I’ve always enjoyed audiophiles; it’s pretty hard to find a single group with so much rich potential for mockery. But, through all my laughter at their talk of high quality digital cables (they haven’t heard of error correction perhaps?); through all the sniggering over their detailed discussions about bit rates when the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is a mystery unto them (What? Perhaps the CD sound frequency of 44.1kHz being approximately twice the typical highest human-audible frequency is a coincidence?)

Anyway, for all that I’ve always just thought it was funny: Ahh, aren’t they cute? No knowledge of information theory at all, but here they are arguing about transmitting bits. Still cute though. Just a geeky hobby, kind of like theology. Theologians and audiophiles arguing about things that aren’t really going to have any effect on their lives, that they don’t understand, and in the end are all indistinguishable.

And I’ve always assumed that on some level audiophiles knew just how ridiculous they were. They’d never admit it, but there was always something in there that would prevent them from doing something really stupid. But, no!

Behold! The $500 Ethernet Cat-5 cable! And it’s not even blue, like a proper one! And they’re available used! Some idiot actually bought one of these!

Oh, and please, please, please can an audiophile attempt to defend this? I won’t respond, but it’s always amusing to listen to.