To the audiophile, this $10,000 Ethernet cable apparently makes sense

Lee Hutchinson - Feb 10, 2015 5:34 pm UTC

Pity the audiophile. The term should be an aural counterpart to "cinephile"—as that word means a person who greatly appreciates movies, so "audiophile" should refer to a person who pursues a pure music listening experience. "Audiophile" should properly refer to someone who appreciates listening to music as it was recorded and who isn't afraid of paying extra for high-quality equipment to chase after a "live" sound.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. "Audiophile" has become synonymous with "person who spends hundreds of dollars on magic rocks."

While the magic rocks might be a bit much for all but the craziest of audiophiles, one area where even mainstream audiophiles have demonstrated an unswerving desire to spend lots and lots of money is on interconnection devices—cables, to you and me. The most recent audiophile interconnect to draw fire (on Reddit, among other sites) is the AudioQuest Diamond RJ/E Ethernet cable, which at 12 meters will set you back a cool $10,000. Made from pure silver, with industrial-style RJ-45 connectors, the cables’ product page is packed with the usual pseudo-scientific garbage about how the cable will keep your audio signal completely free of electromagnetic interference and Martians—but the insanity with this particular cable goes a level deeper.

"All audio cables are directional," says the product page. "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."

Let's stop and think about this for a moment. Remember that we’re talking about an Ethernet cable here—not speaker wire. This cable is specifically meant by the manufacturer to be used to connect a NAS to an Ethernet switch, and then presumably you’d use a second Diamond cable to connect the switch to your computer. So these guys are actually claiming that the direction of the cable has some meaningful impact on how your NAS-hosted music sounds.

I don't think these guys have any idea what Ethernet is, much less any grasp of the OSI model. These kinds of claims are, to quote Gene Wolfe, "the most debased and superstitious kind of magic." What kind of person would fall for them?

Well, this guy (link courtesy of HotHardware's write-up) seems to be guzzling the snake oil by the liter, explaining that he heard a noticeable difference between standard Ethernet cables, lower-grade premium cables from AudioQuest, and the top-end Diamond cables. Apparently, the cheap consumer-grade Netgear Ethernet switch did nothing to degrade the performance of the incredibly expensive cables, either—so major props to Netgear for producing audiophile-approved Ethernet switches without even realizing it.

(I can only imagine the improvements that an audiophile reviewer would hear if they were to replace their Netgear switch with, say, a $250,000 Cisco datacenter-class switch. I mean, if you’re willing to pay $10,000 for just your cables, shouldn't you be spending just as much on your switch?)

There's more jaw-dropping copy on the Diamond Ethernet cable product page:

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.

With that, we have officially left reality and normal space-time behind and entered the audiophile Twilight Zone. That doesn't stop our snake-oil-guzzling reviewer, whose confirmation bias overflows the banks of reason. "What isn't as plain as day is why these AudioQuest Ethernet cables change the way the music sounds coming through my hi-fi. I can in fact think of more reasons why they can't make a difference," he says. "I wish I knew why but I don't. I'm not even going to hazard a guess beyond suggesting that the construction of these cables must affect the way in which data is transmitted.

"My sneaking suspicion," he concludes, "is it has something to do with time."

O-kay...

Taking potshots at "audiophools" dumb enough to believe that a $10,000 cable will somehow improve the playback of NAS-hosted music is a little bit like making fun of Kim Jong Il's golf scores—both are so obviously delusional that it's impossible to not point and laugh. In the case of the AudioQuest Ethernet cables, subjecting the things to a double-blind listening test isn't even necessary to prove that the manufacturer's claims are bunk—a basic understanding of what Ethernet is and how it works demolishes the foundational claims that the cables can possibly do anything special in the first place, and everything else crumbles once those are gone.

I don't doubt that they’re nice cables and that the plugs are sturdy, but if you buy these, you deserve to be parted from your $10,000.