Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 153 posts

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

#81

Post by bayindirh »

ssl-3 wrote: post #77
bayindirh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Like the Synergistic Audio network router that is quite clearly even labeled as a Mikrotik Routerboard Hex S -- inside of a nice box with a (fancy, admittedly) power supply, and some light pipes glued on so the status LEDs shine differently? I mean, I like Mikrotik products just fine. I happen to have a Mikrotik Hex S on my desk in front of me as I write this. But scroll down and zoom in on the money shot here: https…

They even tell that the core is coming from Mikrotik in the review, yet the ignorance is... oof.

Also, this explains why I hear some birds chirping and bees buzzing in the beginning of the Pink Floyd's High Hopes (from Pulse). It's possible that the sounds from outside imprint on my wireless signal while streaming it.

Maybe I should buy this Micro^H^H^H^H Synergistic box and connect via it while listening to music. Of course I'll need Cat8 shielded cables, but it'll clear the sound, probably, I hope. /s

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

#82

Post by exceptione »

wccrawford wrote: post #34
crims0n wrote: post #26

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…

#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 defini…

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'.

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

#83

Post by bayindirh »

amluto wrote: post #80
bayindirh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Where do you live? In the US, there a lot of widely available brands of UL-listed (or equivalent) wire with clearly marked specs and the cross section in ridiculous units of AWG. If it says it’s copper and it’s not an outrageous counterfeit, it’s copper. (And it will have a resistance that is in spec, because this is important for code-compliant electrical installations, and it won’t corrode when terminated properly.…

> Where do you live?

Somewhere far w.r.t. US. :)

> 16AWG CL2 cable is fantastic speaker wire,

Yet, it's way thinner than the manufacturer of my speakers recommend, which start at 13, and only go up. In my case I need 12 or 11. I don't remember honestly.

The good thing is, I managed to get a roll of the correct cable made by Acoustic Research. While the cable is not "fancy", it's copper, has the correct thickness and it's jacket still feels like day 1, and that thing is 10+ years old at this point.

For RCA cables I still use the factory default set came with my amplifier. Japan made, with very flexible jackets and gold plated connectors. That provides more than enough clarity for me.

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

#84

Post by kayodelycaon »

bayindirh wrote: post #69
crims0n wrote: post #26

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…

Unfortunately, (1) is not always true. I have in ears surpass some speakers, over the ears which surpass some IEMs, etc. For (2), again it depends. Some companies build amazing things for cheap, some companies build crapshoot for tons of money. The trick is to find the sound you like for the cheapest price. For (3), the simplest chain is the best(est) chain. I used to have a high-end 2x10 band eq which sat between pr…

> When you increase the resolution too much, the problems in old/remastered sources become apparent, and you can't enjoy that material anymore.

It doesn’t need to even be that old. I’ve got stuff from small musicians and they don’t have the equipment to make perfect recordings. You can’t tell with good headphones, but you put it through an amazing pair of speakers and it gets fuzzy.

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

#85

Post by amluto »

bayindirh wrote: post #73
yial wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t SOOW (or THHN/THWN-2 )in 14 or 16 gauge be appropriate for this?

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 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.

This is just a unit issue. See:

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wire-gauges-d_419.html

Those numbers are also ridiculous. They’re recommending 13AWG or higher for a 3m run. That’s about 20 feet round trip, which is about 0.04 ohms. The speaker should be 8 ohms nominal, but let’s call it 1 ohm at some very audible frequency to be conservative. So you might lose 2% of your power or maybe 0.1dB. Keep in mind that you cannot hear frequency-independent attention at all (the volume knob fixes it), so you’ll only hear the frequency-dependent part, which will be smaller, and your speaker plus room already has frequency dependence far in excess of 0.1dB. Note that the speaker power doesn’t even factor in to the calculation — as you supply more power, you’re increasing the current and voltage accordingly, and the effects cancel out.

At very high power you may care about heating. That recommended cable has an NEC ampacity of 15A or more, and 15A^2 * 8ohms = 1800W. Derate a bit because you’re at higher frequencies than 60Hz and you are just fine — in fact, the voltage will become a safety problem at silly power long before the resistive heating matters.

I will admit that there is a good reason to use at least 18AWG cable or so: speaker cable terminations are utter crap, and the crappiness seems to get worse as the fanciness goes up. A thicker wire is more likely to survive being terminated, within limits.

Buy some 16AWG two-conductor CL2 or CL2R or CL2P cable at your home improvement store and be done with it.

> Unless you're running speaker cables parallel to some power cables, shielding is not a requirement from my experience.

I have never heard mains hum coupled from a passive speaker cable. That’s not really a thing — there just isn’t enough power to make it audible under normal conditions.

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

#86

Post by kachapopopow »

mmmattt wrote: post #58
kachapopopow wrote: post #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…

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.

less about the files, more about the audio equipment in between

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

#87

Post by enjeyw »

ssl-3 wrote: post #53
amluto wrote: post #38

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…

A difference that long cables make can be heard in this video: 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.)

Ok I’ll bite…

37 miles?!? Why??

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

#88

Post by titanomachy »

bayindirh wrote: post #69
crims0n wrote: post #26

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…

Unfortunately, (1) is not always true. I have in ears surpass some speakers, over the ears which surpass some IEMs, etc. For (2), again it depends. Some companies build amazing things for cheap, some companies build crapshoot for tons of money. The trick is to find the sound you like for the cheapest price. For (3), the simplest chain is the best(est) chain. I used to have a high-end 2x10 band eq which sat between pr…

> even the basic airpods provide plenty of resolution and detail

My information might be outdated, but aren’t those the kind that sort of sit loosely at the outside of your ear canal (like the original iPod headphones)? If so, those are the one kind of headphones that I find basically worthless. I’m not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination, but in the iPod era I could never understand how people tolerated those when you can get vastly better sound for a few bucks. I figured the distinctive apple-brand headphones were kind of a status symbol.

AirPod pro sounds fine, though.

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

#89

Post by kayodelycaon »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #75
Youden wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I wouldn't 100% agree with this. It's not that speakers sound "better" than headphones, it's that speakers don't require any tuning to match a person's specific physiology (e.g. shape of their ears, ear canal) but the other things do. When you use headphones, you still use your whole ear canal but the sound is distorted by how the headphones interact with your ears, particularly the pinna. When you use IEMs, you o…

> it's that speakers don't require any tuning to match a person's specific physiology But they do interact with the environment. Having walls which reflect the sound can mess with the sound. Changing speakers won't help. Changing headphones can help.

> they do interact with the environment.

Yup. Got plaster walls, vinyl flooring, narrow room, different sizes of rattling single-pane windows…

Neighbors with leaf blowers…

I really like my noise canceling headphones. :)

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

#90

Post by bayindirh »

titanomachy wrote: post #88
bayindirh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, (1) is not always true. I have in ears surpass some speakers, over the ears which surpass some IEMs, etc. For (2), again it depends. Some companies build amazing things for cheap, some companies build crapshoot for tons of money. The trick is to find the sound you like for the cheapest price. For (3), the simplest chain is the best(est) chain. I used to have a high-end 2x10 band eq which sat between pr…

> even the basic airpods provide plenty of resolution and detail My information might be outdated, but aren’t those the kind that sort of sit loosely at the outside of your ear canal (like the original iPod headphones)? If so, those are the one kind of headphones that I find basically worthless. I’m not an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination, but in the iPod era I could never understand how people tolerated…

I personally dislike wearing isolated earphones for longer periods of time since they short-circuit the ear canal and I hear every bone in my jaw area and neck after some point.

3rd generation Airpods, while don't isolate, sound pretty epic for what they are. When sitting at home, I can listen to some music and genuinely enjoy it, and I like their non-isolating nature because it helps me to hear traffic around while walking with them. The only problem is, talking on the phone with them might get a little noisy for the other party, but I believe phone hardware filters some of it.

When compared to their rivals, they really have higher resolution, and enjoyable sound balance. Also, iPhone scans your ears with FaceID camera to profile them, so they are also tuned for your ears from get go. This makes positional audio really shine, too.

The original iPod buds were pretty flat and tinny. I used to use a pair Sennheisers (I don't remember the model but they were pretty high end) to be able to enjoy what iPods had to offer, back in the day.

Post reply on HN