Caught wind of this one on Slashdot, Denon's $499 Ethernet Cable: "Made from high purity copper wire and high performance connection parts, the AK-DL1 will bring out all the nuances in digital audio..." Link to Denon's page here.
...on an ethernet cable? I know that Ethernet cables are used in audio applications - some of the better stage monitor systems use it to send data back and forth, and there are digital snakes that compress fifty channels of analog XLR into a digital connection via Ethernet, but I rather doubt you'll hear the difference. Digital being digital, it doesn't really matter if your 1s are .998s and your 0s are .015s, as long as the computer at either end can tell them apart.
Some of the Denon stuff using Denon-link is pretty high end, I guess they're just assuming someone that's going to buy one of these bad boys isn't likely to give an awful lot of thought to spending a measly $500. It is pretty after all. Don't forget your £2k kettle lead to go with it.
audiophiles I have some top quality snake oil, guaranteed to make your ears more responsive... a snip at merely £7500
I love this sort of thing. People look at audiophiles and think they are all nuts due to this. You can buy things to lift your cables off the floor, packets of crystals to wrap around cables, racks to hold the equipment that cost more than cars, etc etc. But most people barely believe different cables can make a difference let alone all the other stuff. So don't tarnish us all with one brush
lol, my speaker cables are all choped down, twisted together and wraped in tape so they don't short. dose the job for me. as dose my 2.1 speaker system that has 5.1 speakers in it
Don't forget those wooden volume knobs that cost thousands and improve sound clarity and add vibrance, or whatever they are supposed to do.
Lol. TBH, any sort of -philia is bad, mmmkay. It'll either end up in your bankruptcy, or your incarceration... Personally, I see anything which can be used to play music which you are able to listen to, is sufficient to do the job. Sure, I can appreciate the idea of buying a £400 Pioneer surround system, over the £30 alternative on ebuyer... but a £10,000 amplifier? I wouldn't be looking into spending that much unless I intended to install it in Wembley Arena... Where in the name that all that is good, is the sense in buying a $499 ethernet cable? OK, if you wanted to replace the cheap one you stole off your friend, with a nice £15 Belkin, understandable. If the life of your significant other depended on the quality of the data going through the cable, it might just be justifiable. Buy for listening to Led Zeppelin. Thats overkill. Even for the enthusiast. I wouldn't buy a £30 million computer, unless I owned Microsoft. I wouldn't buy a £30 billion aircraft, unless I owned NASA. And I wouldn't buy a $499 ethernet cable, unless I had a gun to my head.
I wonder if anyone can claim that they actually can notice any difference from using this over a standard, gray Ethernet cable. I could understand the effect of expensive cables when it comes to Analog audio, but the whole point of digital signals is to avoid cable loss. Besides, if they open up their amp and look at the cables inside, their in for a surprise Holy S***! Now THAT is crazy! So this is supposed to do what? So you have an insanely expensive cable the 2 last meters of the power supply line. The rest of the in house cabling as some of the cheapest you can ever find... And I love how they have rated the speed of the cable! Oh, and how can that cable handle 60A when a standard wall outlet is rated for 20A MAX Edit: I just found this: http://www.highendcable.co.uk/Nordost ODIN Power Cords.htm I seriously hope this is a joke!
Sad thing is i have listened to systems with odin installed at hifi shows. The whole system probably retailed around the £200k mark. It did hardly anything more than my current system which is way under 200k!
Those expensive power cables are designed to be plugged into battery power units, not straight into the wall socket, so house wiring doesn't make a difference. Not saying that they can make a huge difference to the sound, but it's probably more than most people think! Personally I didn't think that different interconnect cables were going to make a difference until I actually tried it, and it was actually pretty obvious! To be fair though, i preferred my cheap copper ones over the pure silver I make all my own hi-fi equipment, and it's amazing how much difference a small change in components or wiring can make. I have no idea whether such a high end digital cable could really make a difference, but to be honest, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
I think I'm going to start producing audio cables! I need a company name... Hmm.. What about.... Wait for it.... "Placebo Inc."
I suspect that a lot of the improvement in sound quality is down to the person listening also being the person who paid some daft figure for the cable, if you've just spent your monthly salary on a cable then there's a pretty big incentive to hear the difference. As for the digital cables, the whole point of digital transmission is that the quality of the cable hardly matters, these sorts of things are marketed at people who don't really understand the nature of what they're talking about so they can witter on about aligned crystal structures and nullified magnetic fields without realising what cr*p they're talking. Moriquendi
this reminds me of a conversation i had with my dad the other day, he went into richer sounds to look at blu ray players, and the guy there was telling him that any hdmi cable under £70 would be terrible and would give you a rubbish picture, and that really you want to spend well over £100. i was just like wtf, surely thats the point of moving towards digital video and audio so the cables dont make a difference to the experience.
