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Comment by Sam_Odio | Hacker News Reader

Even better: An electromagnetically shielded, gold plated optical audio cable. Sold at Sears [1].

I stopped buying cables retail a long time ago. My favorite supplier: RiteAV. They're (IMHO) the Amazon of cables. Huge selection, modest prices [2], and great customer service [3].

1. http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_05750807000P?vName=...

2. HDMI cables start at $3.50 - http://www.riteav.com/hdmi-cables-c-141_147.html?osCsid=cjmg...

3. I've never seen another retailer with as high a satisfaction rating: http://www.resellerratings.com/store/RiteAV

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No the best ever is Denon's $500 ethernet cable. if you want the best quality for your downloaded MP3s you really need this.

In tests audiophiles showed that not only are the 1s sharper but the 0s are much more rounded giving a more fulfilled sound

Not to knock your suggestion, but I've had similarly great experiences with http://monoprice.com . It seems similar to RiteAV, but much bigger and their prices seem on par (maybe 6-10 cents more expensive):

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Monoprice

Marginally higher rating, but more importantly a MUCH larger sample size (2338 lifetime reviews vs. 25)

Also, as someone north of the border they do ship here, whereas (as far as I can tell) RiteAV doesn't.

Monoprice also sells really cheap mini displayport adapters. They even sell a mini displayport to hdmi adapter (you can't get one from Apple).

[1] made me hysterical for a few minutes. I know this old audiophile who insisted on buying the gold-plated kind when I helped him set up his home theater. I literally spent hours trying to convince him that it didn't matter, but apparently learned behavior just beats logical arguments and evidence.

I think the reason there is a market for these kind of ripoffs is that back in the analog era the quality of cables really mattered, and that's when the people who buy these learned what they know of tech. I don't think it gets harder to learn new ideas as you get older, but instead unlearning the ones that have worked for you gets progressively harder the longer you have had them. I only hope I can be more rational when I get older.

For UK peeps my recommendation would be

http://euronetworks.co.uk/acatalog/HDMI_Cables.html

Really high quality cables, low prices.

Confusingly named, it's UK based as I said.

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