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Do Fancy Audio Cables Make a Difference? (video)

cursive

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Another scary thing about listening to them talk about their products is I definitely hit a point where I'm thinking to myself "they have no idea why they made the cable this way" There's so little actual scientific research, and demonstrable testing into these cables it's mind blowing. All the money is supposedly going to R&D right, it's not the materials that are expensive... but videos like these make me think it's just dudes sitting around trying different stuff until they decide that's what will sell.

The veil was lifted, increase in detail retrieval, amazing rhythm, felt like I was in the room, increased dynamics, toe tapping etc etc. All this unquantifiable stuff. I honestly get impressed with all the new descriptive phrases and adjectives that get brought in, that's a talent in of itself. Reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear always finding a new way to describing a car or something.
 

Overseas

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Selling high quality cables from exotic materials at a reasonable margin is one thing. For the right price one may want to boast with a full silver cable, whatever.
Selling circus accessories at the price of gold is different.
 

respice finem

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It follows an old saying: "a fool and his money are soon parted". :cool: Some things really never change.
 

Katji

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but videos like these make me think it's just dudes sitting around trying different stuff until they decide that's what will sell.
I think it's more than that - I think they hire marketing consultants that have expertise in that field of psychology.
 

GGroch

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And the companion saying, "there's a sucker born every minute."

In the early 70's when I worked for an unethical audio dealer, one of my cohorts would quote the Calvera principle after each high profit sale: "If god didn't want them sheared......"
In this case, I believe Amir is in the Yul Brynner role.
 
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Lambda

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. Don't believe in science.

A crappy cable can be worse at rejecting noise/hum
https://www.jensen-transformers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/an004.pdf

A good cable don't need to cost 200€
But for 2€... chances are your not getting the most copper in your screen and not the best connectors.

Price in gernal is a bad indicator for quality. a almost perfect cabel with good connectors thicc screen and maybe some ferrites can be made for ~20€
This dose not mean the 200-2000€ cable is actually good.

Also if there is no noise, no common mode current, source impedance is low and sink impedance is high. Every wet string is a "perfect" cable.
 

redstang

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. Don't believe in science.

So I could hear an obvious difference there which (assuming that guy is being honest) makes me think that difference would HAVE to be measurable, no? One of the commenters under the video mentions distinct effect with one of the cables, and I heard the same thing before I read his comment. Anyone else hear it?

It does make me wonder how much of this debate is driven by comparisons made with actually bad/poorly constructed cables, thus providing truth to some testimony.
 

tonymelb

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Amir @amirm,

This is my first post in this forum. Thank you for providing measurements to explain the science of audio systems. I enjoy your blog and YouTube videos. It appears that when distortion is measured, each frequency is generated individually at one end and measured at the other end.
My question is when multiple frequencies simultaneously travel through equiments such as DAC, amp and cables, how would the simultaneous frequencies interact with each other to affect distortion? Does distortion behave the same way with a mixture of frequencies?

Thanks.
Tony
 
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amirm

amirm

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Hi Tony. A number of my tests use more than one tone (IMD, J-test/jitter, Multitone).

That aside, a system doesn't know what the signal looks like. Whatever it does to a lot of tones, it does the same to a single tone. With more tones though, you can get interactions of them with distortion products that are not harmonic. You can see this in multi-tone tests:

index.php


All the "grass" (spikes) between the tall tones which is our source are distortions. Their overall level though matches what I measured with a single tone showing how useful single tone tests are.
 

tonymelb

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Hi Amir, thank you for explaining. So multi-tone tests adds little or nothing to single-tone tests in testing wire distortion? If a wire has certain level of distorting in a single-tone tests, it would behave similarly with different combinations of multiple tones?
 

Ler0ck

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@amirm , I really like to see you test any Nordost equipment or cable. If snake oil, I’m sure nordost cost much more than all remain brand.
 

trl

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nstzya

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AND??? Don’t leave us hanging! PLEASE!

Not sure how I fell down this rabbit hole, but I’ve already wasted... Er... I mean, invested myself intellectually and emotionally (not to mention TIME)... in the original Isolda thread to not find out the answer! So much so that when it looked like you (Amir) were never going get a sample to test, I went ahead and picked up a used pair of Goertz cables off Ebay (at a MUCH more modest cost) with the intention of sending them for testing.

Goertz are identical in construction and actually predate Isolda. Goertz held the original patent, and it is my understanding that once it expired, Townshend put his cryogenic twist on the copper, put an attractive cover on it and named it Isolda. I figured that if this construction and its effect was so obvious that it could be heard from the kitchen by the wife through a camera microphone recording, that the Goertz would get us in the ballpark (and likely the section and row as well) for purposes of testing/ listening. They arrived yesterday. Happy to send them along if interested, but if you‘ve already tested/listened, could you PLEASE point me to the results?

The Goertz/Isolda are so radically different in construction and principle from anything else, I guess I was intrigued. Every paradigm shift seems to fly in the face of conventional thought at the time. I try to have an open mind for that reason. But enjoy the scientific method as a candle in the dark.
 
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