Denon's $499 Ethernet Cable 719
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.
datasheet (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Truth in advertising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Someone will ask for it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Audiophools (Score:5, Interesting)
(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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Is ALL Denon suspect? (Score:2, Interesting)
Honestly, my guess is there is a demand for this cable out there. They have a Denon link cable which is "proprietary". I think that it is Cat-5 but it is not wired the same as normal Cat-5. Rich audiophiles who are clueless have very expensive cables, but can not get a really awesome looking cable for their Denon. They call Denon, and ask for it.
If someone called you right now and said "I need a 500 dollar Cat-5 cable", would you sell it?
Ethernet is NOT a cable! (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Try $550 (Score:4, Interesting)
They're treated with "quantum tunneling".
"Is the Synergistic one meter USB cable worth $550? No, it is worth twice this amount."
Sigh.
For those of you who think it's gotta be a typo... (Score:3, Interesting)
The have several cables that make $499 look cheap.
Denon is now officially "bad" in my books (Score:3, Interesting)
I was looking for a generic corporate email address to write them an email, but I couldn't find one on their web site... Does anyone have one?
Re:It's worth every penny (Score:2, Interesting)
This is only an extreme case of a standard marketing gimmick. I remember the first time I bought a component stereo, I saw a spool of "speaker wire" and thought, "Well, I've got speakers, so I guess I need speaker wire." Later I discovered that ordinary lamp wire works just as well, is a lot cheaper, and doesn't kink so easily.
But my favorite is this business of putting gold on connectors. This actually makes sense if your signal uses a lot of bandwidth, so you want to maximize the quality of the connection. And indeed it was when video components became a consumer item that they started doing this. But once consumer began to associate "gold connectors" with "quality" they started putting gold on everything.
Randi to the rescue! (Score:5, Interesting)
When challenged, Pear cables chickened out.
I checked. Pear cables did not go out of business.
Yeah, but CAT-6 is still cheaper (Score:2, Interesting)
If you think about it, CAT-6 is just "hi-fi" cat-5e, cat-5e is just "hi-fi" cat5, cat-5 is just hi-fi cat-3, and cat-3 is just hi-fi untwisted wire of the same gauge.
Cat3 will do 10mbps as good as CAT-6 over a few meters and you can probably squeeze 100mbps over very short lengths, but why bother, with CAT-5e and -6 being so cheap.
Holy gravy on a potato! (Score:5, Interesting)
So I took a wander over to the site you linked and discovered the following item description for one of their most expensive cables, (and this isn't even for signal balanced cable pairs, which actually do prevent the causing of inductance-based interference in surrounding cables. What's being sold here are just garden variety audio wires. Made of gold.)
Wow! I got scared just reading that. They sure know how to make you feel insecure about your audio signal! --The price for security in plugs and wires? $4358 for twenty feet of cable! I bet you could sell some of these around the White House. (Just had to get a political dig in.)
I am stunned. I am clearly in the wrong business. I should be selling wires to rubes. Of course, I can't imagine that would do much for one's self esteem. George Cardas either doesn't sleep well at night, or he can talk up a real shit-storm when you challenge him on his ridiculous product line. . !
-FL
Re:Cthulhu (Score:2, Interesting)
http://web.archive.org/web/20060112033557/http://hwpr0n.se/ [archive.org]
Re:What happens when everything is wireless? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.audio.marketplace/msg/c1d47f6cc984588d?hl=en&dmode=source&output=gplain [google.com]
Newly redesigned! Highest quality shielded fiber-optic cables. Will
DEFINITELY make a difference in the way your CD's sound. Trust me.
Why run just one media type when you can run two at the same time! Special
connectors at each end allow you to connect to BOTH the fiber AND the coax
jacks, concurrently. The end result yields a level of fault-tolerance that
has never before been available to the end consumer.
Note: these cables are significantly more transparent than ST, I2S, Toslink or
coax, alone.
This week, they're on special for $299.95 (for a 3 metre length). Other
custom lengths are available on request.
if you can believe it, a few people actually took that stuff seriously! they didn't even notice the 1-apr posting date.
actually, my new idea is to use a non-ferrite bead (NFB) like device (as a 'bad waves' blocker) and combine that with the differential fiber optic cable. I'm still hoping to close first-round funding any day now. denon, are you listening?
Re:Audiophools (Score:3, Interesting)
After the reporter had finished his report, and I was trimming it up for air, the client started talking about the wonderful quality of the audio...almost sounded like he was in the same room...great stereo separation....
"It's mono."
"It's mono? No, it can't be. I hear different nuances in my ears."
"It's mono. Take a look at the box, and the pot it's feeding. One channel."
"Oh."
Self-proclaimed audiophiles are also often beer snobs, showing that there's big overlap among two of the most obnoxious groups in the world. Drink a Miller Lite. It won't kill you, really. And that bitter shit that you have to sip, because it tastes so awful that you can't drink more than a sip....really, it's not good beer, even if your book/magazine/friends say so.
Re:It's worth every penny (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is ALL Denon suspect? (Score:2, Interesting)
So? You get a crappy product from a formerly good brand, and you buy elsewhere in the future. Isn't that what branding is FOR? It's underhanded, but how is this a problem?
I would say just the opposite... Now that millions of new brands are popping up all the time, and making crap, while claiming it's pate, is the ideal time to start paying attention to brand names. You can no longer walk into your favorite store and assume everything on the shelves will work just fine, and as described.
Yes, always good advice. You should be sure to try out that pack of gum before you buy it. You should test drive any potential vehicles for 20 years to make sure you know they will hold up. Clearly, that's the real answer. Ignore brand names.
A bit like speaker cables... (Score:3, Interesting)
I got a row from my Mum though, because now the extension lead for the lawnmower was too short.
Just maybe the cost *is* justified (Score:1, Interesting)
So at Frys I can buy a similar cable for less than 1/10th of that. But the quality...
I know everyone will ignore this and nobody will ever read this comment (AC, -1 or 0), but I would very much like to see a chemical analysis or electical analysis of the Denon cable vs the Frys cable.
My money is on "high purity copper" meaning that it is solid core (not stranded, which is better for LANs as it bends better) because that is better for audio and for it to be of a higher grade copper. To paraphrase a well known quote, "some copper is more equal than others."
Now maybe all of the
High quality conduction only for electrons? (Score:1, Interesting)
I guess the audiophiles are not only picky, but not that bright.
Confusion (Score:4, Interesting)
On their show recap Monster is listed http://www.hometime.com/TV/pastshow/pastshows/1995/theater.htm [hometime.com] as the cable supplier.
Monster is probably a paid advertiser but no other explanation was given for the high price other than better safe than sorry. I cringed but not everybody understands this magic called technology like most
And Monster cables are better quality. It's not like they're lying. It just doesn't matter. If they'd compare it to something they understand something like the light bulb doesn't care about the quality of the light switch.
-[d]-
Re:Audiophools (Score:4, Interesting)
I run my $1800 speakers (stereo pair, not 50.1 surround sound) though a Realistic 1978 integrated amp I got for $35 dollars.
Sounds great.
Re:empoying? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing one must understand regarding "high end" stereo equipment, is the marketing aspect of it all. Once you pass a certain threshold, say $600 per component (or $3000 for a 5.1 system with receiver/amp), you step into the audiophile reality distortion field. Crossing that line means you've got money to burn, which is why audiophile gear starts out cheap and stretches to infinity dollars.
The reason your buddy's $11k stereo sounded like ass, is because it puts him in the "rich sucker" bracket. The components may have been selected by the sales person or manufacturer to sound a little off, solely to create demand for their $15k system. The term "upgrade" is heard every day in audio shops around the globe, and such upgrades tend to happen in small, granular steps. That's why speaker vendors don't have just one "perfect" set, they have a long list of products carefully plotted from cheap to obscene, and many shops will offer a trade-in program to help you climb that money ladder. It's all designed to part fools with their money while convincing them otherwise.
Anecdote: a while back I had a stereophile chum, but unfortunately he was dumber than dirt so our convos were rather bland, but he spent every last penny of his on stereo equipment, which fascinated me from a psychological perspective. I never actually liked his system, partly because his "listening room" was a small apartment living room...
Anyway, he started out small, spending about $300 on each speaker and $800 on the receiver. A few months later he had replaced his fronts with a more exotic pair, and continued over the following weeks to replace his other speakers until he had a full matching set. A year later, he had replaced his entire kit twice more, having sold his car to afford a $12000 system, always the same brand as his first cheap kit. Well it should come as no surprise that it sounded like ass to me. He still had sharp highs and horrible staging. Even he conceded there were improvements to be made, to come when his finances allowed it.
Over the course of three years, he probably spent close to $25k on audio gear, since he was selling the used gear at half-price or less. I then used my powers of geekiness to convince him to sell his last heap of junk to some naive schmuck, and took him shopping - online, that is. Shipping was a bitch, but all-told I had him spend about $7k on an assortment of drivers, enclosures, crossover components, soundproofing and related materials, and of course a fierce amp and receiver. I brought over my measuring equipment and taught him how to build speakers (to the best of his limited IQ). He was now free to tweak them according to his personal preferences.
He spent the next few months experimenting with different cones, crossover freqs, enclosure stuffing and a few other tricks I had shown him. Less than a year later, he had settled on his preferred setup, built a second kit out of the leftovers that wasn't half bad. I added some final touches, he sold off the extra system for $3k. Most importantly, he was absolutely in love with his home-made hi-fi sound and it only cost him about $4500 + a lot of fun time playing with it.
The lessons he learned can be applied to any speakers, much like I've been doing forever. Sometimes a commercial speaker might sound 95% good, but have a few annoying flaws. With a bit of elbow grease and know-how, those flaws can often be addressed with an afternoon and just a few bucks.
If you read slashdot, this isn't for you (Score:1, Interesting)
"Value" does not mean anything to someone like this. The cost is irrelevant. I have no doubt that Denon is _not_ making these for $1 each and selling them for $500. They probably spent $25000 on picking the plastics, getting molds made, etc. They might sell a few hundred, making a profit, but not enough to matter. Limited edition custom stuff costs a lot to make. They do it for a few reasons (1) someone will buy it (2) it makes the price of cables they will sell in volume seem more reasonable (think anchoring effect) (3) it makes them seem like they also cater to the high end, which to many people implies their normal stuff it better than some company that doesn't (4) and on and on... it's a business! Next there will be an article claiming $2000/hr sex isn't better than $100/hr sex.
Don't forget the aging period (Score:1, Interesting)
Some manufacturers of kilobuck cables are well prepared for this initial experience. They will indicate that their hyper-inflated product requires a period of "aging," or "burning in," of perhaps several weeks, before the superior sound quality becomes evident to the ears. Hopefully, over this time, the fervent expectation of the deluded audiophile will produce the necessary hallucination that the sound *is* superior. Human perception is very easily tainted.
One must admit that it is a rather clever, if deviant, marketing strategy.
BS (Score:1, Interesting)
They proposed a "blind" listening sessions compare, where cheap electrical cables were compared with hi-end cables.
You'd pay something like $200 to participate, and if you could get the difference between the hi-end cable and the electrical one, four times out of five, you'd win a pretty expensive (in the $3000 range IIRC) set of speakers. Plus you'd get your $200 back.
Nobody showed up.