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

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?


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