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Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

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Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#161

Post by reaperducer »

zw123456 wrote: post #110

Tubes, 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 :)

Tubes, 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.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#162

Post by baddox »

walrus01 wrote: post #70
bayindirh wrote: post #59

I 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.

One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…

Obviously don’t spend $1000 on a normal passive HDMI cable, but I’ve found that increasingly the all-or-nothing argument doesn’t work for some reason. I recently had to upgrade all my HDMI cables to get 4k HDR video working reliably. Before upgrading, the video would work, but I would occasionally see white “sparkles” on the video output. Googling this problem led me to many people recommending upgrading HDMI cables if you have very old cables.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#163

Post by lmilcin »

itchyouch wrote: post #128
walrus01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…

One thing I can say about copper is that it is noisy. We are running FPGAs (with NICs) and were getting lots of packet errors over the copper cable SFP cables. Turns out, we either needed to write out noise cleanup logic into the FPGA, or add in a noise cleanup module which would add an extra 50ns to packet processing to the FPGA. Simple solution was to convert to fiber and the noise and errors all went away. I'd say…

Digital transmission/storage ensures the signal is not affected no matter how much noise is on the line (well, as long as it can be transmitted at all...)

Now, what I think you mean is that the copper in the cable picks up noise either from the device on the other end or from the surroundings and that has the possibility of affecting the DAC.

Even moderately well designed receiver should be able to galvanically isolate itself from outside sources of noise without having to resort to fiberoptics or wireless. It's just couple of dollars max for extra few components on the board.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#164

Post by sjwright »

cies wrote: post #24
pasta wrote: post #15

Once 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...

Record pressers do have very good DA-converters. That's what they do!

It doesn't matter how good your DAC is if your signal path includes scratching the sound waves into lacquer, stamping it into vinyl and scraping it with a stylus. Compared to digital distribution formats, it's utterly Rube Goldberg-esque.

  Performance
  Microphone
  ADC
  Processing
  Mixing & mastering
  DAC
  \
   \
    \
     Scratched into lacquer
     Electroplating
     Stamping into vinyl
     Scraped with a stylus
     Phono amplifier
    /
   /
  /
  Amplifier
  Speakers
  Room
  Ears

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#165

Post by robocat »

duskwuff wrote: post #100
walrus01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…

And then there's even weirder audiophile accessories like cable elevators, amplifier stands, CD "demagnetizers", and "quantum chip" stickers -- all complete nonsense which doesn't even have any plausible way of affecting the audio.

If you believe in the placebo effect, then perhaps the nonsense can have a verifiable effect!!!

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#166

Post by sopooneo »

reaperducer wrote: post #154
AdrianB1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand the power of naivety, placebo effect, dreams and stupidity composed (multiply all). Not in any way intended to insult these people, I know a few (not as rich) and they simply do not want to understand the basic principles behind digital signals, error corrections etc. I know people that work in IT and still pretend that audio transmission over USB can add jitter to music and that a DAC can "open"…

To me, my iPod Shuffles, launch day iPhone, and modern iPhone all sound very different from one another when I play the same song. (I prefer the Shuffles.) Is this a real thing, or should I upgrade to a better brand of crack?

Could you have a couple friends help you set up some double blind comparisons? I'd be interested if learning the results.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#167

Post by samatman »

nabla9 wrote: post #146

Since 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

You 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.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#168

Post by [deleted] »

bayindirh wrote: post #59

I 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.

[deleted]

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#169

Post by sopooneo »

baddox wrote: post #162
walrus01 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I truly will never understand about "Audiophiles" is their willingness to spend money on products that are, from a technical basis, indisputably categorized as snake oil. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable... It's an HDMI cable! The video signal has CRC in it and is packetized, it's either going to make it or it isn't. The quality of video delivered at, for in…

Obviously don’t spend $1000 on a normal passive HDMI cable, but I’ve found that increasingly the all-or-nothing argument doesn’t work for some reason. I recently had to upgrade all my HDMI cables to get 4k HDR video working reliably. Before upgrading, the video would work, but I would occasionally see white “sparkles” on the video output. Googling this problem led me to many people recommending upgrading HDMI cables…

I don't know this world. But could it be because the HDMI protocol doesn't require correcting all errors? And newer cables produced fewer corrupt packets which might have resulted in "sparkle"?

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#170

Post by tlrobinson »

sjwright wrote: post #129
tlrobinson wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, which is why this is one of the more absurd pieces of audiophile gear.

Anything "audiophile" in the digital domain is all equally absurd. The only difference is that some require a half-second of consideration and others require literally no thought at all to identify as stupid.

I wouldn't go as far to say "anything", but certainly most. As long as a DAC with sufficient resolution and stable clock is being fed with enough bits, then yes.
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