9 ms·

Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud

167 points by RandomGerm4n 8mo ago

ungreased0675 8mo ago
While I believe a significant portion of audiophile gear is unscientific nonsense, in this case it’s not clear how adding different materials into the circuit would add distortion or change the audio in any way.
- nkrisc 8mo ago
  I think that’s the point, that according to audiophile “lore” higher quality materials enhance the sound, thus mud should sound bad under that assumption, but they (apparently) can’t tell the difference.
  - kelipso 8mo ago
    It depends on the experiment done… You need every intermediate point between the wires to be low distortion too. As in, audiophiles cannot distinguish between distortion and distortion+distortion is not really an interesting result. You need source, digital to analog conversion, pre-amp, amp, speakers to have low distortion too, and you need the room to be appropriately treated too. I didn’t look at whether they did all that but I seriously doubt they did.
    - wtallis 8mo ago
      Did you really mean to say that audiophiles can distinguish between no distortion and some distortion, but cannot distinguish between more distortion and less distortion?
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
      - 1718627440 8mo ago
        That's how sound works in general. Even doubling is only +3dB.
  - phil21 8mo ago
    I'm not sure it's a really great experiment though? Outside of the hyper-crazies, no one is really stating that a 6-12 inches of conductor is going to make a giant difference in audio quality. Yes, I'm aware of the super-premium-gold-plated-platinum-encrusted 12" audio patch cords available. But almost no one really makes serious arguments those do anything. I don't think running a 50ft banana is going to have similar performance to a 50ft properly-sized copper conductor though. Where you get into the "debate" is the difference between buying a spool of 12ga stranded copper wiring from Home Depot, or buying the same thing only with de-oxygenated or whatever silliness some audiophile brand is selling for 10x the cost. There are levels to things. I imagine copper speaker wire to be essentially fungible. Just size it to your length of run and max power needs. Calculate the total resistance for your wire run and done/done. All professional level sound installations for venues and what-have-you do this already. This sort of test just seems to prove nothing in either direction other than provide bait for folks to point and laugh (or defend) in comment sections. Consider me baited, I suppose!
- anonym00se1 8mo ago
  If nothing else it shows those high end $1,000+ cables they buy are nothing but placebo effect.
  - turnsout 8mo ago
    This may be an unpopular opinion, but if people believe they can hear a difference in their $1000 cables, and they enjoy purchasing and testing them, I'm inclined to let them enjoy themselves. I have a basic hi-fi setup with rational cables, and enjoy the cost savings, but to each their own. I feel the same way about wine. At a certain point, it's not really about objective improvements, it's about vibes and lore.
    - BurningFrog 8mo ago
      I also don't need to storm these people's homes and tear up their expensive audio setups. Life is hard, and if you find something to enjoy, I'll let you have it. That said, think there is value in putting out facts that let people make informed decisions and not spend tons of money on things that don't actually work.
      - turnsout 8mo ago
        Absolutely. I'm glad the linked article exists! Hopefully it can prevent someone who really can't afford it from splurging on expensive cables.
    - rsynnott 8mo ago
      The vendors of such snake oil often make specific, incorrect claims. Fraud is still fraud, even if the victim enjoys it.
    - ungreased0675 8mo ago
      Yes, but there is a negative societal cost to allowing quacks, frauds, and hucksters to exploit the naive.
      - 8mo ago
- wat10000 8mo ago
  You make it sound like these two ideas are somehow opposed.
- helsinkiandrew 8mo ago
  I think the (unstated) point of the article is that if banana/mud can’t be differentiated from copper wire then the audiophile/fool level cable is also nonsense, for example: https://www.audiotherapyuk.com/product/oephi-reference-interconnect-cable/ https://www.audiotherapyuk.com/product/oephi-reference-inter...
  - bayindirh 8mo ago
    I have always said and will always say the same thing: Up to a point, there's an easily distinguishable sound and detail difference between cheaper and more expensive gear, given that you don't cheat (i.e. put cheaper gear in expensive enclosure), but that difference indistinguishable well before these "true audiophile" level stuff. For example: I run a pair of Heco Celan GT302s. They are not something exotic. 100W per channel, adequately detailed speakers with great soundstage. The manual gives you a table: Wattage -> Recommended wire gauge. I got a high quality, 100% copper cable (from Acoustic Research, so nothing fancy) at the recommended gauge, and connected them. You can't convince me to get a better cable. It's pointless. Do I enjoy the sound I get, hell yeah. Do I need to listen to my system instead of listening to the music, hell no. I feed the amplifier with a good turntable (which is 40 years old, shocker!) and a good CD player (which is pretty entry level for what's out there), and that's it. That set will nail any person who likes to listen to the music to its chair. That's the aim of a good system. Same for personal DAPs and DACs. If you enjoy what you have, who cares!
    - k2enemy 8mo ago
      > Up to a point, there's an easily distinguishable sound and detail difference between cheaper and more expensive gear, given that you don't cheat (i.e. put cheaper gear in expensive enclosure), but that difference indistinguishable well before these "true audiophile" level stuff. I don't understand how that is cheating. Isn't it a better controlled experiment if the equipment looks the same?
      - bayindirh 8mo ago
        No, I mean "cheating at the market". Some companies sell literal snake oil for 10x the price, then they make the market unreliable for everyone, and nobody believes a company which really uses more expensive components can get better sound. If you want a good controlled experiment, create a literal black box, without any distinguishing features, or lose the box completely and give them an output (speakers or headphones) only. Another bad thing is, sound is so subjective and experience changes between brands a lot. For example: headphone "burn in" is considered an hallucination, it mostly is. However I have bought a set of RHA MA750i earphones which changed from "This is not what it says on the box" to "am I sure that these are the RHAs I hated" in a month, because it's sound character changed so immensely. No other headphone I had in my life did that. So, everything is so muddy, subjective and unreproducible. When a room's organization or floor carpet density can change its frequency response, you can't control anything. Moreover, every human's ear profile is different, so you can't be sure that their ear is hearing that the same (e.g. one of my ears have a notch in its hearing curve around mid frequencies. we don't know why it happened). If anybody wants to learn some of the tricks which can be done to get better sound, please watch Mend it Mark's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJbpFSFziI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJbpFSFziI While the £25.000 price tag on that preamp is literal snake-oil level and the builder has the audacity to erase the model numbers of the ICs (and OpAmps) he uses, some of the methods he uses are legit and Mark explains them exceptionally well.
- rsynnott 8mo ago
  Magic cables are a _huge_ thing in the audiophile nonsense world.
kachapopopow 8mo ago
I don't know... this test is unscientific... clearly mud and banana can have an unintended side effect that makes audio sound better and needs to be investigated immediately. on a more serious note.. doesn't seem like the "good" audio was good? there is a huge difference between noise free audio and garbage integrated audio / speakers with hizz imbalance and peaking... if the "good" audio is bad then there obviously won't be a difference between any of them. which makes me think... banana and mud are noise filters... hmm...
- mmmattt 8mo ago
  The experiment compared .wav files directly ripped from the cd to these same files played through copper/banana/mud. So yes, the “good” audio is good.
  - kachapopopow 8mo ago
    less about the files, more about the audio equipment in between
    - atoav 8mo ago
      Well ot is very easy to figure that out using the Null method. You have the original recording (A) and play through whatever chain recording it at the end, resulting in recording (B). You now place A and B into seperate tracks of the DAW of your choice and align them in time. You flip the polarity on B and adjust the levels till the output level is minimized (to account for level changes in your playback/recording chain). The mixed signal is the difference. If it is imperceptibly silent, the difference is in fact imperceptable. And with this simple method you can demask a metric ton of bullshit, like differences in wire materials or capacitors materials.
      - atoav 8mo ago
        Small addition: you can also run the signal through a different chain C and then compare B and C. And since they ran through the same DAC, output filters, output connectors, input connectors, preamp and ADC, aside from noise the only measuable (relevant for human ears) difference should be the chain inbetween. This allows you to compare any magical device against a simple conductor. So next time someone tries to sell you chemicalliy pure copper with zero oxygen handbraided by virgins for a thousand bucks test it that way against a cheap pro audio cable, then turn your system up to the loudest listening volume you usually use and litterally listen to the difference. It will unsurprisingly be the sound of silence, your own personal 4'33". Bonus point for using an double-blind ABX process where you and potential others don't know whether you're listening to the expensive or the cheap gear. Turns out often anything short of that won't stop you from wanting to fool yourself, or others from influencing you, which is a big part of the audiophile schtick and the reason why even otherwise pretty smart people are routinely fooled by this.
hackingonempty 8mo ago
> As we can see in the image above, there are only six correct answers out of 43 guesses I would guess that this experiment is under powered and no conclusions can be drawn from it.
porcoda 8mo ago
This seems like a business opportunity. “Ethically sourced organic mud speaker wires for a clean, organic, pure sound.” /s
- RedShift1 8mo ago
  Forged under blue moon light for perfect electron alignment inside the wires.
  - dylan604 8mo ago
    Don't forget to use the full moon to recharge the quartz crystals in that analog gear
  - consp 8mo ago
    Ah, that's why Paix Dieu is such good beer. The electrons are aligned.
spaceport 8mo ago
I cant pack wet mud into a tube and run it in the attic and it stay wet. Same with bananas unfortunatly as that would give banana plugs a lot more meaning.
RedShift1 8mo ago
I remember Technics used to advertise with amplifiers that used bamboo somewhere in the capacitors? Always wondered if there was actual bamboo in there somewhere and what the electrical effects were...
- serf 8mo ago
  they use bamboo in the production of special carbons used in capacitors in a lot of devices. it's sustainable, apparently. I don't know anything about it really.
gorgoiler 8mo ago
The classic fable round these parts is Quad (and/or Cambridge Audio?) demo-ing their latest and greatest at a 1970s Heathrow Expo using mains cables as speaker wire. It’s the least important part of any system and indeed my Quad amp and CA R50s are wired with twisted, braided, brown lamp cable as a nice aesthetic homage.
- toast0 8mo ago
  Why wouldn't mains cable make good speaker wire? Probably much larger diameter than needed for audio and therefore more expensive if fairly priced, but if you've got to wire speakers and that's what you've got, should be fine. About the only things you could do wrong would be using wire that's too small to carry the load, is frayed/broken/severely corroded, or is coiled in a way that inductance becomes a real issue. Running parallel and near electrical or signal wires is problematic, and largely different run lengths can make a difference.
  - bayindirh 8mo ago
    In the past, there was no special speaker wire. It was all mains wire, because all was 100% copper. Today, finding 100% copper cable having the cross-section stamped on it is pretty rare. Electronics being more efficient hence drawing less power allows manufacturers to run 3-4 copper clad aluminum strands as mains cable in some cases. Today, I'd still use "mains wire" if I can find it in a 100% copper form with the correct cross section. The reason I used "speaker wire" in my set is because the recommended cable was thicker than the standard stuff, and I didn't believe that I'd be able to get 100% copper wire easily.
    - yial 8mo ago
      Wouldn’t SOOW (or THHN/THWN-2 )in 14 or 16 gauge be appropriate for this?
      - bayindirh 8mo ago
        My speaker's manual says the following: > Please always use a good quality loudspeaker connection cable from an audio dealer. To prevent impairment of sound quality, we recommend cables with cross-sections of at least 2.5 mm² for lengths up to 3 m and at least 4 mm² for lengths above 3 m. Interestingly, the table present in the printed manual is not present in the one on the internet. IIRC, recommendation for 100W up to 3m was 3mm² or 4mm² at minimum. From what I looked at, 14AWG is ~2mm² and 16AWG is 1.3mm². Way too skinny for what the manufacturer says. Unless you're running speaker cables parallel to some power cables, shielding is not a requirement from my experience. The cable I use is at [0]. I have a roll like this. Mine is thicker than 2.5mm² though. [0]: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71Jr0vhSTsL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71Jr0vhSTsL._AC_UF1000,1...
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
crims0n 8mo ago
Probably going to make some people mad... but I went down the Audiophile rabbit hole last year before ultimately coming to the conclusion that it just isn't worth it. I understand the appeal, especially someone who values a nice piece of hardware. There is so much to choose from... DACs, DAPs, amps, fancy looking balanced cables in quality braiding, headphones with solid wood accents, IEMs that look straight outa sci-fi. A few things I learned that may save someone time: (1) Sound quality is in the medium, not the build. Speakers almost always sound better than a pair of cans (headphones), headphones almost always sound better than IEMs, IEMs almost always sound better than over the ears. (2) The difference in sound quality between something that is a few hundred dollars, and something that is a few thousand is so small that "diminishing returns" as a phrase doesn't do it justice. (3) The stack of DACs, EQs, preamps, and neatly managed RCA/XLR cables looks cool on your desk - but they take up a lot of space and cost a lot of money for something that sounds maybe 10% better than a pair of AirPods Max (provided you remember to turn on lossless in apple music, which I forgot to!)
- wccrawford 8mo ago
  #2 - Can be. Or it might actually make a difference. We had 2 "living room" setups for a while, upstairs and down. We eventually realized how dumb that was, and condensed to 1. Doing that, we stopped using some really expensive speakers and started using some that were 1/5 the price because we couldn't tell the difference. Then, one day, I brought those expensive speakers down and set them up. Wow. There was a definite difference after all. I'm not an audiophile and can't tell you what that difference was, just that both of us could immediately tell the expensive speakers were better, and we were not going back to the cheaper ones. Nothing else in the setup changed. Also, I eventually upgraded the receiver to something that could better drive those speakers. An upgrade from $600 to about $900. And there was a definite difference there, too. The older box should have been enough, but it just wasn't. Do I recommend that someone on a budget spend $4000 instead of $1500? Nope. It's not enough difference. But for stuff we already had, or for someone that really cares, it's definitely better.
  - exceptione 8mo ago
    You can't make a bad speaker good, but also: people spend lots on gear, but forget the room. The room can break a good speaker easily. Also... 'good' is something you first need to agree on when talking with people. Some people like to have 'distorted' playback (compared to the original), because they "like" that better. That is the moment retailers can sell objectively worse but overpriced stuff. Genelecs for instance are very detailed, neutral etc (there is a reason you see them everywhere in professional settings), but consumers don't necessarily have an appetite for 'objectivity'.
londons_explore 8mo ago
The perfect speaker system is indistinguishable from having a live band in the room with you (when blindfolded). Can today's audio systems do that? How much money do I have to spend to get there?
- nkrumm 8mo ago
  I've been in demo rooms that priced in about $100-300k (~2015 dollars), and those sound remarkably close. Not all sound/bands can be reproduced, and it really depends on the recording. Could you do it for less, also? Probably. But it was pretty fun to hear the highest end.
  - mmmattt 8mo ago
    My 500$ KEF Q150 setup sound like the band is here when I close my eyes. The sound will be shaped more by the acoustics of the room than by the actual speakers anyway.
- ozim 8mo ago
  I am quite sure live band will definitely sound worse than most sound systems. My experience is I hanged out with one band in a garage where they were practicing and I attended couple live music shows in pubs. Main upside of those live music shows is that they are not "perfect" like playing a record and each one of the gigs will be off here or there, tempo somewhere will be off or a tune will be off - or you are just having enough beers you don't care pick your way :)
  - 1718627440 8mo ago
    > Main upside of those live music shows is that they are not "perfect" like playing a record That's a very different metric. How good the sound is vs. what the sound is.
    - ozim 8mo ago
      That’s my point.
amluto 8mo ago
One could modify this experiment to have very obvious effects. For example: - Run the amplifier output through a banana or mud. Even if this somehow works and you can hear the sound, you’ll probably smell it as you cook and/or electrolyze your conductor :) (The banana likely works because the load impedance is very high in the experiment they did. The load impedance with an actual speaker is typically in the ballpark of 8 ohms. I admit I haven’t stuck a pair of multimeter probes in a banana lately, let alone done a proper I-V or AC impedance measurement.) - Use really long cables. It’s not especially rare to be able to hear and even understand AM radio that gets accidentally picked up on a long cable and converted to baseband by some accidental nonlinearity in the amplifier. - Use the actual outdoor mud on a rainy day as your conductor. I bet you can get some very loud mains hum like that. Even audiophiles can probably identify these effects!
- ssl-3 8mo ago
  A difference that long cables make can be heard in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SorO-QpqYRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SorO-QpqYRU . Therein, audio from a microphone is sent through progressively-longer cables until the length reaches ~6 miles. It gets pretty muffled-sounding... eventually. (The longest pair of wires I've sent analog audio through was in the realm of 37 miles, stretching across the countryside. AMA, I guess.)
  - amluto 8mo ago
    Hah, that AM-receiving cable was at a theater and only a couple hundred feet long. In general, with low-level analog audio and non-ridiculous lengths, additive noise effects are likely to become audible long before attenuation or especially frequency-dependent attenuation. As a decent heuristic, as long as the DC resistance is small compared to load impedance, the cable impedance is unlikely to be a problem. For the connection from the amplifier to the speaker, additive noise is unlikely to be a problem, so the DC resistance is even a decent heuristic: keep the round-trip resistance below half an ohm or so and you should be fine with most speakers.
    - 8mo ago
cheschire 8mo ago
I've recently been wondering if audiophilia is so polarizing a topic for reasons related to concept that some folks hear Laurel instead of Yanny.
AngryData 8mo ago
The biggest problem with audio hardware businesses is 95% of what they say about their products is marketing bullshit. It doesn't take a lot of money to get really good gear, if you put in the research, but its very easy to get ripped off if you don't, spending multiple times more than you need to get a worse result. Just look at the boxes for half this stuff, quoting peak power for speakers instead of RMS, which is the equivalent of saying "This LED hits 50 watts for .00001 seconds during startup! Wow so amazing! (but don't look at the average 1 watt of output past that)" The speakers, the cables, the AMPs, even digital source cables nearly all have 90% marketing budgets which drive up the price of many products without increasing quality at all.
- tcoff91 8mo ago
  What are some affordable speakers that sound great?
  - fatherwavelet 8mo ago
    It really depends on the music you listen to and what your ears are already use to. I thought my fathers old setup always sounded amazing when I was younger. Coming back to it 20 years later though, it sounds stupidly scooped to my ears. Same speakers but what has changed is the music I was playing on them and what my ears expect to hear. 20 years ago I was more into guitar/bass/drum/vocal music that these speakers were made for. There is really no such thing as "sound quality". There is just different EQ, frequency range, etc.
  - AngryData 8mo ago
    Right now I got Presonus Eris studio monitors, however studio monitors might not be to everyones taste because they have a flat response. But I use them because they help hearing speech in modern movies because they don't drown out the mid range. The very best deals change every few years though. As soon as word of mouth catches and something becomes too popular the business suits look for ways to take advantage. Scrolling old school style forums for audio enthusiast s can lead you to some good lesser known (and thus cheap) brands though.
lich_king 8mo ago
It's fashionable to dunk on audiophiles because many of their beliefs are silly and there are businesses that prey on them selling them "oxygen-free" cables and stuff like that. And some of their beliefs are auto-suggestion. But here's another way to look at it: some audio setups will sound better than others in your living room, because of a million variables you can't really control for. Maybe one manufacturer compensates for speaker characteristics in a different way and that accidentally works better with the speaker you have and the room you're in. Maybe it's the deficiencies of the amplifier that prevent resonance from a nearby bookshelf. Or a ceiling lamp. Or maybe they cause resonance that actually sounds good to you. So yeah, audiophiles are in over their heads and tend to attribute near-mystical properties to individual electronic components, but the only tool they can rely on is trial and error. So if you can afford it, and if some of it seemingly sounds better... have fun? You're going to make mistakes, but that's not the end of the world.
- kraussvonespy 8mo ago
  Or they could buy equipment with active room conditioning like Dirac. I have Dirac receivers in two rooms that are absolutely terrible listening areas, and running the full Dirac calibration on the room creates a soundstage where you don’t hear individual speakers anymore. But it’s much more fun to spend crazy money on magic rocks and snake oil that make your rich audiophile friends want their own magic rocks. https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm
  - lich_king 8mo ago
    > Or they could buy equipment with active room conditioning like Dirac. You realize that the pitch for this is basically the same as the pitch for magic pebbles? It's a cure-all box you put on the wire to make things sound better, for a low price of $1,500 or something like that. I know enough about signal processing to know that magic pebbles probably work worse, but I can think of many reasons why it might not produce the audio you subjectively like better. I suspect it can't really even correct for many of the real-world issues you might have, because equalization doesn't fix echoes, resonance, etc. In any case, it's a bit of a strawman, because most audiophiles are not buying pebbles in the first place. They're trying vacuum tubes instead of ICs, or are trying out different op-amps, or stuff like that.
kraussvonespy 8mo ago
I don’t question that audiophiles hear different things on expensive equipment, but I think it’s all placebo. “If I spend a stupid amount of money on this, my brain will gin up the sound to satisfy my expectations.”
metalman 8mo ago
I spent 3 years in school studying to be an audio engineer, and have built all my own stereo set ups from random equipment and home made bits and bobs, but I am fussy about a clean signal and carefull speaker placement, do silly things like wash a record in the sink with soap and water, and since I run missmatched speakers, amps that are not built tough, die quickly, just occured to me to impidence match sides by daisy chaining random speakers till I get a match, liking that. But yep!, we are not whales, and cant hear at 200khz and dont need to hear the difference between mud and bananas, but I think a whale would.
dubeye 8mo ago
it's definitely pointless over the age of 40. mostly pointless prior to that too. a 20 year old listening with young ears is hearing vastly better audio
jrhizor 8mo ago
I'd recommend AudioScienceReview for anyone looking for measurements-based evaluations of audio equipment instead of the weird and wrongly incentivized audio review ecosystem.
- snvzz 8mo ago
  Yup. Measurements are king. And an objectively good setup is not expensive. A cheap pair of Sennheiser HD600 for headphones will last effectively forever and sound great paired with a very competitively priced Topping DX3Pro+ for external soundcard/amplifier.
type0 8mo ago
I connect my speakers with audiophile grade banana connectors, I don't like mud connectors since the sound becomes muddy
LorenPechtel 8mo ago
Thought here: I think they're missing the issue here. I am not an audiophile by any means, but the thing is cables are more than just resistance. Cables radiate energy, cables absorb ambient energy, cables are both capacitors and inductors (both of which will exhibit a frequency-dependent response). Perfect shield, I can't imagine it mattering. Imperfect shield--I can easily see it mattering, although not to the extent they claim. Don't test against a banana and mud, test against quality wire vs a heap of wire. Test a straight wire with a coil of wire. Test kinked wire. (I'm sure many of us have had bad experiences with network wires that get kinked.)
calmbonsai 8mo ago
Well, duh. The chosen propagation media (wire substitute) wouldn't have significant frequency responses differences for those lengths for that level of power in the audio frequency range. You'd need to have transmission-line effects kick-in which would occur at higher frequencies and/or if a cross-section of the signal propagation paths would have a significant difference in impedance. All three of the chosen medium act like simple power-sink resistors in this scenario--attenuating the signal consistently across the power frequency spectra. Seriously, just do a frequency sweep and plot the log of the output responses! But no, that would be far too straightforward an experiment. What really matters is the signal source, any amplified distortion in the signal, final sonic transducer (speaker), transmission medium (air density), transducer orientation (for higher frequencies), and the individual listener's ear.
- just6979 8mo ago
  They even mentioned this in the article: "However, the tester surmised that introducing the materials into the circuit is just like adding a resistor in series, and they’re unlikely to distort the audio too much, except by lowering the signal level." It's really a terrible write-up (AI?), pure click bait. The final sentence is just garbage: "They then tried various materials like mud and banana, which, although they’re pretty poor conductors, still seemed to introduce imperceptible changes to the signal, at least for the average person." What does that even mean? It's trash.
impish9208 8mo ago
This reminds me of Ken Fritz, a man who spent decades perfecting his living room’s acoustics and building custom gear for it. https://archive.is/6XsTA https://archive.is/6XsTA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2IOOhJmxw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2IOOhJmxw
codpiece 8mo ago
This article and these comments make a caricature of audiophiles, akin to mocking aeronautics because of a flat earther steam-powered rocket pilot. Audio equipment is produced by engineers and they create elegant solutions to physical constraints. There is a huge difference in quality when hearing a pair of Allison One speakers, or AKG K1000 headphones over an airpod. Some engineers believe in speaker wire improvements, most don't. Some even openly acknowledge they don't believe but use premium wires to satisfy customers' demands. Most audio forums outright ban the discussion of speaker wire because it's so contentious. Dismissing the industry that supports audio engineering is dismissing the disciplines of circuit, materials, and sound engineering. Sure, there are extremes and charlatans out there like the guys who sell magic rocks, but wtf, some of you pay for skins to play in a mmog.
- nurettin 8mo ago
  There are definitely better headphones and worse ones, that is elementary. But there are also very real limits to human senses which the industry seems to have ignored for a very, very long time in order to profit off of a niche self-indulgent audience who can afford it. Of course, nothing will change.
- 4gotunameagain 8mo ago
  Nobody is saying that your 1000 euro speakers sound the same like the earbuds that came with your mp3 player in 2005. You know, the ones with the injection mold ports still there, that would dig into your ears. This is to expose the people that buy gold wires for USB, a digital protocol. You are free to spend your money how you like, but extreme diminishing returns are a very much overlooked thing in the "audiophile" circles.
- 112233 8mo ago
  The point about haughty attitude is an important, but rarely mentioned. No one has convinced me to reexamine and change my views by calling me stupid, mocking me, and pointing a finger. If anything, it makes me avoid both that person and their whole group. "the industry that supports audio engineering" though — are you sure this support is welcome? It is not unlike asking to treat counterfeit drug producers with dignity and respect because they support medical professionals. I really do not see how any actual engineer producing audio equipment would not be there if not for a company selling one-directional ethernet cables for 1000/m that improve sound, with a plastic bag filled with gravel that also improves sound... I mean...
bob1029 8mo ago
I was never too fanatical about the signal chain. The room and the loudspeakers were always more important to me. There was a time when things like SACD and high res audio were interesting, but it became clear this stuff has negligible impact compared to concerns like the dimensions of the room. My preferred equipment today is a MiniDSP 2x4HD, a pair of 8" studio monitors on floor stands, a 12" subwoofer and a tape measure. The whole setup cost maybe $1200 and is nearly indistinguishable from my prior setup which cost easily 10x as much. If you've got a bunch of money to spend on audio gear, the best thing you can probably buy right now is some rockwool and the time of a construction crew.
- pseudohadamard 8mo ago
  Hey, don't diss SACD. I have a DVD player that happens to do SACD that I'm hoping to resell to an audiophile for five or more times what I paid for it at some point, I just have to wait another ten years or so for it to become a rare piece of classic audio hardware, so far it's only about 20 years old.
whackernews 8mo ago
Yeh, to zoom out a bit, this is a pattern with all products. It’s all a scam. The only thing you should ever pay for is build quality (you should buy something once, that you can hand down to your kids) and staff wages (something that is made in your own country so you’re not undermining your own economy, this is more of a moral reason).
lproven 8mo ago
Small side note... Around COVID lockdown #1 I did a lot more walking outside, pushing a pram and listening to music on headphones. For years I'd been using cheap wired headphones from exhibition swag and things. I put a pair through the washing machine. Top tip: this is really not good for them. I looked online and found I could buy a brand new pair of my preferred Sony in-ear ones for $NotALot. I bought the absolutely top of the line most expensive bass-boost in-ear buds. They cost the equivalent of $20 (about £15) and the sound is amazing. The point being here: because all the fashion-victims want Bluetooth, wired headphones have got really cheap and top quality premium grade ones cost less than a modest meal, or alternatively perhaps, less than I could easily drink in beer while listening to 1 CD or album. Shun wireless. Go back to wired. Get an adaptor if your phone doesn't have a socket. You can get really good earphones for very little money now, they never need charging, never go flat, never need pairing, are compatible with every OS able to play sound, and they come with a handy tool to stop them falling out and you losing them, called "a cable". Also: the microphone is great as well. I've recorded podcasts with them. The quality is way better than my £300 over-ear sound-cancelling premium Bluetooth headset, which I now only use while onboard aeroplanes.
- kergonath 8mo ago
  > I bought the absolutely top of the line most expensive bass-boost in-ear buds. Out of curiosity, what did you get?
  - lproven 8mo ago
    Sorry for the slow reply. I've looked and there doesn't seem to be any way to tell. I've used them regularly for about 5 or 6 years now and the paint is wearing off. The only readable markings are the [L] and [R] indications for which goes in which year. Something akin to these: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/in-ear-headphones/mdr-ex650ap https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/in-ear-headphones/mdr-ex6... Nickel/neodynium bass drivers, quite large and chunky compared to cheaper Sony 'phones. The cables go into a separate fat little cylinder to which the earbud itself is permanently attached at a fixed angle. However, they're not noticeable in the ear at all and they're very comfy to wear. These are listed at £40 now but before the recent burst of inflation I think about half that is plausible.
sheepscreek 8mo ago
The total number of people surveyed was ~6 I believe. That's a really small and insignificant sample for any reasonable deduction. So yes, these audiophiles had a hard time deducing the original source - the result cannot be generalized beyond that. From the point of scientific rigor, even for an amateur experiment, the experiment falls short. Interesting idea. I wonder if LLMs can tell any difference.
throwawaypath 8mo ago
If you think $200 speaker cables are a waste, go search for "audiophile" quality HDMI and Ethernet cables. $200 for 3m: https://www.amazon.com/Audioquest-RJ-Cinnamon-Ethernet-3-0m/dp/B0073H10BQ https://www.amazon.com/Audioquest-RJ-Cinnamon-Ethernet-3-0m/...

167 points by RandomGerm4n 8mo ago

While I believe a significant portion of audiophile gear is unscientific nonsense, in this case it’s not clear how adding different materials into the circuit would add distortion or change the audio in any way.

nkrisc 8mo ago
I think that’s the point, that according to audiophile “lore” higher quality materials enhance the sound, thus mud should sound bad under that assumption, but they (apparently) can’t tell the difference.
- kelipso 8mo ago
  It depends on the experiment done… You need every intermediate point between the wires to be low distortion too. As in, audiophiles cannot distinguish between distortion and distortion+distortion is not really an interesting result. You need source, digital to analog conversion, pre-amp, amp, speakers to have low distortion too, and you need the room to be appropriately treated too. I didn’t look at whether they did all that but I seriously doubt they did.
  - wtallis 8mo ago
    Did you really mean to say that audiophiles can distinguish between no distortion and some distortion, but cannot distinguish between more distortion and less distortion?
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - 1718627440 8mo ago
      That's how sound works in general. Even doubling is only +3dB.
- phil21 8mo ago
  I'm not sure it's a really great experiment though? Outside of the hyper-crazies, no one is really stating that a 6-12 inches of conductor is going to make a giant difference in audio quality. Yes, I'm aware of the super-premium-gold-plated-platinum-encrusted 12" audio patch cords available. But almost no one really makes serious arguments those do anything. I don't think running a 50ft banana is going to have similar performance to a 50ft properly-sized copper conductor though. Where you get into the "debate" is the difference between buying a spool of 12ga stranded copper wiring from Home Depot, or buying the same thing only with de-oxygenated or whatever silliness some audiophile brand is selling for 10x the cost. There are levels to things. I imagine copper speaker wire to be essentially fungible. Just size it to your length of run and max power needs. Calculate the total resistance for your wire run and done/done. All professional level sound installations for venues and what-have-you do this already. This sort of test just seems to prove nothing in either direction other than provide bait for folks to point and laugh (or defend) in comment sections. Consider me baited, I suppose!
anonym00se1 8mo ago
If nothing else it shows those high end $1,000+ cables they buy are nothing but placebo effect.
- turnsout 8mo ago
  This may be an unpopular opinion, but if people believe they can hear a difference in their $1000 cables, and they enjoy purchasing and testing them, I'm inclined to let them enjoy themselves. I have a basic hi-fi setup with rational cables, and enjoy the cost savings, but to each their own. I feel the same way about wine. At a certain point, it's not really about objective improvements, it's about vibes and lore.
  - BurningFrog 8mo ago
    I also don't need to storm these people's homes and tear up their expensive audio setups. Life is hard, and if you find something to enjoy, I'll let you have it. That said, think there is value in putting out facts that let people make informed decisions and not spend tons of money on things that don't actually work.
    - turnsout 8mo ago
      Absolutely. I'm glad the linked article exists! Hopefully it can prevent someone who really can't afford it from splurging on expensive cables.
  - rsynnott 8mo ago
    The vendors of such snake oil often make specific, incorrect claims. Fraud is still fraud, even if the victim enjoys it.
  - ungreased0675 8mo ago
    Yes, but there is a negative societal cost to allowing quacks, frauds, and hucksters to exploit the naive.
    - 8mo ago
wat10000 8mo ago
You make it sound like these two ideas are somehow opposed.
helsinkiandrew 8mo ago
I think the (unstated) point of the article is that if banana/mud can’t be differentiated from copper wire then the audiophile/fool level cable is also nonsense, for example: https://www.audiotherapyuk.com/product/oephi-reference-interconnect-cable/ https://www.audiotherapyuk.com/product/oephi-reference-inter...
- bayindirh 8mo ago
  I have always said and will always say the same thing: Up to a point, there's an easily distinguishable sound and detail difference between cheaper and more expensive gear, given that you don't cheat (i.e. put cheaper gear in expensive enclosure), but that difference indistinguishable well before these "true audiophile" level stuff. For example: I run a pair of Heco Celan GT302s. They are not something exotic. 100W per channel, adequately detailed speakers with great soundstage. The manual gives you a table: Wattage -> Recommended wire gauge. I got a high quality, 100% copper cable (from Acoustic Research, so nothing fancy) at the recommended gauge, and connected them. You can't convince me to get a better cable. It's pointless. Do I enjoy the sound I get, hell yeah. Do I need to listen to my system instead of listening to the music, hell no. I feed the amplifier with a good turntable (which is 40 years old, shocker!) and a good CD player (which is pretty entry level for what's out there), and that's it. That set will nail any person who likes to listen to the music to its chair. That's the aim of a good system. Same for personal DAPs and DACs. If you enjoy what you have, who cares!
  - k2enemy 8mo ago
    > Up to a point, there's an easily distinguishable sound and detail difference between cheaper and more expensive gear, given that you don't cheat (i.e. put cheaper gear in expensive enclosure), but that difference indistinguishable well before these "true audiophile" level stuff. I don't understand how that is cheating. Isn't it a better controlled experiment if the equipment looks the same?
    - bayindirh 8mo ago
      No, I mean "cheating at the market". Some companies sell literal snake oil for 10x the price, then they make the market unreliable for everyone, and nobody believes a company which really uses more expensive components can get better sound. If you want a good controlled experiment, create a literal black box, without any distinguishing features, or lose the box completely and give them an output (speakers or headphones) only. Another bad thing is, sound is so subjective and experience changes between brands a lot. For example: headphone "burn in" is considered an hallucination, it mostly is. However I have bought a set of RHA MA750i earphones which changed from "This is not what it says on the box" to "am I sure that these are the RHAs I hated" in a month, because it's sound character changed so immensely. No other headphone I had in my life did that. So, everything is so muddy, subjective and unreproducible. When a room's organization or floor carpet density can change its frequency response, you can't control anything. Moreover, every human's ear profile is different, so you can't be sure that their ear is hearing that the same (e.g. one of my ears have a notch in its hearing curve around mid frequencies. we don't know why it happened). If anybody wants to learn some of the tricks which can be done to get better sound, please watch Mend it Mark's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJbpFSFziI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJbpFSFziI While the £25.000 price tag on that preamp is literal snake-oil level and the builder has the audacity to erase the model numbers of the ICs (and OpAmps) he uses, some of the methods he uses are legit and Mark explains them exceptionally well.
rsynnott 8mo ago
Magic cables are a _huge_ thing in the audiophile nonsense world.

kachapopopow 8mo ago

I don't know... this test is unscientific... clearly mud and banana can have an unintended side effect that makes audio sound better and needs to be investigated immediately. on a more serious note.. doesn't seem like the "good" audio was good? there is a huge difference between noise free audio and garbage integrated audio / speakers with hizz imbalance and peaking... if the "good" audio is bad then there obviously won't be a difference between any of them. which makes me think... banana and mud are noise filters... hmm...

mmmattt 8mo ago
The experiment compared .wav files directly ripped from the cd to these same files played through copper/banana/mud. So yes, the “good” audio is good.
- kachapopopow 8mo ago
  less about the files, more about the audio equipment in between
  - atoav 8mo ago
    Well ot is very easy to figure that out using the Null method. You have the original recording (A) and play through whatever chain recording it at the end, resulting in recording (B). You now place A and B into seperate tracks of the DAW of your choice and align them in time. You flip the polarity on B and adjust the levels till the output level is minimized (to account for level changes in your playback/recording chain). The mixed signal is the difference. If it is imperceptibly silent, the difference is in fact imperceptable. And with this simple method you can demask a metric ton of bullshit, like differences in wire materials or capacitors materials.
    - atoav 8mo ago
      Small addition: you can also run the signal through a different chain C and then compare B and C. And since they ran through the same DAC, output filters, output connectors, input connectors, preamp and ADC, aside from noise the only measuable (relevant for human ears) difference should be the chain inbetween. This allows you to compare any magical device against a simple conductor. So next time someone tries to sell you chemicalliy pure copper with zero oxygen handbraided by virgins for a thousand bucks test it that way against a cheap pro audio cable, then turn your system up to the loudest listening volume you usually use and litterally listen to the difference. It will unsurprisingly be the sound of silence, your own personal 4'33". Bonus point for using an double-blind ABX process where you and potential others don't know whether you're listening to the expensive or the cheap gear. Turns out often anything short of that won't stop you from wanting to fool yourself, or others from influencing you, which is a big part of the audiophile schtick and the reason why even otherwise pretty smart people are routinely fooled by this.

hackingonempty 8mo ago

> As we can see in the image above, there are only six correct answers out of 43 guesses I would guess that this experiment is under powered and no conclusions can be drawn from it.

porcoda 8mo ago

This seems like a business opportunity. “Ethically sourced organic mud speaker wires for a clean, organic, pure sound.” /s

RedShift1 8mo ago
Forged under blue moon light for perfect electron alignment inside the wires.
- dylan604 8mo ago
  Don't forget to use the full moon to recharge the quartz crystals in that analog gear
- consp 8mo ago
  Ah, that's why Paix Dieu is such good beer. The electrons are aligned.

spaceport 8mo ago

I cant pack wet mud into a tube and run it in the attic and it stay wet. Same with bananas unfortunatly as that would give banana plugs a lot more meaning.

RedShift1 8mo ago

I remember Technics used to advertise with amplifiers that used bamboo somewhere in the capacitors? Always wondered if there was actual bamboo in there somewhere and what the electrical effects were...

serf 8mo ago
they use bamboo in the production of special carbons used in capacitors in a lot of devices. it's sustainable, apparently. I don't know anything about it really.

gorgoiler 8mo ago

The classic fable round these parts is Quad (and/or Cambridge Audio?) demo-ing their latest and greatest at a 1970s Heathrow Expo using mains cables as speaker wire. It’s the least important part of any system and indeed my Quad amp and CA R50s are wired with twisted, braided, brown lamp cable as a nice aesthetic homage.

toast0 8mo ago
Why wouldn't mains cable make good speaker wire? Probably much larger diameter than needed for audio and therefore more expensive if fairly priced, but if you've got to wire speakers and that's what you've got, should be fine. About the only things you could do wrong would be using wire that's too small to carry the load, is frayed/broken/severely corroded, or is coiled in a way that inductance becomes a real issue. Running parallel and near electrical or signal wires is problematic, and largely different run lengths can make a difference.
- bayindirh 8mo ago
  In the past, there was no special speaker wire. It was all mains wire, because all was 100% copper. Today, finding 100% copper cable having the cross-section stamped on it is pretty rare. Electronics being more efficient hence drawing less power allows manufacturers to run 3-4 copper clad aluminum strands as mains cable in some cases. Today, I'd still use "mains wire" if I can find it in a 100% copper form with the correct cross section. The reason I used "speaker wire" in my set is because the recommended cable was thicker than the standard stuff, and I didn't believe that I'd be able to get 100% copper wire easily.
  - yial 8mo ago
    Wouldn’t SOOW (or THHN/THWN-2 )in 14 or 16 gauge be appropriate for this?
    - bayindirh 8mo ago
      My speaker's manual says the following: > Please always use a good quality loudspeaker connection cable from an audio dealer. To prevent impairment of sound quality, we recommend cables with cross-sections of at least 2.5 mm² for lengths up to 3 m and at least 4 mm² for lengths above 3 m. Interestingly, the table present in the printed manual is not present in the one on the internet. IIRC, recommendation for 100W up to 3m was 3mm² or 4mm² at minimum. From what I looked at, 14AWG is ~2mm² and 16AWG is 1.3mm². Way too skinny for what the manufacturer says. Unless you're running speaker cables parallel to some power cables, shielding is not a requirement from my experience. The cable I use is at [0]. I have a roll like this. Mine is thicker than 2.5mm² though. [0]: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71Jr0vhSTsL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71Jr0vhSTsL._AC_UF1000,1...

deleted 8mo ago

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crims0n 8mo ago

Probably going to make some people mad... but I went down the Audiophile rabbit hole last year before ultimately coming to the conclusion that it just isn't worth it. I understand the appeal, especially someone who values a nice piece of hardware. There is so much to choose from... DACs, DAPs, amps, fancy looking balanced cables in quality braiding, headphones with solid wood accents, IEMs that look straight outa sci-fi. A few things I learned that may save someone time: (1) Sound quality is in the medium, not the build. Speakers almost always sound better than a pair of cans (headphones), headphones almost always sound better than IEMs, IEMs almost always sound better than over the ears. (2) The difference in sound quality between something that is a few hundred dollars, and something that is a few thousand is so small that "diminishing returns" as a phrase doesn't do it justice. (3) The stack of DACs, EQs, preamps, and neatly managed RCA/XLR cables looks cool on your desk - but they take up a lot of space and cost a lot of money for something that sounds maybe 10% better than a pair of AirPods Max (provided you remember to turn on lossless in apple music, which I forgot to!)

wccrawford 8mo ago
#2 - Can be. Or it might actually make a difference. We had 2 "living room" setups for a while, upstairs and down. We eventually realized how dumb that was, and condensed to 1. Doing that, we stopped using some really expensive speakers and started using some that were 1/5 the price because we couldn't tell the difference. Then, one day, I brought those expensive speakers down and set them up. Wow. There was a definite difference after all. I'm not an audiophile and can't tell you what that difference was, just that both of us could immediately tell the expensive speakers were better, and we were not going back to the cheaper ones. Nothing else in the setup changed. Also, I eventually upgraded the receiver to something that could better drive those speakers. An upgrade from $600 to about $900. And there was a definite difference there, too. The older box should have been enough, but it just wasn't. Do I recommend that someone on a budget spend $4000 instead of $1500? Nope. It's not enough difference. But for stuff we already had, or for someone that really cares, it's definitely better.
- exceptione 8mo ago
  You can't make a bad speaker good, but also: people spend lots on gear, but forget the room. The room can break a good speaker easily. Also... 'good' is something you first need to agree on when talking with people. Some people like to have 'distorted' playback (compared to the original), because they "like" that better. That is the moment retailers can sell objectively worse but overpriced stuff. Genelecs for instance are very detailed, neutral etc (there is a reason you see them everywhere in professional settings), but consumers don't necessarily have an appetite for 'objectivity'.

londons_explore 8mo ago

The perfect speaker system is indistinguishable from having a live band in the room with you (when blindfolded). Can today's audio systems do that? How much money do I have to spend to get there?

nkrumm 8mo ago
I've been in demo rooms that priced in about $100-300k (~2015 dollars), and those sound remarkably close. Not all sound/bands can be reproduced, and it really depends on the recording. Could you do it for less, also? Probably. But it was pretty fun to hear the highest end.
- mmmattt 8mo ago
  My 500$ KEF Q150 setup sound like the band is here when I close my eyes. The sound will be shaped more by the acoustics of the room than by the actual speakers anyway.
ozim 8mo ago
I am quite sure live band will definitely sound worse than most sound systems. My experience is I hanged out with one band in a garage where they were practicing and I attended couple live music shows in pubs. Main upside of those live music shows is that they are not "perfect" like playing a record and each one of the gigs will be off here or there, tempo somewhere will be off or a tune will be off - or you are just having enough beers you don't care pick your way :)
- 1718627440 8mo ago
  > Main upside of those live music shows is that they are not "perfect" like playing a record That's a very different metric. How good the sound is vs. what the sound is.
  - ozim 8mo ago
    That’s my point.

amluto 8mo ago

One could modify this experiment to have very obvious effects. For example: - Run the amplifier output through a banana or mud. Even if this somehow works and you can hear the sound, you’ll probably smell it as you cook and/or electrolyze your conductor :) (The banana likely works because the load impedance is very high in the experiment they did. The load impedance with an actual speaker is typically in the ballpark of 8 ohms. I admit I haven’t stuck a pair of multimeter probes in a banana lately, let alone done a proper I-V or AC impedance measurement.) - Use really long cables. It’s not especially rare to be able to hear and even understand AM radio that gets accidentally picked up on a long cable and converted to baseband by some accidental nonlinearity in the amplifier. - Use the actual outdoor mud on a rainy day as your conductor. I bet you can get some very loud mains hum like that. Even audiophiles can probably identify these effects!

ssl-3 8mo ago
A difference that long cables make can be heard in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SorO-QpqYRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SorO-QpqYRU . Therein, audio from a microphone is sent through progressively-longer cables until the length reaches ~6 miles. It gets pretty muffled-sounding... eventually. (The longest pair of wires I've sent analog audio through was in the realm of 37 miles, stretching across the countryside. AMA, I guess.)
- amluto 8mo ago
  Hah, that AM-receiving cable was at a theater and only a couple hundred feet long. In general, with low-level analog audio and non-ridiculous lengths, additive noise effects are likely to become audible long before attenuation or especially frequency-dependent attenuation. As a decent heuristic, as long as the DC resistance is small compared to load impedance, the cable impedance is unlikely to be a problem. For the connection from the amplifier to the speaker, additive noise is unlikely to be a problem, so the DC resistance is even a decent heuristic: keep the round-trip resistance below half an ohm or so and you should be fine with most speakers.
  - 8mo ago

cheschire 8mo ago

I've recently been wondering if audiophilia is so polarizing a topic for reasons related to concept that some folks hear Laurel instead of Yanny.

AngryData 8mo ago

The biggest problem with audio hardware businesses is 95% of what they say about their products is marketing bullshit. It doesn't take a lot of money to get really good gear, if you put in the research, but its very easy to get ripped off if you don't, spending multiple times more than you need to get a worse result. Just look at the boxes for half this stuff, quoting peak power for speakers instead of RMS, which is the equivalent of saying "This LED hits 50 watts for .00001 seconds during startup! Wow so amazing! (but don't look at the average 1 watt of output past that)" The speakers, the cables, the AMPs, even digital source cables nearly all have 90% marketing budgets which drive up the price of many products without increasing quality at all.

tcoff91 8mo ago
What are some affordable speakers that sound great?
- fatherwavelet 8mo ago
  It really depends on the music you listen to and what your ears are already use to. I thought my fathers old setup always sounded amazing when I was younger. Coming back to it 20 years later though, it sounds stupidly scooped to my ears. Same speakers but what has changed is the music I was playing on them and what my ears expect to hear. 20 years ago I was more into guitar/bass/drum/vocal music that these speakers were made for. There is really no such thing as "sound quality". There is just different EQ, frequency range, etc.
- AngryData 8mo ago
  Right now I got Presonus Eris studio monitors, however studio monitors might not be to everyones taste because they have a flat response. But I use them because they help hearing speech in modern movies because they don't drown out the mid range. The very best deals change every few years though. As soon as word of mouth catches and something becomes too popular the business suits look for ways to take advantage. Scrolling old school style forums for audio enthusiast s can lead you to some good lesser known (and thus cheap) brands though.

lich_king 8mo ago

It's fashionable to dunk on audiophiles because many of their beliefs are silly and there are businesses that prey on them selling them "oxygen-free" cables and stuff like that. And some of their beliefs are auto-suggestion. But here's another way to look at it: some audio setups will sound better than others in your living room, because of a million variables you can't really control for. Maybe one manufacturer compensates for speaker characteristics in a different way and that accidentally works better with the speaker you have and the room you're in. Maybe it's the deficiencies of the amplifier that prevent resonance from a nearby bookshelf. Or a ceiling lamp. Or maybe they cause resonance that actually sounds good to you. So yeah, audiophiles are in over their heads and tend to attribute near-mystical properties to individual electronic components, but the only tool they can rely on is trial and error. So if you can afford it, and if some of it seemingly sounds better... have fun? You're going to make mistakes, but that's not the end of the world.

kraussvonespy 8mo ago
Or they could buy equipment with active room conditioning like Dirac. I have Dirac receivers in two rooms that are absolutely terrible listening areas, and running the full Dirac calibration on the room creates a soundstage where you don’t hear individual speakers anymore. But it’s much more fun to spend crazy money on magic rocks and snake oil that make your rich audiophile friends want their own magic rocks. https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina31.htm
- lich_king 8mo ago
  > Or they could buy equipment with active room conditioning like Dirac. You realize that the pitch for this is basically the same as the pitch for magic pebbles? It's a cure-all box you put on the wire to make things sound better, for a low price of $1,500 or something like that. I know enough about signal processing to know that magic pebbles probably work worse, but I can think of many reasons why it might not produce the audio you subjectively like better. I suspect it can't really even correct for many of the real-world issues you might have, because equalization doesn't fix echoes, resonance, etc. In any case, it's a bit of a strawman, because most audiophiles are not buying pebbles in the first place. They're trying vacuum tubes instead of ICs, or are trying out different op-amps, or stuff like that.

kraussvonespy 8mo ago

I don’t question that audiophiles hear different things on expensive equipment, but I think it’s all placebo. “If I spend a stupid amount of money on this, my brain will gin up the sound to satisfy my expectations.”

metalman 8mo ago

I spent 3 years in school studying to be an audio engineer, and have built all my own stereo set ups from random equipment and home made bits and bobs, but I am fussy about a clean signal and carefull speaker placement, do silly things like wash a record in the sink with soap and water, and since I run missmatched speakers, amps that are not built tough, die quickly, just occured to me to impidence match sides by daisy chaining random speakers till I get a match, liking that. But yep!, we are not whales, and cant hear at 200khz and dont need to hear the difference between mud and bananas, but I think a whale would.

dubeye 8mo ago

it's definitely pointless over the age of 40. mostly pointless prior to that too. a 20 year old listening with young ears is hearing vastly better audio

jrhizor 8mo ago

I'd recommend AudioScienceReview for anyone looking for measurements-based evaluations of audio equipment instead of the weird and wrongly incentivized audio review ecosystem.

snvzz 8mo ago
Yup. Measurements are king. And an objectively good setup is not expensive. A cheap pair of Sennheiser HD600 for headphones will last effectively forever and sound great paired with a very competitively priced Topping DX3Pro+ for external soundcard/amplifier.

type0 8mo ago

I connect my speakers with audiophile grade banana connectors, I don't like mud connectors since the sound becomes muddy

LorenPechtel 8mo ago

Thought here: I think they're missing the issue here. I am not an audiophile by any means, but the thing is cables are more than just resistance. Cables radiate energy, cables absorb ambient energy, cables are both capacitors and inductors (both of which will exhibit a frequency-dependent response). Perfect shield, I can't imagine it mattering. Imperfect shield--I can easily see it mattering, although not to the extent they claim. Don't test against a banana and mud, test against quality wire vs a heap of wire. Test a straight wire with a coil of wire. Test kinked wire. (I'm sure many of us have had bad experiences with network wires that get kinked.)

calmbonsai 8mo ago

Well, duh. The chosen propagation media (wire substitute) wouldn't have significant frequency responses differences for those lengths for that level of power in the audio frequency range. You'd need to have transmission-line effects kick-in which would occur at higher frequencies and/or if a cross-section of the signal propagation paths would have a significant difference in impedance. All three of the chosen medium act like simple power-sink resistors in this scenario--attenuating the signal consistently across the power frequency spectra. Seriously, just do a frequency sweep and plot the log of the output responses! But no, that would be far too straightforward an experiment. What really matters is the signal source, any amplified distortion in the signal, final sonic transducer (speaker), transmission medium (air density), transducer orientation (for higher frequencies), and the individual listener's ear.

just6979 8mo ago
They even mentioned this in the article: "However, the tester surmised that introducing the materials into the circuit is just like adding a resistor in series, and they’re unlikely to distort the audio too much, except by lowering the signal level." It's really a terrible write-up (AI?), pure click bait. The final sentence is just garbage: "They then tried various materials like mud and banana, which, although they’re pretty poor conductors, still seemed to introduce imperceptible changes to the signal, at least for the average person." What does that even mean? It's trash.

impish9208 8mo ago

This reminds me of Ken Fritz, a man who spent decades perfecting his living room’s acoustics and building custom gear for it. https://archive.is/6XsTA https://archive.is/6XsTA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2IOOhJmxw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2IOOhJmxw

codpiece 8mo ago

This article and these comments make a caricature of audiophiles, akin to mocking aeronautics because of a flat earther steam-powered rocket pilot. Audio equipment is produced by engineers and they create elegant solutions to physical constraints. There is a huge difference in quality when hearing a pair of Allison One speakers, or AKG K1000 headphones over an airpod. Some engineers believe in speaker wire improvements, most don't. Some even openly acknowledge they don't believe but use premium wires to satisfy customers' demands. Most audio forums outright ban the discussion of speaker wire because it's so contentious. Dismissing the industry that supports audio engineering is dismissing the disciplines of circuit, materials, and sound engineering. Sure, there are extremes and charlatans out there like the guys who sell magic rocks, but wtf, some of you pay for skins to play in a mmog.

nurettin 8mo ago
There are definitely better headphones and worse ones, that is elementary. But there are also very real limits to human senses which the industry seems to have ignored for a very, very long time in order to profit off of a niche self-indulgent audience who can afford it. Of course, nothing will change.
4gotunameagain 8mo ago
Nobody is saying that your 1000 euro speakers sound the same like the earbuds that came with your mp3 player in 2005. You know, the ones with the injection mold ports still there, that would dig into your ears. This is to expose the people that buy gold wires for USB, a digital protocol. You are free to spend your money how you like, but extreme diminishing returns are a very much overlooked thing in the "audiophile" circles.
112233 8mo ago
The point about haughty attitude is an important, but rarely mentioned. No one has convinced me to reexamine and change my views by calling me stupid, mocking me, and pointing a finger. If anything, it makes me avoid both that person and their whole group. "the industry that supports audio engineering" though — are you sure this support is welcome? It is not unlike asking to treat counterfeit drug producers with dignity and respect because they support medical professionals. I really do not see how any actual engineer producing audio equipment would not be there if not for a company selling one-directional ethernet cables for 1000/m that improve sound, with a plastic bag filled with gravel that also improves sound... I mean...

bob1029 8mo ago

I was never too fanatical about the signal chain. The room and the loudspeakers were always more important to me. There was a time when things like SACD and high res audio were interesting, but it became clear this stuff has negligible impact compared to concerns like the dimensions of the room. My preferred equipment today is a MiniDSP 2x4HD, a pair of 8" studio monitors on floor stands, a 12" subwoofer and a tape measure. The whole setup cost maybe $1200 and is nearly indistinguishable from my prior setup which cost easily 10x as much. If you've got a bunch of money to spend on audio gear, the best thing you can probably buy right now is some rockwool and the time of a construction crew.

pseudohadamard 8mo ago
Hey, don't diss SACD. I have a DVD player that happens to do SACD that I'm hoping to resell to an audiophile for five or more times what I paid for it at some point, I just have to wait another ten years or so for it to become a rare piece of classic audio hardware, so far it's only about 20 years old.

whackernews 8mo ago

Yeh, to zoom out a bit, this is a pattern with all products. It’s all a scam. The only thing you should ever pay for is build quality (you should buy something once, that you can hand down to your kids) and staff wages (something that is made in your own country so you’re not undermining your own economy, this is more of a moral reason).

lproven 8mo ago

Small side note... Around COVID lockdown #1 I did a lot more walking outside, pushing a pram and listening to music on headphones. For years I'd been using cheap wired headphones from exhibition swag and things. I put a pair through the washing machine. Top tip: this is really not good for them. I looked online and found I could buy a brand new pair of my preferred Sony in-ear ones for $NotALot. I bought the absolutely top of the line most expensive bass-boost in-ear buds. They cost the equivalent of $20 (about £15) and the sound is amazing. The point being here: because all the fashion-victims want Bluetooth, wired headphones have got really cheap and top quality premium grade ones cost less than a modest meal, or alternatively perhaps, less than I could easily drink in beer while listening to 1 CD or album. Shun wireless. Go back to wired. Get an adaptor if your phone doesn't have a socket. You can get really good earphones for very little money now, they never need charging, never go flat, never need pairing, are compatible with every OS able to play sound, and they come with a handy tool to stop them falling out and you losing them, called "a cable". Also: the microphone is great as well. I've recorded podcasts with them. The quality is way better than my £300 over-ear sound-cancelling premium Bluetooth headset, which I now only use while onboard aeroplanes.

kergonath 8mo ago
> I bought the absolutely top of the line most expensive bass-boost in-ear buds. Out of curiosity, what did you get?
- lproven 8mo ago
  Sorry for the slow reply. I've looked and there doesn't seem to be any way to tell. I've used them regularly for about 5 or 6 years now and the paint is wearing off. The only readable markings are the [L] and [R] indications for which goes in which year. Something akin to these: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/in-ear-headphones/mdr-ex650ap https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/in-ear-headphones/mdr-ex6... Nickel/neodynium bass drivers, quite large and chunky compared to cheaper Sony 'phones. The cables go into a separate fat little cylinder to which the earbud itself is permanently attached at a fixed angle. However, they're not noticeable in the ear at all and they're very comfy to wear. These are listed at £40 now but before the recent burst of inflation I think about half that is plausible.

sheepscreek 8mo ago

The total number of people surveyed was ~6 I believe. That's a really small and insignificant sample for any reasonable deduction. So yes, these audiophiles had a hard time deducing the original source - the result cannot be generalized beyond that. From the point of scientific rigor, even for an amateur experiment, the experiment falls short. Interesting idea. I wonder if LLMs can tell any difference.

throwawaypath 8mo ago

If you think $200 speaker cables are a waste, go search for "audiophile" quality HDMI and Ethernet cables. $200 for 3m: https://www.amazon.com/Audioquest-RJ-Cinnamon-Ethernet-3-0m/dp/B0073H10BQ https://www.amazon.com/Audioquest-RJ-Cinnamon-Ethernet-3-0m/...