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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 w

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.

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.