CEDIA 2011

There’s a bit of a buzz in the industry – okay, there’s a huge roar – about whether one HDMI cable is better than another. There’s certainly plenty of marketing gimmicks from some of the cable manufacturers that will be noted in the long history of snake oil selling. Out of courtesy (and to keep him from sending any more text messages), I made of visit to the Audioquest booth to see our old Editor, Shane Buettner. There, instead of the sickening scent of snake oil, Shane simply laid out the case for why there are performance differences in HDMI and USB cables from an audio standpoint. But hearing is believing, as they say, and so he finally stopped talking, handed over a set of headphones, and proceeded to play music from a CD through three different HDMI cables. Even in the ludicrous environment of the show floor, there were definitely differences in the sound quality of the audio being transported through the HDMI cable. Interesting stuff, and definitely something I’m going to look into a bit deeper.