was happy to send a signal that was corrupted by the cable.) Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_signaling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_signaling
  - Alupis 12y ago
    Again, the bits are either there or they are not (corruption). I don't see your point, because it seems to back my earlier point.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      "Digital" is a fiction made possible by the heroic efforts of hardware designers. In the real world, every interconnect is an analog system. In "digital" interconnects like HDMI that don't have error correction, you can get artifacts before you lose the picture entirely.
    - jrockway 12y ago
      Bits are there, but the bits that come out of the video card may not be the bits that the TV sees. Like another comment says, it's all analog once you're outside of the computer, and the conversion between the two is not perfect. What digital signaling does is fix some common failure modes of analog. The signal is balanced, so it's more immune to picking up and emitting noise. The electrical signal only has two defined states, so if you degrade the signal in some way (attenuation, noise), you'll probably be able to pick the right state. But, you don't get infinite ability to do that, only more. Eventually, the two states become indistinguishable, and then you can't tell which bit was transmitted to you. (But you can't tell that you can't tell, so you start picking bits at random.) If we take this to the logical extreme, your argument implies that you can build an infinitely long cable with an infinitely tiny amount of material.
louthy 12y ago
I'm not an expert, and absolutely willing to be proven incorrect here. But I thought that gold was a better conductor, and that's why they're better for audio cables (less resistance). Surely the fact that gold is a soft metal would be a reason to not use it for reasons of 'extending lives'?
- nitrogen 12y ago
  According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistivity#Resistivity_of_various_materials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistivity#Resistivity_of_var..., copper has a lower resistance per meter than gold. Gold, however, is much more resistant to oxidation.
- seventytwo 12y ago
  Silver > Copper > Gold > Aluminum for conductivity. Gold is used as plating for anti-corrosion/tarnishing and wear, as the other user pointed out. It can be pressed extremely thin and still act as a good coating, so it's not really all that expensive.
  - GregBuchholz 12y ago
    At warm temperatures. Aluminum is a superconductor below 1.2 Kelvin.
    - nsxwolf 12y ago
      Not likely to encounter those temps in the studio.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Gold has more resistance than metals like copper. Its usefulness in electronics comes from the fact that it doesn't corrode or oxidize.
- q3k 12y ago
  Copper is 1.68×10−8 Ω·m [1], while gold is 2.44×10−8 Ω·m [2]. [1] - Douglas Giancoli (2009) [1984]. "25. Electric Currents and Resistance". In Jocelyn Phillips. Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. p. 658. ISBN 0-13-149508-9. [2] - Raymond A. Serway (1998). Principles of Physics (2nd ed.). Fort Worth, Texas; London: Saunders College Pub. p. 602. ISBN 0-03-020457-7.
mikeash 12y ago
I'm mildly surprised that I can't find any audiophile cables with actual gold-plated or gold wires.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  You can probably find silver clad copper though, that combination is fairly popular because it is used in HF gear due to the skin-effect.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Pear Anjou: http://www.pearcable.com/sub_products_anjou.htm http://www.pearcable.com/sub_products_anjou.htm > ANJOU interconnects employ ultra high purity (99.99%) solid gold conductors. It is extremely important for interconnects to maintain a smooth, impurity free conductor surface to maintain signal integrity. Both copper and silver conductors corrode in air over time creating a thin layer of either copper oxide or silver sulfide. Both of these contaminants have vastly different electrical properties from their metallic counterparts, which will cause signal distortion in interconnects. All dielectric materials, including Teflon, are permeable to oxygen, which means that over time, the copper or silver conductors will become damaged. This is especially problematic at the termination ends where heat is frequently applied from resistance welding or soldering. Etc etc.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Excellent. I was careful to phrase my comment to only be about my ability to find them, since I was sure they must exist somewhere. $1,600 for a meter-long gold cable is actually not bad, aside from the fact that it's pointless.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
I don't think that's true. The connector's plating isn't going to make it more durable, that has a lot more to do with the materials and design of the connector. Gold plating's biggest benefit is that it won't corrode like other cheaper materials. Conductivity is good too, so you get both.
jacquesm 12y ago
Zinc plating is just as effective, and much cheaper!
- zafka 12y ago
  I don't think that is true. Consider that IC manufacturers use gold plating on pins and connectors. If Zinc was just as effective, I think they would use it instead. I know zinc protects steel as a sacrificial anode, I am not sure if it does as much for copper.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    As the size if the pin decreases and the frequencies go up the advantages of gold plating relative to the increase in price look better. Quite possibly there is a point where this balance tips over in the favour of gold. Zinc is not used in a sacrificial sense here, just as the main contact surface. There is gold in a few more places in a CPU, typically the bonding pads surface and the wires connecting them to the pins. It is quite possible the skin effect is at play here and that gold's superior resistance against oxidation is what gives it an edge. (we're talking GHz after all!).
joblessjunkie 12y ago
There are no gold plated connectors in a typical studio (exceptions for amateur home studios purchased from Guitar Center). Most cabling in a studio is bulk copper wire from a giant spool, permanently soldered in place for reliability. The only plugging happens at dedicated patch panels, which in my experience are old repurposed analog telephone patch bays that look as old and corroded as they are. Gold connectors are for home enthusiasts with money to burn. The practical effect of the platings are so far below the noise floor (vs ground loops, EMF, amp noise) that it's irrelevant for audio work. I've never seen a gold-plated XLR cable, which is usually the first link in every studio recording chain.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Gold plated XLR. By Neutrik which is a reasonable brand. Your point still stands though - no one actually uses these. http://www.neutrik.com/en/xlr/xx-14-series/nc3mxx-14-b-d http://www.neutrik.com/en/xlr/xx-14-series/nc3mxx-14-b-d

DanBC 12y ago

But the high end drink chiller exists, and it is called "whisky stones" or similar.

bcbrown 12y ago
Those are bunk. The cooling power of ice comes from the phase change from solid to liquid, which absorbs a ton of heat. The temperature change from 25 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit is minor in comparison. Whiskey stones do not change phase, and so they have a much smaller amount of heat they can absorb, and I haven't found them to be very effective for chilling a drink to 32 degrees and keeping it there. There's no dilution, but that doesn't matter to me as much as the temperature.
- dkersten 12y ago
  So, I didn't know what they were so looked them up. According to some of the reviewers on Amazon, the purpose of Whiskey stones is not to chill your drink, but rather to only very slightly chill whiskey below room temperature. That is, as one of the reviewers says, they are great for their very specific purpose and useless for everything else and they are not an ice replacement. So, they're not bunk - they just weren't designed for your use case. Of course, as another reviewer suggests, a cheaper way to chill your whiskey by a degree or two would be to put the glass in a fridge for a minute ;-) (Then again, someone else comments saying that "You don't want to chill your glass, because the moisture will effect your whiskey. You're still exposing your whiskey to the moisture (water) as the glass warms.")

spindritf 12y ago

This is, of course, brilliant: find some mass-market component that is used in a luxury service, and provide a high-end alternative. Many of those things should be considered entertainment, they're conversation pieces. People with a few bucks to burn buy them to have something (very neutral) to talk about for fifteen minutes.