[JaeYoon]

The best part of the page you linked is that they offer financing. The worst part is that people might actually go into debt financing a power cable.

You can always add a $3,800 Ethernet cable. At least the shipping is free

https://www.amazon.com/Audioquest-D...542754144&sr=8-1&keywords=audioquest+ethernet

That's the dangerous! Because they can entice people to buy on impulse! And may not be sure they can afford to do so in the long run. Oh if you can't buy this cable in full now? Don't worry about it! We can make you finance it! We hope you can make all the payments on time if not!!!

 

[JaeYoon]

Sorry if this is off topic, but is this cable in the link just a power cable?

https://www.fanthorpes.co.uk/cables/mains-power-products/power-cables/chord-music-mains-cable/

It’s just short of £5k!

Am I missing something more than it does other than connect power to a device?

That is not offtopic. It's a perfect example!
The website is super shady in it's information and sales pitch.

Although without them providing actual specs in of itself. It's hard to calculate much, and also this
"During our own listening tests we have been pleasantly surprised at the significant changes to the final musical performance."

Funny, I don't see any link on that site pertaining to a listening test done. What variables were this listening test done? How many people participated?

Nothing like the public listening tests on HA.
"Enormous attention has been focussed on materials and shielding to ensure the lowest possible noise floor on the earth conductor. All the internal elements use Taylon® insulation rather than PTFE. This insulation, combined with Chords optimum shielding design, redefines the maximum possible musical performance that we can offer with power connections."
What kind of shielding does a consumer need, we're assuming because this is a bulky audio cable, it will be kept at home for personal listening. So what kind shielding would the average consumer of personal audio would need that much insulation?

"The design also uses a uniquely modified version of our Super ARAY technology"
........

 

[bfreedma]

That's the dangerous! Because they can entice people to buy on impulse! And may not be sure they can afford to do so in the long run. Oh if you can't buy this cable in full now? Don't worry about it! We can make you finance it! We hope you can make all the payments on time if not!!!

That is the real issue. The reality that marketing, both directly (manufacturer and retailer) and indirect (head-FI hype) leads people to spend beyond their means. I don’t think most here are really trying to spend the least amount of money possible as the sole buying criteria, but an uneducated buyer going into debt or sacrificing savings they shouldn’t is where I believe the line needs to be drawn.

If your financial position allows for some unnecessary spending because you simply want something, it’s all good. I’ve certainly spent more than technically necessary at times because there were components I wanted that ticked off a few of my buying criteria checkboxes other than price.

 

[bigshot]

"During our own listening tests we have been pleasantly surprised at the significant changes to the final musical performance."

That is quite a trick! A wire that improves musicians' performances! Does that mean that I can plug my DAC in with this wire and turn the Shaggs into the Beatles?

 

[JaeYoon]

That is the real issue. The reality that marketing, both directly (manufacturer and retailer) and indirect (head-FI hype) leads people to spend beyond their means. I don’t think most here are really trying to spend the least amount of money possible as the sole buying criteria, but an uneducated buyer going into debt or sacrificing savings they shouldn’t is where I believe the line needs to be drawn.

If your financial position allows for some unnecessary spending because you simply want something, it’s all good. I’ve certainly spent more than technically necessary at times because there were components I wanted that ticked off a few of my buying criteria checkboxes other than price.

That's the thing! If someone has a lot of wealth, it's not a concern!

But there was someone on head-fi a while back whom I talked to who used affirm to finance custom IEM audio cables, and high priced multi BA IEMs and he told me that the monthly payments became too much. $480 a month was just too much and ended up he sold them on head-fi auction thread to pay for the monthly payments. Unfortunately, he had to sell it much less than he paid for because it was used.

He ended up selling other equipment to pay off the loan in full.
But that is just one danger of financing, he didn't have the means to pay for the equipment he financed.

That is quite a trick! A wire that improves musicians' performances! Does that mean that I can plug my DAC in with this wire and turn the Shaggs into the Beatles?

That is hilarious! we should've gotten into the audio cable business and sold cables and made a fortune. We can just buy some cables a few bucks a foot and sold it for 2000 and market it which all sorts of technology that was put into it.

Get some impressive slogans and a good writer and we should be set.

Where's Steve Eddy when we need him lol.

 

[bigshot]

I imagine it's pretty easy to arrange financing on a five grand loan when you're selling a two dollar product.

 

[SilentNote]

Wouldn't a null test easily prove if there's a difference between cables?

My intuition tells me that if there's a difference it's most definitely inaudible. Like -100db or less.

 

[Maxx134]

Wouldn't a null test easily prove if there's a difference between cables?

My intuition tells me that if there's a difference it's most definitely inaudible. Like -100db or less.

I am assuming a Null test would only cover the audible spectrum, but we don't know how it would affect a system depending where placed and if it is filtering or leaking any upper oscillations that may or may not be going on.

Ever notice some headphone cables heavily braided?
I find them to be excuses to add expenses to the wire.

 

[bigshot]

Who cares about sound humans can't hear? It won't make Bon Jovi sound any better. Just apply a low pass filter at 20kHz and forget it.

 

[gregorio]

[1] Wouldn't a null test easily prove if there's a difference between cables?
[2] My intuition tells me that if there's a difference it's most definitely inaudible. Like -100db or less.

1. Yep.
2. Second option (less)!

[1] I am assuming a Null test would only cover the audible spectrum, [1a] but we don't know how it would affect a system depending where placed and if it is filtering or leaking any upper oscillations that may or may not be going on.

1. Why do you assume that? A null test is a simple test; we take two signals, invert the phase of one of them and then sum them together. If the two signals are the same then they "null", IE. The result of the summing is zero, no signal at all. If the two signals are in any way different, the result of the summing is the difference between them, regardless of what the difference is, whether it's at 1Hz, 100gHz or anywhere in between! ...
1a. Therefore, this assertion is completely false! If for example we had two signals that were identical except that one of them contained some say 80kHz content and the other didn't, the result of a null test would be a "difference file" containing that 80kHz content.

G

 

[SilentNote]

“Busted” from mythbusters lands on the the thread.

 

[castleofargh]

Wouldn't a null test easily prove if there's a difference between cables?

My intuition tells me that if there's a difference it's most definitely inaudible. Like -100db or less.

it's going to really depend on the cable, and more importantly on what it's being used for.
for interconnect, the differences would expect mostly:
- hardly measurable change in loudness. unless it has plain wrong impedance compared to the standard it's supposed to follow, and then all bets are off.
- a slightly different frequency cut off, with a roll off(they will all roll off at some point) that probably starts to matter way up in the ultrasonic frequencies. but on occasion you do end up with something as dramatic as already -0.1dB at 20kHz so now the music is ruined! ^_^
- some difference in shielding(from irrelevant to somehow having the shield soldered inadequately for the specif use). about that, the matter is going to be how much you need shielding where you are?

now for headphone cables it's a different story. because there is pretty much no standard, so expecting divergence in electrical specs is sort of normal. some will make light, flexible cables as a priority and go beyond what you'd expect electrically for such a use. some will make big fat horrible cables that do have very low impedance and more than enough insulation to keep crosstalk wayyyyy low. some actually use the cable as an electrical component for the final tuning the headphone/IEM, and add resistors or whatever in them that will alter, or stabilize the frequency response of the transducer. so if you remove that cable and use a random headphone cable instead, chances are that they won't sound the same. some cables will be shielded, and half the time with single ended cables, even the guy making the cable has no idea if he should solder that to the "ground" or not. if the cable is braided a certain way then the total length of the wire can be a good deal longer than the same cable length straight, so between the length difference and the braids and probably some other differences, we certainly can expect at least measurable differences and sometimes audible ones. in general many people will find themselves in situations where cables do alter the sound audibly.
we could consider those events the "crap happens" of cable. what I find very strange isn't that people get audible differences sometimes, but this:
1/ they think that their usually miserable way of "testing" can be conclusive. I read cable reviews where the guy didn't have a switch, didn't measure if one made the headphone louder. his way required a good minute just to switch the cable as fast as he could which is a huge nono when looking for small audible differences. absolutely anybody who knows anything about how to conduct a listening test knows as much. but the reviewer is telling you everything(he believes) about the sound of those cables anyway, with the supreme confidence that only ignorance and/or a massive ego can confer to a person.
2/ that people almost always draw the wrong conclusions anyway. as if it wasn't bad enough that they jump on conclusions, they suck at doing it. like the "silver is brighter" stuff a few pages ago, it can be true under a given set of conditions, and not true under different sets of conditions. basically people make a rule that if you flip a coin it will always fall on head. they think they're right and don't hesitate to come declare it on the forum, even if all they have is a butchered anecdotal experiment, or the friend of a friend who knows a guy who said it was so. and yet they will fight to defend the idea on the web. I don't know if it's fun or sad, but at least I know it's a mistake.
2a/ how often people decide that if they like one cable better, then it "obviously" has positive objective impact on sound. it's the same as 2, but it's such an incorrect way of thinking about audio and subjective experience that IMO it deserves its own little spot.


all that to say, you can very much have differences way above -100dB because of a cable. and if you go seek those differences, like many audiophile actively do, of course you'll end up getting them. there are only so many exotic products you can purchase and randomly stick together before something starts acting weirdly. but are those anecdotal situations proof that it's worth spending significant money on cables to change the sound the way we like? I personally don't think so. in practice, moving the placement of the headphone on your head is going to change the sound more than the vast majority of cables ever will. that's what I've come to believe after measuring it many times.

 

[sander99]

It’s just short of £5k!

And that's for 1 metre, if your wall outlet is 10 metres away you'll need £22,999.00 for the 10 metres version!

But wait, what about the copper wires in the wall, oh, and the rest of the distance to the nearest power plant? Maybe we can ask Chord how much it would cost to make a custom high end power connection from the nearest power plant, say 50 km, to my hifi system?
Actually, maybe we should ask them if they can built a high end power plant as well, one that runs on hand picked high end audio grade coal! (Or uranium, but I fear that +200 dB+ when things go worst case awry.)

 

[castleofargh]

And that's for 1 metre, if your wall outlet is 10 metres away you'll need £22,999.00 for the 10 metres version!

But wait, what about the copper wires in the wall, oh, and the rest of the distance to the nearest power plant? Maybe we can ask Chord how much it would cost to make a custom high end power connection from the nearest power plant, say 50 km, to my hifi system?
Actually, maybe we should ask them if they can built a high end power plant as well, one that runs on hand picked high end audio grade coal! (Or uranium, but I fear that +200 dB+ when things go worst case awry.)

for the anecdote, they're currently putting the electrical lines underground around my village, so I keep seeing those huge rolls of cable, and the elite audiophile sleeping deep inside me is a little moved by that vision. the cable is almost like my fist in diameter(insulation included). I'd need 3 to make myself a single ended IEM cable. I suspect that passing it around my ears might be a challenge, but if it's the price of a good soundstage and night and day better experience... one downside though, from the color, they're using aluminum. so it's official, the electrical engineers working on that project are not true audiophiles. plus real audiophiles know that you must always keep your cables away from the floor.noobs.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

for the anecdote, they're currently putting the electrical lines underground around my village, so I keep seeing those huge rolls of cable, and the elite audiophile sleeping deep inside me is a little moved by that vision. the cable is almost like my fist in diameter(insulation included). I'd need 3 to make myself a single ended IEM cable. I suspect that passing it around my ears might be a challenge, but if it's the price of a good soundstage and night and day better experience... one downside though, from the color, they're using aluminum. so it's official, the electrical engineers working on that project are not true audiophiles. plus real audiophiles know that you must always keep your cables away from the floor.noobs.

The good news is you can now purchase an amplifier that draws 200AMPS....or an arc welder to drive your choice of ginormous headphones or speakers......i expect a full report