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
Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
91–100 of 153 posts
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#92It'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 com…
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:…
Dirac won't be able to fully solve the room issues AKA it's not a replacement for proper room treatment, but at least it can reliably make the sound in the room not terrible.
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#93The 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…
What are some affordable speakers that sound great?
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.
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
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??
Land-mobile radio stuff. Analog, voice communication.
Our sales guy had sold a remote node for a voter system to improve receive coverage for a central dispatch system. (Signal-to-noise voters are pretty neat: They can continuously compare two or more related audio signals and [ideally!] pick the one that is best for use while discarding the others.)
That node wasn't all that far away as the crow flies, but it was a very long way out in telephone cabling miles. It spread across two different telco LATAs.
So we rented this very long series of bits of wire held together by scotchloks and punch blocks and whatever else in telephone world to use, and we used it. It was not a conditioned circuit: Just wire.
The specific endpoints of that wire were kind of neat, too: There was some basic EQ that could be used to help compensate, and (IIRC) some impedance adjustment to dial in the circuit itself.
And there was a continuous pilot tone used to set gain: Apparently, when wire gets really long like that, atmospheric conditions can dynamically change its attenuation.
Putting a pilot tone near the middle of the voice range (to be notched it out later) and using its level to set gain helps to improve consistency.
That wireline stuff all worked pretty well.
(The remote node was ultimately a bust. The sales guy also tried to cram too much shit into one feedline and antenna, and the gear to combine and separate all of those signals ate too much energy to make any of it an improvement over doing nothing at all.
Which is... well, that's exactly what the engineering told him would happen, but he did it anyway.
No part of this was inexpensive.)
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#95Probably 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…
My teacher said headphones were superior to speakers, easier to control
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
That’s my point.
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#97I 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...
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.
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#98Probably 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…
As someone who still occasionally mixes for a living, designs and builds audio hardware: Audiophiles are full of shit and this has been scientifically shown probably since the 90s (various AES studies conducted on the perception of CD quality).
Of course there is a difference between cheap gear and decent gear. But the difference between decent gear and audiophile gear is non-perceptible in a blind ABX test. And here is the thing: especially in the elctronics side (so amps) decent gear has become increasingly cheaper.
Audiophiles also tend to have downright naive claims about sound, like the silver cable sounding more clear and "silvery" while something with gold would then sound warmer and richer. All while they measure the same down to inperceptable differences. And of course the device with the walnut case sounds warm because wood is warm and so on.
It would be funny if it wasn't auch a successful con.
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#99I'd recommend AudioScienceReview for anyone looking for measurements-based evaluations of audio equipment instead of the weird and wrongly incentivized audio review ecosystem.
Re: Audiophiles can't distinguish audio sent through copper, banana or mud
#100Earlier 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…
Does aluminum not conduct electricity?
Yes, and it is also useed for certain applications, if you don't care for the need of thicker wires to get the same resistance.