5 ms·

AudioQuest Diamond RJ/E Ethernet Cable: £6899

139 points by jasoncartwright 12y ago

cpplinuxdude 12y ago
Why?
- EliRivers 12y ago
  Because it gives you a "large sound picture". If there's anything I've ever wanted in my pictures, it's for them to be large sound. What's more, these ethernet cables work better passing data in one direction than the other. Here's me using ordinary, non-directional cables, like a sucker :(
- niklasni1 12y ago
  Because will pay it. Some people think cabling, storage media etc. makes a difference in audio quality even when it is digital data. Naturally this has no basis in any reality, but that doesn't prevent anyone from believing it.
iptel 12y ago
Daylight robbery
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.
pan69 12y ago
Well, luckily it comes with a 5 year warranty.
- barking 12y ago
  And in today's fast moving world it's hard to put a price on peace of mind
- agumonkey 12y ago
  I so would like a quote for warranty extension.
surreal 12y ago
Without commenting on whether the product is worth the price (I don't know enough about HiFi quality): There is a bell curve of purchasing mentality - from a minority who buy solely based on what's cheapest, through varying degrees of cost/benefit tradeoff, through to a minority who will tend toward whatever is most expensive. It often pays to offer something to that latter group.
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  I was thinking the same. If just 5-10 rich guys ask their personal shopper for the best setup, "money not an object" and the shopper buys these cables, then it was worth it to set up the entire thing.
- tormeh 12y ago
  This. Fashion and luxury is crazy. Sales may increase as you increase the price. This video explains the Swedish concept of "vasking", essentially throwing expensive liquids down the drain to demonstrate how little their price tags matter to you: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uhEpMJ3n_wU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uhEpMJ3n_wU (it's also hilarious) Making stuff that people use exclusively to show off is such a great business that the only reason everyone's not trying to do it must be some misguided faith in humanity.
  - glesica 12y ago
    > the only reason everyone's not trying to do it must be some misguided faith in humanity. Or an inability to keep a straight face through an entire sales pitch. I doubt the effect works if the sales person or market copy actively mocks the buyers' intelligence.
  - gruntled 12y ago
    Luxury isn't necessarily crazy, it can be rational economic signaling: http://www.joshuakennon.com/mental-model-veblen-goods/ http://www.joshuakennon.com/mental-model-veblen-goods/
    - 12y ago
ryanlol 12y ago
These cables are truly wonderful for deconstructing the Mozartian spacial qualities of the sound and to perpetuate the plateau-spreading fluidity of the music.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jakobegger 12y ago
To be fair, that price is for the 12 meter (40 ft) cable. The 75cm (2 ft) cable is much more affordable at just £600. The best part about that cable is that someone took the time to determine which direction it sounds best, and the cable is marked to make it straightforward to attach it in the best direction!
- noir_lord 12y ago
  > The best part about that cable is that someone took the time to determine which direction it sounds best Nope, they just marked an arrow on it and said they took the time to determine which direction is best.
  - lmm 12y ago
    I doubt it. That seems like the sort of thing that could be illegal. Getting an intern to listen to the cable in both directions and mark an arrow on would cost what, $.50/cable?
cbg0 12y ago
That's actually quite cheap compared to this: http://www.monoandstereo.com/2014/12/250000-eur-schnerzinger-audio-cable.html http://www.monoandstereo.com/2014/12/250000-eur-schnerzinger...
buro9 12y ago
Great, I've been looking for an ethernet cable, I recently purchased a subwoofer cable for only £9,049 ( http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8401/audioquest-wild-dog-subwoofer-cable-20m/ http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8401/audioquest-w... ) and I was worried that I wasn't getting the best out of the sound as the cables earlier in the system weren't at this quality. Edit: just found a £2,199 mp3 player: http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8288/astell-amp-kern-ak240-master-quality-sound-portable-music-player/ http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8288/astell-amp-k...
- kalleboo 12y ago
  With all those high-quality components, make sure you have an $8,000 power cable to match http://www.coconut-audio.com/propower32mm.html http://www.coconut-audio.com/propower32mm.html
  - nunull 12y ago
    Or the "MEGA SATA". http://www.coconut-audio.com/megasata.html http://www.coconut-audio.com/megasata.html
  - abrkn 12y ago
    I don't feel like this power cable is expressive enough. Definitely does not bring out all the subtle nuances of Beyonce's "Single Ladies".
- th0br0 12y ago
  Well, at least you got a 5yr warranty on it.
  - xxxyy 12y ago
    I can give you 30yrs warranty for half the price.
- notahacker 12y ago
  I wonder about the mentality of people that plug their £9049 cables into the highest end surround sound system at a comparably mere £6296? Though the biggest gap in the market would appear to be in TV brackets, where the highest-end option, at a mere £599, doesn't even claim to have sound-augmenting properties
q_no 12y ago
I bet not even NASA would deploy such expensive cables on a spaceshuttle.
- dfox 12y ago
  Essentially same type of four pair cable that is used for SpaceWire and Ethernet on-board of ISS is readily available and generally costs less than 10EUR/meter.
pron 12y ago
For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music.
Aardwolf 12y ago
It says the length is 12m. At this price, surely that must mean 12 miles? or 12 megaparsecs?
ai_ja_nai 12y ago
Audiophiles are truly a sustain for economy
sanoli 12y ago
You know the price is wrong when there's a "Fiance Available" on the sale page of an ethernet cable :-)
- mathieuh 12y ago
  I think buying one of these things would surely reduce the availability of fiancé(e)s.
  - ArekDymalski 12y ago
    It will reduce the availability of certain type of fiancé(e)s, but attract the other type.
    - Thimothy 12y ago
      Or maybe they are too in the bussiness of russian fiancees. I'm pretty sure there is some affinity with selling 7000$ ethernet cable.
- Havoc 12y ago
  Yeah. Frankly finance on anything smaller than a car makes me wonder about people...
Retr0spectrum 12y ago
"All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality. For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music. For example, NAS to Router, Router to Network Player."
- lawl 12y ago
  This will be perfect with the new HiFi Harddisks I'm developing at my startup. They'll offer HiFi data storage to make sure your crappy youtube to mp3 rips don't lose quality when stored over a longer time period. (I just made this joke in IRC too and somebody sent me this link http://www.enjoythemusic.com/hificritic/vol5_no3/listening_to_storage.htm http://www.enjoythemusic.com/hificritic/vol5_no3/listening_t... ) Maybe there is actually money to make off this!
  - anon4 12y ago
    Finally someone is solving the rotational velocidensity problem!
  - Sami_Lehtinen 12y ago
    I remember laughing at Kodak Digital Film. But I knew a few photographers whom preferred to use it. http://www.cnet.com/products/kodak-digital-film-flash-memory-card-32-mb-compactflash/ http://www.cnet.com/products/kodak-digital-film-flash-memory...
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      As opposed to what? There's a lot of variation in flash quality, affecting reliability and speed.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    http://i.imgur.com/E1OV1AS.jpg http://i.imgur.com/E1OV1AS.jpg Such a common sound path deserves only the best.
fdb 12y ago
The "Wat Hifi?" Tumblr features more of these products: http://wathifi.tumblr.com/ http://wathifi.tumblr.com/
- q_no 12y ago
  This blog is hilarious :D Thank you!
- themartorana 12y ago
  That some of the quotes on that blog seem to indicate that different cables can actually change rhythm and timing is really eye-opening to just how outlandish some claims can get.
  - rdale 12y ago
    It doesn't mean that the cables or other equipment differences, can change the 'beats per minute' of a music track. If the bass is reproduced poorly and sounds 'woolly' it will subjectively mess up the timing of the bass playing with respect to the rest of the music, as though the bass player is less skilful. Whereas listening to the same track with equipment that has tight, clear and dynamic bass can make the music sound more lively and subjectively 'faster', and it is more likely to make your foot tap.
    - fennecfoxen 12y ago
      > If the bass is reproduced poorly ... Yeah, sure. But most of these comments are about cables carrying digital signals, a class of devices which only have two real operating modes: "working perfectly" and "catastrophic failure". Instead of respecting the principles of the physics and information encoding associated with this layout, though, we see outlandish claims of frequencies traveling at different speeds and damaging your multi-octave audio.
      - rdale 12y ago
        With digital audio going to a DAC even with cheap cables, the '1's and '0's should be arriving OK and will be in "working perfectly" mode. You have to hope that is the case with USB audio as there is no error checking. But when bits arrive is very important in audio, and whether or not the devices and cables in the chain before the DAC have introduced noise on the ground plane is also considered very important by some. I can't see how an ethernet cable can affect timing, as the packets with the digital signal might even arrive out of order. The earthing of the ethernet cable might influence how much noise is introduced the ground plane though. It might explain why the Audioquest cables are directional, if their earthing arrangement is directional perhaps.
fivedogit 12y ago
I wonder if this is an automated pricing battle, similar to the $23.7 million dollar book about bugs on Amazon. http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/25/amazon.price.algorithm/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/25/amazon.price.algorith...
monkeymagic 12y ago
One of my hobbies is arguing with reviewers about these sort of things on amazon. Its amazing the crap they come up with.
bsaul 12y ago
I onced interviewed for a job at a software company developping virtual instruments plug-ins. At some point in the interview, the guy told me this great story : "We made some test once, and we changed the skin of the software, to a new color. Every people said the software sounded better with that new skin. Yet we changed absolutely nothing except the color." I'm still wondering if some graphical configuration ( such as a bright color) wouldn't stimulate the brain more, making it more receptive in general, and to sound in particular, letting people "hear" better.
- heleph 12y ago
  We find whenever we significantly change the look of our website or our emails, conversion goes up significantly for a couple of weeks and then most the time goes back to the normal levels. I think a difference just stimulates the brain, along the same lines of why supermarkets infuriatingly keep moving the products around so you can't just auto-pilot your shop.
  - tgb 12y ago
    Yet another thing to consider when doing A/B testing. Looks like you'll need active controls as well as controls!
- Sharlin 12y ago
  Sensory experiences are incredibly subjective and different modalities interrelate in all kinds of complex ways. It could be said that everybody is synaesthetic to some extent, some just more so than others. In many contexts outside science, whether some sensory difference exists objectively or not may not be relevant at all as long as there is a perceivable difference in subjective experience.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  There's a reverb plugin I use that has 70s 80s and "now" modes, which drastically affect things like internal sampling rates (bandwidth) and noise. It also completely changes the color of the large GUI from deep red/brown to cool blue to bright white. I find that I have to shut my eyes or look away from the screen when toggling the modes to avoid biasing my perception of how the audio is changing. It's particularly bad because the visual changes are designed to evoke the effect it has on the sound.
geijoenr 12y ago
this can only be some money laundering scheme
kristaps 12y ago
I sometimes wonder if these outrageous "audiophile" products are just trolls and no real person has actually bought any of the crap.
yk 12y ago
"Silver plated plugs" Can someone remind me of the electric properties of Silveroxide? ( Or do I need to hire someone who polishes the plugs before each track?)
- joshvm 12y ago
  That stuck out like a sore thumb for me - it's a £6000 cable and the connectors aren't gold plated? Perhaps that's reserved for a model up..
  - njloof 12y ago
    The silver oxide tells you when the cable is worn out and you need to buy a new one.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Gold causes problems with the wibblefrozits in the audio due to the harkenfarf effect and a low bunfloading, as anyone with any experience in this area knows.
- VLM 12y ago
  Somewhere around here I have a printed copy of a white paper from Tyco (mostly known for IC socket mfgr, although they make a lot of other connectors) on the topic of silver vs gold, mostly as applies to IC sockets. From memory the oxides, sulfides, and chlorides all have to be worried about but they tend to be mushy semiconductors and any wiping action in the connector will 1) destroy the connector plating in 10-20 uses at typical plating / finish reqs 2) wipe itself clean giving a lovely perfect silver to silver contact until it wears out. Another interesting aspect is this engineer from Tyco went to great lengths to claim they can commercially ship lower electrical and thermal resistance SILVER connectors than GOLD connectors as a complete connector system. Its not the bulk conductivity of Ag vs Au that matter, its that every gold plate has an underlying nickel plate or whatever, and some discussion of the deformation of silver being a benefit so you get higher contact area leading to higher conductivity. Then again this whitepaper is around a decade old and gold prices haven't exactly dropped back to $230/oz since then, meanwhile Tyco and everyone else still ships mostly tinplate and goldplate IC sockets and I don't recall ever seeing silverplate IC sockets in any mouser/digikey product list. So maybe there's other problems with silver plated electrical contacts in the real world. It has the odor of a mid 00s marketing doc in its (remembered) claims that by mid 10s no one will ever use tinplate / goldplate in connector design. Well, we can see how that turned out, but maybe the 20s. It made some impression on me a decade ago WRT thinking about RF connectors, .mil / aerospace will pay anything of course for higher performance so it gave me something to think about, if they really can deliver then we can expect gold to disappear from military aircraft radars and stuff like that. Although nothing seems to have materialized on this topic since then.
silverwind 12y ago
100000% the price for 5% more conductivity compared to copper? Thanks, but I'll wait for graphene cables.
Matthias247 12y ago
Directional Ethernet - nice :-)
matthewcanty 12y ago
Shame it makes no difference: https://numeralnine.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/a-brief-guide-to-audio-for-the-skeptical-consumer/ https://numeralnine.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/a-brief-guide-t...
yottah 12y ago
I refuse to ever pay more than $300 for speakers or headphones or anything sound related, I think it's a healthy principle to go by. My theory is that being an audiophile serves as a psychological vehicle for yuppies to feel even more superior to everyone else.
huhtenberg 12y ago
Earlier on - the classics of A/B testing in "Monster cables vs Coat hangers" http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-is-good-enough-enough.2512/page-2#post-15412 http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-i... Scroll to the 2nd from the bottom paragraph staring with "We gathered up ...".
- q_no 12y ago
  I'm not a native english speaker, what are "coat hangers"?
  - b3tta 12y ago
    The thing where you "hang" your "coat" on: https://www.google.com/search?q=coat+hanger&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=coat+hanger&tbm=isch
    - q_no 12y ago
      LOL, and I was wondering what kind of cable it was supposed to be, of course I know coat hangers but didn't get it in the context. Thank you! :)
tilt_error 12y ago
This is hilarious. You are sold the idea of a "pipe", through which something flows -- of course, having a "smoother" directional pipe would be better! But then again, we are talking about electrons -- alternating currents -- flowing one way _and_ the other for a short while. Having knowledge about how currents move in leads, typically on the surface of the lead, explains why quality cables consists of a multitude of small leads. On these leads, electrons are flowing a little bit in one direction and then as the polarity of the source shifts, a little bit in the other. The whole idea of having a "direction" in a cable is just... At one time we really had analog equipment "all the way down", so it kind of made sense to minimise distortion and loss in every individual link. Nowadays, we use digital systems where the music information is conveyed as "symbols". In this realm, a lot of the concepts from analog systems (or even the "pipe" system mentioned above) just makes no sense. It is true that the digital information is still run over analog cables, in this case I assume we are talking about an Ethernet layer, but it has very little resemblance with the idea of a loudspeaker cable as information is packaged and translated in various ways before actually appearing on the cable. Do you remember that funny marker pen that you could use to paint the edge of CDs to minimise effects of laser light running back and forth in the CD. That was a try att connecting a common understanding of the turntable with the new CD medium -- the idea of having a pickup that could be disturbed. I wonder onto what common understanding the idea of these cables are trying to connect, the water pipe idea is visual and easily taken but jumps a generation or two of reality. I choose to see this as a taxation of... less gifted but wondrously more wealthy people. Actually a tax that kind of makes sense.
alexchamberlain 12y ago
What a waste of silver!
ksec 12y ago
I have always wanted to ask this but never found the right place to do so. Why, in the world of Digital Audio with ones and zeros, would any cable, be it silver or gold or what ever super conducting cores make any difference to sound quality? Yes it would properly make 0.0001% ( Wild Guess Only ) speed difference due to better conductivity and less Error correction. But if everything gets decoded at the Chip level, then the cable should in theory makes absolutely NO difference in sound quality what so ever. Please correct me if i am wrong.
- gedrap 12y ago
  I can't remember a title and link to it, but not long ago there was an article about people demanding lossless encoding and how it doesn't make sense because it's almost impossible to tell the difference. Same here, I guess. There are rich people who believe they have a very special taste and can afford it :)
- kule 12y ago
  Yeah I remember reading an article a few years back about hdmi cables. They tested a load of different ones and found they found no difference between the expensive 'gold' ones vs the cheapest of the cheap hdmi cables. Its just a hangover from the old days - the big electronics stores still get to sell mom & dad a £20-30 cable when in reality could pick up one, just as good, for £2 on amazon!
- cmicali 12y ago
  Poor quality or really long connections can cause jitter, especially since in most consumer stuff the clock is sent with the signal. That jitter can cause differences in the signal out from the d/a. That said, the difference is less than minuscule, and time and time again people post double blind tests that prove even people who consider themselves trained audiophiles can't tell the difference. Same goes for analog - in practice the cable doesn't make an audible difference, no matter what you use (see below) Short answer: cables don't matter The famous audioholics coat hanger test: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-is-good-enough-enough.2512/page-2#post-15412 http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-i... Also a great watch: http://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml http://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml
raldi 12y ago
There might not actually be anyone who buys these cables. The point might be to use their existence (or claimed existence) to make the $200 Ethernet cable seem like a good "middle" choice.
- reubenmorais 12y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring
viggity 12y ago
"financing available". wow. some people have no shame.
mavhc 12y ago
A 100Gbps metal twisted pair ethernet cable? that explains the price, it came from the future where such standards may have been defined. I asked them a question on their website to see if that's true.
- mavhc 12y ago
  No reply, and the page has been deleted. The time travel conspiracy must be maintained.
bencollier49 12y ago
Decimal place error?
shin_lao 12y ago
Some Hifi equipments are in the range of hundreds of thousands, it is easy for the reseller to slip in a couple of cables in the range of thousands. It's 1% of the final price. Of course there will be absolutely no difference with a 5 € Ethernet cable. Most interesting is that expensive analogical cables are as much as useless. During a blind tests listeners are unable to tell which cable is the "expensive" one.
jkot 12y ago
There are shoes or bags sold for this price. This thing at least has some silver inside, so its not complete waste.
goodmachine 12y ago
IANAL, so maybe someone who is can comment: surely this is flat-out illegal? The vendor claims that 1.'All audio cables are 'directional' 2.'When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio.' That's two verifiably untrue or misleading statements with reference to a data cable, putting all subjective sound-quality fluff aside. Puts me in mind of the claims of homeopaths, etc. https://www.gov.uk/marketing-advertising-law/regulations-that-affect-advertising https://www.gov.uk/marketing-advertising-law/regulations-tha... http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-Broadcast/CodeItem.aspx?cscid=%7B61a03caa-6750-498d-8732-68d55c0752fd%7D#.VNeI23746K0 http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-Broadcast/CodeIt...
- gcb0 12y ago
  they thrive on indiference. you know how nigerian scams are badly written and full of typos to avoid anyone with half a brain? well, audiophile scams put on a price tag like that for the same reason.
- JshWright 12y ago
  > 1.'All audio cables are 'directional' I have actually used this claim for less evil purposes in the past... I spent my summers in high school working phone support for a university. This was back in the day when people brought desktop computers with them to school and plugged them into the wall with an ethernet cable... Many of the issues folks had getting connected could be solved by reseating the ethernet cable (either it was poorly seated in the first place, or the process of unplugging it and plugging it back in caused the NIC to reset some stuck bit of the driver). Unfortunately, it was quite common for folks to ignore your instructions to unplug the cable and plug it back in (as they are _sure_ that couldn't be the problem). I quickly picked up a habit of suggesting they may have accidentally gotten a 'unidirectional ethernet cable' and they should try swapping it end for end.
  - goodmachine 12y ago
    Fortunately, all the cables from this machine to HN are plugged in facing the right way so I can upvote you.
lucaspiller 12y ago
There's also an £8k HDMI cable: http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/7119/wireworld-platinum-starlight-7-hdmi-cable-w-ethernet-20m/ http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/7119/wireworld-pl... It only supports HDMI 1.4 though, so you are limited to 30fps at 4k :(

cpplinuxdude 12y ago

Why?

EliRivers 12y ago
Because it gives you a "large sound picture". If there's anything I've ever wanted in my pictures, it's for them to be large sound. What's more, these ethernet cables work better passing data in one direction than the other. Here's me using ordinary, non-directional cables, like a sucker :(
niklasni1 12y ago
Because will pay it. Some people think cabling, storage media etc. makes a difference in audio quality even when it is digital data. Naturally this has no basis in any reality, but that doesn't prevent anyone from believing it.

iptel 12y ago

Daylight robbery

happyscrappy 12y ago
A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.

pan69 12y ago

Well, luckily it comes with a 5 year warranty.

barking 12y ago
And in today's fast moving world it's hard to put a price on peace of mind
agumonkey 12y ago
I so would like a quote for warranty extension.

surreal 12y ago

Without commenting on whether the product is worth the price (I don't know enough about HiFi quality): There is a bell curve of purchasing mentality - from a minority who buy solely based on what's cheapest, through varying degrees of cost/benefit tradeoff, through to a minority who will tend toward whatever is most expensive. It often pays to offer something to that latter group.

wodenokoto 12y ago
I was thinking the same. If just 5-10 rich guys ask their personal shopper for the best setup, "money not an object" and the shopper buys these cables, then it was worth it to set up the entire thing.
tormeh 12y ago
This. Fashion and luxury is crazy. Sales may increase as you increase the price. This video explains the Swedish concept of "vasking", essentially throwing expensive liquids down the drain to demonstrate how little their price tags matter to you: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uhEpMJ3n_wU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uhEpMJ3n_wU (it's also hilarious) Making stuff that people use exclusively to show off is such a great business that the only reason everyone's not trying to do it must be some misguided faith in humanity.
- glesica 12y ago
  > the only reason everyone's not trying to do it must be some misguided faith in humanity. Or an inability to keep a straight face through an entire sales pitch. I doubt the effect works if the sales person or market copy actively mocks the buyers' intelligence.
- gruntled 12y ago
  Luxury isn't necessarily crazy, it can be rational economic signaling: http://www.joshuakennon.com/mental-model-veblen-goods/ http://www.joshuakennon.com/mental-model-veblen-goods/
  - 12y ago

ryanlol 12y ago

These cables are truly wonderful for deconstructing the Mozartian spacial qualities of the sound and to perpetuate the plateau-spreading fluidity of the music.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jakobegger 12y ago

To be fair, that price is for the 12 meter (40 ft) cable. The 75cm (2 ft) cable is much more affordable at just £600. The best part about that cable is that someone took the time to determine which direction it sounds best, and the cable is marked to make it straightforward to attach it in the best direction!

noir_lord 12y ago
> The best part about that cable is that someone took the time to determine which direction it sounds best Nope, they just marked an arrow on it and said they took the time to determine which direction is best.
- lmm 12y ago
  I doubt it. That seems like the sort of thing that could be illegal. Getting an intern to listen to the cable in both directions and mark an arrow on would cost what, $.50/cable?

cbg0 12y ago

That's actually quite cheap compared to this: http://www.monoandstereo.com/2014/12/250000-eur-schnerzinger-audio-cable.html http://www.monoandstereo.com/2014/12/250000-eur-schnerzinger...

buro9 12y ago

Great, I've been looking for an ethernet cable, I recently purchased a subwoofer cable for only £9,049 ( http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8401/audioquest-wild-dog-subwoofer-cable-20m/ http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8401/audioquest-w... ) and I was worried that I wasn't getting the best out of the sound as the cables earlier in the system weren't at this quality. Edit: just found a £2,199 mp3 player: http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8288/astell-amp-kern-ak240-master-quality-sound-portable-music-player/ http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8288/astell-amp-k...

kalleboo 12y ago
With all those high-quality components, make sure you have an $8,000 power cable to match http://www.coconut-audio.com/propower32mm.html http://www.coconut-audio.com/propower32mm.html
- nunull 12y ago
  Or the "MEGA SATA". http://www.coconut-audio.com/megasata.html http://www.coconut-audio.com/megasata.html
- abrkn 12y ago
  I don't feel like this power cable is expressive enough. Definitely does not bring out all the subtle nuances of Beyonce's "Single Ladies".
th0br0 12y ago
Well, at least you got a 5yr warranty on it.
- xxxyy 12y ago
  I can give you 30yrs warranty for half the price.
notahacker 12y ago
I wonder about the mentality of people that plug their £9049 cables into the highest end surround sound system at a comparably mere £6296? Though the biggest gap in the market would appear to be in TV brackets, where the highest-end option, at a mere £599, doesn't even claim to have sound-augmenting properties

q_no 12y ago

I bet not even NASA would deploy such expensive cables on a spaceshuttle.

dfox 12y ago
Essentially same type of four pair cable that is used for SpaceWire and Ethernet on-board of ISS is readily available and generally costs less than 10EUR/meter.

pron 12y ago

For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music.

Aardwolf 12y ago

It says the length is 12m. At this price, surely that must mean 12 miles? or 12 megaparsecs?

ai_ja_nai 12y ago

Audiophiles are truly a sustain for economy

sanoli 12y ago

You know the price is wrong when there's a "Fiance Available" on the sale page of an ethernet cable :-)

mathieuh 12y ago
I think buying one of these things would surely reduce the availability of fiancé(e)s.
- ArekDymalski 12y ago
  It will reduce the availability of certain type of fiancé(e)s, but attract the other type.
  - Thimothy 12y ago
    Or maybe they are too in the bussiness of russian fiancees. I'm pretty sure there is some affinity with selling 7000$ ethernet cable.
Havoc 12y ago
Yeah. Frankly finance on anything smaller than a car makes me wonder about people...

Retr0spectrum 12y ago

"All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality. For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music. For example, NAS to Router, Router to Network Player."

lawl 12y ago
This will be perfect with the new HiFi Harddisks I'm developing at my startup. They'll offer HiFi data storage to make sure your crappy youtube to mp3 rips don't lose quality when stored over a longer time period. (I just made this joke in IRC too and somebody sent me this link http://www.enjoythemusic.com/hificritic/vol5_no3/listening_to_storage.htm http://www.enjoythemusic.com/hificritic/vol5_no3/listening_t... ) Maybe there is actually money to make off this!
- anon4 12y ago
  Finally someone is solving the rotational velocidensity problem!
- Sami_Lehtinen 12y ago
  I remember laughing at Kodak Digital Film. But I knew a few photographers whom preferred to use it. http://www.cnet.com/products/kodak-digital-film-flash-memory-card-32-mb-compactflash/ http://www.cnet.com/products/kodak-digital-film-flash-memory...
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    As opposed to what? There's a lot of variation in flash quality, affecting reliability and speed.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/E1OV1AS.jpg http://i.imgur.com/E1OV1AS.jpg Such a common sound path deserves only the best.

fdb 12y ago

The "Wat Hifi?" Tumblr features more of these products: http://wathifi.tumblr.com/ http://wathifi.tumblr.com/

q_no 12y ago
This blog is hilarious :D Thank you!
themartorana 12y ago
That some of the quotes on that blog seem to indicate that different cables can actually change rhythm and timing is really eye-opening to just how outlandish some claims can get.
- rdale 12y ago
  It doesn't mean that the cables or other equipment differences, can change the 'beats per minute' of a music track. If the bass is reproduced poorly and sounds 'woolly' it will subjectively mess up the timing of the bass playing with respect to the rest of the music, as though the bass player is less skilful. Whereas listening to the same track with equipment that has tight, clear and dynamic bass can make the music sound more lively and subjectively 'faster', and it is more likely to make your foot tap.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    > If the bass is reproduced poorly ... Yeah, sure. But most of these comments are about cables carrying digital signals, a class of devices which only have two real operating modes: "working perfectly" and "catastrophic failure". Instead of respecting the principles of the physics and information encoding associated with this layout, though, we see outlandish claims of frequencies traveling at different speeds and damaging your multi-octave audio.
    - rdale 12y ago
      With digital audio going to a DAC even with cheap cables, the '1's and '0's should be arriving OK and will be in "working perfectly" mode. You have to hope that is the case with USB audio as there is no error checking. But when bits arrive is very important in audio, and whether or not the devices and cables in the chain before the DAC have introduced noise on the ground plane is also considered very important by some. I can't see how an ethernet cable can affect timing, as the packets with the digital signal might even arrive out of order. The earthing of the ethernet cable might influence how much noise is introduced the ground plane though. It might explain why the Audioquest cables are directional, if their earthing arrangement is directional perhaps.

fivedogit 12y ago

I wonder if this is an automated pricing battle, similar to the $23.7 million dollar book about bugs on Amazon. http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/25/amazon.price.algorithm/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/25/amazon.price.algorith...

monkeymagic 12y ago

One of my hobbies is arguing with reviewers about these sort of things on amazon. Its amazing the crap they come up with.

bsaul 12y ago

I onced interviewed for a job at a software company developping virtual instruments plug-ins. At some point in the interview, the guy told me this great story : "We made some test once, and we changed the skin of the software, to a new color. Every people said the software sounded better with that new skin. Yet we changed absolutely nothing except the color." I'm still wondering if some graphical configuration ( such as a bright color) wouldn't stimulate the brain more, making it more receptive in general, and to sound in particular, letting people "hear" better.

heleph 12y ago
We find whenever we significantly change the look of our website or our emails, conversion goes up significantly for a couple of weeks and then most the time goes back to the normal levels. I think a difference just stimulates the brain, along the same lines of why supermarkets infuriatingly keep moving the products around so you can't just auto-pilot your shop.
- tgb 12y ago
  Yet another thing to consider when doing A/B testing. Looks like you'll need active controls as well as controls!
Sharlin 12y ago
Sensory experiences are incredibly subjective and different modalities interrelate in all kinds of complex ways. It could be said that everybody is synaesthetic to some extent, some just more so than others. In many contexts outside science, whether some sensory difference exists objectively or not may not be relevant at all as long as there is a perceivable difference in subjective experience.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
JonnieCache 12y ago
There's a reverb plugin I use that has 70s 80s and "now" modes, which drastically affect things like internal sampling rates (bandwidth) and noise. It also completely changes the color of the large GUI from deep red/brown to cool blue to bright white. I find that I have to shut my eyes or look away from the screen when toggling the modes to avoid biasing my perception of how the audio is changing. It's particularly bad because the visual changes are designed to evoke the effect it has on the sound.

geijoenr 12y ago

this can only be some money laundering scheme

kristaps 12y ago

I sometimes wonder if these outrageous "audiophile" products are just trolls and no real person has actually bought any of the crap.

yk 12y ago

"Silver plated plugs" Can someone remind me of the electric properties of Silveroxide? ( Or do I need to hire someone who polishes the plugs before each track?)

joshvm 12y ago
That stuck out like a sore thumb for me - it's a £6000 cable and the connectors aren't gold plated? Perhaps that's reserved for a model up..
- njloof 12y ago
  The silver oxide tells you when the cable is worn out and you need to buy a new one.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Gold causes problems with the wibblefrozits in the audio due to the harkenfarf effect and a low bunfloading, as anyone with any experience in this area knows.
VLM 12y ago
Somewhere around here I have a printed copy of a white paper from Tyco (mostly known for IC socket mfgr, although they make a lot of other connectors) on the topic of silver vs gold, mostly as applies to IC sockets. From memory the oxides, sulfides, and chlorides all have to be worried about but they tend to be mushy semiconductors and any wiping action in the connector will 1) destroy the connector plating in 10-20 uses at typical plating / finish reqs 2) wipe itself clean giving a lovely perfect silver to silver contact until it wears out. Another interesting aspect is this engineer from Tyco went to great lengths to claim they can commercially ship lower electrical and thermal resistance SILVER connectors than GOLD connectors as a complete connector system. Its not the bulk conductivity of Ag vs Au that matter, its that every gold plate has an underlying nickel plate or whatever, and some discussion of the deformation of silver being a benefit so you get higher contact area leading to higher conductivity. Then again this whitepaper is around a decade old and gold prices haven't exactly dropped back to $230/oz since then, meanwhile Tyco and everyone else still ships mostly tinplate and goldplate IC sockets and I don't recall ever seeing silverplate IC sockets in any mouser/digikey product list. So maybe there's other problems with silver plated electrical contacts in the real world. It has the odor of a mid 00s marketing doc in its (remembered) claims that by mid 10s no one will ever use tinplate / goldplate in connector design. Well, we can see how that turned out, but maybe the 20s. It made some impression on me a decade ago WRT thinking about RF connectors, .mil / aerospace will pay anything of course for higher performance so it gave me something to think about, if they really can deliver then we can expect gold to disappear from military aircraft radars and stuff like that. Although nothing seems to have materialized on this topic since then.

silverwind 12y ago

100000% the price for 5% more conductivity compared to copper? Thanks, but I'll wait for graphene cables.

Matthias247 12y ago

Directional Ethernet - nice :-)

matthewcanty 12y ago

Shame it makes no difference: https://numeralnine.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/a-brief-guide-to-audio-for-the-skeptical-consumer/ https://numeralnine.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/a-brief-guide-t...

yottah 12y ago

I refuse to ever pay more than $300 for speakers or headphones or anything sound related, I think it's a healthy principle to go by. My theory is that being an audiophile serves as a psychological vehicle for yuppies to feel even more superior to everyone else.

huhtenberg 12y ago

Earlier on - the classics of A/B testing in "Monster cables vs Coat hangers" http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-is-good-enough-enough.2512/page-2#post-15412 http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-i... Scroll to the 2nd from the bottom paragraph staring with "We gathered up ...".

q_no 12y ago
I'm not a native english speaker, what are "coat hangers"?
- b3tta 12y ago
  The thing where you "hang" your "coat" on: https://www.google.com/search?q=coat+hanger&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=coat+hanger&tbm=isch
  - q_no 12y ago
    LOL, and I was wondering what kind of cable it was supposed to be, of course I know coat hangers but didn't get it in the context. Thank you! :)

tilt_error 12y ago

This is hilarious. You are sold the idea of a "pipe", through which something flows -- of course, having a "smoother" directional pipe would be better! But then again, we are talking about electrons -- alternating currents -- flowing one way _and_ the other for a short while. Having knowledge about how currents move in leads, typically on the surface of the lead, explains why quality cables consists of a multitude of small leads. On these leads, electrons are flowing a little bit in one direction and then as the polarity of the source shifts, a little bit in the other. The whole idea of having a "direction" in a cable is just... At one time we really had analog equipment "all the way down", so it kind of made sense to minimise distortion and loss in every individual link. Nowadays, we use digital systems where the music information is conveyed as "symbols". In this realm, a lot of the concepts from analog systems (or even the "pipe" system mentioned above) just makes no sense. It is true that the digital information is still run over analog cables, in this case I assume we are talking about an Ethernet layer, but it has very little resemblance with the idea of a loudspeaker cable as information is packaged and translated in various ways before actually appearing on the cable. Do you remember that funny marker pen that you could use to paint the edge of CDs to minimise effects of laser light running back and forth in the CD. That was a try att connecting a common understanding of the turntable with the new CD medium -- the idea of having a pickup that could be disturbed. I wonder onto what common understanding the idea of these cables are trying to connect, the water pipe idea is visual and easily taken but jumps a generation or two of reality. I choose to see this as a taxation of... less gifted but wondrously more wealthy people. Actually a tax that kind of makes sense.

alexchamberlain 12y ago

What a waste of silver!

ksec 12y ago

I have always wanted to ask this but never found the right place to do so. Why, in the world of Digital Audio with ones and zeros, would any cable, be it silver or gold or what ever super conducting cores make any difference to sound quality? Yes it would properly make 0.0001% ( Wild Guess Only ) speed difference due to better conductivity and less Error correction. But if everything gets decoded at the Chip level, then the cable should in theory makes absolutely NO difference in sound quality what so ever. Please correct me if i am wrong.

gedrap 12y ago
I can't remember a title and link to it, but not long ago there was an article about people demanding lossless encoding and how it doesn't make sense because it's almost impossible to tell the difference. Same here, I guess. There are rich people who believe they have a very special taste and can afford it :)
kule 12y ago
Yeah I remember reading an article a few years back about hdmi cables. They tested a load of different ones and found they found no difference between the expensive 'gold' ones vs the cheapest of the cheap hdmi cables. Its just a hangover from the old days - the big electronics stores still get to sell mom & dad a £20-30 cable when in reality could pick up one, just as good, for £2 on amazon!
cmicali 12y ago
Poor quality or really long connections can cause jitter, especially since in most consumer stuff the clock is sent with the signal. That jitter can cause differences in the signal out from the d/a. That said, the difference is less than minuscule, and time and time again people post double blind tests that prove even people who consider themselves trained audiophiles can't tell the difference. Same goes for analog - in practice the cable doesn't make an audible difference, no matter what you use (see below) Short answer: cables don't matter The famous audioholics coat hanger test: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-is-good-enough-enough.2512/page-2#post-15412 http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/speakers-when-i... Also a great watch: http://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml http://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml

raldi 12y ago

There might not actually be anyone who buys these cables. The point might be to use their existence (or claimed existence) to make the $200 Ethernet cable seem like a good "middle" choice.

reubenmorais 12y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring

viggity 12y ago

"financing available". wow. some people have no shame.

mavhc 12y ago

A 100Gbps metal twisted pair ethernet cable? that explains the price, it came from the future where such standards may have been defined. I asked them a question on their website to see if that's true.

mavhc 12y ago
No reply, and the page has been deleted. The time travel conspiracy must be maintained.

bencollier49 12y ago

Decimal place error?

shin_lao 12y ago

Some Hifi equipments are in the range of hundreds of thousands, it is easy for the reseller to slip in a couple of cables in the range of thousands. It's 1% of the final price. Of course there will be absolutely no difference with a 5 € Ethernet cable. Most interesting is that expensive analogical cables are as much as useless. During a blind tests listeners are unable to tell which cable is the "expensive" one.

jkot 12y ago

There are shoes or bags sold for this price. This thing at least has some silver inside, so its not complete waste.

goodmachine 12y ago

IANAL, so maybe someone who is can comment: surely this is flat-out illegal? The vendor claims that 1.'All audio cables are 'directional' 2.'When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio.' That's two verifiably untrue or misleading statements with reference to a data cable, putting all subjective sound-quality fluff aside. Puts me in mind of the claims of homeopaths, etc. https://www.gov.uk/marketing-advertising-law/regulations-that-affect-advertising https://www.gov.uk/marketing-advertising-law/regulations-tha... http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-Broadcast/CodeItem.aspx?cscid=%7B61a03caa-6750-498d-8732-68d55c0752fd%7D#.VNeI23746K0 http://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Non-Broadcast/CodeIt...

gcb0 12y ago
they thrive on indiference. you know how nigerian scams are badly written and full of typos to avoid anyone with half a brain? well, audiophile scams put on a price tag like that for the same reason.
JshWright 12y ago
> 1.'All audio cables are 'directional' I have actually used this claim for less evil purposes in the past... I spent my summers in high school working phone support for a university. This was back in the day when people brought desktop computers with them to school and plugged them into the wall with an ethernet cable... Many of the issues folks had getting connected could be solved by reseating the ethernet cable (either it was poorly seated in the first place, or the process of unplugging it and plugging it back in caused the NIC to reset some stuck bit of the driver). Unfortunately, it was quite common for folks to ignore your instructions to unplug the cable and plug it back in (as they are _sure_ that couldn't be the problem). I quickly picked up a habit of suggesting they may have accidentally gotten a 'unidirectional ethernet cable' and they should try swapping it end for end.
- goodmachine 12y ago
  Fortunately, all the cables from this machine to HN are plugged in facing the right way so I can upvote you.

lucaspiller 12y ago

There's also an £8k HDMI cable: http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/7119/wireworld-platinum-starlight-7-hdmi-cable-w-ethernet-20m/ http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/7119/wireworld-pl... It only supports HDMI 1.4 though, so you are limited to 30fps at 4k :(