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$10K Ethernet Cable Claims Audio Fidelity, If You're Stupid Enough To Buy It
MojoKid writes: There are few markets that are quite as loaded-up with "snake oil" products as the audio/video arena. You may have immediately thought of "Monster" cables as one of the most infamous offenders. But believe it or not, there are some vendors that push the envelope so far that Monster's $100 HDMI cables sound like a bargain by comparison. Take AudioQuest's high-end Ethernet cable, for example. Called "Diamond," AudioQuest is promising the world with this $10,500 Ethernet cable. If you, for some reason, believe that an Ethernet cable is completely irrelevant for audio, guess again. In addition to promises about the purity and smoothness of the silver conductors, and their custom "Noise-Dissipation System," they say," "Another upgrade with Diamond is a complete plug redesign, opting for an ultra-performance RJ45 connector made from silver with tabs that are virtually unbreakable. The plug comes with added strain relief and firmly lock into place ensuring no critical data is lost." Unfortunately, in this case, there's the issue of digital data being, well... digital. But hey, a 1 or a 0 could arrive at its destination so much cleaner, right?
There are plenty of products in the audiophile industry that can match or exceed this in craziness level. I wouldn't be surprised to see a glorifying review of this in a hi-fi magazine.
If there's a market, somebody will exploit it.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
How come it won't stay closed?
We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.
PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long... I will type as fast as I can.
DO NOT USE THE CABLES!
We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this... accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the... whispers... began.
Were they Aramaic? Hyperborean? Some even more ancient tongue, first spoken by elder races under the red light of dying suns far from here? We do not know, but somehow, slowly... we began to UNDERSTAND.
No, no, please! I don't want to remember! YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME REMEMBER! I saw brave men claw their own eyes out... oh, god, the screaming... the mobs of feral children feasting on corpses, the shadows MOVING, the fires burning in the air! The CHANTING!
WHY CAN'T I FORGET THE WORDS???
We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.
Do not use the cables!
Next cost plus contract I see, I will spec all the cables as these.
The contracts are the cost plus a profit margin.
The more we spend the more we make.
Sounds like a bargain
Hey if it sells, half the value in most things is imaginary anyway.
true story
while my Killer brand NIC card stares back at me.
I spoke to a friend who is in ultra-high-end business about those cd transports and how can one sound better than the other (he's not stupid) and after a while we came to the conclusion (well I did anyway, he knew this) that it all boils down to jitter and real-time error correction. Even nowdays if you wish to rip a cd that's as clean as possible you have to do multipass read with that german free software I forgot what it's called now. And these expensive cd transports do it in real time. Hence the price tag. I believe silver wire ethernet cable will be better and super quality rj45 will contribute in some miniscule way to fewer error corrections on layer 1, bit $10k worth? Don't think so.
What actually matters isn't the fidelity of the sound, but the self-satisfaction you feel when you listen to it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You think they are crazy, but as along time audiophile I can till you we are just trolls who are spending or claiming to spend lots of money only to get attention. This conspiracy has been going on for to many decades now, but it's getting old so I'm exposing it here.
I'm just going listen to Simon and Garfunkel on my built in 386 era PC-speaker now.
The Denon AKDL1 was essentially the same thing, though a bit less tarted up. Also a lot less costly in terms of MSRP, but since it's no longer being produced, you can guess what happened to the price.
Apparently there's a market for this sort of thing. The difference between this and, say, gold-plated diamond-encrusted all-but-obsolete-at-launch nokia phones, is that's straight-up tarting up until senseless for the millionaire chavs among us. This does the same thing to your wallet but insults your intelligence instead.
The review linked at the bottom is right on the money. As the money goes up you get increased clarity. That much is obvious.
Even a deaf person should have the clarity to realise that fools and their money are more easily separated.
And any engineer or psychologist would agree that as the cost of snake oil reaches new heights more and more people become amazed at the stupidity of others.
These cables really do provide clarity.
... made by elves during full moon, just to plug them into your $15 NetGear switch to play your library of crappy encoded 128 kbps MP3 files and enjoy the sound of awesome...
The whole argument of those bullshit products is that... you cannot measure it, only a golden ear will be able to hear it. Well, that's one strong argument to sell snake oil.
While you could go to all kinds of stretches with analog signals, you'd say this argument will fall flat for anybody that even has a hint of knowledge about digital signals. But no, those people are still convinced by stuff like "timing issues" and "bit flips" will hurt the quality of your playback. They totally forget that Ethernet is one of the most buffered protocols out there and that there are buffers everywhere else in the system: In the NAS that's serving your files, the crappy switch you used to string it all together and in the playback device that's creating the analog signal too, most likely on several layers.
Ah, and by the way... It's great to have those silver lined, oxygen free super conductors in the wire between my systems, but euh... what happens to the signal once it enters one of those pesky devices? Won't I need conductors doped fairy dust in those devices too to close the magic loophole of audio perfection?
All those 1%ers need something to spend their money on.
...will be able to see the value of these cables. If you idea of fine dining is hotdogs and cheetos while watching Gilligan's island, then you won't be able to tell the difference. You might as well use your crappy coax cable with duct tape on it for your streaming audio!
But if you actually want to reduce the latency between your brain and pure audio bliss (and also have a higher TCP window size), then these cables are a *requirement*.
I am truly sad that I forgot the brand, but my favourite snake oil product in the audio industry was an RCA interconnect cable. It was unique compared to all the other cables. Rather than using some weird alloy hand picked by Hathor the goddess of music, they decided to eliminate the pesky metal altogether and replace it with .... optic fibre.
Yes gentlemen they did the impossible. They produced the first RCA cable which actually had a measurable performance impact on the sound. By modulating an LED on one end and picking it up with a photoresistor on the other the cable selling in the thousands of dollars introduced in the order of 0.2%THD to the signal, orders of magnitude worse than a cheap amplifier, and infinitely worse than any other cable which produces no measurable change at all.
I am really annoyed I forgot the brand of it, but believe it or not people actually bought into this shit and said it sounded amazing.
These must be those deep space rated audio cables, capable of providing clean sound around Jupiter, or any easily accessible pulsar. They make the sound of the Voyager's gold plated information disk so much better.
Get your special 'sound-optimising' storage here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Just look at today's Slashdot poll. It too implies the more expensive your audio gear the better it is. No wonder cables like those sell.
If it has silver connectors at least you can kill vampires with it!
Maybe 10k$ is a little bit over my budget, but trust me, I would pay a lot for an Ethernet cable whose connector has virtually unbreakable tabs.
Two words: HDMI cables.
Audiophiles don't care for physics. It's all about placebo and e-penis contests.
For HDMI, the signal is all digital, but it gets weaker. As long as it is strong enough, it's fine. If it's too weak, the picture is gone.
So you have standards how much the connector on your computer is allowed to distort the signal, how much the receiver on your TV is allowed to distort it, and how much damage the cable is allowed to do. If all three are below the limit, you are guaranteed to be fine. If one or two are above the limit, you may be fine because the damage adds up - rubbish laptop with excellent cable and excellent TV can work.
If you run HDMI over long distances (40 metres to the TV in your garden shed), that's when you need a high quality cable where the loss per metre is low.
And while I cannot imagine anything that a $10,500 ethernet cable could do better than a normal, quality one, any cable has the capability to transmit both a digital signal, and all kinds of electrical noise. So while the digital signal is transmitted perfectly fine, that noise might for example sneak into an amplifier and become audible. There is snake oil, and there are quality and rubbish products.
This is also called "Placebo Effect".
"My first change is from Supra Cat-7+ to Audioquest Cinnamon playing a piece from Eric Satie, a performance by Alexandre Tharaud of Gnossienne No. 1. I immediately notice an increase in air and a wider stage with the Cinnamon. The recording room has grown and the playback is a little more fluid, more natural I would say."
Can someone please do a bit-wise compare between what is received just before the DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter)...? I doubt there are any missing bits using the 'cheaper' cable.
My blog: http://www.redcode.nl
Just a note of perspective. It is easy to tag audiophiles as naive fools with too more money than sense.
But not all are like that.
I am quite interested in good rendering of favourite music, so are a few friends. We do indeed try out hifi gear, but that doesn't mean we all fall for this snake oil product.
By and large most people are used to the sound of multimedia speakers or mini systems. For a music lover, it is possible to get so much better results, and it does not need to cost crazy money on crazy products for a decent result.
So far I find speakers having the largest influence on the end reproduction quality. There is some difference between the electronics, but once you are beyond the bare basic level the differences are getting smaller. But speakers are worth spending money on if you are a music lover using a good quality music source.
Actually its pretty stupid to claim that its digital therefore the cable doesn't matter. In industrial environments I see properly installed cat 6 cables losing through put because they keep calculating bad ethernet CRC's. Obviously you would have to be dumb to buy this. For $10,000 you do so much more... like easily get 1gps+ wireless.
I can sell you cans of higly purified Himalayan air for reducing the harmonic distorsion introduced by the WiFi connection between your Ipad and your NAS. Results guaranteed or your money back!
The truth is that when digital data are modulated with some "dense" QAM scheme, then the amount of noise the cable introduces IS important. The 1s and 0s will get distorted if noise is too high. BUT, the other truth is that, all you have to do is buy a cable that is compliant conductivity-wise. All those fancy Monster cables are an ordinary cable, just upmakerd. And you should NEVER exceed the distances recommended by the standard. You should not build a 100m link even if it's consisted of monster cables. Better save the money for repeaters.
...a zero and a one arrive out of order.
I blame the cables.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I recently had to purchase a toslink cable, and all I could find was a goldplated one. GOLDPLATED fibre optic cable.
I mean.. wtf!
It doesn't even make plausible sense.
Computer people are used to error-tolerant systems, which are usually implemented with forward error correction and/or retransmissions. In the face of hard real-time constraints with low latency, retransmissions can't be used, and even forward error correction adds latency depending on block size, so there are limits to what you can achieve with it. That's why computer people will waste no thought on the quality of cables and buy the cheapest USB cable with the required standard from the bargain bin, while audiophiles know that USB cables matter for sound quality (they actually do, look it up) and, in the absence of ways to measure the quality, choose the "more expensive = better" approach. In the case of Ethernet, the quality of the cable is probably less important, but even there a lost packet is an extraordinary jump in latency due to a retransmission or simply lost data. None of the network audio protocols avoid retransmissions by adding enough redundancy to reconstruct lost packets. Personally I'd be more worried about the things switches and network cards do than I'd worry about the cable, which at these lengths really isn't critical. Also note that shielding, particularly over small distances in non-industrial environments, will add more problems than it solves. Ethernet uses differential signals which are electrically isolated from the end points, so interference cancels out and ground potential differences don't matter to the signal. But if you add a shield, it connects the ground potentials of the end points and can create a ground loop antenna, which will add a nice 100 or 120Hz hum to your analog signals.
I wonder if they make a matched set of "cable elevators" to go with this fine cable? :-)
When Chord announced their latest cables 1m ethernet cable (GB£850 is about US$1300) , and 1m RCA stereo cable (GB£1600 is US$2500), I emailed them asking for some technical details, as if I might be a buyer, but they didn't respond. They probably sensed I had a bullshit detector.
I had a discussion with their local Trading Standards, a government-run operation that exists to protect consumers, stating that their scientific claims were bogus, and the TS people said that since I hadn't bought the product, and they hadn't had complaints from other people who'd bought the product, and Chord could show them reviews praising their product, my complaint was invalid.
My working assumption is this: it's like the story of emperor's new clothes. When someone had paid a rediculously high price for cables and believed the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, they will resist any efforts to debunk it lest they appear a complete idiot. I think it's actually a mechanism in the brain, akin to some cultish religious beliefs and even fanboyism.
You're right that not all audiophiles fall for the snake oil, but a common problem in audiophile circles is that good knowledge of Elec Eng principles is quite rare.
Unlike religious zealots, audiophiles do generally seek to inform themselves about the underlying technology, but the lack of elementary EE understanding doesn't allow them to distinguish nonsense from reality in electronics and information theory. This leaves them susceptible to marketing buzzwords, and any good intentions they may have had are then wasted.
It certainly doesn't apply to all audiophiles, but alas it's extremely common.
Perhaps the EE-educated audiophiles just don't post much, so the blind are very widely leading the blind.
wtf.. so this is why the cable company offers shitty upload speeds but fast downloads? and why my cable bill is so fucking high? they're using these cables for their data network.
How come these companies don't get sued into oblivion for false advertising (claiming an impact on sound quality, unidirectional data transfer, 100Gbps compatibility). And why don't the reviewers get sued too for professional misconduct?
This same company also sells a diamond hdmi cable. Now you can buy the set. Personally, I just like reading the reviews.
You know, if Apple were making this, people would be buying them left, right and center.
Well, clearly a snake oil.
But, in audiophile world, or in a low-noise world, a cable is responsible not only for what it carries (a task solvable with $2 ethernet cable), but also for what it emits (or fails to emit) around. The second point is something ethernet cables have a long way to go.
Don't know much about how Ethernet works, do you?
First, shields are never, EVER terminated at both ends. Second, differential signaling does not mean interference cancels, it only means that common mode noise is lessened Third, not all Ethernet is electrically isolated at both ends (100 Base-CX, for example). Fourth, ground potential differences do matter, especially if they are large, as the typical isolation transformer used in Ethernet has only a 1500V 1-minute HIPOT rating. Lastly, not a single digital music system out there is unbuffered, and so there is plenty of time to allow for retransmissions and error correction, even in realtime systems. Ethernet, as it turns out, is so fast that redundancy, error correction, and latency correction can still be done in less time than it takes for a D/A converter to convert an Ethernet frame's worth of samples.
A letter in a hi-fi magazine (Hi-Fi News and Record Review, but I'm not 100% sure) years ago from someone who was upgrading his system.
He started by describing the upgrades to the cables and connectors. Then moved onto rewiring the amp with better quality conductors. Rewiring his house for a better electrical feed into the kit. He then described chasing his dream of perfect audio further by liaising with his local power company to get the substation upgraded. Finally (the punchline) was that he had written to the power generation company to change the isotope of uranium they used to get better bass.
Made me giggle.
Any audio device using USB or Ethernet will use buffers. So you real-time constraints are irrelevant as long as the connection can keep the buffer full.
Oh come on! Surely they use that cable for connecting a quadraphonic sound system. You really think that $0.20/feet Cat-6 cable would drive the sound without noise?
My 0's were much more vibrant and the 1's, well, they were richer in tone. ;)
Don't be a hater before you try it...
you want to report someone, how about those folks selling cordless anti-static wrist straps, such as:
http://www.amazon.com/Static-D...
its almost funny (but its quite sad) to imagine lab people wearing these, thinking they are protected when its not doing a thing other than pinching their wrists and emtying out their pocketbooks.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I'd rather replace a cable than a motherboard or 10Gig NIC.
Oh come on, that's ridiculous. RJ45 is not for the audiophile. The least I can expect is a fully coaxial RG58 Ethernet. I mean, are you really sending your audio through twisted pair? It will get all dizzy.
However, for a true audiophile experience I would expect using a 10Base5 yellow cable, and having a Tibetan monk perform the wiretaps in a solemn procedure.
The only "problem" a really shitty cable will cause for digital data is the maximum throughput will be slower due to error correction/detection re-sending lots of packets that didn't make it to the other end intact. This is what is meant when they say a comms protocol (such as tcp/ip) has "guaranteed packet delivery". At the file/audio-buffer level the packet was either faithfully copied across the cable or it wasn't. 1's and 0's do not suffer from "distortion", packets with flipped bit errors are either corrected using the EC bits, or dropped and resent. This is why no sound comes out if a CD is too badly scratched for the ECC to work, it's "all or nothing", there is no fuzzy middle ground.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
but as long as there are people with lots of money and not a single fucking shred of sense, then these criminal businesses will exist.
And after all that, he planned to upgrade his speakers, from his current 4" titanium drivers to 6$. :)
Tell me then, what is the block size of the forward error correction in the USB audio standard and how much redundancy is added? What types of transmission errors are detectable/correctable, how often will a corrupted block be retransmitted and for how long does the USB audio standard require the sending device to keep the data to be able to retransmit it?
I picked up two, for stereo, you know...
See, this ethernet cable is super special in that instead of just passing every 0 or 1 verbatim, it also filters out those pesky qubits that don't seem to want to be in either state, ensuring that the only random audio chaos experienced by the end user comes from running their speaker wiring next to their power cabling, which is so random that it's almost always in the neighborhood of 60 hz.
It's really hard to tell whether you're sarcastic or moronic.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Cleanest 96kbps I ever heard.
Cable needs to use insulation braided from the hair of Grecian virgins, collected under the full moon and rinsed in the pure waters of Mount Olympus. ...
Shield needs to be oxygen-free 99.9999% pure kryptonite.
Conductive slugs in the plugs at end end must be an alloy of gold, silver, and copper, refined in orbit to guarantee freedom from gravitation bias.
Plug bodies must be cast from artificial diamond to ensure frictionless fit.
My favorite audiophile product, though, was a special rock that you sat on top of your amplifier to absorb impure vibrations. Problem was that it would fill up with bad vibrations, so you had to replace at intervals, depending on what sort of music you were playing. Death metal filled it up much faster than classical music, for example.
Of course the truth was that you didn't have to replace it - you could empty it of bad vibrations by immersing it a mountain stream for a month.
"Audioquest claims these cables are directional and an arrow on the connecter indicates the data flow from source to receiver."
lol
Active components:
Pioneer Elite receiver
Samsung television (LN46B650 IIRC)
Samsung blu-ray player
Pioneer tape deck (the last time I played a tape? Maybe 2003, but I keep it anyhow)
A couple of S-VHS VCRs (which I hook up only when I feel like watching some old movies I have only on VHS)
Speakers:
Klipsch Reference Series
The cables? For analog and digital coax line-level cables, cheap shielded monoprice cables
Speaker wire: fine-stranded OFC cable - ONLY because it is more flexible than zip cord
HDMI cables: cheap monoprice cables
Ethernet cables: Patch cables I made myself using a bulk spook of CAT5e and 8p8c (or RJ-45 if you prefer) connectors from Lowes
The truth about cables:
http://gizmodo.com/363154/audi...
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It's called straight-faced sarcasm and/or well done, traditional, trolling ;)
If one is using Ethernet to transfer bits, then once one has 6dB of noise margin, more just pushes the BER lower.
Assuming S/W adjusts for bit errors anyway, then there is no advantage.
If the application cares about lost packets, then maybe there is an advantage in theory.
(Note to self, another market for high frequency traders?)
One might claim the the cable is useful if one is using Ethernet to transfer time, (See IEEE-1588 aka Precision Time Protocol.)
This might be useful for some audio apps requiring time synchronization of ADC's in a studio.
My guess is that there might make the claim of similar usefulness as the claim for golden audio cables.
Because this makes the cable an analog cable in some sense.
The product has a slim claim for plausibility, unsupported by serious physics, but sufficient to make somebody feel better.
In short, a perfect product for separating a fool from his money.
To my tin ears, it sounds like it meets it's design goals pretty well.
Yes, the Digital Audio chain people talk about jitter. But jitter is a property of the transmitter and receiver, not the cable; it's rather passive when it comes to bit timing over a serial link.
Allow me to state for one last time the obvious.
Ethernet is a digital protocol. In other words, what's being transmitted is a stream of 0s and 1. Discreet. There's no such thing as a lot of 0 that's almost a little bit of 1. Such a stream has one quite beneficial property: It's trivially easy to check whether it was transmitted correctly. Ethernet does that. Yes, that means that if you have a (really, REALLY) crappy cable that you'll get retransmissions. Which matters little considering the amount of data required to keep an audio stream steady and the speed of Ethernet retransmissions. What does matter, of course, is that the receiving end has a big enough buffer to cover for the retransmissions. But if that buffer wasn't big enough, it would not take an audiophile to notice the difference because, well, the audio would pretty much stop.
As for how USB cable quality matters, I did take a look around. But I doubt those were the results you got, so you might want to point us to some research that actually DOES find a difference in the sound quality properties of USB cables.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't be jealous. Tsk tsk
It probably does sound better for them paying so much. I mean if blue pills work better than white ones why not?
I'm starting to come around and instead of thinking about how dumb these people are seeing the marketing opportunity instead.
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Discontinued-Manufacturer/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM
Great cable, but too fast.
Transmission of music data at rates faster than the speed of light seemed convenient, until I realized I was hearing the music before I actually wanted to play it. Apparently Denon forgot how accustomed most of us are to unidirectional time and the general laws of physics. I tried to get used to this effect but hearing songs play before I even realized I was in the mood for them just really screwed up my preconceptions of choice and free will. I'm still having a major existential hangover.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
The company's Amazon store is full of such nonsense. My favorites are the $8,594.75 3.5mm to RCA cable, and the $6,899.75 power cable.
The only time ultra-low latency actually matters is in a DAW setup where you're monitoring the audio back to the performers; then you really want a latency of less than 8ms or so. But if you're doing that then there's no earthly reason you should be passing the audio over a network anyway (or anything other than mic -> audio interface -> DAW).
Ethernet does not retransmit. That's a function of some higher level protocols. Network audio protocols (for example RTP) use the other kind of higher level protocols. If you lose a packet (for any reason, including a checksum error), it's gone.
USB audio does not retransmit (it uses the isochronous USB flow type), and it doesn't use forward error correction either. Shocking, yes, but true. If your cheap cable mangles the data, the USB audio device has to make something up.
"Digital cables" aren't. The real world is analog. The "digital" aspect is how we interpret continuous signals to represent discrete data. Transmission systems are designed so that most of the time the discrete data can be recovered exactly from its continuous representation. But interference and the resulting bit errors are unavoidable, so they must be dealt with. Error detection and to some extent correction are part of every "digital" transmission standard. In some standards, like USB audio, constraints like hard real-time with low latency make engineers choose less or no forward error correction under the assumption that the transmission errors are sufficiently rare and unimportant to accept them instead of loosening the constraints. The assumption is violated when the properties of the transmission system are degraded, for example by using cheap cables.
Total rubbish and a false dichotomy as well.
I'd like to see the results of a double-blind experiment in which a bunch of "people who truly appreciate high quality" were tasked with differentiating a $500 Ethernet cable from a $10,000 Ethernet cable. With some decent mid range stereo equipment and all else being equal, you would not be able to tell the difference.
I think the knowledge of how much you spent on your equipment probably makes a marginal contribution to your audio bliss, despite the fact that it has no effect on the actual signal quality.
Are they danceable cables? At 2750$ per meter.
http://www.positive-feedback.c...
.
They did a listening test comparing a $300 Pioneer receiver with two $10,000 "audiophile" mono tube amplifiers.
At the beginning of the test, the listeners knew which device they were listening to and, predictably, the Pioneer receiver was painful to listen to, destroying the music.The mono amps were all that is wonderful in listening.
Then the identities were masked and the listening test was done again. Most of the listeners could not tell the two apart, guessing incorrectly about half the time.
A sad commentary on the industry when an audiophile club cannot even tell a $300 receiver from $20,000 of audiophile amplification.
Is it better than a wire coat hanger
http://www.zdnet.com/article/c...
So that helps.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"You get what you pay for".
That's worth $10k to me right there.
Apparently DICE/slashdot still has enough readers to take down a linked site. Who knew?
I find it funny this crap is still being debated decades after all of the claims have been virtually debunked.
But don't believe me, read and enjoy a history lesson from a couple of audio engineering experts on the subject.
Specifically, Gordon Gow of McIntosh Laboratories, and his famous zip cord (common lamp wiring) test:
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#gordongow
Hey, guys --
I bought a couple of these cables to go from my PC to a switch then from the switch to the NAS.
Now I'm scared that that the ports on my switch, NAS, and motherboard are not up to snuff since my MP3s still sound like crap.
A list of their clients must be worth a lot. It's people who would pay a fortune for every inch of anything you can put in their houses.
that's the attitude of many contractors bidding on gov contracts. That and lowball the bid to win the contract, then hit them up for growth.
So let me get this straight - I have a gigabit ethernet signal with a 1 GHz data rate, and edges that are probably rising 100x faster, and you want a cable that has good frequency response in the 20 - 40 kHz range? Who cares if it completely rolls off and low pass filters the GHz band, as long as the response is good around 20 kHz.
I think I've posted this before when this subject comes up, but if you have a free hour or two, spend some time here. Amusing and depressing at the same time. http://pwbelectronics.co.uk/pr...
I do have to admit that that is the most awesome looking ethernet cable I have ever seen.
Ethernet may transmit digital information, but it is not a digital signal on the wire.
The phy is an A/D converter, and sends your digital bits down the wire with oscillators.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Don't you know that every single 0 or 1 that traverses that cable gets a full body massage with a happy ending? Your bits arrive smiling, so of course it sounds better!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
you've tried the best now try the rest i have produced for the rest a cable clobbed together from the bottom of the fleabay bin, complete with mal-fitting rj45s on misatched stp cables.
I rather like their DragonFly USB DAC/amp. Granted, I didn't pay anywhere near $250+ for it, but for the ~$75 I got it for, it's nice, sounds good and is portable. My other choices for use with my work provided laptop were the usual Schiit stack and Monoprice desktop amp (11567), but the DragonFly won out on simplicity.
Riiii-ight. Well, I do like my music bits and bytes nice and shiny and orderly.
Except I don't know how good these things could possibly be. I mean, they aren't even gold plated! Didn't we learn from NASA: everything headed for outer space must be gold plated?
They _are_ speccing these cables for the ISS, aren't they?
that depends entirely on how the usb audio device was built anyways.
and you can do bit-perfect tests to show if you're spouting bullshit anyhow.
and you can check the devices for retransmits.
it's just bullshit and since audiophiles can't double-blind test them it's just more and more bullshit. the fucking 1k+ ethernet cables for audio idiots have fucking direction symbols on them.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Droll, funny sarcastic.
Is this whole thing REALLY different than any other consumer purchase. Hey, if you can spend $10k on cables, then fine. When the Oscars roll around, there are plenty of bimbos walking around in $100K dresses hacked together between coke snorting sessions and taped on. People spent millions on a painting of a soup can, just because the guy who painted it told them to.
Whats the difference in all of this? And, why is buying these cables better/worse than paying $10K to have dinner with Obama and 500 other people?
If people will buy it, and it is legal, what is the problem? So people do stupid things with money, is that NEW info to you all?
Sheeple killed the "died-in-the-wool audiophile".
The reviews are the best part.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IL3TZSQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00IL3TZSQ&linkCode=as2&tag=hothard-20&linkId=KF44MKFFBDPOC2R7
i got your monster cable right here
this cable is pointless unless you also have a proper power cord (Shunyata TRON SIGMA HIGH CURRENT Power Cord for example) and machinadynamica's magic pebbles.
You think filthy 1s and 0s are bad, you should see a dirty number 2.
Or are you smart enough to sell it?
USB audio is a standard. That standard does not do retransmits, because it uses isochronous transmissions. Come on, this isn't super secret information. You can read, can't you?
In that case the protocols are shit and need to be replaced.
Should be HEAPS cheaper than burning through 10k for a cable.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You go ahead and replace USB audio and RTP. Pardon me for not holding my breath.
Otherwise we wont need Error detection and correction! Each Ethernet frame carries a CRC-32 checksum. Frames received with incorrect checksums are discarded by the receiver hardware.
http://i.imgur.com/Bm2njAA.jpg
You might think I'm moronic, but when you find out that I bought platinum plated DDR, you will change your ultra high-fidelity tune :)
No. No jitter can be introduced in the cable.
Serial L1 encoding protocols are specifically designed to keep the frequency of the signal constant, no matter the bit pattern being transmitted. This helps avoid DC offset screwing up the receiver, and maintains proper PLL timing. There will always be the same number of + to - transitions over all but the tiniest span of time.
As far as noise goes? That can certainly lead to data loss, but not jitter. The PLL-driven clock will always look for the signal at the appropriate times, unless, of course, the cable does not meet the relevant standard and stuff is getting lost.
Once a cable DOES meet the relevant standard, it doesn't matter if it's some 15-cent thing put together in a soot-filled Chinese sweatshop or some solid-gold, silver-plated, hand-assembled-by-Bob-Metcalfe-Himself bazillion dollar wonder. Cat 6 is Cat 6. End of story.
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