Is the entire audio industry a fraud?

[danadam]

But watch fancy involves the appreciation of other things in addition to timekeeping.

Which is exactly the opposite to cable fancy and why cables are called snake-oil and mechanical watches are not.

 

[Deleted member 51584]

Which is exactly the opposite to cable fancy and why cables are called snake-oil and mechanical watches are not.

I have a very nice mechanical watch. It was designed and made by a watchmaker, who is also a professor at a world-leading university of art and design. He's a real artist and artisan. I purchased it from him in his workshop, but it took me 9 years to make up my mind. He tells me that is not uncommon. When I was there buying it I was followed by a family, they all got one, it had taken them 6 years to go for it. It is the only watch I own.

Strangely, people seem to have the same feelings about cables, that some engineer has slaved over a hot soldering iron crafting gargantuan multi-coloured signal pipes. I don't see it myself, but there is no reason why someone cannot have the same emotional connection to a cable as to a watch.

A $10,000 cable is not snake-oil. If it does its job, whatever that is, it's fit for purpose. It's just a very expensive option and most people would consider it idiotic. Snake oil is something that does not do what it's advertised to do.

 

[MattHooper]

A $10,000 cable is not snake-oil. If it does its job, whatever that is, it's fit for purpose. It's just a very expensive option and most people would consider it idiotic. Snake oil is something that does not do what it's advertised to do.

You are ignoring that these high end cables typically do NOT do "what it is advertised to do" - which is to combat electrical "problems" that involve false claims, and to alter the actual audio signal to audibly improve the sound over standard AC cables.

That's the whole justification given for paying all that extra money for the expensive cables. One of the common features of "snake oil" is deceptive marketing especially claiming solutions to problems that don't really exist.

 

[danadam]

Strangely, people seem to have the same feelings about cables, that some engineer has slaved over a hot soldering iron crafting gargantuan multi-coloured signal pipes. I don't see it myself, but there is no reason why someone cannot have the same emotional connection to a cable as to a watch.

I don't know where do you get it from, that they have the same feelings. Most "reviews" of cables focus mostly on how they supposedly change the sound, not on the craftsmanship. That's why I wrote it's "exactly the opposite":

• expensive watch: reviews focus on things other than how well it measures the time
• expensive cable: reviews focus on how it sounds

Snake oil is something that does not do what it's advertised to do.

Sure, they usually put some meaningless, technically sounding mambo-jambo as the product description, so they can't be accused of outright lying, but they'll "helpfully" provide review snippets nearby. I consider those to be a part of "advertising what it does" (they put them, so I assume they agree with them). Have you read those snippets. Do cables do those things?

 

[bodhi]

I wonder if there is a 10k€ cable which the manufacturer says does exactly the same as 10€ one with no other benefits than looks and bragging rights. I'm sure mechanical watch makers don't claim they keep time better than quartz watch though.

 

[ribonucleic]

I'm sure mechanical watch makers don't claim they keep time better than quartz watch though.

Rolex tells you their watches will make you Steve McQueen or James Cameron.

Patek Philippe tells you their watches will make you an impeccably tailored French banker.

Neither mentions how many seconds a day the watches lose.

 

[antcollinet]

Snake oil is something that does not do what it's advertised to do.

Snake oil cables fail on that basic test. There are no veils that can be lifted by a cable, no matter how esoteric.

 

[kemmler3D]

Sure, they usually put some meaningless, technically sounding mambo-jambo as the product description, so they can't be accused of outright lying,

Eh, not really. I think any cable over $1000 is usually outright lied about.

From a gryphon page:

Extreme low noise and high resolution are achieved through careful scrutiny of the electro-dynamics of field geometry.

Rigid mechanical construction and unstressed conductors of the purest metals are employed. Crystalline purity ensures fewer crystal boundaries and eliminates distortion caused by amplitude-dependent signal transmission.

Multiple layers of insulation contribute to uniform pressure on the conductors and effectively eliminate the “acoustic memory” of insulating materials, which in other cables causes smearing and degraded impulse response.

They are saying their cables improve noise, resolution, nonlinear distortion and smeared impulse response. It's hard not to view that assertion as an outright lie.

 

[Deleted member 51584]

I don't know where do you get it from, that they have the same feelings. Most "reviews" of cables focus mostly on how they supposedly change the sound, not on the craftsmanship. That's why I wrote it's "exactly the opposite":

• expensive watch: reviews focus on things other than how well it measures the time
• expensive cable: reviews focus on how it sounds

Sure, they usually put some meaningless, technically sounding mambo-jambo as the product description, so they can't be accused of outright lying, but they'll "helpfully" provide review snippets nearby. I consider those to be a part of "advertising what it does" (they put them, so I assume they agree with them). Have you read those snippets. Do cables do those things?

My apologies, I've never read a watch review. I have read several cable reviews that go on about how the cable is so complex it takes some poor chap days to do it by hand. It does have amusement value.

@MattHooper I get it, but I consider all this verbiage to be "advertising puff" that's been around forever.
I did once file a complaint against Carlsberg TV campaign. Me and hundreds of others. It got banned ... 6 months after the campaign ended! Strange as it may seem, advertising agencies are full of lawyers doing legal compliance because they don't want complaints or legal action. The thing about the Carlsberg ad was how it ever got through legal compliance.

Here are Shunyata's claims: https://shunyata.com/power-cable-tech/
Is there anything fraudulent here? They say, for example, that pure copper connectors sound better than brass or bronze. (I thought pure copper was avoided simply because it it too soft.) You might say "prove it". They will say "we compared in our lab and that was our opinion". It's a road to nowhere. I have absolutely no doubt that Shunyata have all this stuff checked out.

Dasani say on their homepage " From recycling to packaging, The Coca‑Cola Company is helping to solve the global plastic waste crisis." That's far worse than anything I've read from an audio company. The only thing they could do to help is close down their business. Instead, they are now selling water in smaller 20cl bottles - more plastic, less water - more pollution.

 

[Deleted member 51584]

Snake oil cables fail on that basic test. There are no veils that can be lifted by a cable, no matter how esoteric.

My impression is that it is the reviewers who make these statements, not the manufacturer advertising puff. The reviewers may be paid surrogates, but they will just say it's their opinion.

I'm sure you remember that QED did two reports on speaker cable design. https://www.qed.co.uk/qed-genesis-report
They make some of the cheapest and most trusted cables, a 3m pair of XT25 will cost you £36 (about $50). They include a lot of technical stuff.

QED XT25

X-Tube™ technology first came to prominence in 2005 with the launch of the world renowned Silver Anniversary XT, the most highly awarded mid-range cable in the world, winning the What Hi-Fi Product of the Year three years in a row.

www.qed.co.uk

A 3m pair of QED79, probably the most popular cable ever in the UK, would cost £14. Does this so-called fraud operate at this level as well, or is there any merit in their published science? I have no idea.

I'm not defending the hi-end cable business at all. I do admire their commercial savvy and marketing skills, but I can't see it as fraudulent, with one exception - I recall one company was caught dressing up generic cables and selling them for £hundreds. All I'm suggesting is that if anyone falls down that worm-hole, they only have themselves to blame.

 

[MarkS]

Rolex tells you their watches will make you Steve McQueen or James Cameron.

Patek Philippe tells you their watches will make you an impeccably tailored French banker.

Neither mentions how many seconds a day the watches lose.

Rolex actually does: their "superlative chronometer" standard is +/- 2 sec/day on wrist, and they are all COSC (Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres) certified as within +6 -4 sec/day as a positional average (plus a bunch of other tolerances for variations in position, temperature, etc).

On the other hand, Patek believes that even asking about the accuracy of their watches merely reveals that the asker is unworthy of owning one, and should be shunned by all of polite society.

And of course both are less accurate than any $20 battery-powered quartz model from the drugstore.

Which is why "chronometer" has been retconned by the Swiss to refer to mechanical watches only.

 

[ribonucleic]

Rolex actually does: their "superlative chronometer" standard is +/- 2 sec/day

While the Casio WV58A - a whopping 43 bucks - is accurate to 2 seconds in 200,000,000 years. (Or at least until the US government goes off the air, at which point you'll presumably have other things to worry about.)

 

[MattHooper]

@MattHooper I get it, but I consider all this verbiage to be "advertising puff" that's been around forever.
I did once file a complaint against Carlsberg TV campaign. Me and hundreds of others. It got banned ... 6 months after the campaign ended! Strange as it may seem, advertising agencies are full of lawyers doing legal compliance because they don't want complaints or legal action. The thing about the Carlsberg ad was how it ever got through legal compliance.

Here are Shunyata's claims: https://shunyata.com/power-cable-tech/
Is there anything fraudulent here? They say, for example, that pure copper connectors sound better than brass or bronze. (I thought pure copper was avoided simply because it it too soft.) You might say "prove it". They will say "we compared in our lab and that was our opinion". It's a road to nowhere. I have absolutely no doubt that Shunyata have all this stuff checked out.

I'm not talking about what, for instance, could be legally actionable. Tons of snake oil claims are made around the world every day and no legal action is taken.
I'm talking about whether claims are true or false, and therefore whether the consumer is getting what he/she is led to believe they are getting.

It doesn't matter if the company claims they tested a claim if they don't provide the evidence, nor whether the company itself believes the claim. There are people selling healing crystals at New Age fairs who fervently believe in their magic.

What matters is whether the claims are false.

And there is every reason to think a great many claims made by expensive cable companies are false.

 

[ribonucleic]

there is every reason to think a great many claims made by expensive cable companies are false.

Nordost claims their "revolutionary" Dual Mono-Filament technology produces a "dramatic increase in signal speed". Since regular speaker wire sends its signal at 1/2 the speed of light, this could mean a two-fold increase. (Unless they've found a way to exceed the speed of light, which would be revolutionary indeed.)

If one's speakers are 20 feet away, this means the difference between the signal arriving in a crisp .00000002 of a second rather than a sluggish .00000004 of a second.

Seems worth a few tens of thousands of dollars to me.

 

[MarkS]

While the Casio WV58A - a whopping 43 bucks - is accurate to 2 seconds in 200,000,000 years. (Or at least until the US government goes off the air, at which point you'll presumably have other things to worry about.)

Well, not really: like any non-temperature-compenstated quartz watch, it can drift by up to a second per day (usually less), and then gets corrected by the radio signal at night (if it makes the connection).

 

[Descartes]

Nordost claims their "revolutionary" Dual Mono-Filament technology produces a "dramatic increase in signal speed". Since regular speaker wire sends its signal at 1/2 the speed of light, this could mean a two-fold increase. (Unless they've found a way to exceed the speed of light, which would be revolutionary indeed.)

If one's speakers are 20 feet away, this means the difference between the signal arriving in a crisp .00000002 of a second rather than a sluggish .00000004 of a second.

Seems worth a few tens of thousands of dollars to me.

This is hilarious

 

[kemmler3D]

I consider all this verbiage to be "advertising puff" that's been around forever.

Here are Shunyata's claims: https://shunyata.com/power-cable-tech/
Is there anything fraudulent here?

Shunyata is pretty careful not to make concrete claims, but they goofed up in the paragraph about "CopperConn:"

Many audiophile grade connectors are made from brass or bronze. While some may get a plating of silver, gold or rhodium, the majority of the current is carried by the contact’s base-metal. ‌CopperCONN® connectors contain pure copper contacts which has a much higher conductivity that brass. The difference in performance is clearly audible.The difference in performance is clearly audible.

This is definitely BS.

Or possibly they found the worst bronze connector and compared it to their copper one, and got a 0.1dB difference, which is technically considered audible. At most. Highly doubtful though. And not what most people consider "clearly audible".

Also, they IMPLY (but don't actually say) their power cables reduce audible noise by 12dB. They don't, obviously. In court they could correctly claim that they didn't specify at what frequency... it's probably -12dB at 150khz or something... so I would call that a lie in all but the most legalistic sense.

Here's another one. PSAudio is likewise careful not to claim much about the cables' actual performance, but here they couldn't help themselves:

The use of FEP Air-Tube insulation, with almost nothing but air around the solid conductors, improves the sound of an audio system's focus and dynamics.

Yeah effing right. PROVE IT. They can't, and they won't, because it doesn't.

Also, the fact that these cable manufacturers HEAVILY IMPLY that the cables improve the sound, but RARELY ACTUALLY SAY IT proves the point pretty well. They don't want to get sued, their marketers don't want to gain a reputation as outright criminals (scumbags, maybe) so they toe the line but don't cross it.

If the cables actually did what they (don't) say they do, they would just say it. The fact that they very carefully avoid ACTUALLY saying what they say the cables do, proves that they know exactly how dishonest they are.

Example:

Asymmetrical Double-Balanced Geometry offers a relatively lower impedance on the ground for a richer, and more dynamic experience.

They say "experience", not "sound". Odd, I thought these were audio cables? Are they piping some other kind of sensory information that I can experience?

High-end audiophile cable manufacturers that are stupid or drink their own kool-aid, lie outright. The rest lie in ways that are extremely dishonest, but technically legally permissible. They all lie.

Here's a pretty honest one, but it's still exploiting people in a very unethical way. They just state how ethernet cables work, and let the viewer assume they're saying things that are relevant to sound quality, since it's billed as being for audiophiles. Of course, it does nothing at all for sound quality, but hey, don't let that stop you from spending >$200/m on a cable that ought to cost $4.

I would argue that most of this language and framing goes beyond puffery, and many or most of them would lose a class action. Unfortunately that's the only worthwhile type of lawsuit against a firm like this, and their customers actually get angry if you tell them they've been fooled, so I guess the chain of deception will remain unbroken.

 

[sejarzo]

Yea, and in the early twentieth century Beyer brought out a morphine sourced product for medical purposes they labeled Heroin. Todays synthetic medical opioids, and I could list 10 - 20 well known products, are essentially the same product as Beyer's Heroin, and operate on the same neural receptors which is to say huge corporations actively are distributing heroin; that is, essentially the same product with the same operational results as street heroin. Corporate structures are impervious to morality and ethics.

To alleviate any confusion...I used to work for US-based divisions of Bayer AG, the global healthcare firm, which is not related to Beyerdynamic audio products firm. A coworker of mine spent a couple of years in Germany under a job swapping program and learned about the development of heroin during his time there.

Bayer AG bought the business that I worked for, Miles Labs, in 1978 and eventually managers from across the pond got it involved in a price fixing cartel with ADM that was a sister to the one featured in the movie "The Informant." I actually knew folks who left Miles and went to work for the "star" of "The Informant" before the crap hit the fan.

So yeah, perhaps it's little wonder why I also question the ethics of many large firms, not only in audio.

 

[kemmler3D]

it's little wonder why I also question the ethics of many large firms, not only in audio.

Large firms only get ethics or morality from one place: The bottom line. Either the market punishes bad behavior by making it unprofitable, or legal penalties make bad behavior unprofitable. If neither gets in the way of bad behavior, the only question remaining is whether it makes money.

The only difference between a large corporation and the mafia is the people working for large corporations aren't ALL willing to break enough laws to risk going to prison, just some.

I would like to be able to say that the willingness to engage in violence is a difference, but look up the etymology of the phrase "Banana republic", and you'll see it's not.

This might sound really cynical, but even just looking at the corporate crooks who actually get caught, I find it hard to think otherwise.

 

[sejarzo]

While the Casio WV58A - a whopping 43 bucks - is accurate to 2 seconds in 200,000,000 years. (Or at least until the US government goes off the air, at which point you'll presumably have other things to worry about.)

Last week, our Seiko "atomic" analog wall clock started to reset itself every night, and while every morning the minutes are correct, the hour is never correct. Totally random.

In January, a digital "atomic" wall clock we have no longer resets itself, even though the antenna icon shows that it is receiving a strong signal. I must reset it manually every few months.

I started to wonder if the government had gone off the air.