Audiophile Ethernet card! Finally!

[Simon]

I have a close friend who has a solid understanding of digital audio and a PhD candidacy in theoretical physics at UCSB, and he always believed cable thing is 24 karat bullshit, until recently he started buying so called HiFi headphone cables .

I discussed this phenomenon with a psychiatrist. She pointed me to towards the "Veblen Effect".
This effect is is described here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good.
This piece of information helped me to understand a bit what is going on in these people.
Basically they are trying - through buying super expensive products - to demonstrate how financially and technically-wise able they are thereby raising themselves above others.
Knowing this, it is clear to me that the people suffering from the Veblen Effect have a simple ego problem. Comments from any psychiatrists here are welcome, since there may be other aspects and explanations for the behaviour described.

Of course, it can of course blight the lives of the less well off but those with money to burn need something to burn it on and it gets to the point where they want it to be expensive or it can't be good enough. It's a similar thing to those who will not only buy and expensive yacht but want certain stupidly expensive things done to it like paint with diamonds in it (I am not joking I work with a guy that used to design them).

[tooki]

Can someone explain to me how in a digital system, the "noise" is at all relevant to the sound quality? Wouldn't the only effect be relevant at the final DAC stage and downstream amplifiers? Everything else prior to the DAC along the digital transport pathway (USB, ethernet, etc...) should not be susceptible to noise, that's the whole point of digital, no?

No, nobody can explain it to you, because your understanding is already correct. You are exactly right: converting a content signal into a digital abstraction is precisely to eliminate noise, such that noise on the physical, transmitted signal has no effect on the content.

[KWKolb]

What about the crosstalk over the internet interfering with the audiophileness of my streaming audio?

[KWKolb]

Bob Pease's thoughts on audiophileness.  Should be required reading for anyone with golden ears.  I also enjoyed his columns on fuzzy logic.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1278898

[Jinjuku]

You should see the fecestorm threads where I ordered some really expensive Ethernet cables from 3 - 12 feet ,with one being $699 for 3ft, and compared them to 315 foot of generic CAT5e that I put underneath a running microwave while capturing tracks into my ADC all the while switching out the cables because, well, buffering.

It never occurred to these buffoons that this is all buffered and you can yank the Ethernet cable and the sound still plays. Did sound suddenly get better or worse when I pulled the cable? Can you tell when the cable was swapped (no one could). Etc, Etc, Etc.

[SL4P]

I spent all my $$$ inheritance - then discovered the air between my system and my ears & eyes was the weak point... Sigh.

[timgiles]

So how long will it be before someone sells superconducting cables with monthly deliveries of liquid nitrogen (or similar)?

And reselling that DLink switch.... I mean..... errrr how, what, when, where? I am not even sure DLink would be happy with a 3rd party making such crazy statements about a produce that has their name on it.

[GreyWoolfe]

I spent all my $$$ inheritance - then discovered the air between my system and my ears & eyes was the weak point... Sigh.

See?  You just need to buy audiophile quality air.  Nothing to it.  You just need another inheritance to pay for it.

[SL4P]

So how long will it be before someone sells superconducting cables with monthly deliveries of liquid nitrogen (or similar)?

You mean you're not getting weekly Nitrogen refills?
I though that was a given!

[CJay]

I spent all my $$$ inheritance - then discovered the air between my system and my ears & eyes was the weak point... Sigh.

See?  You just need to buy audiophile quality air.  Nothing to it.  You just need another inheritance to pay for it.

Common misconception, it's really not expensive.

The main reason non audiophile air lowers the quality of the listening experience is because non audiophile oxygen rich air supports humidity, audiophile air is entirely composed of 'dry' gases.

Replacing the poor quality oxygen and humidity rich atmosphere in the listening room with a pure nitrogen atmosphere guarantees an almost 100% reduction in listener complaints after a short audition.

[GreyWoolfe]

I spent all my $$$ inheritance - then discovered the air between my system and my ears & eyes was the weak point... Sigh.

See?  You just need to buy audiophile quality air.  Nothing to it.  You just need another inheritance to pay for it.

Common misconception, it's really not expensive.

The main reason non audiophile air lowers the quality of the listening experience is because non audiophile oxygen rich air supports humidity, audiophile air is entirely composed of 'dry' gases.

Replacing the poor quality oxygen and humidity rich atmosphere in the listening room with a pure nitrogen atmosphere guarantees an almost 100% reduction in listener complaints after a short audition.

 

[SL4P]

My Labrador ("SO₂") sometimes farts when he's in my listening area, should I be concerned about the contamination of the listening environment and pure audiophool atmosphere?

The smell doesn't really disturb me, as the impedance matched gas-mask I bought earlier this year solves that.  But, sometimes the glass eyepieces rattle with very low frequencies.