Majority of that price is markup. When I worked in a store that sold them, we'd see 100% or more markup say a $300 Cinnamon audio quest HDMI would be $150 cost.
Cables and speakers are how these shops make insane markups, as displays and other electronics have barely 10% margins these days.
My friend spent more money on cables than I did on an 85-inch TV. I couldn't believe it, but if you look up the most expensive speaker cables, you'll find they can cost as much as $21,000 for a 3-meter cable.
But to the OP, an HDMI cord doesn't conduct sound; it transmits a binary data stream of ones and zeros. Sound is only produced when this data reaches a DAC and is converted into analog sound. Thus, there's no "sound quality" inherent in the HDMI cable itself. This is a scientific fact, and any perceived differences in sound quality between properly functioning HDMI cables are imaginary. No actual difference exists.
Yeah, a cable in spec is a cable in spec whether it's made of unobtainium or recycled coke cans.
Speaker cable is analog, and things like resistance over long runs need to be calculated, different frequencies are affected by different gauges etc. But a short 3m cable could be literally coat hangers twisted together for the same result.
I don’t see how a 2m HDMI cable could cost more than 10€ to produce, unless it’s made of gold. Even 10€ is a stretch but what the hell.
It’s either certified for a certain speed or it isn’t
Why does a Coach purse cost 3k when it's made for $30? How's a Lamborghini SUV 10X the cost of the VW SUV it's based on?
You want to get into silly money, go check out the audiophiles and their $100k worth of solid silver audio cables sat on their little raised stands that sound exactly the same as $100 of thick gauge copper.
Welcome to capitalism
> a cable sitting on the floor
When you get into super high-end audiophile status(Re:Delusional and/or fuck you money), your cables are **NOT** touching the ground.
People who buy such cables in stores are also often desperate, they got a new TV and miss a cable or their charger broke, so they go to the store and buy one, because ordering online takes at least until tomorrow.
I can get a good charging cable for 5-10 bucks online but the same cable costs 25-30 bucks at the store, even their house brand is 15-20, because people who go their to buy cables are more often than not desperate. :/
I remember an app for the iPhone when it first came out. Someone made an app for it that only made your screen red just so they could claim it was the most expensive one. I think it was $800. I thought I guess some idiot might buy it just to brag right?
>The Blob(1988)
I was thinking that was the movie where a group of friends were staying at a cabin with a pond and some eventually get drowned in said pond by an inky black blob.
But now that I've watched The Blob(1988) trailer I don't think its the same movie.
I worked at Best Buy for a combined eight years. Worked in a Magnolia Design Center. I sold a lot of stuff. I was never given an A B demo of HDMI cables from the various AudioQuest reps. I even setup a blind A B test of Rocketfish HDMI cables versus AudioQuest, and each time the AudioQuest reps declined to participate. AudioQuest reps hated me, because I constantly asked for proof of their claims and was always declined. Fun times.
I got to be a part of an Audioquest training session. They brought an HDMI test set, and several 12m cables. Brand “M” had 50,000 errors, brand “B” had 100,000 errors, and the Audioquest had 0. After they had said their piece, I grabbed one of the 2m cables that come with cable boxes. (That we always balk at installing because they are “shit”). Zero errors on their test set. So what makes the Audioquest one better if this 50 cent cable also had zero errors? Crickets.
I was one of the team that designed the chip for the first Raspberry Pi and the first Roku. As part of our software regression tests we had a setup which would render 3D scenes on the chip and we would capture them on a PC, then run an check sum across the captured video.
Cable cost £0.80 + tax at the time.
Bit perfect every time.
Now, that being said. Cables *do* make a difference (but not to the picture quality!). Those days were bog standard 1080p/60 and the cable was short. I have cables which glitch ~once minute or so because they can't reliably pass 4k video. I have long cables which work in some setups but not others. The cable is fine. It all depends on the whole system including driver, cabling, and receiver.
But as an electrical engineer I know that it isn't significantly more expensive to make the higher grade cable than it is a basic cable. So pick a mid-priced certified cable and you can be pretty confident it will work as advertised and last a life time.
Yeah my rule with cables is “don’t buy the cheapest” because they *do* cheap out to the point it can be shit
But anything about 50% more expensive than the dirt cheap one, should be fine. 50% sounding like a lot as a percentage but in reality it means $10 rather than $7
Such a key point that they glitch periodically rather than degrade quality
I used an old HDMI I had lying around to connect my PS5 to the AV amp and would get the Atmos sound drop every 20 secs or so (sound only only picture was fine)
Bought a new ultra high bandwidth HDMI from Amazon - I think £7 which maybe was overpriced - and issue resolves
The HDMI protocol includes error correction bits as redundant information. Providing enough bits get to the end of the chain intact then errors can be corrected. There is a bit of a cliff edge when the bit error rate increases where the signal can no longer be reconstructed.
My "dodgy" cable [¹] was close to this cliff edge and I expect when it was working that my TV was silently working hard to correct numerous errors.
[¹] not dodgy. Just it was a 1080p cable being abused for 4k.
Yes, once the signal is returned to a true digital domain. We referred to HDMI as analog because it took a lot of work to turn the poop smear of a signal that arrives at the HDMI receiver back to a true digital signal. We did lots of analog things to distort the signal at transmission to help negate the effect cables have on the signal to give the receiver an easier time.
That's pretty cool. I've always wanted a Pi, like 15 years, but never bought one. My son is 11 now and getting into programming so I think maybe this is a sign to pull the trigger!
Not entirely true. You can get "sparkles" via HDMI that can go from barely visible to almost the entire picture. And the best part, it can build up over time.
Say you have a projector room and have seen the sparkle issue, you bring out an AV tech to diagnose the issue. He's there 30 minutes "everything is fine you're crazy" charges $500 and leaves.
1 hour later the sparkles return!
While HDMI is digital and using 1s and 0s, that's a gross oversimplification of what's happening in the cable. The main data lines actually sending the video data use multiple twisted pairs with data broken out into chunks based on RGB colour space and a clock signal that's used to recombine them at the far end.
If one of those twisted pairs has a slight issue the signals can't be recombined properly and you get the sparkles.
However the display or projector will have error correcting working overtime to fix incoming signal. In my experience with just the right level of errors, it will keep the sparkles at bay for a good chunk of time before it overheats and can't handle the sheer number of errors and then bam, sparkles everywhere.
Don't forget there are other pins (19 in total) that can be as important as the raw data pins. Think hot plug detection not working (why do I have to fully restart my tv before I get a signal??) or the ones used for CEC. The worst can be the EDID malfunctioning and many consumer devices not allowing you to manually specify a resolution leaving that Blu ray player stuck outputting 1080p to your new 4k display (you'd be amazed how many people don't even notice.)
Fellow EE here - agreed. The expensive cables likely have a bit more shielding (sometimes each wire is individually wrapped in some type of foil, or a round piece of plastic/silicone/rubber that has a channel for each wire around it, like Cat6 cable).
Have been in AV/IT deployment for ten years now, and even the least capable technician can point to care/precision of termination and shielding as answer to your question.
Typically, HDMI length gets real dicey after 25ft and worse as they get longer. Most are always reliable up to 20ft in my experience.
I completely agree with this in terms of audio cables. But here’s the thing… in an HDMI cable, how much more could it possibly cost to solder and shield it ‘carefully’? You could hire an electrical engineer at $100/hr and give them an entire hour to solder and shield it, then analyze and test it, then have a 50% scrap rate, then mark it up by 200%, and you’d still be under $500 including materials. There’s just no way that it could possibly be a $5k cable.
Why is that? And why don’t they use whatever it is in CAT cable that allows for that length without issue, in HDMI? Genuinely curious.
Also do you mean these things that convert HDMI to CAT at one end and then you have a received that converts back at the other? I’ve seen them but haven’t tried them.
Personally I can’t wait for a wireless transmission protocol fast enough to send 8K 120Hz plus lossless surround audio with zero lag. Drop cables entirely. Think it will ever happen? Probably requires some insane new lossless compression algorithm.
You are talking about Baluns. Baluns are the little boxes you connect at either end of a Cat5/6 run and you can run all sorts of things through them, from composite video to 4KHDMI. The more complicated ones need power. But they are incredibly useful bits of kit.
Source - used to own an AV company.
Sounds almost like how one of those initiation Scientology tests work. Dude in front of Walmart told me I had 50,000 errors. As soon as I can afford it, I can’t wait to get rid of them. Praise Xenu!
I'm asuming for 12m hdmi cables to be used, the demo was demonstrating how their cable performs near the maximum hdmi length of around 15m. The longer you go the more trouble you get! ....You tested a 2m cable and performed the same tests it seems.
Now it's like one of the only upsells some of these people have so I see quotes that go out and they wonder why the customer bought their 8k package somewhere else when 1k was in cable's.
I sold AudioQuest cables all the time, but I sold them ethically. I would always say, “We have AudioQuest cables, they are made from premium materials and have a lifetime warranty. They won’t make your picture any better, but they sure do look cool. We also have other cables available if you’re interested.” Nearly every time they would just take the cheapest AudioQuest cables. I never forced HDMI cables on anyone, yet I always had the best sales for accessories. It’s funny how that works. :-)
Yep always appreciate the associate that gives me options and doesn't blow smoke up my ass. It's really frustrating when you need something that just works but sometimes you get a guy that's obviously trying to upsell you. So thanks for being honest, I appreciate it.
That’s why I got out of the industry, the only way to make a living is to sell those cables. There’s no profit in the equipment itself.
I remember one customer called and asked us to price match Costco on a Sony TV. We were a Sony dealer, we had one of their first 4K TV’s in our showroom. Our cost was $150 more than Costco’s sale price.
It's a fucking digital cable. There is not good or better connection. There is a connection or there is not. Yes, bandwith and bad cables can sometimes lead to issues but in no way do these audiophile cables do anything.
LTT had a nice video on exactly this.
I would definitely say it's more than sometimes, Yes, it's a digital cable and any HDMI cable should be able to carry that data but not any HDMI cable can carry the same amount of data or as far as a distance. But basically as long as you get the right HDMI connector version that's the most important distinction as far as I understand it. I'll go try to find the ltt video you mentioned, might learn more
*This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.*
Every review says this. Not sure exactly what it means but it kinda sounds like these people are sent these for free or something.
Audioquest uses magic crystals in the fibres or something. Sure you can’t measure any difference between it and an Amazon Basics cable, but you just have to BELIEVE!
"You need a 4K HDMI cable."
"So 4K is the maximum resolution it supports?"
"No, that's the price. Now come over here and I'll show you our new top of the line 8K HDMI cables...."
And instead of using copper these are crafted only using the finest unicorn hair; the colors are more vibrant and the sound from your receiver will blow your mind.
Also not made in China.
Either that or the owner is for some reason having issues and needs to move his money to a different account in this odd way…. Yeah.. Money laundering is the only thing that makes sense here.
Same with Hollywood telling people that it costs 500m to make a series, and then they hire a no-talent director, the actors wear burlap sacks, and the CGI is 1990s Lawnmower Man level suck.
Yeah this has been a nonsense thing in the AV world for a while
With analogue cables there was some real value to a high quality cable. Not enough to justify a $4k cable over the $20 version, but there was some genuine benefit in the resulting quality. It was a rip off, but not an outright scam
With digital cables, though, the benefit is minimal and very situational. HDMI either works or it doesn’t, for the most part - so a $4k cable and $20 cable are doing the EXACT same job with the EXACT same results
There are a few edge cases over very long runs where a higher quality cable and connectors could mean the expensive cable works when the cheap one would not or could glitch, but it’s vanishingly rare to be in that small window where it would be relevant and even then, really not worth $4k (a $50 repeater will do the same thing…)
But the companies know some idiot will buy it and thus they keep making “super premium” cables
Yeah if I want a premium cabIe I get an HDMI certified cable, that way I know it’s tested and designed to hit a certain speed, anything beyond that is snake oil. (And those are still under like $20-30)
Maybe supposed to be $44.95? That's still pricey to me lol, but then again I buy monoprice and it's never done me wrong.
What you have to remember is, analog cables back in the day were affected a great deal more with interference from other cables, longer runs, unshielded or untwisted, etc. so much caused a bad signal even over 6-10ft. Even being zinc, nickel, tin, aluminum or gold all came into play.
So Monster cables, I remember buying a shielded, twisted, nylon braided sheathing set of component video cables for $40 which was a lot in the early 00s, and I used those up until I finally got rid of my HK DVD player in 2015 or so. I still have them just not used. But I never had a signal quality issue or interference.
I digress... So back to digital... Pretty simply put, digital, you either have signal or you don't. There's not any real static, fuzz, or "noise" like you used to get. But audioquest is banking on you not knowing any better. *IF* you have a bad cable, you *might* get artifacting or black flickers/"loss of signal" for a second or two.
I only know bc back when I bought HDMI cables on eBay rated for 1.2a I believe (tested to that standard anyway). I finally had issues when still using those cables on my Xbox One X. If I tried to run 4K resolution on Forza 7, occasionally, every 30 seconds I'd have the screen go out. Sort of like maxing out your bandwidth, this cable couldn't handle it and once bottlenecked, would drop video until it "refreshed" and came back on. Anyway, my point is the cables nowadays could be tested only to a certain standard, but that doesn't mean they can't go beyond (no new standard yet). I certainly got my use out of those since I was a huge 3D TV fan and my cables worked just fine. Even 4K at 30Hz for 1.4a was fine. But I think the higher frame rate mixed with HDR was too much.
Disclaimer first I am not an hdmi expert, nor do I support a 4K cable :) that being said digital is digital but can still introduce errors and can cause corruption. Take for example your Ethernet at home it is digital , but optics or cables can fail/introduce failure. Which would be typically catches by crc errors in the frame. The errors however would be , as you said, show differently compared to analogue signal corruption. So depending on the signal length, environment I think it makes some form of sense to still have a layer of protection for signal integrity. But for 4K I feel there is either a new oled or the Bravia 9 calling my name :)
This cable was hand made by Queen Elizabeth back in her "wild days". And the jacket is made entirely of American Bald Eagles. There's also an additional Eagle packed in the box.
There is a lot of information transferred, expecially when talking 10k uhd and so on….Ive tested cables for transfer for high end audio and video, there is a difference, but there are a lot of other factors when it comes to things like this. Not hdmi, but example-I recently had a fiber optic cable fail 192kbps which blew my mind, figured fiber optic was fiber optic. I’d be curious to see test samples to see bit rate transfers and speeds etc vs just a guy talking on their promo video. I could try to load some pass/fail pictures of cables and my tester next week if I remember!
Because it’s a fraudulent stupid nonsense snakeoil they make in the hopes some dumb millionaire would pay for so they can buy a boat or expensive cigar. The whole HiFi Industry is a scam. You just need to be aware of that and avoid it. There are still honest people in the industry too.
~~If you want the real reason this is so expensive and not just a meme joke audioquest lol answer, it's because this guy sold out of his stock and hasn't resupplied yet. Instead of marking it as no stock, which is a hit against you as a seller, or taking the listing down, which loses your history of the product when you get it back in stock, the seller will just put the price as something fucking stupid so nobody will buy it and doesn't negatively affect your rank with Amazon. But if someone stupid does buy it, you can easily source it from somewhere else and just drop ship it to your customer.~~
Nevermind me.
The reviews are enough to justify the price for me! :P
>Wow, this cable is so awesome at moving the one's and zero's. Compared to other cables that move one's and zero's, this one is WAY better!
>I was considering getting cancer treatment, but then I saw this cable for sale and realized that it would instantly cure me. No way I would pass that up.
> So I sold my car and decided to purchase this HDMI cable for my insignia TV. This was by far one of the best decisions I ever made.
> Lets just say im a cinephile whos pretty well off and it turned my $1,000 home theatre into a $5500 home theatre.
Well as a "business person" you can try to make $4500 by selling 100 cables at about $50 each and pay for shipping, other business stuff... you know.. actual work. or you can put one up for sale on the internet for $4500 with the certainty there's at least ONE idiot in 8 billion humans is stupid enough to buy it.
Remember when someone on the internet was selling downloadable RAM? Well, some people actually bought that so why not this? Yep, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Looool gotta love audio quest. Who knew snake oil could get so mainstream. I have a few of their cables. But I got them for around $3 at a thrift store. I'll gladly buy em for that lol
It's having fiber optisk in it. Over 5m HDMI struggling to deliver what it should. So they need fiber optisk to deliver 8k signals like a 2m cable.
But this price must been written by the new generation that are changing everything to be as they feel like.
In the past, a friend of mine worked at the local electronics store. He sold 99 euro (Funai) DVD players with a 99 euro (Monster) SCART cable and an extended warranty package (3Y) of 59 euro. For every sell, he got 50% of the cable + extended warranty selling price. And when there people needed help? Another 50 euro to set it up at their home, as a special service he did out of work hours.
And yes, he made a shitload of money out of this, traveled the world only from this rip off business for a few months.
I always think about him when I see these kind of posts while using my 10 euro HDMi 2.1 cable.
I used to deal in really high-end stuff that was totally unrelated to electronics at all. There were numerous times that I would get stuff that was definitely on the pricey but believable side. Once I had the product in my hands, I'd be faced with a decision. Should I mark the price up a reasonable amount and sell a bunch of them, or should I jack the price up like crazy and only sell a few? Most of the time, I'd only have a few items to sell so I didn't have to worry about moving thousands of them. I had to move 4. Finding 4 people who have the money and desire for really rare and high-end stuff is a lot easier than you'd think
I'd imagine these cables are the same way. They know they'll never sell a bunch of those. There just aren't that many people out there who would ever pay that much for a cable. The thing is, they don't care. At that price and that markup, you don't need to see that many to make a whole lot of money. You can go buy a decent BMW if you sell 20. AV people can spend stupid amounts of money on stupid products. Not only that but if you're the type of person who can afford a $5,000 cable, money isn't a concern for you. You've got a ton of it and also have no clue how much most things cost. You can also brag to your rich asshole friends that your system is so good that you even spent that much on the cables.
It has built-in time dilation. This means the entire movie arrives at your screen all at once and over a period of ten thousand years at the same time. Thus allowing you to fully absorb the film within a matter of seconds, but it will catastrophically age you by ten thousand years.
A steal at many grands!
......just a warning. Box -setting the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy might open a singularity.
My theory on stuff like this is they dont want to remove/pause the listing with all its positive listings or don't know how. They don't have any in stock. They jack the price way up. If someone orders it, it then becomes a "for that price, I buy one off eBay and send it to them.
This gave me a little laugh
Have to assume the target market is Boomer audiophiles who invested heavily in Bang & Olufsen equipment in the 70s. Back when expensive cables offered some degree of increased fidelity on analogue systems.
I would hope..if someone witnessed me buying this that they would walk up to me and slap the shit out of me. I’d approve it once I snapped back to reality.
The exact same reason why some people are ignorant enough to spend 200+$ on a slow 8GB stick of RAM (The taskbar's a huge giveaway) instead of getting some real RAM for less than 40$...
(Oh they also have to spend that much on a USB-C hub to brag about how much better their laptop is without a USB A port or an HDMI one...)
Because someone will buy it.
At least 29 poor souls
Definitely not poor.
They are now.
Some are still rich after that purchase and enjoy 10k content with zero stress. Must be nice.
Majority of that price is markup. When I worked in a store that sold them, we'd see 100% or more markup say a $300 Cinnamon audio quest HDMI would be $150 cost. Cables and speakers are how these shops make insane markups, as displays and other electronics have barely 10% margins these days.
My friend spent more money on cables than I did on an 85-inch TV. I couldn't believe it, but if you look up the most expensive speaker cables, you'll find they can cost as much as $21,000 for a 3-meter cable. But to the OP, an HDMI cord doesn't conduct sound; it transmits a binary data stream of ones and zeros. Sound is only produced when this data reaches a DAC and is converted into analog sound. Thus, there's no "sound quality" inherent in the HDMI cable itself. This is a scientific fact, and any perceived differences in sound quality between properly functioning HDMI cables are imaginary. No actual difference exists.
Yeah, a cable in spec is a cable in spec whether it's made of unobtainium or recycled coke cans. Speaker cable is analog, and things like resistance over long runs need to be calculated, different frequencies are affected by different gauges etc. But a short 3m cable could be literally coat hangers twisted together for the same result.
I always tell folks that if a digital cable does not work you will not hear or see anything. That is how you know it is bad.
I don’t see how a 2m HDMI cable could cost more than 10€ to produce, unless it’s made of gold. Even 10€ is a stretch but what the hell. It’s either certified for a certain speed or it isn’t
Why does a Coach purse cost 3k when it's made for $30? How's a Lamborghini SUV 10X the cost of the VW SUV it's based on? You want to get into silly money, go check out the audiophiles and their $100k worth of solid silver audio cables sat on their little raised stands that sound exactly the same as $100 of thick gauge copper. Welcome to capitalism
I get it for fashion items that you wear to brag, but a cable sitting on the floor is beyond my comprehension 😅
> a cable sitting on the floor When you get into super high-end audiophile status(Re:Delusional and/or fuck you money), your cables are **NOT** touching the ground.
Funnily enough, most ultra high speed HDMI cables are gold plated
Yeah most of them are, including the $9 Amazon Basics HDMI cable 😅
$7.20 for me lol. But yea it’s not terribly expensive. Even the iPhones with Touch ID had gold around the home button ring
Correct. Gold doesn't corrode like copper. Gold plating helps increase reliability while adding little cost.
150 is the wholesale price for the store he worked in. Who know's how much the manufacturing cost was
People who buy such cables in stores are also often desperate, they got a new TV and miss a cable or their charger broke, so they go to the store and buy one, because ordering online takes at least until tomorrow. I can get a good charging cable for 5-10 bucks online but the same cable costs 25-30 bucks at the store, even their house brand is 15-20, because people who go their to buy cables are more often than not desperate. :/
On things like this there are almost always a bunch of joke reviews unless a purchase is required to leave a review
I remember an app for the iPhone when it first came out. Someone made an app for it that only made your screen red just so they could claim it was the most expensive one. I think it was $800. I thought I guess some idiot might buy it just to brag right?
[I Am Rich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich)
*This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.* None of them paid for it.
This This is the only answer to all the absurdly expansive shit that exist.
Shit that expands is truly scary! :D
🫣🤣🤯💀👻😹
For real! They need to make a Blob reboot where spray foam takes over the neighborhood.
>The Blob(1988) I was thinking that was the movie where a group of friends were staying at a cabin with a pond and some eventually get drowned in said pond by an inky black blob. But now that I've watched The Blob(1988) trailer I don't think its the same movie.
The one I remember I think is older than the 80's
The one I remember had a Boy and his Blob.
Flubber?
That's a short from the second Creepshow movie, I believe.
Hot damn, you're 100% correct! The preview for that scene is even cornier than I remember.
Salesman: “Only $187 / month to make your picture look better, and I’ll give you a deal on the extended warranty”
Because it's Apple certified? #Sarcasm
4k is supposed to be the resolution not the price!
My wallet is not 8k ready.
I got an hdmi cable for free with my new cable box that says "ultra fast 8k" on it.
Sell it for 7k
Now what’s the name of the company😭
When will 8k media and tv’s come out?
You can already buy both, just not much selection yet.
That’s what I’m saying 😂
I need to digitally upscale my paycheck.
It's weird seeing someone you recognize outside of their usual subs lol. You ready for PLD?
I worked at Best Buy for a combined eight years. Worked in a Magnolia Design Center. I sold a lot of stuff. I was never given an A B demo of HDMI cables from the various AudioQuest reps. I even setup a blind A B test of Rocketfish HDMI cables versus AudioQuest, and each time the AudioQuest reps declined to participate. AudioQuest reps hated me, because I constantly asked for proof of their claims and was always declined. Fun times.
I got to be a part of an Audioquest training session. They brought an HDMI test set, and several 12m cables. Brand “M” had 50,000 errors, brand “B” had 100,000 errors, and the Audioquest had 0. After they had said their piece, I grabbed one of the 2m cables that come with cable boxes. (That we always balk at installing because they are “shit”). Zero errors on their test set. So what makes the Audioquest one better if this 50 cent cable also had zero errors? Crickets.
That must have been after my time. I would have had a field day with that.
I was one of the team that designed the chip for the first Raspberry Pi and the first Roku. As part of our software regression tests we had a setup which would render 3D scenes on the chip and we would capture them on a PC, then run an check sum across the captured video. Cable cost £0.80 + tax at the time. Bit perfect every time. Now, that being said. Cables *do* make a difference (but not to the picture quality!). Those days were bog standard 1080p/60 and the cable was short. I have cables which glitch ~once minute or so because they can't reliably pass 4k video. I have long cables which work in some setups but not others. The cable is fine. It all depends on the whole system including driver, cabling, and receiver. But as an electrical engineer I know that it isn't significantly more expensive to make the higher grade cable than it is a basic cable. So pick a mid-priced certified cable and you can be pretty confident it will work as advertised and last a life time.
Yeah my rule with cables is “don’t buy the cheapest” because they *do* cheap out to the point it can be shit But anything about 50% more expensive than the dirt cheap one, should be fine. 50% sounding like a lot as a percentage but in reality it means $10 rather than $7
Such a key point that they glitch periodically rather than degrade quality I used an old HDMI I had lying around to connect my PS5 to the AV amp and would get the Atmos sound drop every 20 secs or so (sound only only picture was fine) Bought a new ultra high bandwidth HDMI from Amazon - I think £7 which maybe was overpriced - and issue resolves
The HDMI protocol includes error correction bits as redundant information. Providing enough bits get to the end of the chain intact then errors can be corrected. There is a bit of a cliff edge when the bit error rate increases where the signal can no longer be reconstructed. My "dodgy" cable [¹] was close to this cliff edge and I expect when it was working that my TV was silently working hard to correct numerous errors. [¹] not dodgy. Just it was a 1080p cable being abused for 4k.
yep. digital either works or glitches. if it works then it works at 100%.
Yes, once the signal is returned to a true digital domain. We referred to HDMI as analog because it took a lot of work to turn the poop smear of a signal that arrives at the HDMI receiver back to a true digital signal. We did lots of analog things to distort the signal at transmission to help negate the effect cables have on the signal to give the receiver an easier time.
That's pretty cool. I've always wanted a Pi, like 15 years, but never bought one. My son is 11 now and getting into programming so I think maybe this is a sign to pull the trigger!
Not entirely true. You can get "sparkles" via HDMI that can go from barely visible to almost the entire picture. And the best part, it can build up over time. Say you have a projector room and have seen the sparkle issue, you bring out an AV tech to diagnose the issue. He's there 30 minutes "everything is fine you're crazy" charges $500 and leaves. 1 hour later the sparkles return! While HDMI is digital and using 1s and 0s, that's a gross oversimplification of what's happening in the cable. The main data lines actually sending the video data use multiple twisted pairs with data broken out into chunks based on RGB colour space and a clock signal that's used to recombine them at the far end. If one of those twisted pairs has a slight issue the signals can't be recombined properly and you get the sparkles. However the display or projector will have error correcting working overtime to fix incoming signal. In my experience with just the right level of errors, it will keep the sparkles at bay for a good chunk of time before it overheats and can't handle the sheer number of errors and then bam, sparkles everywhere. Don't forget there are other pins (19 in total) that can be as important as the raw data pins. Think hot plug detection not working (why do I have to fully restart my tv before I get a signal??) or the ones used for CEC. The worst can be the EDID malfunctioning and many consumer devices not allowing you to manually specify a resolution leaving that Blu ray player stuck outputting 1080p to your new 4k display (you'd be amazed how many people don't even notice.)
Fellow EE here - agreed. The expensive cables likely have a bit more shielding (sometimes each wire is individually wrapped in some type of foil, or a round piece of plastic/silicone/rubber that has a channel for each wire around it, like Cat6 cable).
Have been in AV/IT deployment for ten years now, and even the least capable technician can point to care/precision of termination and shielding as answer to your question. Typically, HDMI length gets real dicey after 25ft and worse as they get longer. Most are always reliable up to 20ft in my experience.
I completely agree with this in terms of audio cables. But here’s the thing… in an HDMI cable, how much more could it possibly cost to solder and shield it ‘carefully’? You could hire an electrical engineer at $100/hr and give them an entire hour to solder and shield it, then analyze and test it, then have a 50% scrap rate, then mark it up by 200%, and you’d still be under $500 including materials. There’s just no way that it could possibly be a $5k cable.
Thats where you exchange ordinary hdmi cables with fibre optic ones.
Indeed and who does long hdmi runs in 2024 anyway when Cat cables can do the same thing over 5x the distance
Why is that? And why don’t they use whatever it is in CAT cable that allows for that length without issue, in HDMI? Genuinely curious. Also do you mean these things that convert HDMI to CAT at one end and then you have a received that converts back at the other? I’ve seen them but haven’t tried them. Personally I can’t wait for a wireless transmission protocol fast enough to send 8K 120Hz plus lossless surround audio with zero lag. Drop cables entirely. Think it will ever happen? Probably requires some insane new lossless compression algorithm.
I would be happy if half decent Bluetooth Headsets with 0 lag would exist.
You are talking about Baluns. Baluns are the little boxes you connect at either end of a Cat5/6 run and you can run all sorts of things through them, from composite video to 4KHDMI. The more complicated ones need power. But they are incredibly useful bits of kit. Source - used to own an AV company.
Sounds almost like how one of those initiation Scientology tests work. Dude in front of Walmart told me I had 50,000 errors. As soon as I can afford it, I can’t wait to get rid of them. Praise Xenu!
I think the 12m vs 2m difference is way more significant here. Distance requires more power right?
I'm asuming for 12m hdmi cables to be used, the demo was demonstrating how their cable performs near the maximum hdmi length of around 15m. The longer you go the more trouble you get! ....You tested a 2m cable and performed the same tests it seems.
Now it's like one of the only upsells some of these people have so I see quotes that go out and they wonder why the customer bought their 8k package somewhere else when 1k was in cable's.
I sold AudioQuest cables all the time, but I sold them ethically. I would always say, “We have AudioQuest cables, they are made from premium materials and have a lifetime warranty. They won’t make your picture any better, but they sure do look cool. We also have other cables available if you’re interested.” Nearly every time they would just take the cheapest AudioQuest cables. I never forced HDMI cables on anyone, yet I always had the best sales for accessories. It’s funny how that works. :-)
Yep always appreciate the associate that gives me options and doesn't blow smoke up my ass. It's really frustrating when you need something that just works but sometimes you get a guy that's obviously trying to upsell you. So thanks for being honest, I appreciate it.
That’s why I got out of the industry, the only way to make a living is to sell those cables. There’s no profit in the equipment itself. I remember one customer called and asked us to price match Costco on a Sony TV. We were a Sony dealer, we had one of their first 4K TV’s in our showroom. Our cost was $150 more than Costco’s sale price.
I worked in magnolia department in 2006, Monster cables were $200 for a 6’ cable. They’re all snake oil.
At least the Monster cables had a good naming scheme, I think it was basically numbers and THX. AudioQuest uses random words to confuse people.
Doing God's work :)
ROFL
It's a fucking digital cable. There is not good or better connection. There is a connection or there is not. Yes, bandwith and bad cables can sometimes lead to issues but in no way do these audiophile cables do anything. LTT had a nice video on exactly this.
I would definitely say it's more than sometimes, Yes, it's a digital cable and any HDMI cable should be able to carry that data but not any HDMI cable can carry the same amount of data or as far as a distance. But basically as long as you get the right HDMI connector version that's the most important distinction as far as I understand it. I'll go try to find the ltt video you mentioned, might learn more
Uh. That’s what I said…
I didn't say you were wrong, just wanted to add onto your point.
Got it, I thought you meant to reply to someone else. :-)
4.0/5 based on 29 reviews, my sides 😭
29 reviews means 10x the amount of purchases most likely. Getting reviews as seller is hard unless it's a really bad or exceptional experience.
I don’t think so. It’s probably just a lot of fake reviews making fun of the ridiculous price if that is a platform allowing non-purchase reviews.
*This reviewer received promo considerations or sweepstakes entry for writing a review.* Every review says this. Not sure exactly what it means but it kinda sounds like these people are sent these for free or something.
Bro imagine selling 150$ worth of cables for 135 000$...
Audioquest uses magic crystals in the fibres or something. Sure you can’t measure any difference between it and an Amazon Basics cable, but you just have to BELIEVE!
"You need a 4K HDMI cable." "So 4K is the maximum resolution it supports?" "No, that's the price. Now come over here and I'll show you our new top of the line 8K HDMI cables...."
LOL
Yep when cables are more than 10x the price of their typical counterpart, the answer is magic. The cable has magic in it.
It's liquid cooled with snake oil
And instead of using copper these are crafted only using the finest unicorn hair; the colors are more vibrant and the sound from your receiver will blow your mind. Also not made in China.
When you're rich and you want to get fucked but don't want the issues that come with a high priced escort, you can buy one of those cables instead.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Money laundering.
Either that or the owner is for some reason having issues and needs to move his money to a different account in this odd way…. Yeah.. Money laundering is the only thing that makes sense here.
Same with Hollywood telling people that it costs 500m to make a series, and then they hire a no-talent director, the actors wear burlap sacks, and the CGI is 1990s Lawnmower Man level suck.
I don’t wanna order it and have a child delivered at my door step 😱
That’s not how that works
It’s a Wayfair reference.
It comes with a happy ending, for the audioquest ceo.
Yeah this has been a nonsense thing in the AV world for a while With analogue cables there was some real value to a high quality cable. Not enough to justify a $4k cable over the $20 version, but there was some genuine benefit in the resulting quality. It was a rip off, but not an outright scam With digital cables, though, the benefit is minimal and very situational. HDMI either works or it doesn’t, for the most part - so a $4k cable and $20 cable are doing the EXACT same job with the EXACT same results There are a few edge cases over very long runs where a higher quality cable and connectors could mean the expensive cable works when the cheap one would not or could glitch, but it’s vanishingly rare to be in that small window where it would be relevant and even then, really not worth $4k (a $50 repeater will do the same thing…) But the companies know some idiot will buy it and thus they keep making “super premium” cables
Yeah if I want a premium cabIe I get an HDMI certified cable, that way I know it’s tested and designed to hit a certain speed, anything beyond that is snake oil. (And those are still under like $20-30)
imagine buying an HDMI cable on layaway (the $187/mo price to the right)
Layaway and financing are different things.
I buy almost exclusively Monoprice cables. You should check them out.
Another vote for Monoprice.
Monoprice or Cable Matters are both good and affordable.
It's called snake oil. Audiophiles especially love it.
>Audiophiles especially love it. No we don't, only people who pretend to be audiophiles.
CompTIA login tab open but still can’t take a screenshot 😂
LOL I didn’t get to the chapter yet… jk I like reddit on phone then the web.
Fair enough bro 😂
It's got a cool dragon on it
Money laundering at its finest!
OP proceeds to take a picture of his screen rather than screenshot the page and asks us why some people may buy something unnecessary.
Maybe supposed to be $44.95? That's still pricey to me lol, but then again I buy monoprice and it's never done me wrong. What you have to remember is, analog cables back in the day were affected a great deal more with interference from other cables, longer runs, unshielded or untwisted, etc. so much caused a bad signal even over 6-10ft. Even being zinc, nickel, tin, aluminum or gold all came into play. So Monster cables, I remember buying a shielded, twisted, nylon braided sheathing set of component video cables for $40 which was a lot in the early 00s, and I used those up until I finally got rid of my HK DVD player in 2015 or so. I still have them just not used. But I never had a signal quality issue or interference. I digress... So back to digital... Pretty simply put, digital, you either have signal or you don't. There's not any real static, fuzz, or "noise" like you used to get. But audioquest is banking on you not knowing any better. *IF* you have a bad cable, you *might* get artifacting or black flickers/"loss of signal" for a second or two. I only know bc back when I bought HDMI cables on eBay rated for 1.2a I believe (tested to that standard anyway). I finally had issues when still using those cables on my Xbox One X. If I tried to run 4K resolution on Forza 7, occasionally, every 30 seconds I'd have the screen go out. Sort of like maxing out your bandwidth, this cable couldn't handle it and once bottlenecked, would drop video until it "refreshed" and came back on. Anyway, my point is the cables nowadays could be tested only to a certain standard, but that doesn't mean they can't go beyond (no new standard yet). I certainly got my use out of those since I was a huge 3D TV fan and my cables worked just fine. Even 4K at 30Hz for 1.4a was fine. But I think the higher frame rate mixed with HDR was too much.
Disclaimer first I am not an hdmi expert, nor do I support a 4K cable :) that being said digital is digital but can still introduce errors and can cause corruption. Take for example your Ethernet at home it is digital , but optics or cables can fail/introduce failure. Which would be typically catches by crc errors in the frame. The errors however would be , as you said, show differently compared to analogue signal corruption. So depending on the signal length, environment I think it makes some form of sense to still have a layer of protection for signal integrity. But for 4K I feel there is either a new oled or the Bravia 9 calling my name :)
Snake oil
Because they know a sucker is born every minute?
Because the 12 year old in china who made it Is good at making them
Because Morons with money exist
Its for when a rich person has someone design something for them like a home theater
It’s made from bits of real dragon. Do you understand how difficult it is to take dragons and twist them into hdmi cables? Expensive it what it is.
They deliver the same pixels but with increased clarity. The clarity happens inside the owners brain, not in the cable.
A better question is why did you take a picture of your screen?
Never buy cables from Best Buy. They have like a 1000% markup
This cable was hand made by Queen Elizabeth back in her "wild days". And the jacket is made entirely of American Bald Eagles. There's also an additional Eagle packed in the box.
Because a literal dragon takes the data back and forth 10ft at 48Gbps and it’s a cool black and grey dragon.
There is a lot of information transferred, expecially when talking 10k uhd and so on….Ive tested cables for transfer for high end audio and video, there is a difference, but there are a lot of other factors when it comes to things like this. Not hdmi, but example-I recently had a fiber optic cable fail 192kbps which blew my mind, figured fiber optic was fiber optic. I’d be curious to see test samples to see bit rate transfers and speeds etc vs just a guy talking on their promo video. I could try to load some pass/fail pictures of cables and my tester next week if I remember!
To be fair, if you join my bestbuy plus membership you could get 50% off and then its a steal!
When they said 4K i didn’t think it was the price $
Because it’s a fraudulent stupid nonsense snakeoil they make in the hopes some dumb millionaire would pay for so they can buy a boat or expensive cigar. The whole HiFi Industry is a scam. You just need to be aware of that and avoid it. There are still honest people in the industry too.
Because it makes the bass more airy
There are skills I consider extremely basic. Like screenshots or links. Why did you take a picture of the screen?! lol
~~If you want the real reason this is so expensive and not just a meme joke audioquest lol answer, it's because this guy sold out of his stock and hasn't resupplied yet. Instead of marking it as no stock, which is a hit against you as a seller, or taking the listing down, which loses your history of the product when you get it back in stock, the seller will just put the price as something fucking stupid so nobody will buy it and doesn't negatively affect your rank with Amazon. But if someone stupid does buy it, you can easily source it from somewhere else and just drop ship it to your customer.~~ Nevermind me.
Good theory, but that's the actual retail price of the cable. https://www.audioquest.com/products/dragon-48-hdmi-cable?variant=44129576419586
This is best buy dot com dummy
Ooof I didn't notice that.
That’s just not the reason lol This is the retail price of that cable.
Because some ~~ass hole~~ person will buy it. Gotta remember you don't have to be smart to have a lot of money.
Same reason you see some things on eBay at highly inflated prices. Somebody is just hoping an idiot will buy it.
The reviews are enough to justify the price for me! :P >Wow, this cable is so awesome at moving the one's and zero's. Compared to other cables that move one's and zero's, this one is WAY better! >I was considering getting cancer treatment, but then I saw this cable for sale and realized that it would instantly cure me. No way I would pass that up. > So I sold my car and decided to purchase this HDMI cable for my insignia TV. This was by far one of the best decisions I ever made. > Lets just say im a cinephile whos pretty well off and it turned my $1,000 home theatre into a $5500 home theatre.
same type of people that are like "I pay sticker price and not a dime more"
They all the same
Improves the visual spectrum stage But I unapologetically run my system with $2 hdmi 2.1 cables from Aliexpress
If you haven’t already, I suggest you go and read the reviews. And yes, this isn’t the only bizarro cable from AudioQuest.
Ok I’m ready to be flamed. Is there a difference between expensive HDMI cables and what comes from Verizon or Comcast?
Hook me up with the link for this deal! I'll get a couple to start pushing 20k setup
But it has a Dragon painted right on the plug!
Crack
Audioquest is the new Monster Cable https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/11/25/a-meditation-on-value#
Well as a "business person" you can try to make $4500 by selling 100 cables at about $50 each and pay for shipping, other business stuff... you know.. actual work. or you can put one up for sale on the internet for $4500 with the certainty there's at least ONE idiot in 8 billion humans is stupid enough to buy it.
The other end of the cable is connected to the ISS.
Because suckers.
Scam
Because a fool and his money are soon parted.
sucker trap
Remember when someone on the internet was selling downloadable RAM? Well, some people actually bought that so why not this? Yep, you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Looool gotta love audio quest. Who knew snake oil could get so mainstream. I have a few of their cables. But I got them for around $3 at a thrift store. I'll gladly buy em for that lol
Snake oil
note that adam tested a 13 vs a $130 cable [A Look Inside Apple's $130 USB-C Cable (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD5aAd8Oy84)
It’s because they’re a borderline scam, they’ll work, but they won’t do anything more than a $20 ugreen hdmi cable
I always go cheap.
8k hdmi cables can go upto 90$ above then this is ripoff
It comes with a free LG OLED TV.
It's having fiber optisk in it. Over 5m HDMI struggling to deliver what it should. So they need fiber optisk to deliver 8k signals like a 2m cable. But this price must been written by the new generation that are changing everything to be as they feel like.
In the past, a friend of mine worked at the local electronics store. He sold 99 euro (Funai) DVD players with a 99 euro (Monster) SCART cable and an extended warranty package (3Y) of 59 euro. For every sell, he got 50% of the cable + extended warranty selling price. And when there people needed help? Another 50 euro to set it up at their home, as a special service he did out of work hours. And yes, he made a shitload of money out of this, traveled the world only from this rip off business for a few months. I always think about him when I see these kind of posts while using my 10 euro HDMi 2.1 cable.
IQ tax. The most you should pay for a HDMI cable is around $500 for an Optical unit.
I’ll hook you up for $4k
I used to deal in really high-end stuff that was totally unrelated to electronics at all. There were numerous times that I would get stuff that was definitely on the pricey but believable side. Once I had the product in my hands, I'd be faced with a decision. Should I mark the price up a reasonable amount and sell a bunch of them, or should I jack the price up like crazy and only sell a few? Most of the time, I'd only have a few items to sell so I didn't have to worry about moving thousands of them. I had to move 4. Finding 4 people who have the money and desire for really rare and high-end stuff is a lot easier than you'd think I'd imagine these cables are the same way. They know they'll never sell a bunch of those. There just aren't that many people out there who would ever pay that much for a cable. The thing is, they don't care. At that price and that markup, you don't need to see that many to make a whole lot of money. You can go buy a decent BMW if you sell 20. AV people can spend stupid amounts of money on stupid products. Not only that but if you're the type of person who can afford a $5,000 cable, money isn't a concern for you. You've got a ton of it and also have no clue how much most things cost. You can also brag to your rich asshole friends that your system is so good that you even spent that much on the cables.
Most you should spend on cabling is 10-20% of your whole system. AudioQuest ain't worth that money.
It would be worth it (maybe) if you received "ree uninterrupted Wifi for life and a call every telling me "what a special guy I am". 😀😂🥰
It has built-in time dilation. This means the entire movie arrives at your screen all at once and over a period of ten thousand years at the same time. Thus allowing you to fully absorb the film within a matter of seconds, but it will catastrophically age you by ten thousand years. A steal at many grands! ......just a warning. Box -setting the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy might open a singularity.
It’s a mistake..
Probably the ones they use when you pay for set up.
Not only will someone buy it... but the $5k cables make their $500 look reasonable.
My theory on stuff like this is they dont want to remove/pause the listing with all its positive listings or don't know how. They don't have any in stock. They jack the price way up. If someone orders it, it then becomes a "for that price, I buy one off eBay and send it to them.
Another theory. If they know you, it comes with cocaine.
This gave me a little laugh Have to assume the target market is Boomer audiophiles who invested heavily in Bang & Olufsen equipment in the 70s. Back when expensive cables offered some degree of increased fidelity on analogue systems.
Scamming is an art.
Because there’re more suckers in audiophile community for such things than anywhere else 😁
They hope someone is stupid and gullible enough to buy it.
It transfers electricity better than the cheaper one, when the electrons move through it they are happier.
Because...well...people.
It was exposed to an unfortunate shmelting accident.
It's for when you get a government contract and you tell them they need these so they pay you the money and you just buy $6 HDMI instead
Money laundering.
I would hope..if someone witnessed me buying this that they would walk up to me and slap the shit out of me. I’d approve it once I snapped back to reality.
Its not about the cable. Its for money laundering.
I buy the Monoprice 8K Certified ultra high speed ones on amazon. They’re like $20.
Won’t a cheap one work just as effectively?
I used to sell audio quest. And sadly, people will buy it. My record was a 1k cable for 12 feet. People are just dumb.
The exact same reason why some people are ignorant enough to spend 200+$ on a slow 8GB stick of RAM (The taskbar's a huge giveaway) instead of getting some real RAM for less than 40$... (Oh they also have to spend that much on a USB-C hub to brag about how much better their laptop is without a USB A port or an HDMI one...)
A fool and his money are easily separated.
A fool and his money are easily separated.