£3k for an Ethernet cable..!?

Just in case they take it down I had to do a screen grab! Yes, there are people selling "audiophile" grade network cables for three grand.

Buy yours here!

All sorts of dishonesty is written about high end audio cabling - directional conductors, "burned in" mains cables, even quantum effects are cited as important ways to "improve sound clarity" etc. You can believe that decent quality copper cable makes some difference at analogue baseband but by the time you get to AES and even network cables so long as the packets are getting through there is nothing the design of the cable can do to change the sound being re-produced. Even in the case of analogue audio (either line level or the speaker cable) good quality copper is all that's needed.

Still, a fool (make that an audiophile) and his money are soon parted and once you've spent thousands of pounds on cable you probably can "hear" a difference!

So, the lies peddled about this particular brand;

Perfect-Surface Technology applied to extreme-purity silver provides unprecedented clarity and dynamic contrast. Solid conductors prevent strand interaction, a major source of cable distortion. Extremely high-purity Perfect-Surface Silver minimizes distortion caused by the grain boundaries which exist within any metal conductor, nearly eliminating harshness and greatly increasing clarity compared to OFHC, OCC, 8N and other coppers.

Just nonsense!  Electrical signals travel down cables by the movement of electrons. Copper (Oxygen free or otherwise) is about the best conductor commonly available and the "grain" or "strand interaction" has nothing to do with the movement of electrons. BUT, let's not forget that this is a network cable and the transit of TCP/IP packets has NOTHING to do with the "harshness" or "clarity" of the sound.

Any solid material adjacent to a conductor is actually part of an imperfect circuit. Wire insulation and circuit board materials all absorb energy (loss). Some of this energy is stored and then later released as distortion. Solid High-Density Polyethylene Insulation ensures critical signal-pair geometry while minimizing insulation-induced phase distortion.

Are they hinting at capacitance here? "Energy stored and then later released as distortion" - where do you start. This is so misleading. Network cables are twisted pair construction (relying on common-mode rejection on each pair) - they aren't coaxial cables (if they are referring to capacitive effects?). "Insulation induced phase distortion" - have any electronic engineers ever measured that?!

All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality. For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music. For example, NAS to Router, Router to Network Player.

Please - audio cables are not directional! As many electrons flow in one direction as the other. This old chestnut was commonly trotted out for analogue cable, it was a lie then, and it's a lie now. With a network cable packets travel in both directions as the TCP/IP handshake brings up a connection, data is transferred and then the connection is closed. There is no directionality for the packets, the data they carry or the electrical signals that represent the bits. 

What this all comes down to is that these snake-oil salesmen NEVER subject this tat to a double-blind test. If they did you find out that there aren't a pair of ears in the world that can actually "hear" the difference between a £3k and £2 network cable.

Expensive HDMI cables are a scam!

If you ever spend more than £15 on an HDMI cable you have wasted your money - the above story (on Engadget) isn't just true in the states, I've seen the same 'demo' of Monster cables on Tottenham Court Road.

The 'amazing'(!) Shakti Electromagnetic Stabaliser

Having offered my beloved Harbeth speakers for sale (lots of interest so far!) I came across this bit of nonsense online. Audiophiles really are gullible fools with too much money to spend.

SHAKTI Noise Reduction Technology (NRT) absorbs and dissipates Electromagnetic Interference (EMI). Automotive Computers (ECUs) and audio/video components self generate a radiated EMI field that degrades signal transfer functions. The word SHAKTI means "energy." Through an energy conversion, inductive coupling process, the "antenna-like" circuits within SHAKTI attract and then resistively convert EMI to non-interfering heat.

The upshot is - pop one of these bad-boys on top of your amplifier and it will sound better! They even do little ones to sit on top of your speaker cables. They even claim that strapping one to your engine management module will make your car go faster! I emailed them to suggest that a few stuck on top of the UN building in New York would do wonders for world peace.

But wait - they have an even greater innovation - The Hallograph;

The Hallograph Soundfield Optimizer consists of two arrays that are easily placed behind each speaker near the corners of the backwall. Each array is engineered with proprietary technology (patent pending) and made with exotic hardwoods, consisting of staggered activated panels that are mounted on an elegant base that beautifully blends into any style room environment.

That's £1000 a pair to you chief!

Snakeoil salesmen target networking!

I would not have believed it unless I saw it with my own eyes! A five-hundred dollar cat5e cable - for audiophile application!
It has the obligatory signal direction markers - is that for the Tx or the Rx pair?! Like all non-DC electrical signals there are as many electrons going one way as the other!

Thanks Matt - you sick man!

Audiophiles are gullible fools

See the previous post above for a giggle!

I gratified to see that the ASA have made a ruling concerning the kind of expensive mains cables sold by HiFi snake-oil company Russ Andrews Accessories. Nice to see their conclusion;

We told Russ Andrews not use the claims again unless they could substantiate them with robust scientific evidence.

Here here! The Guardian carried a similair story a couple of years back.

$13,000 speaker cable!

Save us from Audiophiles!

John Dunlavy, who manufactures audiophile loudspeakers and wire to go with it, does think questioning is valid. A musician and engineer, Mr. Dunlavy said as an academic exercise he used principles of physics relating to transmission line and network theory to produce a high-end cable. "People ask if they will hear a difference, and I tell them no," he said.
Mr. Dunlavy has often gathered audio critics in his Colorado Springs lab for a demonstration.
"What we do is kind of dirty and stinky," he said. "We say we are starting with a 12 WAG zip cord, and we position a technician behind each speaker to change the cables out."
The technicians hold up fancy-looking cables before they disappear behind the speakers. The critics debate the sound characteristics of each wire.
"They describe huge changes and they say, 'Oh my God, John, tell me you can hear that difference,'" Mr. Dunlavy said. The trick is the technicians never actually change the cables, he said, adding, "It's the placebo effect."

I remember BBC Research Department did a similair set of tests in the late eighties and concluded that the best paid ears in the industry (with the best amps and speakers) couldn't tell the difference between 10A mains cable and very expensive OFC cable. Around the same time Practical Electronics magazine did a blind test with the editors of What Hifi and HiFi World and they concluded that the mains cable they'd taken off a lawn-mower was the best sounding cable!

With all this in mind I'd point you at previous posts;
Audiophile at I-Like-Jam and Why do people have to have their say?

Cable Burn-in Service!

Last year I posted about a firm I'd found who offer one and a half grand mains leads! But the audiophiles have outdone themselves in the emperor's new clothes stakes;

Cables should be burned-in or conditioned on a regular basis for optimum performance. In normal use, there is a leakage current from electrical equipment which causes the cable to take on a charge; cable conditoning will neutralize this charge.
New cables often have very high levels of electrical charge caused by the production process. In addition, gases are often trapped between the insulation and the conductor during manufacture. This can often result in new cables sounding brittle, bright, and lacking in detail. These charges must be neutralized if a cable is to ever achieve its maximum performance.

These people should be prosecuted - they are liars.

Audiophile at I-Like-Jam

This is an hilarious bunch of links to unnecessary audio accessories - $1,500 for a mains lead? $30,000 for interconnects! A fool and his money are easily parted it seems.

The Intelligent Chip is a one inch square, bright orange plastic wafer that, when placed on top of a compact disc player for 2-3 seconds, upgrades the disc (CD, DVD or SACD) being played at the time. The sound of the upgraded disc has more detail and articulation, better dynamics and an absence of "digital harshness." Voices are more human-sounding and less synthetic. The upgrade is permanent. Inside the white translucent Intelligent Chip case are two ultrathin, clear polycarbonate sheets, one on each side of the Chip. The manufacturer's product brochure states, "The Intelligent Chip should be put back into the packing case after using, because the packing case can protect the quantum material of the Intelligent Chip, preventing them from leaking."

The nonesense goes on with reference to Schrodinger's cat and other quantum ideas, the summary is the best;

The Intelligent Chip works via coherent quantum superposition and quantum entanglement, in which two coherent light sources - the CD laser and the quantum dot laser in the chip - interact strongly with the atoms and molecules in the CD's polycarbonate layer to produce long-lasting, superior transparency for better optical signal to noise ratio (SNR). Laser light escapes the player via a number of small holes and gaps in the player case. The emitted light from the quantum dot laser instantly comingles with the CD laser light in the room and inside the player.

Now what has escaped these people's attention is that with some CD players you can get the CD to show the number of errors in the bitstream (the Red Book standard specifies Miller Coding so errors are easy to spot). I used to have a Sony machine in the early nineties that had a maintenance mode that would make the display show the error count rather than track number etc. I had several disks that could play end to end with no errors - so, how can improving the s/n of the bitstream signal improve the final analogue sound if the digital signal wasn't noisey enough to give errors in the first place?!
However - the $1,500 power cord really got my goat! I wrote an email to the dude;

Hi,

I just read your review of this power cable - did you write this for a joke or is it a paid-for "advertorial" for the company concerned?

If this power cable produced a measurable difference in sound reproduction why didn't you include some measurements (Total Harmonic Distortion, bandwidth figures, signal-to-noise etc.)? - Would you know how to measure these things?

"...like most other AC products, it will undergo changes in sound for three to five days after its application to a component. Judging the absolute merits of any AC product within this "settling period" will most often prove misleading. "

What, precisely, happens to a power cord during this "bedding in" period? For such a high sum you'd expect the manufacturer to burn the cable in for you!

What, in your view, makes this a good power cord? What was the impedance per metre? What about the capacitance? Do they make a different design for 50hz users? If it is so optimised the difference between 50 and 60Hz is surely significant.

Surely improvements and order of magnitude more significant than this could be achieved by hard-wiring the amp's mains input to the incoming mains feed from the street - even then they have merely used copper cabling for the mile back to the substation.

Regards,

Phil Crawley,

I'll let you know what comes back!
I really feel it's important to stand up against this pseudo-science and trickery.