All BS just get Canare, Belden or Mogami and that’s all that you need
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Is there even a tiny bit of truth in all the marketing voodoo that audio cable manufacturers say? Or is it all BS?
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Aerith Gainsborough
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If a cable alters the frequencies of audio, a.k.a. "lies" .... what does that make a PEQ? :X
antcollinet
Grand Contributor
That is the wrong approach. When someone claims something not backed by existing information, or science - or even just logic, it is HIS job to prove it. No others jobs to disprove it.
It costs no effort to make stuff up - which is why there is so much bullshit around. It often takes a lot of effort to objectively prove it is bullishit - often it is not even possible, proving a negative etc. So unless you want every scientist and engineer in the world working on disproving bullshit rather than making good stuff, you need to reverse the burden of proof you are holding.
antcollinet
Grand Contributor
Audio signals are amongst the simplest of physical phenomena to measure, especially in the electrical domain (eg as it comes out of a cable). There is only amplitude, frequency and phase. And we have measurement equipment able to measure those to a sensitivity way beyond that of our ears.
You can measure everything from a DAC or AMP (or a cable) that impacts the sound coming from the speakers. And therefore if there is a difference between the sound waves created by two different items - reaching the subjects ear.
There is nothing that can be heard, that can't be measured.
(the reverse is not true - just because something can be measured doesn't mean it can be heard - as stated above our measurement gear is more sensitive than our ears.)
But actually it can't be experienced either. Not a single person (of the roughly 8 billion of us) have been able to hear the difference between speaker cables in a proper blind test. Isn't that a bit suspicious?
In my experience, the cable manufacturers sales pitches usually fall in one of the following categories:
1. Pure fantasy - The claims have zero compatibility with the known laws of physics.
2. Massive exaggeration - The "problem" they claim to fix actually exists, and is measurable, but it is in practice so tiny, that it is insignificant in normal audio use cases with reasonably well designed gear.
3. Preaching to wrong audience - The "problem" is real, but only in environments and use cases that have nothing to do with our audio gear. (like phenomenons that are meaningful in GHz frequencies, or outside the earth's ionosphere)
Summa summarum: There is no need to pay extra for fancy cables, unless Your reproductive organ is so small, that every compensation method available must be utilized.
1. Pure fantasy - The claims have zero compatibility with the known laws of physics.
2. Massive exaggeration - The "problem" they claim to fix actually exists, and is measurable, but it is in practice so tiny, that it is insignificant in normal audio use cases with reasonably well designed gear.
3. Preaching to wrong audience - The "problem" is real, but only in environments and use cases that have nothing to do with our audio gear. (like phenomenons that are meaningful in GHz frequencies, or outside the earth's ionosphere)
Summa summarum: There is no need to pay extra for fancy cables, unless Your reproductive organ is so small, that every compensation method available must be utilized.
- Thread Starter
- #48
Did you not watch the video? The whole video is about his proof and he went through the testing. Why do you people keep commenting discrediting him when you clearly haven't even watched the video?
- Thread Starter
- #49
How do you measure soundstage though? Or detail? These are qualities we can clearly hear in person. But I'm not sure how you would measure it.
- Thread Starter
- #50
Actually it's more like people can hear a difference.. but they cannot say which one cable is which.
If you're determined to believe bullshit, it's really not worthwhile to talk you out of it.
My anecdotes: The first time I heard a cable demo was about 45 years ago; it was put on by Kimber. The difference was absolutely startling. That night, after a little bit of thought, I realized exactly how the demo was rigged, and that gave me a good idea of how dishonest that entire market sector really was. It was a growth moment for me.
About ten years after that, I was working with a wire/cable manufacturer (contract house with dozens of customers) who were providing cables to another of the boutique cable peddlers. Their GM and I were chatting over lunch and he told me that the guy running the boutique would come in at the beginning of a run, cut off a piece from the raw wire reel, and then do an unknown test to determine the wire "direction" for the cable manufacturing. The GM was impressed since despite decades of experience in manufacturing cables, they had no electrical means of determining the direction that the wire had been extruded. I asked, "Did you hand him a few segments of wire from the same reel and see if his test was repeatable?" The GM seemed startled at this novel idea, had a nice laugh as the light went on for him, then observed, "They pay their bills on time."
My anecdotes: The first time I heard a cable demo was about 45 years ago; it was put on by Kimber. The difference was absolutely startling. That night, after a little bit of thought, I realized exactly how the demo was rigged, and that gave me a good idea of how dishonest that entire market sector really was. It was a growth moment for me.
About ten years after that, I was working with a wire/cable manufacturer (contract house with dozens of customers) who were providing cables to another of the boutique cable peddlers. Their GM and I were chatting over lunch and he told me that the guy running the boutique would come in at the beginning of a run, cut off a piece from the raw wire reel, and then do an unknown test to determine the wire "direction" for the cable manufacturing. The GM was impressed since despite decades of experience in manufacturing cables, they had no electrical means of determining the direction that the wire had been extruded. I asked, "Did you hand him a few segments of wire from the same reel and see if his test was repeatable?" The GM seemed startled at this novel idea, had a nice laugh as the light went on for him, then observed, "They pay their bills on time."
RandomEar
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Which video? You keep referencing this over and over, but I couldn't find any such video linked in this thread.
The precision of modern instruments is insane. You can easily proof that signals are identical to within -140 dB or better. That's a difference of less than 0.00001%. You will never, under any circumstances see, feel or hear such unimaginably small differences. And if signals are demonstrably this close to being identical, no characteristic of them - whatever you want to call it: "soundstage" or "warmth" or anything else - can be different.
If that is the case, then why hasn't anybody ever delivered conclusive evidence that they can hear those differences?
Old_School_Brad
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He might actually be special though.
RandomEar
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It is, though. What matters isn't "6%", what matters are effective cable resistance and - to a much, much smaller degree under some rare cirumstances - cable inductance. If silver has 6% less resistance at the same length and diameter, guess what you can do? Just use a copper cable with at least 6% higher cross sectional area. That will decrease the resistance of the copper cable by at least 6%.
Example for 5 m cable length:
- Copper, 2.5 mm² -> 33.6 mOhm
- Silver, 2.5 mm² -> 31.8 mOhm
- Copper, 4 mm² -> 21.0 mOhm
Which would be the exact same result as if they just thought they could hear the difference, but actually didn't.
DanielT
Master Contributor
Morrow Audio and me not even having English as a first language immediately see the joke that can be made at their expense.
Maybe too childish, trivial and simple joke because no one else has done it in the thread?
Or in these times a non-politically correct joke to make?
Moron Audio
Peter Walker (QUAD) had this to say:
When asked what the requirements of a good speaker cable were, he is said to have replied:
" There are only two requirements a speaker cable should satisfy. The first is that it should be long enough to reach between amplifier and speaker. Then having done that, the only other requirement is, ideally, the colour of the insulation should match that of the surface on which it is lays."
When asked to list some of the best speaker cables, Peter Walker replied:
"The best kind are those that conduct electricity."
When asked what the requirements of a good speaker cable were, he is said to have replied:
" There are only two requirements a speaker cable should satisfy. The first is that it should be long enough to reach between amplifier and speaker. Then having done that, the only other requirement is, ideally, the colour of the insulation should match that of the surface on which it is lays."
When asked to list some of the best speaker cables, Peter Walker replied:
"The best kind are those that conduct electricity."
danadam
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In audioquest jitterbug thread:
AudioQuest JitterBug USB Filter Review
Full Ack. Galvanic Isolation of the digital input side of a DAC is 100% guaranteed to always eliminate all "ground loop" type of issues, as it fixes the root cause of the problem. why they dont include it, i really dont understand. Marantz ND8006 had same issue with my pc as well, same shit...
www.audiosciencereview.com
AudioQuest JitterBug USB Filter Review
I can definitely tell the new Jitterbug FMJ does something to the sound, though I am not sure if it's for the better or worse. I use my DAC with a very noisy gaming PC and I can hear clicks and pops when the GPU load is high. Jitterbug removes that noise quite a bit. For that purpose, the...
www.audiosciencereview.com
Of course the video itself was discussed back then in at least 3 threads:
"Passion for Sound" says they got meaningful differences between different USB cables- I want to try to reproduce but want feedback on approach
Video in question: He takes a file, plays it through a dac via multiple USB cables and records it in Audacity. Then he inverts polarity and plays it against the source track. He gets noticeably different results between USB cables but multiple recordings using the same cable cancel out...
www.audiosciencereview.com
What is flawed?
In this video, it is claimed and demonstrated that USB-cables make a difference, i.e. the transmission of music in the form of digital signals is affected by the properties of the cable. In the video it is claimed that this is proven by (semi-) scientific method. I want to emphasize that this...
www.audiosciencereview.com
More USB
I presume the slight differences in level are down to the various cables electrical parameters or is there something fundamentally wrong with his method? Keith
www.audiosciencereview.com
Speaker cables do I assemble myself with good banana plugs. If the copper square is good enough then the loudspeaker works as intended. Buying preassembled cables, there are of course differences in connectors and the wire connection which will create the price tag. Same for RCA and RF cables.
As I have stated herein before, my technical expertise is limited… that said : There is almost no truth to the BS of “High-end” cable pushers!
Despite my lack of true expertise, I am frequently asked whether I can help improve the quality of XXXYYY stereo system; I can almost always help…
First, and most important, is positioning the usually mediocre speakers relative to the primary listening position - invariably provides a noticeable improvement!
Second, and to my resulting amazement, I check the size of the speaker wires! Wire is inexpensive, yet the manufacturer's will scrimp and use true crap, undersized wire! Stupid place to cut coast - but I digress! I simply replace the wires with decent copper zip cord and, Voila!, happy friends!!
Tillman
Despite my lack of true expertise, I am frequently asked whether I can help improve the quality of XXXYYY stereo system; I can almost always help…
First, and most important, is positioning the usually mediocre speakers relative to the primary listening position - invariably provides a noticeable improvement!
Second, and to my resulting amazement, I check the size of the speaker wires! Wire is inexpensive, yet the manufacturer's will scrimp and use true crap, undersized wire! Stupid place to cut coast - but I digress! I simply replace the wires with decent copper zip cord and, Voila!, happy friends!!
Tillman
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