Come to think of it, I've got a new idea!

A relabelled can of toiletfreshner you can spay to improve your WiFi connection.

Just $50,- a can.

For playback of 192kHz for general listening through most if not all amplifiers there is not likely to be noticeable audio quality improvements for a variety of reasons, but the higher frequencies captured at that rate end up generating intermodulation distortion in the amp which is made for the human hearing range. I'm not sure how audible that is in an A/B test, but it's a known quality issue.

That said, 24/192kHz used for sourcing and processing audio is superior as it keeps a higher resolution copy of the audio around and any rounding error, aliasing and other distortions present in the digital signal processing stages will generationally add up to a much smaller part of the overall digital signal. When that is down converted to 16/44.1 or 16/48k it will be of higher quality than if the entire signal was recorded at that rate and manipulated digitally at the same rate. Essentially it's the audio equivalent to what professional graphic artists do with photographs. Take the very-high-megapixel original uncompressed images directly off the camera which are massive and highly detailed, photo manipulate them at that high resolution, then downscale the result to the size needed for the usage case. All of the rounding error in the photo manipulation gets discarded as low order noise. Same thing with manipulating audio at a higher rate/depth.

One thing it's very noticeable with is pitch shifting, time/tempo shifting, and some modulation effects. In particular up-shifting slightly, or downshifting heavily. That produces very audible digital artifacts normally. At the higher rates the artifacts are produced also, but at finer resolution, then when downscaled the artifacts more or less disappear as they're smaller than the lower rate's error margin more or less. Dropping the output back to 44.1k/16 filters out the high frequency intermodulation distortion artifacts from the higher rates.

I can make my own, probably costs 25 cents or so a foot... the most expensive part is the RJ-45...

This really would be a very high-quality cable. Electrons do flow on the outside edges of metal, for the most part.

You're going to have production costs that are sky-high with this b/c you're not selling very many. And you're going to want to recoup that as profits fairly quickly b/c you're not selling very many. So that accounts for the price.

The masking tape, due to its location, was clearly for assembling the unit. They just grouped the wires in a way that wouldn't put a lot of stress on them but got them tight enough to put the expensive RJ45-like apparatus on it.

And there are uses for this. None that you an I have, but definitely some uses. Your signal loss will be teeny-tiny, and you'll be able to send crazy amounts of data. And you could make use of it to send really crisp analog signals. The "not as good as the human ear can distinguish" arguments would be, I think, refuted by people in audio who have to mix multiple tracks on top of each other and trying to avoid any distortions or re-write artifacts.

Anyhoots, my point is that this does have a function, hardly anyone is going to buy it, it does work, and it is priced outside of anyone's sane purchasing point unless they have a specific need or a lot of cash to burn.

Even just the words audiophile and ethernet are ridiculous in conjunction.

It's true that high frequency signals mostly travel on the surface of a conductor, but the cable quality is somewhat irrelevant to the quality of your sound system before the DAC...

adioquest actually
and they use silver instead

Yupp, that sounds right, I haven't accounted for distortions/noise.

The cable they sell is 1.5m long, too short to plug it in the ass. All the silver wasted.

thats the cheapest one
the 8 meter one is 4500 dollar the 12 meter one is 10 grand

I started to read the article and was initially thinking they were talking about the old (maybe it's still a thing?) story that ethernet cables make for good speaker cables, supposedly because they're built in a way to reduce the introduction of extraneous noise.

And then I got further into it and, no, they're talking about an ethernet cable being used for networking. Hmmm.

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Anyway, the best noise-protected cables on earth aren't worth a damn if you're using a very generic DAC. If these 'audiophiles' are going with the plain ol' DAC built into a garden-variety PC, then I think they're missing the point. A good DAC will take care of whatever noise comes down the pike, and won't cost anywhere near that much money.

Oh, for $4,300 to $10,000, couldn't you buy a fiber optic network setup?

Final point, some irony that a lot of these are going to be the same guys who adore vinyl for the "warmth" - whatever that means - along with all of the clicks and pops (read: noise) that come along with it. "Dude, these $4,300 cables mean I can hear the turntable rumble better than ever!"

-snip-

You guys just don't get it. The Audiophile Ethernet Cable has magical powers. If you slice it open, you have a whip you can use to defend yourself against vampires and werewolves.

The fact that the FTC doesn't do anything is astonishing to me. Granted that wouldn't help the 95% of people that don't live in the US. Or really the 99.999% of people that are either too smart, too cheap or too broke to waste that kind of money, but there's clearly an adequate number of morons willing to pay.

The worst thing though is that when you make the cables out of spec, you run the risk of damaging what is supposed to be the more expensive component.
In my experience, the hum from the power supply is more of an issue than the damage to the signal that comes from the signal passing through non-blessed cabling.

Fiber optic is great, but unless you're trying to pass a signal over a long distance the disadvantages in terms of cost and just working with the cable can't possible make it worthwhile.

Yeah. To me, these cables are trying to eliminate a problem that is mostly created AFTER the cables do their job.
Out of curiosity I did try to find some pricing on these things, without much luck. I saw a single response somewhere that a guy 'wired' his house for about $1,000, not including the PC and router hardware. Copper, of course, is probably 1/10th that if you DIY. $1,000 plus hardware isn't cheap, to be sure, but at the ultra high-end pricing they're talking about for just a single cable, fiber may turn out to be a viable choice. Honestly have no idea but that price simply got me thinking about other solutions with a wider benefit for the cost.



Ultimately, I wish I had the money and the ears with which to hear these subtle differences. With the money, I'd instead waste it on trying to ruin my hearing with ridiculous cars. ; )

It's a rather challenging problem to solve as the typical 50-60hz that's used for household power is within the range of what audio devices are able to supply. I'm not an EE, so I'm not sure how to fix that, but it can be rather challenging to filter that out without influencing the sound.

I'm guessing that the correct solution is expensive, so if you've got cheaper gear it's just not designed to properly filter that out.

I think a lot of that comes down to the installation. Fiberoptics are very stiff and there's relatively few people that are willing to work with it in a residential setting. I'm not really sure why anybody would bother. Cat 6 cable is good to 1gbps, so you'd have to have some rather huge bandwidth needs internally for that to be necessary.

The only people I can think of that might genuinely need that are people that expect to have a lot of EMF coming off their equipment. I suppose that hams might, but I think even they're not going to have enough to make it worthwhile.