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Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles
- fb03 8y agoI believe the law of diminishing returns kicks in realllly fast in terms of 'ultra high quality audio'. I have an external usb dac (Yamaha AG06), a pair of good studio grade monitors (Yamaha HS8's) and that's it for me. Exquisite listening quality without having to sell a kidney.
- LinuxBender 8y agoCommercial power is noisy and sloppy, especially in my neck of the woods. I use a double conversion UPS (always on) to clean it up. I can feed them with a generator and the output is still a nice steady clean sine wave. Beyond that, I use line conditioners and rf chokes to clean up the noise a little prior to reaching the ups. Double conversion ups are not cheap. They start around 15x what you pay for the AVR UPS that you can find in electronic stores. My power is so sloppy that AVR UPS catch on fire after about 10 months.
- CaliforniaKarl 8y agoGizmodo’s source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who-have-it-all-a-personal-utility-pole-1471189463 http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who-have...
- Izmaki 8y agoWhen I'm playing music on my stereo from my PC through USB, turning off the lights on my bathroom on the other side of the wall will momentarily kill my USB driver and as a result Spotify stops working. Electromagnetic interference is no joke.
- ryacko 8y agoDid you hit the Amazon counterfeit stock bingo or something?
- winrid 8y agoGround loop through stereo?
- robocat 8y agoMost likely a crappy PSU with failing output caps. Mains noise/spike/brownout coming through onto 12V/5V/3.3V lines. Relevant to the article too!
- gerdesj 8y agoHire an electrician. While you are at it, get them to do a quick inspection of the rest of the 'leccy stuff at your home. Throw away any power bricks/wall warts/devices whose name you cannot pronounce easily or can't even read. Clear the fluff out from behind your fridge. Fire is no joke and given the EMI in your place I suggest you take it seriously. I'm not suggesting that fire hazards are exacerbated by EMI but that the sort of environment that has one may be more prone to the other. For the sake of what ... USD100(?) in time plus some materials you could fix and head off some potentially seriously life shortening problems. If nothing else, you'd keep Spotify working. If it dies say five times a day and costs you a few mins, then that is say 20 mins per day. Cost your personal time at say $20 per hour. Now tell me you can't afford to get it fixed. ... or you could whine about it on HN 8)
- Izmaki 8y agoI live in an apartment with little or no connected ground. We had weird laws once that allowed electricians to cut corners which they did. If its serious, I could try to convince the landlord... Hmm...
- gerdesj 8y agoThat does not sound too good. I doubt that the weird laws allowed outright dangerous practice but you never know. I don't know your landlord (obvs!) but you are probably keener on your own well being than they are. Please get some advice: blow a few quid (bucks, whatever) on a sparky. If you have a friend who knows what they are on about then bribe them to come over and cast an eye over things. Just to re-iterate the point: it is not normal for your bathroom light to cause a USB (bus) to crash in another room.
- marcosdumay 8y agoYour first comment sounds like something very serious. The kind of stuff that kills people.
- eigenvector 8y agoI had an old Dell laptop where I could "hear" an external USB hard drive spinning up in my headphones, but only if it was connected to a USB port on the same side of the laptop as the audio jack.
- aidenn0 8y agoDell is terrible about this; On my last 2 workstations I could hear my mouse moving if I plugged my mouse into the USB port next to the headphone jack.
- lucas_membrane 8y agoDid you buy it from the guy who took his battery powered Dell with him as he sailed from California to Hawaii? 1000 miles from land, he could still hear the 60 Hz. hum.
- MisterTea 8y agoUGh. Reminds me of the terrible USB powered speaker bar for an HP LCD I have at work. The audio comes from the 3.5 mm jack and power from USB. All you hear is the damn switching noise from the motherboard. Any time there is significant CPU use you get this noise in the background and it's quite audible at even moderate volumes. Not sure if it's the crap speaker bar; power and audio coming from the same chassis using two different cables or the motherboard. Could be a ground loop? Now That I think of it, I'll try to power the USB from a lab supply or beefy USB charger.
- robertAngst 8y agoWait- your USB on your computer stops working? Is this true for every component you plug in? I imagine this is your stereo power supply. I oddly would love to hear more.
- ansible 8y agoCould be lots of things. The first thing to check out is the neutral and ground connections on all related circuits.
- wtracy 8y agoI'm also curious if it affects all USB ports on the computer, or only some. (Some PC's have "always on" outlets that supply power even when the PC is turned off, and I imagine that those take a slightly different route through the power supply.) Anyway, my guess is that there's some line noise that isn't enough to mess up the PC, and the PC is passing it along to some component in the speaker that doesn't like it.
- pizza 8y agoTurning on my ceiling fan kills my USB audio device as well. Audio applications on Windows do have a tendency to more or less self-immolate when the audio driver fails.
- Spooky23 8y agoThat’s bad ground. There’s some sort of shoddy electrical work in the wall. In my home, a previous owner cut a cable too short and connected the line to ground via a paper clip. Could have killed us.
- archagon 8y agoI had a similar problem with an aluminum Silverstone case. Turned out there was a grounding washer connected by wire to the front panel that had to be attached to a screw on the motherboard (I think). Fixed USB disconnecting issues right up. (See: https://superuser.com/questions/64098/static-when-metal-usb-plug-touches-my-case-and-other-electrical-problems https://superuser.com/questions/64098/static-when-metal-usb-...)
- white-flame 8y agoThat is absolutely NOT "electromagnetic interference", in terms of radiative electromagnetic noise. It's a wiring fault.
- dbuder 8y agoIt absolutely is EMI and the only way to construe it as a wiring fault is to count the pcb as wiring, because that is usually what you would need to fix. Long headphone cables don't help either.
- Johnny555 8y agoI wonder if a battery-inverter setup would give cleaner power for less money? For less than $40K you can buy a couple powerwalls along with a top-rate inverter/charger.
- LeoPanthera 8y agoOr, with less insanity, DC powered equipment running from batteries. Which is still pretty insane. A good quality PSU should be able to tolerate quite a lot of noise. And power conditioners are already a thing.
- analog31 8y agoIndeed, and if you think about it, an amplifier is a power conditioner.
- codewritinfool 8y agoExplain to me how an amplifier is a power conditioner, please.
- analog31 8y agoAn amplifier conditions the line power in a couple of ways. First, it converts line power to stable DC voltages while filtering out spurious signals that could affect the audio output. Second, the power amplifier circuit is designed so that the output voltage is proportional to the audio input voltage, even in the face of power supply variations. A well designed amplifier tolerates a fair amount of noise and amplitude variation on the input power line. The end goal is for any residual variation to have a minimal audible effect. For this reason, additional power conditioning is rarely if ever needed. My source of this information comes from the musical instrument and live-sound side of audio, rather than the hi-fi side. But most mainstream designers do not recommend additional power conditioning. Of course nothing prevents people from buying additional gear if it makes them happy. And in the audiophile world, there is some interest in exploring the behavior of historical or minimalist designs that might not have a very high level of power conditioning. I'm only thinking about "mainstream" gear.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ferongr 8y agoAt what point does it stop being a hobby and turn into mental illness?
- CaliforniaKarl 8y ago“The difference between a collector and a hoarder is a display case.” -John Hodgman
- mcguire 8y agoYou're not boozing it up if you're pouring from a decanter. - me, to GF
- tzs 8y agoDoes that mean that by definition it is not possible to hoard display cases?
- andrewflnr 8y agoNo, you have to put the display cases inside another, larger display case for it to not count as hoarding.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoAnother case of first world problems I suppose?
- Waterluvian 8y agoConsequences. If it's disposable income, your hobby can be blending $100 bills into mulch to grow a bonsai tree. If you are eating up your retirement at 40, it's a disease. Of course I'm not an expert whatsoever. Just my loose sense.
- loeg 8y agoYeah. It's similar to the point where drug or alcohol use becomes addiction — it's a disease when it has significant negative impact on the rest of your life.
- remcob 8y ago$100k in equipment, but I bet none of that went to an oscilloscope to actually quantify the problems they are imagining.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 8y agoAudiophiles in a nutshell
- AndrewUnmuted 8y agoI bet you some of those dollars went towards the acquisition of some Brilliant Pebbles [0]! [0] http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm
- gpderetta 8y agoThis must be satire, right?
- api 8y agoThere is no stupidity limit. Research flat Earth!
- gerdesj 8y agoActually it is quite fun to do thought experiments on what a flat earth would be like. I think (not a physicist) that the sea and atmosphere would end up dome shaped, centred on the centre of the disc. Non symmetric continents would cause instability so can't exist. I wonder what is on the other side? For even more fun why not (re)read Sir Terry's oeuvre. Pissing yourself laughing is good for you.
- Rjevski 8y agoI'm not sure what's worse. From my limited observation of flat-earthers on YouTube, they at least seem to be willing to do measurements but then either misinterpret the results (due to lack of knowledge) or knowingly twist them to say what they want to say. Audiophiles on the other hand seem to reject the whole idea of taking measurements.
- pasta 8y agoOnce a producer told me that they mastered at 16bit 44.1kHz and then pressed records and CDs from those masters. Ofcourse the records sold better because they sound much better...
- kazinator 8y agoOf course the records will sound better; they will have their dynamic range squashed to fit the medium. Compression sounds nice: all the quiet parts are so clear, yet the transients are cleanly articulated. Compressed audio, like from a record player, also works better with a cheap back end. Protecting the record player's needle from skipping out also helps the amplifier and speakers.
- mrob 8y agoDon't confuse the sound of compression with the sound of music being louder. Compression can help with poor quality equipment or noisy listening environments (e.g. cars), but it also adds audible distortion and is tiring to listen to for long. Most dynamic range compression in music is there to trick people into playing it louder (see "loudness war"), and louder music sounds better. Of course, you can get the same benefit without the distortion by turning the volume up yourself. But despite vinyl being poorly suited to high dynamic range, the vinyl release sometimes has higher dynamic range than the CD/download release. This is probably because vinyl purchasers are thought to be more discerning customers. This isn't always the case; the most popular dynamic range measurement algorithm (see http://dr.loudness-war.info/ http://dr.loudness-war.info/ ) is fooled by all-pass filtering, and vinyl record players do this, so the measurements will be falsely high for vinyl. Often the supposedly higher dynamic range vinyl release is actually from an identical master.
- kazinator 8y ago> Most dynamic range compression in music is there to trick people into playing it louder That's a relatively new phenomenon, together with the distortion. Compression doesn't add audible distortion, except if it is used in an extreme way to boost the signal so that it sits at close to maximum volume. Compression is a tool that can combat distortion. Reduce the transients; reduce the clipping. Compression can be used to obtain more consistent distortion on purpose over longer envelopes of the signal, like in a common configuration in guitar audio: compressor followed by distortion effect. Obtaining more consistent distortion can mean consistently less of it, not only consistently more.
- andrewvc 8y agoEven if you buy into this theory, how is this cheaper or better than using batteries to power your gear?
- robertAngst 8y agoExactly my thought. A cocktail of capacitors could do the trick.
- kazinator 8y agoWe'd like to say "battery of capacitors", but we more or less cannot. Ironically, the word "battery" was originally used by Benjamin Franklin to refer to a bank capacitors, not to chemical cells.
- wavefunction 8y ago"Battery" is a sort of nebulous term for a collection of similar objects working in concert, whether that be artillery guns or electrical cells. Consumer electrical batteries are a collection of electrical cells.
- wtracy 8y agoCall it a "capacitor array" and you're set.
- social_quotient 8y agoDrink the cocktail and then the sound will be more perfect.
- topspin 8y agoThere is no deeper well of audiophile snake oil than capacitors.
- tlrobinson 8y agoGood question. Sounds like a great opportunity to sell overpriced batteries to audiophiles.
- kazinator 8y agoI have a power amp whose transformer hums once in a while, for periods of a few seconds. Then it goes quiet just as abruptly as it started humming. Someone is unbalancing the power in the building, causing a DC offset.
- newnewpdro 8y ago> he realized that electromagnetic interference from his neighbors’ appliances was propagating through their shared power lines, reducing the quality of the sound he was getting. This actually seems a lot more reasonable to me than the monster cable level of absurdity audiophiles are famous for. When I last visited family my sister's home's electricity exhibited all sorts of overload artifacts. Her lights would dim when the neighbor's AC or refrigerator compressor ran. I convinced her to contact ComEd about it as it suggested there was an overloaded supply shared across their homes making voltages sag under load. They sent someone out to just look around her house and act like they did something, then said nothing's wrong. Of course they're not interested in actually fixing the infrastructure when it involves costly work. She's had an exceptional number of electrical appliances fail over the years she's owned the home as well, which I presume is related. But I figure with this audiophile guy he could just run the system off a UPS using the mains just to top up the batteries.
- nimish 8y agoA filter would be just as good.
- adjagu 8y agoDid they check your sisters electricity meter? We had similar issues here. Random light flickers/dimming, electrical devices shorting out and such. All tests in house returned with nothing wrong yet we were having issues. Electric company sent someone out and they got the same results inside as we did. Not deterred they next checked the line into the residence and it was good too. Eventually they tracked the issue to our electricity meter and replaced it. Haven't had an issue since.
- newnewpdro 8y agoThey claimed to have checked 'everything', but from what I saw they did nothing. I wouldn't expect her meter to be responsible for dimming lights when the neighbor increases the load though. There didn't seem to be any problems related to loads generated within her home, which I would expect to be a problem when the meter's the culprit. It just seemed to me like they had something inadequate in common between the homes, maybe a deteriorated transformer or bad connection. They don't seem motivated to do anything until the power is completely off, monopolies aren't known to prioritize customer service.
- kazinator 8y agoThe thing is, that power upgrade is likely much more meaningful than the $60K amplifier or the stupid gold cables. Clean power + $399.99 amplifier > dirty power + $60K amp.
- ianhowson 8y agoA $60k amp should have a phenomenal PSRR, making power quality irrelevant. Then the amp quality becomes the differentiating factor, and one would hope that a $60k amp sounds better than a $399.99 amp.
- Yetanfou 8y ago...and clean power can be achieved by adding some capacitors and inductors at the right locations in the power supply. This'll cost a few tens of dollars, if you really want to go wild you could spend around $100. Not that this should be needed in a $40K amplifier of course. Private pole pigs are not needed for this application, the only function they serve is as a form of affluence signalling to 'those in the know'.
- intopieces 8y ago(2016)
- nayuki 8y agoGonna toss a related idea out there: Converting single-phase AC power to DC requires treating a lot of ripples. Maybe an audiophile should convert three-phase AC power to DC to ensure higher power quality?
- dustycat 8y agoThis has nothing to do with 50/60 Hz ripples, the point of having a personal power transformer is to isolate from high-frequency noise.
- codewritinfool 8y agoA motor-generator is a better solution. Preferably with a big flywheel.
- lostlogin 8y agoFunny you should mention this. I’m concerned about how clean the feed is to his power pole. A dedicated line is definately needed, shielded etc all the way back to its own power plant.
- bayindirh 8y agoI don't understand this type of audiophiles. I also have a fairly high end, vintage audio system at home, but I'd never do anything like that in the name of audio quality. There's a quote I love about these people: A normal person uses the audio system to listen music, while an audiophile uses music to listen to his audio system.
- PappaPatat 8y agoTotal personal anecdote: Yeah that basically describes me, between the ages of 16 and 26. We would spend hours moving gear to different locations (homes), fiddling with cables, different amplifiers and loudspeaker to find the best possible match our (limited) finances would allow. Tube amplifiers combined with mosfet pre's, magnapans with external bass speakers. Class A amplifiers that would require a dedicated powerfuse per amplifier. First press vinyl from Japan. Van-den-Hul needles. Granite turntable platform. Every single weekend we'd swap pre amps, amps, turntables, arms, elements, needles and listen to the "audio system via music" :) What happened to my setup, you ask? I got married. My living room was modelled around the audio experience: it was not an ideal love nest :) I actually gave my hand crafted, tailor made end amplifiers away just a year ago to a young stranger I overheard talking about his audio quest and who is in the phase where he is searching for his ideal setup like I was 30 years ago.
- seandougall 8y agoThat's a very apt quote. The way I look at things like this is: Do recording studios go to the same lengths? After all, if the effect is real, and the studio didn't do something to mitigate it, then it's going to be on the track regardless of what you do in playback at home. Much more so, even, because of the gain stages involved when recording a microphone signal. (Spoiler alert: Recording studios do not install their own power poles. What they do, though, is install isolated ground circuits.)
- retrogradeorbit 8y agoIndeed they do. Some high end studios install balanced power. Which is more involved than just a power pole.
- dang 8y agoUrl changed from https://gizmodo.com/obsessed-audiophiles-in-japan-are-installing-their-own-1785291714 https://gizmodo.com/obsessed-audiophiles-in-japan-are-instal..., which is cribbed from this.
- neonate 8y agohttps://outline.com/pBJfhG https://outline.com/pBJfhG
- pkaye 8y agoAfter getting tinnitus, none of these things matter to me anymore.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jsjsoaofnfn 8y agoHas there been any development that goes beyond masking?
- vortico 8y agoI work in the audio industry, and I can say two things: 1) most everything they do is audio mysticism (i.e. complete BS), and 2) they are very profitable customers.
- zmix 8y agoAs what do you work in the audio industry? Marketing? Sales? Engineering? Programming?
- Groxx 8y agoFrom what I've heard talking with a variety of these: it's similar to how every programmer is also asked if they can help with computer problems, and how they all know that turning it off and on again is the primary fix. It just goes with the field - everyone even tangentially related will encounter this kind of thing with some regularity.
- vortico 8y agoAll of the above. Most people want to buy a product that solves a particular problem. Some want to be convinced that what they get results in "perfect" audio, for whatever definition of perfect they have.
- hermitdev 8y agoAs a trained EE, non-practicing, I would think it would be far easier to install filters/conditioners on the line to normalize the voltage and current (e.g. performing phase correction). Also, if you had a local AC->DC->AC conversion, could probably get a more uniform power source frequency. Not sure, been a long time since ive studied this, but I think a lot of thw high-end audiophile stuff is snake oil. I've been able to listen to a couple of high end audiophile installs. The electrostatic speakers are amazing, but I'm not going to appreciate enough to justify a $120k install over my $2k commodity home theater sound.
- cardy31 8y agoI used to work as a musician professionally, and have dealt with “dirty” power in old theatres. It was solved completely by bringing in a power conditioner. I don’t know why they can’t do that in this situation.
- confounded 8y agoA tangent, but seeing as this thread has awoken the HN audiophiles: What should I look for/avoid in a DAC? Does it really matter if my source device is an iPhone/iPad? Reading blogs and review sites talk about the personality of DACs has started to grind on me. Surely it’s just a question of accuracy which can be summarized in a metric? (I’m currently probably going to get a NAD D 3045 integrated amp/DAC, mainly for the specs, and fond memeries of being a teenager with a 3020).
- zzzcpan 8y agoThe cheapest chip-on-board USB DACs from China are the ones to avoid, they can't even do conversion well. Everything else that has proper surface mount chips (even if they are cmedia clones) and output capacitors for headphones is of decent quality.
- ericabiz 8y agoRecovering audiophile here...my favorite DAC right now is the EarStudio ES100. In addition to functioning as a USB DAC, it also enables regular headphones to "become" Bluetooth devices. It's by far my favorite because my nice wired headphones are now no longer obsolete. I often use it with my iPhone + Roku + Roku iPhone app's "headphone" option. It's perfect for listening to TV late at night after my kid is asleep.
- v_lisivka 8y agoCan you try [1] (using Vp9/Opus codec in HQ) on your Bluetooth and then via cable? IMHO, Bluetooth is not good enough. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT-rdjv8wgQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT-rdjv8wgQ
- jd20 8y agoThere's a sharp curve of diminishing returns, for DAC's especially. The super cheap units you find for like $10-20 will usually have serious shielding / noise issues, which is immediately apparent upon listening. Beyond $100-200, the design and components are usually pretty competent, and what you are mainly hearing is just how the implementation was "tuned" by the manufacturer (not necessarily better or worse). Playing from an iPhone or iPad is perfectly fine. Make sure EQ and Sound Check are turned off. Most music streaming formats are nearly impossible to differentiate from lossless (i.e. Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify), so I wouldn't sweat that.
- zw123456 8y agoTubes, cables now this. It seems more like religion or superstition than technology IMHO. If you want to take it to the limit, hire someone to come into your home and perform live for you, then you can eliminate all the sources of distortion. Not only would you be hearing the ultimate perfect sound, you would be providing employment for artists. Seems like a win - win to me :)
- ada1981 8y agoAnd perhaps at a fraction of the cost ;)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zw123456 8y agoSo true, a friend and I had a holiday party at my house and we talked about having a DJ but instead we went online and got a piano player instead for less money and honestly way classier and BTW, it was fun and nice, sort of a cool thing really.
- agumonkey 8y agomaybe they'll obsess about musician's health or instrument care
- arvinsim 8y agoBut you won’t be able to play it at leisure then :P
- reaperducer 8y agoTubes, cables now this. It seems more like religion or superstition than technology IMHO. My advice to everyone is to never ask a hard-core gamer what he's tweaking when he's got his favorite rig open, and cards scattered all over the workbench. There's enough technological superstition in some of them to summon the devil.
- 8y ago
- rixrax 8y agoI always wondered how people selling some of these audiophile gadgets can justify to themselves over long run what might appear as a scam to many outsiders. But then I was explained that this is little different than my|your|their wife spending $$$ on some ridiculously expensive Bottega|Hermes|Burberry|... handbag. Which after all is functionally about the same as $1 handbag. Some people choose handbags, or cars, and I guess them audiophiles choose thick cables, and concrete poles. Each to their own.
- tjr225 8y agoRight. It(audiophiles) also seems like a pretty dead horse to beat. Not many original criticisms come of these discussions. Ya don't have people critizing folks buying a Porsche when a corolla will do the job just as well. Audiophiles, as well as "hipsters" I think just provide themselves as an easy target for internet commentators.
- kuratkull 8y agoHandbag producers don't claim their bags contain magic. The audiophile stuff producers do. The are making false claims.
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoLuxury / designer products basically advertise by saying “if you buy this you’ll look cool / more beautiful / stylish / whatever” It’s the same thing
- monochromatic 8y agoThe amplifier converts the AC to DC anyway. Any marginally competent amp is going to include plenty of power filtering to reject noise. Surely with a $60,000 amp, it makes no difference whatsoever if your input waveform has some ripple.
- simon_acca 8y agoEven if noise in the power signal were to influence audio quality to an appreciable amount, this way of solving the problem is rather curious for the uncompromising audiophiles. Why would you install your own secondary transformer when you could just rectify the current, accumulate it and then use an inverter for a fraction of the price? Or even better just store the current and use it to power the audio equipment with direct current, skipping AC entirely.
- dustycat 8y agoAudio amplifiers already contain transformers, large capacitors, and rectifiers.
- burfog 8y agoIf you want to get something legit of this nature, keep the AC power entirely away from the audio room. The wires in the walls can give off AC hum. Run DC over shielded twisted pair cables. At this level you'll also be doing something about noise from aircraft, wind, trucks, birds, and everything else.
- reaperducer 8y agoThe 82-year-old lawyer already had a $60,000 American-made amplifier, 1960s German loudspeakers that once belonged to a theater, Japanese audio cables threaded with gold and silver, and other pricey equipment. Meanwhile, my wife plays her Dean Martin records through her own personal 15-watt AM radio station in the closet, picked up on vintage tube radios scattered around the house so the music sounds like it was intended by the audio engineers of the day. There are all kinds of audiophiles. I don't understand any of them.
- intopieces 8y agoI take it you didn’t grow up in church. Hear me out: Audiophilia is a combination of technophilia and ritual, and it’s no surprise that Japan is the center of the audio technology world, given its culture. All sound perception is subjective. In “MP3: The Meaning of a Format,” the author sites a study that showed college students preferred the sound of 128 MP3 over “lossless” or “HD” audio, probably because that’s what they cut their teeth on. This is why we have mastering with blown-out loudness and compression, even on CDs. For others, though, even secular people, music is sacred. The quest for the perfect sound through fiddly nobs and fancy cables is like building a personal cathedral. It’s all subjective, but there’s no denying that ritual enhances it.
- sjwright 8y agoAt least your wife's perspective makes sense—it's treating music as deeply experiential and contextual.
- hwillis 8y agoNot to mention that any recorded music is going to: 1. sound quite different because it was recorded by several point microphones instead of your actual ears 2. Already have distortion introduced by the microphone and recording equipment. That distortion will obviously be quite small, but higher end audiophile setups will often be easily smaller. It does not make sense to spend $XX,XXX to get to .03% THD from .03000001% THD.
- themodelplumber 8y ago
- nabla9 8y agoSince audiophiles are so gullible I wonder if you could sell even more stuff for them. For example: * plastic surgery for ear lobes (Ferengi audio Inc.) * ear wax removal and ear hair trimming services
- samatman 8y agoYou joke but there is no a priori reason that improvements in cochlear implants have to plateau at human-normal hearing. This is an implant I would actually consider having done.
- zimpenfish 8y agoWalking around with binaural mics in your ears is an enlightening cyborgian experience. Especially when you whack the input and monitoring volumes right up. (But don't do it near busy roads. Or roadworks. Obvs.)
- asdff 8y agoYou'd probably have migraines!
- nabla9 8y agoHyperspectral cochlear implant would be cool thing to have. When I had my ear wax removed by a nurse first time, it was really awesome experience. I had no idea how much it helped. For example when I was walking on the street, I heard strange rhythmic sound just behind me. Every time I stopped the sound stopped. Finally I figured out that the sound was coming from my backpack that was chafing against my jacket. Habituation removed the hyper-hearing sensation in 3-6 hours afterwards.
- blattimwind 8y agoAt this level of fanatism I'd probably hold back with criticising them, because they might actually stab you if their lunacy bubble pops.
- jhallenworld 8y agoWhen marketing a product one must consider the four basic segments: the smart rich, the stupid rich, the smart poor and the stupid poor. Obviously you are not going to make any money selling to the poor, so strike them. Good luck trying to separate the smart rich from their money- they tend to save. Thus we are left with the stupid rich. High end audiophile products are a perfect fit for this lucrative segment.
- rhacker 8y agoIt would seem simpler to just put in a lot of batteries and a pure-sine wave inverter.
- edoo 8y agoDoes anyone remember the tests they did where 'serious' audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between the $200 cable and a coat hanger?
- zmix 8y agoNo. But I remember those tests, where they actually could!
- squarefoot 8y agoI do, here's some info. https://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell-the-difference-between-monster-cable-and/ https://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell-th...
- amluto 8y agoI suppose these folks don’t want to know that utility transformers transmit noise both directions, so this doesn’t do much. It may help isolate from noise that comes from the audiophile’s house, though — nasty current waveforms will cause noisy voltage drops in the house’s wiring, and that will cause nasty voltage waveforms in the house (and everywhere else on the block, but less so). A much better approach would be to buy a motor-generator pair with a decent-sized flywheel. But this is all silly. The noise in question might cause audible noise in the power supply, but the power supply can go in a different room. As anyone who has listened to a problematic audio system can attest, the noise that really matters is the 50/60 Hz AC hum, and none of these hacks will help.
- airbreather 8y agoA utility transformer is an extremely effective low pass filter, any noise you are getting will be from the secondary side only.
- aristophenes 8y agoI'm interested in the playlists of these guys. What are the songs that are worthy of being played on your $100K+ setup? I had never heard of that Queen song before, wonder what his top 10 songs are.
- IAmGraydon 8y agoI think that you can consider extreme audiophilia to be an expression of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and therefore the audiophile industry is predatory in that it preys upon the mentally ill. I’ve seen it all - including $1,000 aftermarket wooden knobs that were said to dampen sound-corrupting vibrations in your power amplifier. The people who sell these items know exactly what they’re doing, and I hope more people will see them for what they are - common con men.
- brightball 8y agoPreviously worked for an after market sales site for the industry and the level of fraud in the marketplace is what got me into anti-phishing in the first place. I’ve never seen anything like it.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoHow do $1,000 aftermarket wooden knobs (with no detectable physical effect) differ from, say, a $1,000 bottle of wine (which cannot be distinguished in a blind taste test from a $5 bottle)? They're just class signifiers. The difference I see is that audiophiles are less prestigious than oenophiles, but I don't see how you get from there to "audiophiles have a mental illness".
- imgabe 8y agoA $1000 bottle of wine is going to be from a specific year, from a specific vineyard. There's naturally a limited supply, so price will increase with demand like any collectible. A wooden knob is not unique and anyone could manufacture an unlimited amount at low cost.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ekianjo 8y agoWhat I like about this article is that they just find a few weirdos in Japan who actually end up doing that, and you get a blanket statement like "Audiophiles in Japan" while the proper headline should be "A few crazy old rich people". Journalism at its best.
- chinzsteel 8y agoThat depends on what categorizes "Audiophiles". If out of a million self-proclaimed audiophiles, a few hundreds are genuine ones and if out of those, a few tens are behaving this way, I think it can be reasonable to say that the audiophiles are behaving like that ;) You must be aware that the audiophile community lives in a completely different world, where recreating sound is of more importance to them than rather enjoying the music on its own. The amount of money and time these people put in satisfying their "passion" is unrealistic. So, no. The article is right in talking about the weirdest of the weirdos ;)
- erikpukinskis 8y agoIf you parse a sentence that begins “Audiophiles in Japan...” as making a claim about every Japanese audiophile or even most of them, you will find the world a confusing place. These sentences are everywhere. “Men are pigs”, “tacos are awesome”, etc. Only two exemplars must exist for any such sentence to be true. Once you understand that, you will understand a lot more of what’s being said around you.
- pcurve 8y ago"It’s completely beyond my understanding,” says his wife, Reiko, 57. “But if I take it away from him, he will lose the motivation to live.” LOL! I love it. God bless his wife.
- naikrovek 8y agoThe thing about that is that it isn't beyond her understanding. It's beyond his.
- msisk6 8y agoGeesh, I just sold my ranch last year that had its own transformer at the very end of a distribution circuit. I could have gotten extra for it's "audiophile grade electricity" if only I knew that was a thing!
- Animats 8y agoNow to sell them a motor-generator set.[1] Total isolation from power fluctuations. The only connection between input and output is a rotating shaft. I once worked in a mainframe computer installation which had one of those. Before switching power supplies, many mainframes used them for power cleanup. Cray used them to convert to 400Hz, so the power supplies had smaller transformers. [1] http://acim.nidec.com/generators/kato-engineering/products/motor-generator-sets http://acim.nidec.com/generators/kato-engineering/products/m...
- resters 8y agoMaybe try some common mode filters before investing in a private line.
- xrd 8y ago“It’s completely beyond my understanding,” says his wife, Reiko, 57. “But if I take it away from him, he will lose the motivation to live.” My telephone pole keeps me going...
- heyjudy 8y agoWow. That's next-level not understanding Nyquist bandwidth "records are better" extremism. I also get why Nakamichi or early Mark Levinson audio gear was outrageously expensive: they were like modern Apple but in the 1980's... ridiculous engineering and design. Hipsters should love 'em too. :)
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- throwawaywhynot 8y agocan someone explain why my phone and laptop both produce an annoying noise in 3.5mm jack when connected to AC? Is the lack of a grounding pin in the charger or the source at fault
- white-flame 8y agoIf their stereo equipment is so high end, then why are their input power electronics so crappy at producing clean voltages? Filtering and isolating against common noisy power lines seems a pretty obvious design consideration. I love throwing that point at situations like this.
- tgtweak 8y agoYou could just use a proper sine wave filtering UPS which actually runs everything through the transformers internally to produce cleaner voltage. I'd be inclined to make a battery powered mechanical AC generator with a big old flywheel on it to sell to these audiophiles :) Regarding the equipment, most of the "audiophile" grade gear is analog, using very little input cleaning circuitry if any at all. Whether this is desirable from a sound quality perspective or not (assuming the input power is clean) is debatable. Would be interesting to see what an electrical engineer in the audio field says about this. I'm sure there is some method to the seemingly mad claim that having your own "pole" could make a difference in your audio quality through your amplifier. If you consider that the coils on the other transformers that are positioned on the same medium voltage lines (running the other houses on the block for example) act as attenuators which partially soften out any harmonics from devices under them (like switching power supplies found in any computer), then effectively by installing your own, dedicated transformer (not actually just having your own pole) you would be isolating to some extent potential noise from those neighbors (noisy neighbors in the real sense), to only devices in your own home. If you think of electrical harmonics like sound waves, they would lose amplitude when traveling through the coils of a transformer. There are also ways for transformers to be built so that it prevents these harmonics from carrying upstream (see zigzag winding, isolated or "harmonic mitigating" transformers) but this would do nothing for the noise on the low voltage side coming from neighbors on the same transformer. This would be the power line equivalent of sharing a single broadband connection with your entire neighborhood while trying to play a latency sensitive game with no QOS. It would have been really interesting to see the ocillosope before and after.
- Ice_cream_suit 8y agoSad. The naive and gullible fall victim to these scams and fads.
- locusm 8y agoThese guys need to do the Richard Clark 10K challenge. Richard posited that when compared evenly, the sonic differences between amplifiers operated below clipping are below the audible threshold of human hearing. No-one took the 10 grand in 15 years if my memory serves me correctly.
- Nition 8y ago> There’s a debate among audio enthusiasts about whether personal poles make any meaningful difference. Audiophiles, though, “live in a kind of no-compromises world,” says Mark Bocko. Plus the requisite "no blind A/B testing" world of course.
- Havoc 8y agoTop end audiophiles seem bat shit insane, but if it makes them happy then I’m all for it
- hagreet 8y agoMy only question is why BS like this has 169 points on HN.
- masklinn 8y agoUpvotes don't necessarily mean "this is a good idea".
- seletz 8y agoDC i could understand. But AC ...
- pseingatl 8y agoThe "can" attached to the pole is called a "pot." At least in the U.S., four homes are normally attached to a pot. But sometimes, you might have as many as eight. When eight are attached, you will have power drops, momentary losses of electricity. Without a UPS, your desktop will turn off. Or your stereo system will--flash on and off. Intolerable. The solution is an additional pot. Or this man' solution, a pot of his own. It's not so crazy, in areas where electricity is affected by a tropical climate or... not enough pots. I learned this while struggling with electricity issues after surviving Hurricane Wilma and talking to the repair crews.
- FraKtus 8y agoMost of the time the room where those high-end audiophiles have their equipment is just not designed to listen to music. The room around you is as important as the equipment. I remember making speaker tests in the anechoic chamber of my university, and it's just mindblowing, even with average equipment.
- unsignedint 8y agoSo he installed a pole to prevent perhaps fairly subtle common mode interference from his neighbor's appliances. Wouldn't a ham (or any potential EM source) in the proximity that he cannot control ruins his installation easily? Maybe he is lucky to not have them nearby...
- azinman2 8y agoSeems like it’d be easier, cheaper, and more “accurate” to put conditioners on the input to the equipment directly... by doing this to the transformer you’re still including your whole house and any noisy equipment (like lights) on your power line.
- vilaca 8y agoI am not to be a jerk with this comment but he spent 60k on an amplifier and 40k on his private power pole. For that kind of money he could hire professional musicians to be playing real instruments in his living room.
- xfitm3 8y agoI read through this and I’m surprised at all the negativity. Audio is subjective, and even if it’s just placebo good for them. In my limited experience audio is all about component matching. Sometimes you want distortion, like what you get from a tube amp. The right mix of distortion is what makes things sound good to some ears.