[bigshot]

Some people are not self-directed. They allow other people to direct them. And those people have ulterior motives.

 

[71 dB]

I go on hiatus from head-fi for about 7 years and the cable discussion is still going strong?

Yes. Unless in the future people are genetically modified to be critical and immune to snake oil claims, this discussion will stay strong forever.

In fact, it seems there are MORE believers in cable snake oil now and prices are just nuts!

During your hiatus from head-fi the World entered the post factual era. Facts don't matter anyone. Feelings matter and you know what? people FEEL facts matter!
All facts they don't FEEL are facts are simply conspiratorial lies! It is total lunacy!! The World entered post factual era, because politicians learned to take advantage of the dangerous combination of frustration, ignorance and the bubble-effect of social media. Now everyone can find the bubble where things called "facts" match with their feelings.

What is going on with this hobby?

Confusion. What is the hobby about when transparent audio is so easy to achieve? How do you improve an already totally flat frequency response? Extent it beyond ultrasonics? How do you decrease the noise floor if it is already well below the listening threshold? Why decrease harmonic distortion if you can't even hear it? If you don't know yourself what the hobby is about, how would manufacturers and audio gear sellers know what to make and sell? Snake oil audio cables are a desperate attempt to make this more of an hobby than it really is. It is about "pretending" things aren't as transparent as they are, wanting to doubt things in order to feel your hobby is more than it really is. Audio has become the hobby of millionaires. Poor people buy their affordable audio gear and that's it. It is fine. Millionaires can custom-build amazing ATMOS-home theatres with fine-tuned acoustics. Such projects are no doubt a great hobby, but unfortunately only possible to a few people here and there.

 

[someguyontheinternet]

A nice feel and look make a difference. Stable connectors that won't fall apart at a slight yank make a difference. But other aspects?
I can understand that these factors may positively affect the perception of quality with other aspects of the product. Such a big difference that people would be willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars however baffles me.

 

[wind016]

Yes. Unless in the future people are genetically modified to be critical and immune to snake oil claims, this discussion will stay strong forever.


During your hiatus from head-fi the World entered the post factual era. Facts don't matter anyone. Feelings matter and you know what? people FEEL facts matter!
All facts they don't FEEL are facts are simply conspiratorial lies! It is total lunacy!! The World entered post factual era, because politicians learned to take advantage of the dangerous combination of frustration, ignorance and the bubble-effect of social media. Now everyone can find the bubble where things called "facts" match with their feelings.


Confusion. What is the hobby about when transparent audio is so easy to achieve? How do you improve an already totally flat frequency response? Extent it beyond ultrasonics? How do you decrease the noise floor if it is already well below the listening threshold? Why decrease harmonic distortion if you can't even hear it? If you don't know yourself what the hobby is about, how would manufacturers and audio gear sellers know what to make and sell? Snake oil audio cables are a desperate attempt to make this more of an hobby than it really is. It is about "pretending" things aren't as transparent as they are, wanting to doubt things in order to feel your hobby is more than it really is. Audio has become the hobby of millionaires. Poor people buy their affordable audio gear and that's it. It is fine. Millionaires can custom-build amazing ATMOS-home theatres with fine-tuned acoustics. Such projects are no doubt a great hobby, but unfortunately only possible to a few people here and there.

That is so crazy because I saw in other threads there seems to be more information available now. Someone showed me there are other people now in other forums doing what Tyll did back then and measuring all kinds of equipment. It should be pretty clear with this wealth of knowledge (over 15 years at this point for me), that aftermarket cables don't make any difference beyond a certain point and considering equal resistances. In fact it almost ALWAYS WORSENS performance. These cable companies are always small. They rarely can create a cable, for example, up to Sennheiser standards without the Sennheiser multimillion dollar budgets and assets. At most, they can create an equally-well performing cable.

 

[Barusu Lamperouge]

Wow this has been a hilarious ride last 12 pages or so were super lit. I laughed at people's inability to discard science to justify their snazzy "super-scientific" cables research. It just shows that folks with crap loads of money are super gullible. I wonder how did they manage to make that much money in the first place.

But over tons of posts on this thread, I noticed one thing, the believers always interpret music via cables and not the 'sound'. Music is an art which can have n number of interpretations due to it's subjectivity. But, 'sound' is the medium and it is dead objective and can be 100% justified by science. Folks are unable to discern such a simple fact.

You enjoy music via sound and not the sound via music. Both machines and human ears can pick up sound, the precision varies but both are capable enough to capture it. Music is subjective and it has crap loads of psychoacoustics attached to it.

I mean a basic test to verify this is just listen to a news bulletin, does it sound ever so smooth on $500 cable as opposed to a $5 cable? Or if someone really wants to test all frequencies along with impact and everything, just try listening to a sine sweep. I mean if it improves treble I'm sure it will make that 5-7k Hz sound ever so smooth and delicious. Or the sub 50 Hz rumble will be ever so powerful.

I mean the forum is sound science and not music science forum.

 

[bigshot]

Exactly. Music is about emotions and ideas. Sound is about fidelity. They're quite different, completely separate things.

 

[Roland P]

Imagine the horror on the recording side

 

[Barusu Lamperouge]

To answer the thread, easiest way to convince them would be to explain them the difference between sound and music. Most folks and believers don't seem to understand the difference between the two. Then to tell them why FR is an important evidence amongst other tests. If they still don't understand and are hellbent on this then they should probably check this small wiki on Physics of music -
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_acoustics

The FR is nothing but placement of 'music' in terms of acoustic waves basis which many folks buy their audio gear. The graph only tells how it will sound, it doesn't factor in how will you perceive the sound. Maybe an AI in future would easily manage this part as well but till then that's that.

 

[Maxx134]

Many circumstances can be made:
Unbalanced cable runs,
equipment interactions,
Interference

Wire difference is very important.
Microphone cable to power cable to antenna cable to digital (Cat7) cable.
They all have a real purpose so we need to not side track that cable is just cable...

Most minute measurable differences should not be audible.

Yet we do have some very elaborate & thick, expensive "Headphone" cables that can alter the sound because of poor sheilding from all that fancy twisting.
They will tell you one their websites, how great their cable is against all number of issues, happening on a nano scale...

Electricity and magnetism are inseparable, and any resultant stray inductance is not resistance.
What about the skinn-effect?
An obfuscation of the signal can be an outcome, but to what level?

Question is all these things happening in nano levels, so the real question is not that nothing is happening, but wether your gonna detect that?
Good luck with that heheee

 

[1S0U0N0S]

This thread is ****ing hilarious. The fact that the dude who originally posted this requested that he got banned makes it 10x funnier. Honestly I think cables matter in a small sense, but not anywhere near where people claim.,

 

[bigshot]

Cables either work for their intended purpose, or they don't to varying degrees of degradation of the signal. No cable sounds better than a properly functioning cable. Amazon Basics makes properly functioning cables. You can spend more, but it won't make any audible difference.

 

[1S0U0N0S]

Cables either work for their intended purpose, or they don't to varying degrees of degradation of the signal. No cable sounds better than a properly functioning cable. Amazon Basics makes properly functioning cables. You can spend more, but it won't make any audible difference.

part of me is curtious what does 10,000 dollar cables sound like. If I cant hear a difference i dont care.

 

[Maxx134]

you can get an Akiko stick which works by soaking up unwanted frequencies using special crystals

WOW OMG... Talk about voodoo electronics haha.
Last I heard Crystals do not have actual electric properties.
That is the key here..

I have heard of talk of crystals and frequency, or psychic influence but not in an electrical sense.
Heheee!

 

[Maxx134]

Most esoterica audio end up being variants of a box with a either a straight wire, or a resistor, or a simple filter (capacitve or inductive) inside. Lol.

I'm not nocking crystals or stones, as I had used them as decorations on gear, but to effect audio electronically, lol nope!

 

[bigshot]

part of me is curtious what does 10,000 dollar cables sound like. If I cant hear a difference i dont care.

Actually, the ultra high end cables are more likely to sound different than cheap ones. The manufacturers deliberately hobble them to eliminate high frequencies to give them that "analog sound". You can do the same thing by turning down your treble control.

Most esoterica audio end up being variants of a box with a either a straight wire, or a resistor, or a simple filter (capacitve or inductive) inside.

I did a tear down of one and it was a male and female plug at either end with a straight copper wire between them, wrapped in tin foil and there was a pinch of sand inside the case. I guess the sand was the crystals.