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This audio cable business is getting out of hand...

solderdude

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Just a small inductor in there which has no influence in the audible range.
 

dkfan9

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No need. Some already did. JipiHorn is a French objectivist who tested a MIT interlink cable (entry level) few years ago.

Guess what? There's nothing in it.

Selling cables with mythical sound enhancements at exorbitant margins with certainly seems in line with Randian philosophy :p
 

Juhazi

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I was surprised that it took him 30 minutes to find it and explain! He started opening the box at 20m...

(No wonder why some people think hifi people (guys?) are strange...)
 
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tellyoulater

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What's the point in using Starquads for single ended signals? I keep the Starquads for balanced signals and use Canare LV-61S for unbalanced
 

FrantzM

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Bear repeating: No amount of proof will convince the true believers... They'll hear the "vast" differences in sound, various "blackness" of the background and the ever expanding size of the soundstage. Some will have better PrATT and some cables will be more "organic"...As I may have post here someone did manage to "program" electrons to behave ....

Just thinking aloud here:
Shouldn't the the US Federal Trade Committee or some consumer agency look in to this? This is gouging, pure and simple ... This is as fraudulent as can be.:mad:
 

Wombat

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'Greed is good' is alive and well. Quietly fraudulent does it well. :facepalm:
 

BDWoody

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Bear repeating: No amount of proof will convince the true believers... They'll hear the "vast" differences in sound, various "blackness" of the background and the ever expanding size of the soundstage. Some will have better PrATT and some cables will be more "organic"...As I may have post here someone did manage to "program" electrons to behave ....


Just thinking aloud here:
Shouldn't the the US Federal Trade Committee or some consumer agency look in to this? This is gouging, pure and simple ... This is as fraudulent as can be.:mad:

Sucker born...

Maybe there's a quantum entanglement between some very special people's brains and the device, and if you aren't properly trained to entangle yourself (the training costs a lot in material...), then there's really just no hope for you.
 
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Thomas savage

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The mogami microphone cable I'm using now seems ' perfect' .

You don't need anything better it would seem. Taking some of the room ' distortion' out appears to be FAR more rewarding and compared to my previous cables a lot cheaper.

I'm totally convinced the cable game is bollocks , part of the audiophile mental illness that the industry encourages for profit.
 

DonH56

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Star quad cables will still provide additional common-mode rejection for single-ended cables. I suspect it does not matter in the (vast?) majority of home installations.
 

Purité Audio

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I like Mogami and Matthew at HHB ( U.K. disti) is always extremely helpful.
Keith
 

StevenEleven

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Bear repeating: No amount of proof will convince the true believers... They'll hear the "vast" differences in sound, various "blackness" of the background and the ever expanding size of the soundstage. Some w ill have better PrATT and some cables will be more "organic"...As I may have post here someone did manage to "program" electrons to behave ....

Just thinking aloud here:
Shouldn't the the US Federal Trade Committee or some consumer agency look in to this? This is gouging, pure and simple ... This is as fraudulent as can be.:mad:

I’ve seen some “true believers” come around, even on Internet forums. . . I imagine it’s a tough pill to swallow at first. I imagine we’ve all been really wrong about one thing or another and can relate at least a little bit. Continued willful ignorance and intentional duplicity in marketing are harder to accept, though, I’ll agree with you there.

As to why no one ever does anything about this stuff, at least in the U.S., I posted this off of the top of my head on another forum a few weeks ago, but I imagine I can be permitted to plagiarize myself:

There are a lot of reasons. One is a concept in the law at least In the U.S. called “mere puffery” which gives advertisers a lot of leeway to say exaggerated, ridiculous, or unsubstantiated things if it is not incorrectly making a false claim that their specific product is better than another specific product.

Another reason is that audio equipment is not a food or drug or automobile or some such thing, and the claims being made by audio companies are not putting the health, safety and welfare of the public at risk, as might be the case for false claims about drugs or food or cars or nutrition supplements, so the area of claims about audio equipment is not tightly regulated.

Another reason is that prosecutors and courts and other legal institutions have only limited resources. There is a concept that the law does not deal in trivialities. We can’t clog up the courts and waste the time and resources of legal institutions on things that are below a certain level of importance.

Another reason is that there is going to be a question as to whether the claims made are falsifiable under the law. Drug companies and other similarly critical product types have to prove safety and efficacy. But with most things what will be at issue will not be whether the claim is unsubstantiated but whether it is demonstrably false or made with a reckless disregard for the truth in such a manner as to intentionally cheat people out of their money or other material goods (i.e., fraud).

Another reason is that there is not much money or glory or political benefit in taking down audio companies who make ridiculous claims. If you are going to bring a class action who is your class? Most of the “victims” don’t even know they are victims—how are you going to get a bunch of aggrieved parties to participate?

Another is the concept in the U.S. of caveat emptor—let the buyer beware—the government can’t be the truth police for every product on the market—they have to pick and choose their battles. Consumers are responsible for some level of judgment. Again the brightest lines are really fraud or where health, safety and welfare is at risk or where one company feels it has been directly financially harmed by the false claims (or theft of intellectual property, etc.) of another company.

That’s six. I think I’ll stop there. ; )

That is not to say that if a talented lawyer took on the cause he or she could not make some headway. But they almost certainly have better ways to spend their time and effort.
 

JJB70

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A legal case would be difficult as these snake oil sellers would be able to find plenty of satisfied customers and references from "professional" reviewers etc and they would baffle the court with science (some of which would be valid but taken out of context and misrepresented.
There is enough rational and objective information about cables, those buying snake oil want to believe and psychology results in these things actually "working" for them since to an individual their perception becomes their reality.
And people wonder why the world of audiophilia is derided as a joke. Ultimately this part of the hobby and industry is a micro-niche existing in its echo chamber and an irrelevance even to most music lovers who do value good sound let alone the wider public. Which also probably has an influence on the interest of authorities. There are enough important things to keep them occupied without going after a micro-niche serving wealthy hobbyists who seem happy to be fooled by snake oil.
 

MattHooper

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Hold on you cable naysayers!!! :)

Who here can tell the sonic difference between the different AC cables in this recently posted youtube demo?


Funny enough, if I skip from the first "cheap" AC cable sound to the end "more expensive AC cable," I actually seem to perceive a difference, the sound of the more expensive cable seeming a bit fuller, richer.

But of course, until I actually tested them in a blind test, I would presume it's likely bias of some sort perceptual bias - e.g. having been told one sound is being played with a more expensive cable. Even just searching for differences can yield the perception of a difference, as we know.
I suppose one could to a quick blind test by having two tabs open for this video, and while eyes closed or somehow blinded, have someone else click between the cheap and expensive cable portions, to see how the guesses come out. (And even then, if one reliably identified the more expensive cable portion of the video as sounding better, you can't just trust that nothing about the making of the video wasn't playing a role).
 

VintageFlanker

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Who here can tell the sonic difference between the different AC cables in this recently posted youtube demo?
I don't. Maybe mine is not performant enough (Furutech OCC cable with Neotech OCC plugs, for the fun part...:facepalm:)

This is the comment I just posted:
Hum... This has unfortunately no value as we KNOW which cable is playing. I don't know where is "night and day" difference some mentioned in comment... :facepalm: To be relevant, I suggest you to post the video under blind test condition then see if any could hear differences. IMHO, most of you guys "hearing" anything are heavily biased.
 

MattHooper

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I don't. Maybe mine is not performant enough (Furutech OCC cable with Neotech OCC plugs, for the fun part...:facepalm:)

This is the comment I just posted:

Yeah. Back when debates about the influence of analog video cables where all the rage - boutique S-Video and component cables were raved about in the subjective rags and forums for their amazing reproduction of detail/color, black levels over standard grade cables - I conducted a big blind test of video cables using the AVSforum members. Photos taken from images using a variety of video cables from cheap to very expensive. Members of the poll were blinded to the identities of the cables. Not surprisingly, the results of the guesses turned out to be indistinguishable from random.
 
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LuckyLuke575

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The mogami microphone cable I'm using now seems ' perfect' .

You don't need anything better it would seem. Taking some of the room ' distortion' out appears to be FAR more rewarding and compared to my previous cables a lot cheaper.

I'm totally convinced the cable game is bollocks , part of the audiophile mental illness that the industry encourages for profit.

My principle on cables is to buy something that's got a decent build and name behind it. This could be a reputable brand on Amazon, or Mogami or Canare. But those cables that go for hundreds or thousands of dollars are total bullshit e.g. Silver Dragon, 'diamond' HDMI and USB cables etc.

I've decided to use Mogami cable for all my headphone cables as the top end, but just the 4 core configuration. This comes in at around ~$90 for a custom made 10 ft / 3 m cable with nice sheathing and Neutrik termination for my HD 650s (although while I've been waiting for the cable to arrive from the US and pass through customs over here, I've been very happy with the stock OFC cable and 1 m, $8 OFC extension cable). I'd also probably buy Mogami interconnects if I every needed it.

I'm still to understand why 8 core or Litz UP-OCC could be objectively better? I have an 8 core cable gold and silver MMCX cable for my T3 IEMs, but that came in the box. The strange thing is that it terminated to a 3.5 mm TRS connection, so I'm wondering how all the cores work better than just a 3 core cable (which would be the minimum for TRS)? Its not even a balanced termination, so it seems like overkill (but I Iove using the cable nonetheless :)
 
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