Audioquest $340 Ethernet cable teardown.

Did a search couldn't find any recent note on this.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...40-audiophile-ethernet-cable-and-look-inside/

Exec Summary -

Looks to be about $25 worth of materials...including masking tape!

 

Arstechnica, and sites like them (I'm thinking NWAVGuy for one) are needed in this hobby to put out information the consumer doesn't have easy access to. Good post!

 

Well being primarily an IT guy I really get annoyed seeing Hi-Fi companies re-selling essentially basic $10 computer parts for $1000 to unsuspecting audiophiles in their late 50-60's who haven't a clue.

I often scan their websites and spot a bit of kit with a different label on it that I know costs just $50 on Amazon.

Seen quite a few 'audiophile' CD and DVD players that when you tear them open have a $10 PC DVD drive in them doing 98% of the work. I don't think the hi-fi companies effort constitutes 98% of the final cost however.

Kind of why I stopped buying 'high-end' hi-fi gear 15+ years ago. I could see what was coming.

 

Stop using reason and logic daglesj. You have just not been trained to "hear" the difference and "feel" the difference. Everyone knows too that a 60 year old man has better hearing than a 30 which is why they buy those $340 cables, you just need a few more years under your belt and you'll be hearing that audio nirvana. Or could be they just have a ton of disposable money after a lifetime of accumulating.

USB and ethernet cables are one of the biggest scams out there. It's a digital signal. Bit for bit perfect. It's the components on either end of that signal, not that cable, that has the effect of change to the sound.

 

"Bit for bit perfect" is a narrow view of what is really going on with computer audio. Full disclosure - my USB cable was $44 from eBay (Supra) and if I need a network cable to transmit audio I'll just make it using the same parts I wired the rest of the house with - BUT, if "bit for bit perfect" were the end of the story, then tell me how taking a "throw-in" USB cable out of my system and replacing it with the Supra and a USB Regen finally brought my perceived sound quality up to the level of my old Optical setup? I mean, it's all just 1's and 0's right? If that were actually the case, why would we have highend streamers like Aurender and dCS, why wouldn't we just use our iPhone bluetooth to send out to our system? It's all just 1's and 0's right?

If you disagree with the premise - fine. $340 network cables are absolutely stupid IMO. I will not say that a "better" network cable absolutely cannot affect sound quality but I've no interest in trying nor do I have any dog in this race. But throwing out the "it's just bit perfect" angle is distilling the process down much farther than it should be. In the analog world, you would be burned at the stake for saying all cartridges and stylii sound the same. Like it or not, digital is not so simple as "plug this end in here and plug that end in there and voila, (bit)perfect sound!"

Digital can be as tedious to monkey with as a turntable. See my other thread on the front page for that story

 

I think only the truest believers would disagree with you. Agreeing that this is true, how can one believe what a company like that says about their other products?

 

In case no one noticed - this teardown is part one of a series where a supposed group of trained listeners are being asked to blindly A/B the expensive network cable vs a standard one. The test is done but Ars is still finishing up the copy and accompanying video of the testing.

 

All the usb or ethernet cable is doing is acting as a "pipe" to transmit the data from one end to the other. It's the digital hardware on either end.

As for why does one sound different to you? There are some really cheap poorly constructed cables from China out there. Maybe the cable was damaged, poorly assembled, etc. etc. Pretty much anything you use in a datacenter environment should be fine. I push terabytes on end through cables , nicely constructed , but nothing like the boutique cabled sold to "audiophiles" without issue. I use power cables that are shielded data center grade, once again nothing the size of a garden hose, just stuff from EMC and HP. Trash basically that would have been thrown out if I didn't snag them.

 

This is exactly what i was thinking when I read what you're responding to here. I 100% believe that digital cables will make a difference specific to performing within specification, so if the better cable got you to bit-perfect while the other one wasn't doing that (and thus likely not performing to spec), it's perfectly reasonable to see a difference. Given that any modern USB spec should allow for bit-perfect audio, the threshold after which there is no improvement is a very low and inexpensive one.

 

Not trying to be argumentative or defensive but, in a digital transmission, what part of a cable could be distressed/broken that would result in 99.9% of the signal arriving (e.g. music still sounds very good, but is observed to be better after a cable change) rather than the signal just breaking down entirely and the transmission being a failure? And lastly, we seem to be saying that you can have a less than perfect cable but still receive a signal, but there is a hard stop at "bit perfect" whereby no amount of work done to improve the cable (impedance, shielding) will produce better results? That seems like an awfully convenient narrative.

I did see one theory from a person on another forum who posited that what *might* be going on when cables are swapped out in the digital space and subsequent improvements are perceived is that it could be related to signal integrity. If more of the signal arrives at the destination in perfect form, less processing is needed on the receiving end to "fix" the signal back to what I assume would be a bit-perfect state. And that extra processing is what is heard as a (lack of) perceived sound quality.

Either way, I am no electrical engineer by any stretch but I do find this topic fascinating and I appreciate the civil debate

 

Lets forget the 'cable sound' debate.

Do people expect masking tape in a $340 'specialist' product?

Do people think this cable justifies the $340 cost?

They are the initial questions really.

 

Hi there Todd. The most likely culprit in a defective cable is your connectors at either end. How well terminated the wiring is to them. The wire used itself is more of a secondary concern, not talking composition but just the general quality of the metal used coating. Maybe a super cheap wire would not have an even coating or even be missing some. It would be very clear and evident of a failing or poor quality that was to the point of causing thousands of packets being thrown out.

Yes, you can have a less expensive, less than perfect/expensive/over the top quality cable and have that bit perfect carrying of the signal. I'm talking super cheap 50 cent type cable.

If you are friendly with any of your network or desktop guys (or gals) at work, see if you can just snag a normal network cable and try it out at home. It's only your time and being a bit friendly to your IT staff, I'm sure they will hook you up.

Even a cable that is dropping a few packets is going to not going to be able to be noticed. There's way too much data being pushed to be noticed.

 

PT Barnum and The Wizzard of Oz. Pay no attention to the man......

The truth is often sad.

It still seems to be it is what is done with the "bits" after they have traveled the cable that is the issue. Ram buffer and restreaming with a super-stable clock seems to be very important.

Barry Diament of Sound Keeper Recordings has some interesting reading on his blog about CD manufacturing houses and how discs from each sound different. Very interesting to me.

We seem to hear often that everything matters, but at times seem to be tricked into thinking that certain products offer solutions to problems that may not exist. The audiophile dilemma for sure.

 

I was thinking of bad connections and/or terrible shielding causing a hum or bad static that isn't even part of the data being played back. Yeah, it's far fetched, but you see some crazy stuff.

 

Masking tape? Eh, considering you can find some very "unexotic" materials in VERY exotic, bespoke vehicles - that wouldn't bother me. I'd probably cast a skewed eye at it but then just go on about my business. That is, if I were... um... eccentric enough to justify a $340 network cable. No $340 network cable is price-justified. They mention in the article the terminations are about $11/each (9 EUR, I'm just estimating dollars) so that's $22, then you have $0.50 worth of wire - I don't care if it's lined with unicorn hair, that small of gauge and that few wires just isn't expensive, even if it were pure silver (dumb) - and some fancy foil shielding and a jacket that can be had for a couple of dollars at most.

So no, I don't see it. IF they spent a ton of money on a machine that weaves in the sheilding I could see that cost making up part of the cable cost but I can't believe these things are flying off the shelf so fast that they need to be built by a machine. I'd think these are handmade and since I've made hundreds of CAT5e cables in my day, that doesn't take more than 5 minutes for a trained person, less even for people who only do that task. Now, the shielding is going to take some time to braid in, but if that takes more than an hour to do? I'm dubious. So let's just go with an astronomical rate of $100/hr - that makes the part cost around $125. This is really, REALLY reaching to try and justify a $340 patch cord.

$340 buys a lot of bourbon and even more music.

 

I admit I was kind of surprised at how "well made" the cable is. They didn't just take regular STP and put snakeskin over it the way I expected them to. The issue, of course, is that no aspect of TCP/IP requires such an animal, and if there was an application for a cable like this it wouldn't be in one's home, it would be in some industrial application.

I've actually been curious about something, which is if shielded twisted pair cable is still commonly used in such high-noise applications, or if advances higher up the network stack have made it less relevant?

 

Isn't everyone who's everyone using fiber now when it comes to moving the amount of data the higher bandwidth ethernet cables are rated for anyway?

 

Let's be clear -- we 'audiophiles' aren't paying a markup on the bill-of-material. We are paying for a particular voicing. A bit more art than science, and we have to be comfy with that.

 

I think the issue is whether or not there is such a thing as digital voicing. Any "voicing" would come from the DAC.

 

"audiophile" Ethernet cables are low hanging fruit for mockery.

The only real market for those cables are people who don't understand Ethernet yet want to be sure that all the cables in their system are "audiophile grade". Audioquest will gleefully take their money.

I will admit, they're prettier than these:


...but are they measurably better?

 

Right, so when you get Van Damme and not Van Gogh, you're peeved?

Thing is, you need the science in afraid.

 

It's one thing to debate if an spdif or usb cable is "voicing" something, but the idea that a network cable between your computer and router can influence the sound of music is straight up preying on people who have been convinced to believe every possible wire can have a "sound".

I mean heck, if we can determine that a packet-switching network lends a "sound" to music, is running an old IBM token-ring network like using a refurbished Garrard 301? Will we one day hear Art Dudley talk about how some audiophiles just feel Novell protocols had a better flow and sense of timing?

 

I took the "voicing" post as sarcasm...

 

These look pretty too - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vandesail®-Computer-Networking-Professional-1-meter-Black/dp/B00M7UAILC/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1437751365&sr=1-2&keywords=ethernet

Not quite as pricey either. Plus they have a 'Van' in the name so must be pucker!

 

AppleLink over BNC or GTFO.