The $10k ethernet cable
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It's a good job he'd come out of nowhere - you'd have no hope of getting a Corsa towing a caravan to him.
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caravan
Jeremy Clarkson
Which immediately made me remember this:
Which I, as a Citroën fan, have to appreciate even more for it's hillarity
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Yeah but there's like 6 Novas that haven't rusted to pieces by now.
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Is that a tree mounted on the corner?
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Is that a tree mounted on the corner?
It looks like it is just on the roof. In a pot planter.
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Oh, I see it now. Still:
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Holly Necro!
Ars prepares to put “audiophile” Ethernet cables to the test in Las Vegas
We’ve partnered with James Randi's foundation to prove or debunk magic cables.
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hmmm.... i should track down that paper where someone tested those gold placed monster RCA cables against an unbent wire coathanger in a double blind listening test and could find no difference in audio quality.
or at least that's what i remember of the paper...
/me wanders off to google to search for the paper again
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Holly Necro!
Well, at least somebody linked the Amazon page of one of those cables. The reviews are a thing of beauty.
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Discontinued-Manufacturer/dp/B000I1X6PM
I knew my day was going to improve when the truck pulled up at my home
with this cable deep within. No ordinary truck, this one was Holy White,
and the gold Delivery logo sparkled like a thousand suns reflected
through shards of the purest ice formed with unadulterated water
collected at the beginning of the universe. The driver, clad in a robe
colored the softest of white, floated towards me on the cool fog of a
hundred fire extinguishers. He smiled benevolently, like a father
looking down upon his only child, and handed me a package wrapped in
gold beaten thin to the point where you could see through it. I didn't
have to sign, because the driver could see within my heart, and knew
that I was pure. Upon opening the package, an angelic choir started to
sing, and reached a crescendo as I laid this cable on my stereo system.
Instantly, my antiquated equipment transformed into components made from
the clearest diamond-semiconductor. The cable knew where to go, and
hooked itself into the correct ports without help from me - all the
while, the choir sang praises to the almighty digital god. With
trepidation, I pushed "play," and was instantly enveloped in a sound
that echoed the creation of all matter, a sound that vibrated every cell
in my body to perfection. I was instantly taken to the next plane,
where I saw the all-father. I knew with my entire soul, that all was
good in the world.But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
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They gutted one of their test cables ...
Gallery: We tear apart a $340 audiophile Ethernet cable and look inside
We bought two, and since we can't return them, we decided to destroy one and share!
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and now the results ...
The audiophile’s dilemma: strangers can’t identify $340 cables, either [Updated]
![The audiophile’s dilemma: strangers can’t identify $340 cables, either [Updated]](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/JT3A3678-640x215.jpg)
But pre-set expectations and testing questions make us wonder about our results.
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and now the results ...
The audiophile’s dilemma: strangers can’t identify $340 cables, either [Updated]
But pre-set expectations and testing questions make us wonder about our results.
Damn that statistician is absolutely retarded. He screwed up, big time.
Considering a "I don't know" to be the same as indicating the wrong cable is terrible. Let's say only 30% of the people have good enough ears to tell, then these results would be easily expected. This is something any researcher should've caught early on, not only when the crowd complains about it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't believe this cable works better one bit, but this research is junk.
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I wonder why they didn't put an oscilloscope as an audio receiver. If the results were identical for both cables, there would be no way to deny it's scam.
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But oscilloscopes don't have ears! They don't understand True Audio Quality™!!!
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They do if you replace all their knobs with wooden ones.
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Considering a "I don't know" to be the same as indicating the wrong cable is terrible.
No, it isn't. If they were testing whether the cable was actually able to improve sound quality, you'd have a point. But they were only testing whether the cable was able to produce any discernable difference. In that case selecting the wrong cable or being unable to tell the difference are both indications that there is no discernable difference.
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They are planning that. The article said so. ( not only an scope)
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@Evo said:
Considering a "I don't know" to be the same as indicating the wrong cable is terrible.
No, it isn't. If they were testing whether the cable was actually able to improve sound quality, you'd have a point. But they were only testing whether the cable was able to produce any discernable difference. In that case selecting the wrong cable or being unable to tell the difference are both indications that there is no discernable difference.
No, just because it's not discernible for most of the test subjects doesn't mean it's not for everybody.
I could imagine some/many (well hearing) people can't discern 128k and 256k mp3s. That doesn't mean nobody can. The question is if anybody can; and for that the number of test subjects who think they can must be large enough.
If you think I'm wrong, read the article. Even the statistician admitted he was wrong. Unfortunately, he only realised after the crowd noticed this. Honestly, I find this terrible; I noticed straight away, and certainly someone who is a statistician for a living should have enough experience to notice.
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No, just because it's not discernible for most of the test subjects doesn't mean it's not for everybody.I could imagine some/many (well hearing) people can't discern 128k and 256k mp3s. That doesn't mean nobody can. The question is if anybody can; and for that the number of test subjects who think they can must be large enough.
All they were testing was whether the claims made by the manufacturer were legit. The manufacturer said that the cable would improve the audio quality and that the difference would be "plain as day". I don't know about you, but the "plain as day" language implies that the majority of people should be able to tell the difference. The weak experiment was enough to disprove this claim.
The author of the article stated that if the experiment had born fruit they would have performed more rigorous experiments, but the cables flopped so badly they didn't even make it through the planned 20 subjects.
With these points in mind, the experiment they did was plenty sufficient.
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They're not saying you'll hear notes in the wrong order, but that the waveform gets spread out, and that the spread varies by frequency. A real effect (people are testing the theory of special relativity with it), but pretty much irrelevant to audio.
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but the cables flopped so badly they didn't even make it through the planned 20 subjects.
that's the problem i had with it really, 20 tests is a rediculously small sample size to me, but to stop at 6 is....
you need to complete the experiment!
I'll point out that i also don't believe the cables would have made a lick of difference but when you can't even be arsed to COMPLETE YOUR OWN EXPERIMENT i have to say "hold on a minute!"
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I'll point out that i also don't believe the cables would have made a lick of difference but when you can't even be arsed to COMPLETE YOUR OWN EXPERIMENT i have to say "hold on a minute!"
This I'll agree with.
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Considering that both ends of the cable are digital and packet-switched with error correction, and there's absolutely no possible scientific or technical reason to believe the results could possibly be discernible--
I have no problem with them ducking out early for a couple beers.
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Considering that both ends of the cable are digital and packet-switched with error correction, and there's absolutely no possible scientific or technical reason to believe the results could possibly be discernible--
i'll agree with that, or rather i'll happily take that hypothesis as true lacking contrary data
I have no problem with them ducking out early for a couple beers.
Neither would i notrmally, except they set this up as a scientific experiment. you can stop an experioment part way through because "you've already prooved the results" you need to gather all the data!if they hadn't billed it as a scientific experiment i wouldn't have cared, but they set it up as a scientific experiment, botched the setup (they shouldn't have known what the results were either as they went. it should have been double blind) and furthermore botched any hope of validity by abandoning the experiment half way through.
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On the other hand, he was in Vegas.
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On the other hand, he was in Vegas.
look if he just wanted an excuse to go to vegas on someone elses dime he could have at least been honest enough about it to spend the rest of the hour completing the test.
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look if he just wanted an excuse to go to vegas on someone elses dime he could have at least been honest enough about it to spend the rest of the hour completing the test.
OR he could have stopped after a few people and gone straight for the hookers and blow.
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Considering that both ends of the cable are digital and packet-switched with error correction,
And buffered. As long as the waveforms in regular cables aren't smeared so much bits are getting flipped (they aren't), the cables won't make a difference, even if the fancy schmacy cables do stop the smearing that goes on in regular cables (which isn't much).
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OR he could have stopped after a few people and gone straight for the hookers and blow.
in which case he shouldn't have set the experiment up as this scientifically rigorous thing.
i don't care much what he did afterwards but i do care about the lack of scientific rigor in his scientific experiment!
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(My reading position in this thread is also gone - but I hope this like have not been posted, and this is the right thread)
Expert electrical analysis: $340 audiophile cables test “marginal”
Listeners couldn't distinguish them from spec-failing, garbage-quality cables.
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I hope this like have not been posted
'd by two discominutes. I was just about to post that.They took the two cables they used for the test to a cable testing lab. Fancy cable wasn't tested for Cat 7, because apparently there isn't really a well-defined electrical standard for Cat 7, so it was tested for Cat 6a, and just barely1 passed. Cheap cable (supposedly Cat 6) failed 6 and 5e, but still didn't make any difference to the audio.
1 Passing margin for near-end cross-talk was within the tester's margin of error, so it is likely that some testers would report it as passing and some would report it as failing.
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Neither would i notrmally, except they set this up as a scientific experiment. you can stop an experioment part way through because "you've already prooved the results" you need to gather all the data!
Sometimes you can tell it's ok. If the claim they were testing was "our cable won't set your hair on fire" and it does, in fact, set the hair of the first half-dozen testers on fire, it's safe to stop the test!
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So it's not a bad cable ...
Expert electrical analysis: $340 audiophile cables test “marginal”
Listeners couldn't distinguish them from spec-failing, garbage-quality cables.
