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

tomshardware.com

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

#3

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.

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.

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

#4

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.

If nothing else it shows those high end $1,000+ cables they buy are nothing but placebo effect.

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

#5
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...

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

#6

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.

You make it sound like these two ideas are somehow opposed.

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

#9

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.

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-inter...

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

#10
post #3

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.

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.

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.

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