when did monster buy denon. is there a coat hanger test for this too?

A fool and his money are soon parted.

You know someone who doesn't know a thing about computers will see this and probably go buy it. I know if I didn't buy all the cables and components for my parents they would have no clue if this made a difference or not.

Hey - I have one of these and you wouldn't believe how much crisper and clearer Consumerist.com loads up. It's AMAZING!

Ha Ha. My ethernet cable is bette than your ethernet cable.

Beyond that this cable is worthless.

Of course anyone that doesn't TRULY APPRECIATE high spectrum core performance networking wouldn't understand. I also own a Neo Geo.

I wish I had the lack of ethics to get into the high-end cable business.

I don't see Ethernet, Cat6 or anything on that description. Is it really wired as an ethernet cable or does it just just that 8P8C plug on both ends?

Because of how you can find compatible cables and jacks pretty much everywhere I've used that format for my own electronics projects when I need > 2 and <= 8 conductor cable.

I love my Denon AV receivers...but honestly...that's absurd. Their receivers are well priced but this is just silly.

Pure adulterated fluff. I never, ever seen outrageous prices outside of what monster cable asked for their junk.
Cat-5/6 is speced using unshielded pairs, nothing fancy. I agree copper is copper, as long as the quality control is high. I run resistance checks on each pair on my 1000' boxes before I take it to the checkout counter. If any of the pairs show higher than usual values than the length its cut for, that box goes to the manager for them to deal with it.

The only time shielded cabling is used if it is in a environment that is heavy with RFI or high EM radiation that can interfere with signal quality. That crap is pricey and usually not worth the cost and the time to buy and make runs with it.

I'm not saying it's worth the price, but this is not intended to be used as a networking cable. It's intended to be used to connect Denon's DVD players with their receivers. Like this one here:

[usa.denon.com]

Do you or don't you want to impress everyone with your expensive, tasteful Ethernet cables? Sure, you laugh now, but you'll be the ones embarassed when that hot babe you bring back to the apartment sees the best you can do is to connect your bangin' rig with a $10 cable from Radio Shack. Might as well fix your sofa with duct tape while you're at it, Mr. Smooth.

These are designed for the audio enthusiast. I am not one, but some of the features do seem like it would be helpful if you were using this for audio equipment. However, to justify the $499 price tax when the thing probably cost $.49 to make is a more difficult challenge.

Apparently they didn't use "attention to detail" by "empoying" a proofreader in the copy-editing process.

Not sure if everyone is picking up that these are being sold for audio equipment, not for computers/networking.

In any event, that explains why they're trying to sell them for so much. Audiophile equipment seems to be where companies think people will pay out the nose for things that most of us know not to pay more than $1.99 for.

So, just to recap, these are being sold as high-end AUDIO cables, not network cables. There's still no excuse for it, but that's the reasoning.

$499 and it still comes with a POS plastic plug with the tab that's sure to crack and break off.

Who listens to audio through their ethernet (that's not being streamed online and sounds crappy anyway)? Anyone? Anyone?

@GMFish: Doesn't matter, ethernet is ethernet. There's not going to be signal degredation over the 5 feet of ethernet if you buy DECENT cable (for like $15).

@Jesse: Audio enthusiast? More like designed for the audio enthusiast with way too much money and no knowledge of wiring.

@CajunGuy: I understand that's the reasoning, but it seems almost criminal to try to sell your basic wiring for $500. They did a test with monster HDMI cables and a coat hanger and found "videophiles" could not tell the difference.

The who point of digital is error and noise mitigation. If the receiver remains locked to the bit stream, you get a perfect signal, regardless of the quality of the cable.

That being said, if the consumer is too dumb to know this, its their own fault, consider it a idiot tax.

If your going to make a several hundred dollar purchase on a cable, you owe it to yourself to do some research.

Caveat Emptor.

DENON. We'll see your series of tubes, and raise you a catheter.

Essentially what this is, is a gigabit ethernet cable according to the Denon Link specification. Instead of using HDMI, they're using cat6 to transfer audio between Denon components. But to me, even if you were to send uncompressed 7.1 PCM over a wire, you wouldn't need to be in the gigabit range to do this?

Geeze and you thought those $100 Monster HDMI cables were pure rip offs. At least the HDMI cables were doing video and audio. This is a $500 cable that ONLY does audio between 2 Denon components.

@Nighthawke:

Resistance checks wont be very useful unless you get a very high resistance. You'd have to do and impedance check at the operating frequency.

I foresee many wives being jailed for stabbing their husbands in the near future.

@GMFish:

I can't tell for sure, but glancing at the pin-out colors it sure *looks* like it's for ethernet.

In for two!

Now does this Cat 7 Cable (so futuristic) help the Display my Bit Torrents on your receiver in 1440p. This thing must be rated in the Google-hertz.

@amodlin: Oh, I agree that it's criminal...and a bit stupid if the consumer actually buys them. I was just trying to get the point out that they weren't being sold for networking purposes, and that they entire reason they're being sold for so much is simply that they're "audiophile" cables...as if there's such a thing for a DIGITAL signal.

So what happens when you plug this into a port, either wall, or router/modem, that doesn't have the high quality super duper copper? Does it magically make all the copper that is connected to it awesome? Otherwise you get bottled necked right away. LAME

The question is. Is there someone out there stupid enough to pay $499 for this cable?

When that cable shows up at my house in a couple days, I'm going to run it in front of my audio rack so I can show commoners how much money I have.

You don't buy that cable and leave it behind gathering dust. You buy it for status.

@Applekid: It looks like it's probably just using the connectors. Unless we take one apart, we won't know if the wires are hookedup in the right pattern.

amodlin: "Doesn't matter, ethernet is ethernet."

Look, I never said it was worth the price. And fact I specifically said the opposite. And I believe in my hears of heart that this is a scam. However, the headline is misleading because it is not sold as an overpriced networking cable. It is sold as an overpriced audio cable.

@GMFish: It may be for their devices and not for networking, but if their devices are transmitting a digital signal, the crappiest cable would work just fine. So they are still stealing people's money by lying about the extra quality a 500 dollar cable brings. Digital is either on or off. Working or not working.

So I should cancel my order then? Is that what everyone is saying?

Wow, this new cable really makes Gawker more danceable.

You can actually hear the ones and zeros with this cable!

@backbroken: No No. Just you'll need to buy a new NIC card, and re-run the whole world with AK-DL1. If thats plausible for you, I say go for it man.

That looks like a $499 challenge to my cable-chewing cat.

Hey - 'signal direction markings' what a cool feature. I always wanted to know which direction my data was flowing...

Hmmm... lets see - it that data flowing in or out?? I just can't tell with my cheap cables. Makes it so difficult to tell whether I'm sending an email or receiving one from someone else...

@headhot: Exactly. Since it's "digital" according to them, any signal loss should be taken care of by error correcting codes or error detecting codes with retransmission. This is pure ripoff BS, in my opinion, regardless of whether it's for audio or not. I think it's bordering on fraud for them to say it will "bring out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction". That might be true if we were talking about an analog signal over speaker wire or something, but it's absolutely not if it's digital. Either the digital signal gets through intact, or it doesn't.

@Veeber: And if you spend $30 on a crimper, a few feet of Cat6 from Home Depot, and a bag of RJ45 cable ends, you can pin it out yourself to match Denon's spec.

Looking at the diagram they have on the site, the pin outs ARE the same as a ethernet cable. What would be the point of reinventing the wheel, that would require thought to make that extra $497 on this cable....

[www.usa.denon.com]

@johnva: "error correcting codes or error detecting codes with retransmission"

I totally worked on litigation over patents for this. I think I'm still scarred. It did score me a date with a hot engineering grad student, though, since I was the only non-engineer he'd ever met who knew wtf he was talking about when he talked about his area of study.

If PT Barnum was still alive, he'd be giving audiophile shows town-to-town :^))

Here is an exploded diagram from the vendor's site: [www.usa.denon.com]

As you can see by the wire colors, it's cabled using the 568-B standard. And looking closely at the connectors, I don't think it's crimped as a crossover either. Ergo, this is your standard $2 Ethernet patch cable.

I emailed them to ask how they sleep at night selling crap like this and if they were taking lessons from Monster....I will let you know the response.

Thanks ShortBus....I already said that.

Denon is a great brand for audio components, no doubt at all. Its harder (not impossible) to compare them with Monster for that reason....Denon has a long history of having good product lines. Some of their products are more expensive because the product is Denon...no surprise there, since some names do command a premium over others. But this is absurd, regardless of what you're connecting with it. DVD players, network connections, etc, will all work just fine with a decent quality Cat6, or Cat5e on the high side, but neither will run you $500. Now, if they were selling it for $20 or so, depending on the run, that would be acceptable, and they would still be profiting off of it by a good margin.

Their cable has the signal direction marking because their copper only conducts one way. If you reverse the cable direction, you get no connections. No?

Wow ...

So how short of a run does it have to be before we can't "hear the difference."

www.monoprice.com FTW!