I can understand perhaps why the 12 Metre+ ones that are active might be be st used one way or the other but it doesn't explain the direction arrows of the others.
Not that I'd pay £25 for one, I might pay upto a fiver though.
pity there's no whisky one there's a vodka version at £260 for 0.6 met re.
unless it's an active cable, then BS.
"All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. All signal conductors controlled for digital-audio direction in AudioQuest HDMI cables, and care is even taken to run the conductors used in the Audio Return Channel in the opposite direction to ensure the best performance for that application. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality."
In message , whisky-dave writes
From the features list regarding one of their cables:
" 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. All signal conductors controlled for digital-audio direction in AudioQuest HDMI cables, and care is even taken to run the conductors used in the Audio Return Channel in the opposite direction to ensure the best performance for that application. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality."
I'm surprised you didn't know that.
:-)
They are the best - What HI-Fi? says so - so it must be true!
I'm pretty sure that there is nothing active in their pieces of wire. All the clever stuff will be performed in the equipment to which it is attached.
The arrows probably indicate they have used unobtainium directional cable on pin 14.
+1
I'm sure this nonsense all started out when some pro cables had an arrow on them. Nothing to do with the sound or whatever, but to aid tracing them through in a big rig.
You should read the tripe on the ethernet cables:
With choice nuggets like:
"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."
How is 1000BaseT an audio cable?
and
"Solid 10% Silver Conductors :
Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications, like Ethernet audio. These signals, being such a high frequency, travel almost exclusively on the surface of the conductor. As the surface is made of high-purity silver, the performance is very close to that of a solid silver cable, but priced much closer to solid copper cable. This is an incredibly cost effective way of manufacturing very high-quality Ethernet cables."
These pesky audio signals being "such a high frequency", is obviously going to cause problems!
Notice they don't say what the other 90% of the cable is. Silver clad aluminium anyone?
Theo
Firmly in Devil's Advocate mode you understand...
...They are not talking about baseband audio over UTP, are they not referring to audio over Ethernet? In which case the signals would exhibit some skin-effect, and silver plating the conductors may have a beneficial effect, perhaps extending the maximum length of a segment by a few meters?
I do.
Yup, indeed - all the talk of router to NAS connections etc.
(I understand there are "Audio over Ethernet" protocols like AES50 for use in pro audio distribution, that don't necessarily sit on top of a TCP/IP protocol stack - but it seems unlikely that is what is being discussed here)
Ultimately they are talking about plain old data over ethernet - can't see the cable caring much what the content is. As for "squeezing"
150KB/sec of data down a 1gig ethernet link... that does not sound too onerous. ;-)Better quality cables may in theory give more headroom to cope with less than perfect terminations etc.
The actual signal bandwidth will depend on the standard of ethernet connection negotiated for the link. If both ends agree on 1000BaseT for example, then the bandwidth is fixed at 100MHz.
If you start pushing the signalling rate on CAT6 systems (say running
10GBaseT), then insertion loss of cables starts to get slightly more significant. (going to CAT7 standard cables can buy you and extra 5dB or so reduction is losses).Can't see any of that mattering in a typical domestic streaming setup...
+1
The specification for Ethernet within a HDMI cable to limits it to
100BaseT. Ethernet above this rate requires more that one pair of cables which the HDMI doesn't have.It will be the matching of the HDMI data and clock lines that will limit the performance of the cable.
The practical length limit for a HDMI cable is around 15m so no significant losses.
Yes, you need a better constructed cable for 15m which their £700 offerings provide. However, if someone is really clued up on their oxygen free, silver plated, directional cables that only Russ Andrews and AudioQuest etc. can provide to give that enhanced sound and vision experience they would also be aware that using a 15m HDMI cable that is operating at the edge of the construction technology is not the way to go. They would be using cables of 1m, or less, and leave the 15m cables to the plebs don't know any better.
Bottom line. A quick search on Amazon for a HDMI 2.0 cable of length 15m = £19 AudioQuest 15m HDMI 2.0 cable = £699.
John Rumm formulated on Tuesday :
Very amusing also try reading some of the reviews provided by some of their supposed customers - hilarious comments.
I wonder what happened to the 'oxygen free copper'?
I am obviously in the wrong business - £249 for a bit of LAN cable :oÞ
Graham. brought next idea :
Don't you start with this silliness - its data, just data. it just goes in one end, comes out the other. Any corruption or loss of the data is dealt with by resend.
Not very likely, its not the conductivity that limits length on ethernet or hdmi.
e best used one way or the other but it doesn't explain the direction arrow s of the others.
Yep I blame the hippies and the ravers for these 'high' frequencies they sh ouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
Is Russ Andrews involved at all? Brian
But in the real world you can;t have too many resends or it slows doown the data or rather the amount of data that can be sent per unit time.
Someone had a problem where there ethernet cable seemed to be very slow it turned out to be it was a home made ethernet cable where the maker didntl k now that the pairs not only had to be matched but they had to be in order t o cut down on cross-talk which corrupted the signal so the signal was rese nd. If this happens too often you get cascade failiure. Of course it does matter what cables you use for certain purposes and we ha ve a network analyers that we use in labs to detect this sort of thing the good cables we have are about £80 and we can buy the really good ones at over £1000 but for what we do they aren't really necessary except p erhaps in reasearch applications.
yup. For the avoidance of dount, the comments above were specifically about their CAT5e/6 patch leads, not the HDMI ones.
Yup, after that you need cables with active repeaters...
(or use baluns on both ends of a pair of CAT6 cables)
Bet the AQ one looks snazzier though ;-)
As soon as you get to a certain price the gold plating and "designer" multi-colour plastic moldings at the end of the cables are used to justify a cost more than a few quid. The ones on Amazon look as snazzy as the AQ offerings but the former lacks the all important directional arrows so if you plug them in the wrong way the quality of data will seriously degrade. However, £680 is a lot to pay for the printing of two arrows.
Perhaps we could buy the cheap ones, and print our own arrows. Then sell them for 3/4 the price with a claim that in a proper double blind scientific comparison, users could not tell the difference from the AQ ones costing 25% more ;-)
You mean you think that uk.d-i-y should go into business?
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