Back in February, we ran a piece discussing a hyper-expensive “audiophile-grade” Ethernet cable, the Audioquest Diamond. An 8-meter version of the Audioquest Diamond costs about $4,500, and a 12-meter version will run about $10,000; proponents (like Audiostream reviewer Michael Lavorgna) say that the Audioquest Ethernet cables have a meaningful and positive impact on sound when you use them to listen to audio files hosted on a NAS.
The first objection to that claim—and the one most folks immediately made—is that digital data is digital data, and if the Ethernet cable is good enough to carry the bits at all, it’ll do so with perfect fidelity. However, audiophiles focused on these kinds of Ethernet cables contend that the cables’ greater insulation prevents electromagnetic noise from creeping up the cables, through your listening computer’s Ethernet port, and making itself heard as distortions in your sound card’s digital-to-analog converter (or DAC). Better cables, the contention goes, means less EMI and therefore better sound.
Wow. Such connector.
Credit: Lee Hutchinson
Wow. Such connector. Credit: Lee Hutchinson
After several e-mail and Twitter discussions with a bunch of different audiophiles—including Michael Lavorgna who initiated what turned out to be a very courteous exchange of e-mails—it became pretty obvious that the folks who believed in this kind of thing really believed in it. The best way to dig into it seemed to be to bring in an outside expert.
So, we called the James Randi Educational Foundation. Founded by famous illusionist and skeptic James Randi, the JREF is an organization which aims to “help people defend themselves from paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.” It also administers the “Million Dollar Challenge,” a decades-old contest that offers a prize of one million dollars to anyone able to conclusively prove the existence of “psychic, supernatural, or paranormal ability under satisfactory observations.” The JREF are experts in conducting impartial controlled tests to prove or disprove extraordinary phenomena—like the kinds of phenomena surrounding audiophile equipment.
And that’s how we found ourselves bound for Las Vegas, with a pair of Audioquest cables in our luggage and a bunch of electronics in tow. Ars will be on stage at the JREF’s The Amazing Meeting conference headlining the final day’s “Million Dollar Challenge” event. We’ll be testing a pair of Audioquest Vodka Ethernet cables (the penultimately expensive cables—I just couldn’t get Ken to OK the thousands of dollars for a pair of Diamonds) in a controlled blind listening test with a wide variety of audio samples and a wide variety of listeners. The goal will be to see if a statistically significant number of test subjects can differentiate between a Vodka cable and a cheap Amazon Basics Cat5 Ethernet cable of the same length.