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Denon's $499 Ethernet Cable
Guysmiley777 writes with what looks like a very late (or very, very early) April Fool's joke: "Denon's $499 Ethernet cable 'brings out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction.' Sure, that seems plausible. After all, nuances in digital signals are so subtle. Oh, and 'signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer.'" Considering that $499 will get you a competent laptop these days, I wonder how big the market is for such a thing — then I look at Stereophile magazine's annual list of recommended components. The "view more images" link shows that they take cable porn seriously at Denon.
Well here's your answer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/14/humanbehaviour
"How being swindled can make you feel better" by the Guardian's "Bad Science" columnist, Ben Goldacre.
Google: Shielded Twisted Pair (STP). Quite common. Probably can get a 1.5m STP cable for about $3.
This was done with wine, often with humbling results.
The cable insulation and the rest looks mostly standard - I mean, it's cloth and heatshrink (probably PVC) instead of vinyl, but I can't imagine that the change would make such a huge difference, even in terms of so-called 'vibration protection'. Are electrical signals really that sensitive to normal sounds?
So a huge markup for a very small piece of tin foil and some cloth. Whee! I use shielded connectors at work every day. I work in the industrial sector so we must use shielded to keep external noise from interfering with the network. I wish I could charge my customers that much for shielded cables...
This type of test has been conducted a great many times over the years. Notable is the work of Dr. Floyd Toole when he was head of the acoustics lab at the Department Of Physics at Canada's National Research Council in Ottawa. He was able to demonstrate that people of all sorts would recognize and prefer the sound reproduction that was most accurate in terms of having the lowest distortion, flattest frequency response and best loudspeaker dispersion as long as they did not know what equipment they were listening to. When they did know, their beliefs and preconceptions essentially determined their perceptions.
I thought so at first, too, but in depressing fact, that's the real price from Denon.
:)
And it looks like you save 100 pennies if you order from Denon rather than Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM
The reviews are hilarious
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Silver is better than gold all the way around with only one exception: it oxidizes.
If you want the *best* signal quality possible, it's silver plated copper stranded wire (or Coax if that's the app) with silver connectors both on the cable and console. The connectors need to mate very tightly and ideally have a small gasket to seal them.
That's what I use on my GHz frequency equipment. I'd use it on my video editing gear as well, but some conspiracy has landed me with only gold plate beryllium copper contacts as the best I can find...
for average joe consumer though, they buy overpriced cables with high-end looking terminations badly assembled ending up with this as the result.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
i think you mean monoprice.com . I've also had good luck with cablesforless.com
Audiophiles are amazing. They're the only group I can think of that make Scientology, ID true believers AND flat earthers look like rationalists.
Check out the the ultimate in audioweenie gear. Magic rocks you tape to your cables, magic clocks, and "audio tuneups" transmitted through your phone!
I'll bet if I tape those magic rocks to the super ethernet cable and put that clock on top of my server, I can probably get a 20 jillion teraquad internet connection over the POTS line.