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.

It's worth every penny

[Marcion (876801)]

...until your cat chews through it.

Ah well, there is a mug born every minute. I start selling $500 USB cables, anyone want one?

Re:It's worth every penny

[sakusha (441986)]

..or until you pull the end through a snarl of cables and the plastic tab breaks off.

Re:It's worth every penny

[fm6 (162816)]

So, you just secure it in place with duct tape. And for that, you want high fidelity duct tape...

empoying?

[Jeremiah Cornelius (137)]

You think at $500 a pop, Denon could afford a copy editor - or at least a spellchecker! The tortured grammar of the non-statement about design is also a howler.

Re:It's worth every penny

[Blakey Rat (99501)]

My audio cables are temporally-shielded to prevent interference caused by the EM wake of time travelers. A steal at only $800. An inch.

Re:It's worth every penny

[Usquebaugh (230216)]

In free advertising for Denon

1 Advertise cable with crazy price
2 Post story to /.
3 Hordes click to laugh
4 Some buy other cables
5 $$$

Re:It's worth every penny

[donguru (595418)]

There is, however, a significant difference between using two point and four point barbed wire for speaker cables. Per http://www.tinaja.com/glib/marcia.pdf [tinaja.com]

Re:It's worth every penny

[niko9 (315647)]

Don't laugh.

Check this out: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/03/300_audiophile_grade_power_cable_is_really_worth_15-2.html [gizmodo.com.au]

And the actual thread at Head-Fi: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f21/my-cat-tore-up-my-virtual-dynamics-power-3-a-293165/ [head-fi.org]

What's surprising about this is some of the comments made by the company rep.

Nope, no typo, just a thinko :)

[timothy (36799)]

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 [amazon.com]

The reviews are hilarious :)

timothy

Re:It's worth every penny

[flappinbooger (574405)]

I bet it has something to do with the nature of the cable. It is probably the twisted pairs. They are hand twisted by hot 6 foot tall blond virgins with phd degrees.

That way you're guaranteed the best and most precise twistiness for your twisted pairs.

See, they don't tell you that in the ad because it's a trade secret. The other cables are just twisted by a machine or something, thus the mundane pricing.

Cthulhu

[Frosty Piss (770223)]

Cable porn. Is that a sub category of tentacle porn? A giant Cthulhu-like monster made of Cat-5?

Re:Cthulhu

[cthulu_mt (1124113)]

I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Cthulhu

[spazdor (902907)]

OK, I'm invoking Rule 34. Provide links.

Re:Cthulhu

[Nullav (1053766)]

Would those be Monster cables, by any chance?

Re:Cthulhu

[Oktober Sunset (838224)]

A giant Cthulhu-like monster made of Cat-5?

I think you just described what's behind my desk.

What happens when everything is wireless?

[linzeal (197905)]

Will they try selling us higher quality air to shoot the EM signals through?

Re:What happens when everything is wireless?

[mikael (484)]

Will they try selling us higher quality air to shoot the EM signals through?

We Introduce our latest product, the Acme professional EF signal booster. Scientific studies have proven that high humidity levels reduce signal quality of EM signals. After years of painstaking research, our scientists have designed and patented a foolproof system for maximising the quality of EM signals within a internal area. Using our patented process of filtering the air molecules within a building, our system removes all impurities and excess humidity that would reduce the quality of EM signals in your building. Our system also reshapes the air molecules as well as adding specially designed EM friendly molecules which guarantee that your electronic equipment will always receive and transmit the highest quality EM signals wherever you are.

Our system is available for immediate purchase. Just visit our website and select the number of filtering units that you require (ideally one unit should cover every 20 square metres, or one unit per corner of a room), and your order will be despatched within 24 hours.

Re:What happens when everything is wireless?

[DarkOx (621550)]

Not EM, but I let me take a crack at the audio/air biz.

Are you looking to recreat the concert experience at home? Have you already asembled the stero system proffessionals dream of but can't understand why it still just won't sound like its live? The problem is the air in your home. Sound waves propogate through air from the speaker to your air differently depending on the exact chemical make up of the air. If you really want your live recordings to have that same special POP you heard at the concert you need to recreate the air. For only $500 our company can have a air delivered to your home form all major us cities representive of almost any time of day! You can finally recreate that perfect sonic experience you enjoyed at the club last year. Once our custom built to preserve, air canister arrives all you need to do is open the easily turn valve and you can immediatly start enjoying more prefect reporductions of live concerts! Its that easy!

Still need that little extra? Well we also have special modifier canisters availible, that can be added to your order for only a small additional cost. These include botique air qualites such as smoke, and stale beer, which can also subtly change the way sound waves porogate and may be requried for the ideal experince. Stop trying to play your recorded sound into a medium it was never ment to be played in, start enjoying your recordings in the air they were ment for today!

Hey, there's a market for this

[Skee09 (987325)]

What's the point of using an $800 HDMI cable to connect my media center PC to my HDTV if the content I'm streaming over my network isn't in the high fidelity I can only get with this $499 Ethernet cable?

datasheet

[drakyri (727902)]

Looking at the datasheet for that cable on their website, it seems like the only possibly unique thing they've done is to add a thin metal shield around the cable near the tip - from where it stops being UTP (with all the noise-protection that UTP tends to have) to where the plastic connector-to-NIC starts.

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!

Re:datasheet

[ozamosi (615254)]

So a huge markup for a very small piece of tin foil and some cloth. Whee!

That makes you think... How about high fidelity tin foil hats?

Re:datasheet

[sjf (3790)]

You're forgetting the signal direction markings: who knew that electrical signals could read ?
I know that before I put little arrows on my cat5 a lot of my ethernet packets were getting lost.

Now I'm going to see if I can do traffic shaping by putting "Slashdot, this way ->" on them.

Re:datasheet

[HaeMaker (221642)]

Google: Shielded Twisted Pair (STP). Quite common. Probably can get a 1.5m STP cable for about $3.

Re:datasheet

[mprindle (198799)]

Looking at the datasheet for that cable on their website, it seems like the only possibly unique thing they've done is to add a thin metal shield around the cable near the tip - from where it stops being UTP (with all the noise-protection that UTP tends to have) to where the plastic connector-to-NIC starts.

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...

Re:datasheet

[sjf (3790)]

Oh God no. You'll just have greater clarity in the upper octaves and your porn will be more nuanced.

There is more

[gotw (239699)]

While they're at it they should just purchase this wonderful device to demagentize your CD's [6moons.com].

Some day...

[Kjella (173770)]

...I wish someone would do a form of blind test - split a bunch of audiophiles into two different groups. Tell one group the price and quality of each system, while the other group isn't told anything and can only listen to the system. Or for extra fun, a third group that's telling them all sorts of wrong information. It'd be fun to see how much that would impact their impression of the system.

Re:Some day...

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Some day...

[Achoi77 (669484)]

This was done with wine, often with humbling results.

Re:Some day...

[Joska (78000)]

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.

In other news...

[Radium_ (150865)]

A fool and his money are soon parted

Truth in advertising

[dn15 (735502)]

I don't doubt that this is a well-made cable, but why don't they get in trouble for implying that it will even make a difference in your viewing experience? That is, wont *any* cable "bring out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction" as long as there's functional error correction and sufficient bandwidth to stream all data being transmitted?

What a Brilliant Technical Innovation

[OzTech (524154)]

These cable will be a great leap forward for Digital Audio.

The arrows to indicate direction will mean that the Electrons wont have to look around before knowing which way they are supposed to be moving. This will allow them to get to their destination quicker and even take a moment to go back and get any stragglers who can't keep up. The end result being that all of the electrons will arrive at the intended destination and as you can imagine this will mean a much better signal.

The next generation of these will probably contain filters to stop those pesky noise electrons making their way down the cable. This will really help the signal to noise ratio, although the commercial development of this is still a little way off yet.

Is ALL Denon suspect?

[hirschma (187820)]

I was thinking of buying a Denon AV receiver for my home theater upgrade.

Then I see this. Are all their claims just sheer puffery? How can I take their brand seriously?

If this Ethernet garbage is just an aberration, don't they know that doing it will have the reverse effect on consumers with clue?

Re:Is ALL Denon suspect?

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

There are very few established brands anymore. Unfortunately for us and the Europeans, China has been using our brand-consciousness against us for some years now. Old-line American audio equipment manufacturers like Marantz sold their names and are now just marketing fronts. The point being, a particular model from a particular maker may be good quality and worth the money, but you can no longer depend upon branding as a reliable indicator of quality. You need to do your research first before you plunk down your money (good advice in any event, but it's especially true today.)

Signal directional markings

[Myria (562655)]

Additionally, signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer.

That statement is quite correct. The plugs have arrows pointing in both directions.

Confession:

[regular_gonzalez (926606)]

I actually own one of these. Unfortunately it got bent and now some of the 1s get stuck because they don't slide through the bent area as easily as the 0s :(

Ethernet is NOT a cable!

[Dahamma (304068)]

This is an RJ45 cable. Actually, to be precise it's an RJ45 connector with an 8-wire cable (unknown if it's even a twisted pair cable, though I'd imagine so). Actually, to be really precise it's not even officially RJ45 but why go into that...

RJ45 cables are used for the ubiquitous 100BASE-TX Ethernet, of course, but also for plenty of other applications, some of them not even digital (for example, long distance transmission of component video signals).

I'm not saying that a $500 RJ45 twisted pair cable is not absurd, just that there ARE applications where a higher quality cable would make a difference; try running a 100m 1080i (analog) component video connection over $1/ft RJ45 and see how it looks compared to something better built for the job.

That said, looking at the intended use ("Denon-Link") it seems to be multichannel 192kbps PCM audio, hence $500 for 1.5m is obviously a total waste of money.

Ok, end rant. Point is, nothing about this cable or any of its uses has the SLIGHTEST thing to do with Ethernet, but now everyone seems to think Denon is selling a cable to stream MP3s over your home LAN (yeah, a 1.5m cable would be really useful for that...) Sigh, why is it that I expect more from /. editors and readers on these types of stories!?

Randi to the rescue!

[jpbelang (79439)]

James Randi: http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-09/092807reply.html#i4 [randi.org]

When challenged, Pear cables chickened out.

I checked. Pear cables did not go out of business.

they are amazing

[speedtux (1307149)]

I'm an audiophile, and I have to tell you, these cables are AMAZING. They bring out nuances in the sound that you never knew were there. Listen to a recording of the Brandenburg Concertos in the classic 1972 vinyl recording with the Berlin Philharmonica, and you'll swear you're sitting there with Christian Ludwig right in the room, hearing his every borborygmus and flatus. These cables are so subtle that they even allow you to separate the overtones from the bass notes of his snart! And the Goldberg Variations with Glenn Gould... just breathtaking. You hear every note he sings (and the piano is pretty good, too).

Usability is great, too: you'll never spend half an hour wondering which way to plug these things in, since the marking on them finally make it clear that it doesn't matter; now, why didn't anybody think of that before?

If you're an audio professional, these cables will pay for themselves in a week. And if you're a serious amateur, they'll give you an audio experience you won't soon forget.

(-; for the humor impaired)

Re:Audiophools

[hack slash (1064002)]

You have just described every collector of Star Wars action figures.

Re:Audiophools

[HungSoLow (809760)]

There are two types of Audiophiles:
(1) Non-technical people who like knowing they have thousands of dollars in equipment, blissfully ignorant of the technical details, but trusting in the outlandish claims of the various companies.
(2) Technical people who know about skin depth, SNR, etc. and make informed purchases and more often than not (as in my case) build their own high end audio equipment.

Re:Audiophools

[Lumpy (12016)]

The more money you spend on your Stereo or home theater. the dumber you are.

Yes, several of my clients are INCREDIBLY stupid. they have $5000.00 DVD players, $12,000.00 Surround sound deciders, and over $100,000 in speakers.

They are flat out morons. but I'll take their money every time they offer it. If I did not take it, someone else would.

Re:Someone will ask for it

[mikesd81 (518581)]

And since we're talking about cat5 cabling.........here [monstercable.com].

Re:Audiophiles

[belmolis (702863)]

Oh, yes, please! Only a high-quality wooden volume control can convey the subtle warmth of audio amplified by vacuum tubes. :)

Re:Audiophiles

[gardyloo (512791)]

Perhaps. What's it go to?

Re:...This got greenlit?

[erudified (958273)]

Man, maybe I'm a terrible person, but I absolutely love these kinda scams.

Every time I see something like this, I really wish I'd thought of it.

Re:...This got greenlit?

[maxume (22995)]

You could always start selling cables that cost $599.

How could they *not* be better?

Re:...This got greenlit?

[maxume (22995)]

I store them in gold lined boxes to prevent space radiation from degrading them.

Also, they are manufactured in harmony with the orbit of the moon, so the lunar cycle does not impact the quality of audio fed over them.

Finally, the meteoric metal mixed into the alloy used for the cables gives them the power of the universe, preventing them from aging.

Re:Wow.

[mikael (484)]

One branch of ComputerWorld used to sell boxes of 10 3.5" pre-formatted floppy disks for 100 pounds/box. This particular branch was next to an oil company headquarters.