AudioQuest Wind High-end Cable Review

[AudioSceptic]

Holy Smokes!! that person spent ~ $10k for ONE AC power cable and is selling it at a 50% loss. I could travel half the world modestly for that price AND would have a much better time!! I had no idea folks were willing to pay those prices, a good thing he did not wire his whole house with that "solution".

$10k is more than most people, and even many (most?) who care a lot about SQ, spend on their entire system. How crazy is that?

I am a frequent visitor to that site, I should have mentioned it. Thank you for reminding an old man. One more site that I would like to list; The Audio Critic, Mr. Aczel has since passed away but the laws of Physics have not changed, sadly the mainstream audio industry has followed suit. A free read and quite informative. The hyper is; http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic.htm

You beat me to it! Another excellent source of proper reviews that I mention whenever the opportunity arises.

 

[AudioSceptic]

What amazes me is that in this day and age, after decades of debunking and discussion the world over, people still want to believe and continue to fall for this b#llsh#t. It's almost like the human race is devolving in many ways.

Sadly, it seems that irrationality and belief in magic has never gone away and even seems to be on the rise. In particular, the internet has led to every sort of science denier and conspiracy nut having a global platform.

 

[Dmitri]

Sometimes i wonder what if all the money spent in this court of miracles that is the cable market, had been redirected to for example the speaker market instead. But always reassuring to think you ve put the money where it really matters.

And then there’s the social activist me that thinks how that money could have done some real good in the world. What a sorry, shallow waste born from the intersection of stupidity and greed.

 

[DonH56]

When it comes to insanely priced audiofool cables - the thousands of dollars range one has a sneaking bit of sympathy. This is all about liberating money from people who clearly have vastly more wealth than most of us can imagine and don’t have the intelligence to justify it. The manufacturers probably throw a party every time they get an order.
I am a great believer in the notion that you place a product at every possible price point. There is always someone who has even more money to spend, and the trick is to ensure you get that additional money instead of it going to some other seller of useless bling. Every luxury brand worked this out aeons ago. If someone wanders into your HiFi shop and has a half million dollar watch on their wrist, you will have failed if you have not lightened their wallet by a few thousands on some cables. So you need to have them for sale.
Extracting money from the dumb rich has a long and glorious history.

I would say less "dumb" or unintelligent than ignorant. Chances are they did not get rich by being an electrical engineer and are taken in by marketing malarkey.

 

[MediumRare]

Even $100.- interlink cables can be considered 'snake oil' when claims about sound quality are made.
When these are very well constructed with nice looking materials something can be said about build quality.

The thing is that people that get ripped off by believing in cables and buy stuff they can't really afford and buy with the 'assurance' they are buying 'improved sound quality' haven't informed themselves properly. It is on them if they do so.
There is plenty of info found on the web and these buyers either ignore it or think it is 'fake news'.

That's what ASR is good for. They measure it and the info is available. Those that ignore it or think they know better because they clearly hear it themselves will always keep buying snakeoil.

The whole audio industry revolves around making money. Manufacturers can choose between low pricing and selling tons or selling just a few and make a living this way.

HDMI cables are rife with "quality levels" probably to extort $25 to $100 extra profit per TV. Would be good to establish any conditions beyond those in which the cheap cable does the job perfectly.

 

[Jinjuku]

I don't know if we should add such measurements to this one or have a new project/review focused on those cheap cables.

Measure a coat hanger.

 

[StefaanE]

Measure a coat hanger.

Mine are made of wood.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Yes. Unfortunately, most audiophiles are time poor (and cash rich) so we offer the Re-energizer Quantum Express ($999) which accelerates the rejuvenation process. Pick that option on checkout and bundle with two mains cables to get free postage and a discount voucher for your next purchase!

I know you are joking, but this is for real <https://www.futureshop.co.uk/free-cable-burn-in>. Good job it's included in the cable price!

 

[ctrl]

The thing is that people that get ripped off by believing in cables and buy stuff they can't really afford and buy with the 'assurance' they are buying 'improved sound quality' haven't informed themselves properly. It is on them if they do so.
There is plenty of info found on the web and these buyers either ignore it or think it is 'fake news'.

I think you underestimate the power of misinformation, fake science and group dynamics.

If nine out of ten voices claim that the xy effect is real and the one voice takes time to answer because answering based on facts and measurements takes time, the nine voices have published hundreds of other made up "information" about the xy effect in the meantime and simply claim that the one voice is not "able" enough to understand the xy effect.
Hifi studio owners, recording engineers, influencers and editors claim that the xy effect is real and they have noticed it. etc...

In earlier times people were often too gullible towards scientists and experts. That has changed completely in the present time. So much so that one can speak of the end of the Age of Enlightenment in the broadest sense. We are again in a time in which a clergy determines what is scientific.
High-end hi-fi was only slightly ahead of this social trend.

 

[solderdude]

HDMI cables are rife with "quality levels" probably to extort $25 To $100 extra profit per TV. Would be good to establish any conditions beyond which the cheap cable does the job perfectly.

Yes, some of them will for sure. However, there is a difference in needed bandwidth for 8k video and 720p as it were and as this is digital there is a limit as to what the cable can do. I am quite certain in HDMI cables there are some duds and excellent ones in all price classes.

I have some SCART cables for instance and some of them have a nasty hum in the audio when subtitles or white surfaces are present where 'better' ones have perfect sound.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

HDMI cables are rife with "quality levels" probably to extort $25 To $100 extra profit per TV. Would be good to establish any conditions beyond which the cheap cable does the job perfectly.

What is so bad about HDMI is that these quality levels actually mean something, and not adhering to them can end in pain. HDMI is a trainwreck of a connection standard. (Seriously, I2C for inter-device communications, whoever though that up clearly wasn't awake in lectures.) As we get to quite insane bandwidth requirements for 4k and above, the cracks are beginning to show. Use a cable not rated to the needed bandwidth and the data may simply not flow at all, or more likely, we end up with days of frustration with unreliable performance and behaviour that will convince you that the cable is possessed. The need for these newer high bandwidth cables is in part the result of the idiotic design of the entire HDMI specification. Whereas there are almost certainly charlatans trying to take your money, when it comes to HDMI, the charlatans were the design engineers.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Well, I am not surprised. The same goes with food and wine, olive oils and vinegars. It is an inevitable psychologic mechanism: it is very expensive, it must be very good. Few learn to position their organs of sense appropriately to evaluate and draw reliable conclusions from a listening session. While mechanical qualities of a product carry an associated cost, it seems AudioQuest has not done a good job here either with the poor connection of the ground portion of the RCA. Definitely a pass. It would be nice to test uber-expensive ICs, power cables, speaker's and XLR too from other companies (like these: https://www.thecableco.com/emperor-double-crown-speaker-cable-pair.html) to evaluate all the snake oil for sale.

I thought Nordost was already beyond belief, but this is yet another level of insanity. Makes me wonder: is there a $100k cable out there somewhere, and how do these cables compare with pure gold by weight, given that gold is around £50 per gram?

 

[solderdude]

I think you underestimate the power of misinformation, fake science and group dynamics.

If nine out of ten voices claim that the xy effect is real and the one voice takes time to answer because answering based on facts and measurements takes time, the nine voices have published hundreds of other "made up information about the xy effect" in the meantime and simply claim that the one voice is not "able" enough to understand the xy effect.
Hifi studio owners, recording engineers, influencers and editors claim that the xy effect is real and they have noticed it. etc...

In earlier times people were often too gullible towards scientists and experts. That has changed completely in the present time. So much so that one can speak of the end of the Age of Enlightenment in the broadest sense. We are again in a time in which a clergy determines what is scientific.
High-end hi-fi was only slightly ahead of this social trend.

Yes this is all marketting BS and the vast majority of folks believe it. All I (or other folks) can do is inform people. It's their decision to do something with it. It's their wallet and their peace of mind is what I am getting at. This has been the case with all products and even religion.

Best way to counter this is to measure and publish. Readers can then decide who and what to believe.

 

[xykreinov]

I stopped playing PC games after Doom. The very first one. It was an upgrade from Wolfenstein 3D. I suggest fast cars and fast women as an upgrade- you'll never look back.

That reminds me, I'm getting a CAI specially made for my car soon. 7hp isn't much to some, but I'll at least pay for the upgrade in sonic quality of the engine :^)

 

[AudioSceptic]

I agree except for the part about further testing.

Amir has done an outstanding job of demonstrating that a cable included with a good hifi product and worth $45 on the secondary market is superior to a snake oil cable priced more than 40x higher. We can easily extrapolate that a $50k or $900k cable, if someone makes it, will not be any better than a properly executed generic cable that was bundled with a premium product 20 years ago. The cables over $100 have been crushed along these lines.

The remaining question for me, is , what about the $20 cable, the $5 cable and the measly $1 cable?

I know not to go above a 1999 Hitachi, but is that necessary, or beneficial, and if beneficial, by how much, compared to the cheapest cable from Monoprice, the slightly better cable from Monoprice / Amazon Basics etc.?

We've been told for decades now by dealers and mags, and more recently online, to replace the "free" cables with "proper" ones immediately we get a new device, but it's always been a mystery to me why a manufacturer would include a cable that reduces the performance of their product when they could so easily include something that doesn't for a small amount extra. I suspect that Monoprice/Amazon is good enough for almost everything, and no one needs anything better than Blue Jeans Cable or equivalent.

 

[AudioSceptic]

What is so bad about HDMI is that these quality levels actually mean something, and not adhering to them can end in pain. HDMI is a trainwreck of a connection standard. (Seriously, I2C for inter-device communications, whoever though that up clearly wasn't awake in lectures.) As we get to quite insane bandwidth requirements for 4k and above, the cracks are beginning to show. Use a cable not rated to the needed bandwidth and the data may simply not flow at all, or more likely, we end up with days of frustration with unreliable performance and behaviour that will convince you that the cable is possessed. The need for these newer high bandwidth cables is in part the result of the idiotic design of the entire HDMI specification. Whereas there are almost certainly charlatans trying to take your money, when it comes to HDMI, the charlatans were the design engineers.

Is HDMI not just DVI plus digital audio plus DRM, miniaturised? What would be the best way forward?

 

[AndrewDavis]

Ll

But the problem is that these companies don't care about robbing only the rich

I once read an "article" on Audiogon where the author set up the "best" stereo setup for 10,000. He used a 50/50 rule for cost: half for speakers and half for everything else, amp, source, cables, etc

He set aside "only" 10% of his budget for cables and went on and on about how it was hard to find top notch speaker cables for only $1000. At that point I stopped reading.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

I don't know if we should add such measurements to this one or have a new project/review focused on those cheap cables.

I vote for a dedicated thread for measurements of different brands of coat hangers.

 

[Billy Budapest]

Ll

I once read an "article" on Audiogon where the author set up the "best" stereo setup for 10,000. He used a 50/50 rule for cost: half for speakers and half for everything else, amp, source, cables, etc

He set aside "only" 10% of his budget for cables and went on and on about how it was hard to find top notch speaker cables for only $1000. At that point I stopped reading.

50/50 divided between speakers and “everything else” is ridiculous.

There are no hard and fast rules. Set a budget for yourself and then pick the best components you can within that budget. There often is not a direct correlation between price and sound quality. More often, the correlation is between price and bling.

If I were to do it all over, I’d buy the best pair of Genelec monitors I could afford and then an Okto DAC and call it a day.

 

[AndrewDavis]

50/50 divided between speakers and “everything else” is ridiculous.

There are no hard and fast rules. Set a budget for yourself and then pick the best components you can within that budget. There often is not a direct correlation between price and sound quality. More often, the correlation is between price and bling.

If I were to do it all over, I’d buy the best pair of Genelec monitors I could afford and then an Okto DAC and call it a day.

How is that a good idea? None of the components in your setup are cryogenically treated to align the copper grains.

At least are you discarding the standard Genelec cable and buying a power cable with Counter-Spiral HyperLitz Geometry? Because it's all going to sound like shite without it.