Just when you've thought you've heard everything....
These guys should go public. There's probably some AERP, EXPH, EFFC, PNTV, EIGH, SPNG, PTOI and other pinky players that would buy their stock...
I facepalmed so hard, my engineering diploma fell from its hook on the wall behind me.
Audiophiles have been known to spend big money on products that seem a bit out there to the average user. For instance, they will spend thousands of dollars on amplifiers with old school vacuum tubes when the non-audiophile can get an amp for a fraction of that price. A new audiophile product has landed and this time it's an insanely expensive Cat-6 Ethernet cable.
The selling point for this Cat-6 cable appears to be a notion that your junky network cables that came with your WiFi router are killing the sound quality of your MP3s. This cable promises to fix that for the steep price of about $10,500. The cable is made by a company called AudioQuest.
The RJ-45 connectors on each end of the cable aren't normal plastic, they are made from silver. Apparently, some puffery from the company making the cable claims the cables are directional. The cables also have lots of insulation promising to generate an electrostatic field.
That field claims to reduce energy storage and non-linear time delays to a minimum. Other audiophile brands have been making expensive cables aimed at audiophiles for years that have dubious benefits. I'm curious if this cable actually delivers benefits over cheap cables. What do you think?
DiamondOver the past several years there’s been a revolution in the way people store, distribute, and access digital media (in real time), including photos, movies, and, of course, music. No longer dependent on physical media, our media is often data that’s moved from multiple devices to multiple locations. For audio applications and protocols, audio over Ethernet offers the virtues of high-speed, low time delay (latency), significant distance capability (328 feet without an active booster or repeater), and extremely low-jitter, bit-perfect communication. Who wouldn’t want all of these things?
SOLID 100% PERFECT-SURFACE SILVER (PSS) CONDUCTORS: 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.
SOLID HIGH-DENSITY POLYETHYLENE INSULATION: 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.
DIELECTRIC-BIAS SYSTEM (DBS, US Pat #s 7,126,055 & 7,872,195 B1): All insulation slows down the signal on the conductor inside. When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio. AudioQuest’s DBS creates a strong, stable electrostatic field which saturates and polarizes (organizes) the molecules of the insulation. This minimizes both energy storage in the insulation and the multiple nonlinear time-delays that occur. Sound appears from a surprisingly black background with unexpected detail and dynamic contrast. The DBS battery packs will last for years. A test button and LED allow for the occasional battery check.
CARBON-BASED 3-LAYER NOISE-DISSIPATION SYSTEM (NDS): 100% shield coverage is easy. Preventing captured RF Interference from modulating the equipment’s ground reference requires AQ’s Noise-Dissipation System. Metal and Carbon-Loaded synthetics prevent most RFI from reaching the equipment’s ground plane.
TERMINATIONS: Precision-made low-loss ultra-wide bandwidth connectors with 100% shield coverage and strain relief.
HIGH-SPEED DATA CAPACITY: The Cat 7 cable standard has been created to allow 10- Gigabit Ethernet over 100 m of copper cabling.
DIRECTIONALITY: 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.
audioquest.com |
