Shopper connects to Jesus via Denon link cable There's plenty of merriment on offer down at Amazon this week, where net wags have been having a bit of a field day with the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable - modestly priced at $499.99: The Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable as seen on Amazon In case you're wondering why on God's Green Earth you'd want to pay 500 bucks for a …
"Aficionados of such gushing endorsements will, of course, be reminded of Peter Andre and Jordan's sensational album, the famous Oxo Tower and Playmobil's Security Check Point. "
And who can forget the amazon.com reviews of David Hasselhoff's meisterwork "Looking for... the Best of David Hasselhoff"? 1035 5 star reviews along the lines of, "...sounds like a herd of cows falling down a spiral staircase". Super.
Sounds like a case of the cart leading the horse. You paid a fair amount of money, so you convince yourself it's money well spent! I think the most expensive hi-fi cable I have seen, was some $7000, 5 feet copper effort from the States, more money-rich, time-poor morons raving about it too.
Can't be a wise investment though, as you get older your hearing gets worse and you hear the higher frequencies less and less clearly. One born every minute!
A $500 cable for DIGITAL signal transmission - would you Adam and Eve it?
Well done Denon for seeing the gap in the market and exploiting it.
There are other manufacturers making "superior quality" digital cables, notably HDMI, but the audacity of charging $500 for a cat-5 is to be aplauded.
Not a new idea to take the mick on things like this - i remember when ebuyer first introduced reviews on their products - the bog standard IEC lead ended up with hundreds of reviews all basically a discussion thread on why it didn't come with an instruction manual and why it wasn't linux compatible!
I am put in mind of the Golden Sound "Intelligent Chip", which is a small wafer of plastic that costs hundreds of dollars; you rest it on top of your CD player - with a disc in the tray - and it upgrades the compact disc so that it sounds better. But you can only do this ten times before the magic wears off. I believe there is an upgraded version that has a laser, or quantum dots, or something. You could probably write an article about high-end audio nonsense and I reckon that some people already have.
Can I please issue the following statement from the US Government.
"We must insist without prejudice that all purchasers of the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable must immediately cease usage and return this product in secret to "Ali-Disect-Team, Area 51b, Nevada, USA, 80085'. This product uses stolen military technology taken from a research lab at a base somewhere near Roswell, New Mexico, and has been in development since 1947. Failure to return the cable, or discussions with others about the nature of these cables will result in severe penalties including extraordinary rendition, military invasion of your country and having dinner with a Mr George W Bush.'.
"it's designed to thoroughly eliminate adverse effects from vibration"
"the insulation is made of a fluoropolymer material with superior heat resistance, weather resistance, and anti-aging properties."
Where the holy feck do they think people are going to be using this thing?
Sure as hell I'm going to need "weather resistance" in my living room! Anti-aging properties? What, my lines and wrinkles will appear reduced in just two weeks or my money back? Superior heat resistance is important, though, since I actually live in a secret lair hidden in the bowels of a volcano.
Oh man.
First of all you're not playing music though the cable your streaming data. And data is digital. The packets are either there or they're not. And if they're not there it will re-try at such speeds that you wouldn't notice. The music will still sound the same.
And if your network connection is so crappy that you ARE noticing lag or choppiness on playing back streaming audio then you need a $40 Gig switch or perhaps even a new $5 CAT5e ethernet cable from your local Best Buy.
More proof that audiophiles and computers don't mix. They're still living in an analogue world.
"Engineers can't sell and marketing people can't engineer. It takes teamwork.
(Sorry that last bit sounds so corny, but it is true)"
No. I was a software engineer, writing real-time trading systems in C and C++. More recently I worked at a certain place not a million miles from Stonehenge writing stuff I can't discuss for people I won't name.
Now I'm a freelance marketing consultant. I can go both ways, so to speak -- I still write the odd bit of Perl and PHP for my own websites and whatnot.
So there.
Denon is a high end audio company, so the price is what I would EXPECT from them.
Would I pay that much for a cable, maybe if
the conductors were 24 karat GOLD,
Each pair was shielded with a GOLD foil shield,
overall there was a GOLD foil shield,
the insulation was teflon,
the cable's capacitance was extremely low,
and the cable could pass a 1 GHZ SQUARE WAVE without any tilt.
Otherwise - forget it!!
El Reg seems to have missed this particular gem, the Amazon "Kid's Pimp Suit"
http://www.amazon.com/Kids-Pimp-Suit-Costume-Size/dp/B000QDXZZ8/
And in the great world of HiFi overcharging, nothing comes close to the "Special Black Wax" sold at £250 for 5ml, from a website which also offers red and green pens to colour in the edges of CDs. Spread the wax on your credit card then wipe it off and it improves the sound of your HiFi.
I'd give a URl, but the site in question is down ATM.
Paris, because even she wouldn't be fooled by this stuff, would she?
"You could probably write an article about high-end audio nonsense and I reckon that some people already have."
I remember reading just such an article in a radio amateur's magazine in the late 80s that was laughing at all the pseudo tech babble audio magazines write. My favourite bit was about an audio journo suggesting that cables were directional and worked better one way round than the other.
So quick everyone go pull all the ethernet cables out of your office walls and turn them round, you might get faster download speeds! :D
Well they're analogue cables, fully balanced.... so could well be of some sonic benefit, i've sat and listened to some extensive blind test demos of Nordost and Chord interconnects and painful as it may be they do make a difference, i could never justify the costs of some cables but if you can hear a difference in a blind test and can justify the expense go for it...
An RJ45 digital cable is likely to have somewhat less improvement... but hey.
IT and Audio - rarely get on....
When I saw this on Amazon I thought it was either a typo or some company trying to rip off idiots. However Denon actually has this on their web site!
I think it is time someone started selling "AK-DL1 100% compatible" cables for the discount price of $200!
http://usa.denon.com/ProductDetails/3429.asp
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