I’m lightly active in the headphone enthusiast space. Even in the more light-hearted circles there is still an elevated amount of placebo bullshit and stubborn belief in things that verifiably make zero difference.
It’s rather fascinating in a way. I’ve been in and out of various hobbies over the course of my life but there is just something about audio that attracts an atmosphere of wilful ignorance and bad actors that prey on it.
I’ve been in the audio enthusiast community for like 17 years now. When I was fresh, the internet commentators had me thinking there was some audio heaven in the high end compared to the mid range priced gear. Now I know better and the gear community is not so high end price evangelicals like it used to be. I feel like there was a before and after the $30 Monoprice DJ headphones and the wave of headphones since. Then especially IEMs. Once ChiFi really got rolling with IEMs and amplifiers and DACs, $1000+ snake oil salespeople got to deal in a way more competitive market
Same with speakers. Internet changed everything. No more at the whim of specialty audio stores stock and Best Buys. Now you got the whole worlds amount of speaker brands at a click of a finger plus craigslist/offerup. Also again ChiFi amplifiers and DACs. Also improvements in audio codecs whether for wireless or not. Bluetooth audio was awful until it stopped being awful as standards improved
These days I mostly see the placebo audio arguments in streaming service and FLAC/lossless encode fanboys. Headphone and speaker communities these days seem a lot more self aware and steeped in self-deprecating humor over the cost, diminishing returns, placebo, snake oil they live in today compared to 17 years ago. I want my digital audio cables endpoints plated with the highest quality diamonds to preserve the zeros and ones. No lab diamonds. Must be natural providing the warmth only blood diamonds that excel in removing negative ions. I treat my room with the finest pink himalayan salt sound absorbent wall panels to deal with the most problematic materials used by homebuilders. Authentic himalayan salt has been shown to be some of the highest quality material in filtering unwanted noise and echos while leaving clean pure audio bliss
These days I mostly see the placebo audio arguments in streaming service and FLAC/lossless encode fanboys.
The clamour for lossless/high-res streaming is the audiophile community in a nutshell. Literally paying more money so your brain can trick you into thinking it sounds better.
Like many hobbies, it’s mainly a way to rationalize spending ever increasing amounts on new equipment and source content. I was into the whole scene for a while, but once I had discovered what components in the audio chain actually improve sound quality and which don’t, I called it quits.
Usually when I hear someone swear by lossless audio one service provides compared to another, I swear the reality is either placebo or one service is just using a better masterering of an album compared to another. The service that has on their service the better version album mix and mastering. Like they could serve it as 192kbps MP3 and sound better than a lossless encoded album version with the non ideal mix and mastered release
Oh, 100%. I actually tested this by recording bit perfect copies from different streaming services and comparing them using Audacity.
I found that they only way to hear a difference between the same song played on two different platforms was 1) if there was a notable difference in gain or 2) if they were using two different masters for the same song. If two platforms were using the same master version, they were impossible to tell apart in an ABX test.
All of this is to say that the quality of the mastering is orders of magnitude more important than whether or not a track is lossy or lossless, as far as audible audio quality goes.
Not here to argue I can hear the difference, because I can’t. But in audio collecting where the size and burden of even large lossless files isn’t much different from lossy files, why care? I download the flac files and compress upon delivery to the client where the space might be of a larger concern.
I do the same, as it happens, so I won’t argue with you.
As for “why care?”, I’d say it’s about making informed decisions and not spending money unnecessarily in the pursuit of genuinely better sound quality.
Yeah, I don’t get too deep into that game. I do have some higher-ish quality headphones and speakers though. I also find that subwoofers are largely underrated by audio snobs.
I think it depends on your source.
If we are talking about a downloaded good high bit rate MP3 and a FLAC, then yeah, I can’t hear a difference.
For streaming, I CAN hear a difference between the default spotify stream and my locally stored lossless files. That difference might come down to how they are mastered or whatever spotify does to the files, but whatever it is the difference is pretty perceptible to me and I don’t have especially sensitive ears.
If we’re talking free tier Spotify, then it could actually be due to the bitrate (96kbps OGG vorbis, IIRC). However, if you’re a premium subscriber then the standard bitrate is 160kbps, which is definitely not audible to 99.99% of people.
In fact, after much ABX testing, I found that a noticeable audible difference between a local file and the same song on a streaming service is almost always due to either a loudness differential or because the two tracks come from different masters.
I really noticed when I switched from Spotify to Tidal that there is something different about Spotify’s sound quality that makes it worse even at the highest streaming quality. I was surprised since I fully admit that in 99% of cases I can’t tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 and a FLAC of the same file.
Could be poor mastering. You can’t always just take a track and squish it down to a low bitrate without tweaking some settings.
I’m a person with sensitive hearing and mp3 always sounds muddy to me compared with a flac or wav rip. My coworker poo-pooed this notion, but I proved it to him. Mp3 does alter the sounds, most people won’t notice, but for somebody that does hear the differences its annoying. I would not spend 10k or anything. I paid $15 for an old 5.1 system, and max $80 for a pi2 with a DAC hat. LOL
For me its like if you stood outside a persons house and heard them talking vs their words coming over their TV. There is a noticable signature that let’s you hear its the TV or real people, and that’s what mp3 vs wav is like for me.
I can also hear my neighbours ceiling fan running in the connected town home. That almost inaudible drone of the motor running, drives me nuts
I don’t about you, but in my country Tidal is cheaper than Spotify. But that might be placebo
/jk, though tidal is actually cheaper here. I can’t tell the difference in blind testing between 320 kbps mp3 exported in Reaper and the original wav; they’re indistinguishable to me. Actually, I can tell them apart with some airwindows dithers, but that is a pretty esoteric exception.
I like lossless compression. But not because I’d be a audio nut. I prefer it from a data retention and archival viewpoint. I could cut and join lossless data as often as i like, without losses accumulating.
Do you often cut and join audio that you did not record yourself?
I would not call it often, but it happens.
Gotta love those people with fiber optic cables with gold plated connectors.
But don’t forget the quality of the optic fibers used is also absolutely crucial. Most important factor here is to prevent light scattering along the cable run. So that the zeroes and ones don’t get irritated and upset. You don’t want the amplifier’s error correction to get in a bad mood. So better buy that pure diamond cable that was produced on a full moon night. The captured moon light can can soothe the negative effects of scattered light.
No more at the whim of specialty audio stores stock and Best Buys.
I remember in 2017 going into an audio store near where I worked, and the guy was emphasizing how clear the audio sounded on certain (expensive) setups, and how it was streaming in from “Norway” which was better than what you’d find on Spotify or YouTube. It took me a while to piece together what he was on about.
Dude was talking about Tidal. All he meant was they streamed lossless formats via Tidal. As if anyone could tell the difference between, say, stereo 192kbps AAC and flac.
Also, remember the supposed amazing quality of MQA? What a shitshow. It’s rather remarkable that a pair of Airpods Pro 2, when fit into your ears properly, are essentially perfectly tuned headphones for only $250 or less compared to some of what the competition sells. Not to say I don’t love my Sennheiser HD650.
You sound like the right person to ask then—how much should I spend on a soundbar for a tv? Or at least do you know a place to ask these questions that give realistic answers with less fanboyism and faux-intellectuals?
I would never recommend a soundbar unless you’re absolutely stuck to that form factor for spacial reasons. Bookshelf speakers are still superior and don’t take up that much space. But I’m also not familiar with any I just got tower speakers that sounded really good at a friend and been loving them.
Honestly I just want something that sounds better than tv speakers that won’t break the bank. It seems like everything everyone recommends is $400+, which isn’t crazy compared to the price of a tv but I just need the most basic thing possible that’s better than built-in for occasional movie nights with friends and family
I bought a pair of Edifier powered bookshelf speakers (R1280T model, I think) for my living room setup and they work fine for casual TV and movie watching. Cost about $110 total. No subwoofer necessary, but I would add one if I had movie nights with more than just me and my partner (and didn’t have downstairs neighbors, lol).
I get that but is a 400 dollar soundbar really any good? Even the 1000 ones sound tinny and small to me but maybe I’m just spoiled.
You can use this to connect your TV to bookshelf speakers through an optical cable. Just need some speaker wire or banana plug cables to go with it
This one has HDMI ARC which most sound bars use for connection along with optical
Then offerup/craigslist/marketplace for used bookshelf speakers. Practically anything will be far better than your TV. Like $50 used polk, klipsch, and sony speakers are real common on the second hand market. They may be old but speakers last a real long time if you’re not blasting them at super high volumes. Go for speakers that have 5.25"-6.5" woofers. You’ll appreciate them for music too
There’s a bunch of brands and you really can’t go wrong compared to TV speakers. Edifer powered speakers don’t require a separate amplifier. Other major brands like ELAC, Kef, wharfdale, paradigm, …
There’s a difference though, it’s just that gold plated cables doesn’t change anything.
I’d love testing a Sennheiser hd600 series, to see if I hear some difference, from my 598 headset. But they are so expensive so I’m all okay with my refurbished 40€ ones :-)
A DAC for the PC is a nice step up though IMO (there are crap ones too ofc). Not everything is audiofoolery.
I’ll agree that sound quality doesn’t seem to be consistent but I will say that Bose is a very nice quality sounding company. Never been disappointed by them.
Bose is famous for unnatural sound boosting. This appeals to the masses and fits to modern listening habits.
Well their A20s are still top of the list and the most common brand you’ll see during your travels… Must be a good reason.
As I said, that appeals to the masses.
I remember when we’d say, no highs no lows, must be Bose. They must have over-corrected.
Bose the bass enhancing company? Euw…
Must be why I like it.
Then don’t listen to me and enjoy your headphones 🫡!
I fucking love audio and have an extensive collection of equipment. The last thing in the chain before your ears (so headphones and speakers) will absolutely make a difference and the thing that provides power to that can make a difference. But the cables? The fucking cables?! Absolutely no impact once you’re above like $10. Turns out, electrons are electrons and they behave like electrons. Shockingly that doesn’t change in copper, gold plated copper, pure silver, or mud. Doubly so for the non analog part of the chain. Hell I’ve even seen “audiophile grade” ethernet cables.
The other part of the equation is if the differences made by the things that do make a difference actually matter to the listener. They do to me, but my dad is more than happy to just use the speakers on his Dell monitors.
Well, that’s not entirely correct. Given a long enough run, attenuation will absolutely cause bad cables to perform poorly. Like your not getting a 10 meter run on bananas. That said, for any modern cable, that run has to be greater than 50 meters for it to even start mattering. So if your wiring up a warehouse, you probably need to care about the type of wire your using.
Like your not getting a 10 meter run on bananas.
Source? /s
Oh yeah, definitely. The wiring needs for an industrial space or event venue are different than a domicile, but I don’t think anyone’s buying audiophile snake oil for those. They really seem to market that kinda crap to the fool and their money crowd.
I buy headphone cables based on how nice the cable feels, if it transmits noise when it rubs against stuff, and how well the connectors fit into the devices I am using.
My favorite is when people get picky about cabling for digital transfer. The ones and zeroes either get there or they don’t, nothing in-between. They work or they don’t.
I think the best thing to do is to assess your ability to hear difference. I can absolutely hear the difference between my Bluetooth earbuds and a decent wired IEM, so I use wired headphones for listening to music. I CANNOT hear a significant qualitative difference between the $25 Chinese IEMs that I use and more expensive options that I have tried, so I use the cheap ones.
To be sure, there ARE perceptible differences between wired headphones, but those are more a matter of EQ and personal preference. I can achieve my maximum perceivable level of quality with pretty inexpensive hardware. It doesn’t mean that other people cannot, that isn’t my problem.
My favorite is when people get picky about cabling for digital transfer. The ones and zeroes either get there or they don’t, nothing in-between. They work or they don’t.
Around the time when HDMI was released my friend bought some "super-high-end "cable that cost over 200$, since he wanted the "best possible performance " out of his system. I tried to explain that the cheapest cables would give the exact same results if they’re not faulty from the start. We had a loud argument about this, even though the guy is a goddamn tech PhD. He just could not admit he got scammed and tried to give me a lecture about “how the gold plated connectors make all the difference”.
I had a salesperson who said that with This more expensive HDMI cable, the picture almost looks three-dimensional!
For IEMs, the price difference typically goes towards comfort rather than sound quality. As a professional audio technician, a custom-molded IEM will be infinitely more comfortable than a cheap set. But not everyone can justify spending $2000 for custom molds, because they don’t use them for work every day.
Regarding digital, quality spdif cables absolutely matter. One tiny mistake and they crackle out and don’t work. I’ve gone through many pairs of cheap ones until I just spend the money to never have issues again.
Now will the 1 dollar one sound the same as the 80 dolalr one? Yes. It won’t last or hohld up to dust or abuse at all though.
I’m a musician. I swear by Beyerdynamic DT700. Fucking great headphones for like an insanely reasonable price
Awesome headphones. If you don’t mind the beyer peak. My favorites are my grado rs2. But I prefer music on speakers not headphones, so much space is lost on headphones. Hear a pair of magnepans in a room and you’ll be blown away. Got some original SMGa’s from 1989!
Real audio enthusiasts know the room is the most important, followed by the speaker itself, followed by the actual source. Then the amp etc.
And when you record and mix music you realize how much of it is bullshit in the end. The source is all that matters, really.
Isn’t it more of the weakest link? Bad amp and you can have the nicest room etc.
Stereo is overhyped IMO too 😋 except if you have a dedicated listening room.
Yeah it is. Right, room is very important. Ive always been able to designate a listening area where I am, thankfully.
I have a set of Sony studio monitor headphones. I can hear more nuance and parts of the music I simply can’t hear in any of my ear buds or noise canceling headphones. They aren’t wireless, so I don’t really use them that often though.
It doesn’t matter the cable, the amp, shitty 128kbps mp3 or vinyl. I can hear much, much better with the drivers in them.
I’d say 90% of anything that matters is the driver. But past a certain midrange point, there just isn’t really much or any improvement.
It mattered more back in the analog days, I think. Now that it’s all digital, and going through dac’s, its all just about being good enough for 1’s and 0’s to get through. “Noise” doesn’t exist for digital audio. It either works, or it doesn’t.
It definitely mattered a hell of lot more in analog days. Getting a properly calibrated reel tape machine through a properly calibrated tube amp in a properly dimensioned room with good speakers is a feat, and absolutely sounds amazing.
Nowadays, it’s about how they mastered it. I can tell you for a fact Ozzy’s no more tears CD sounds like shit and the double record mix is FARRRR better, because it doesn’t have the life squished out of it from brickwalling. Is that digital vs analog? No. Its mastering.
Analog will sound better if you spend a SHIT ton and have an insanely good source. Digital will also sound amazing if you spend a lot. I myself very much enjoy listening to my original reels of 50s-70s music because you really can get so close to being in the studio and hearing everything, because they couldn’t edit it to death.
Bridge over troubled water on a reel is a real experience.
Nowadays, it’s about how they mastered it. I can tell you for a fact Ozzy’s no more tears CD sounds like shit and the double record mix is FARRRR better, because it doesn’t have the life squished out of it from brickwalling. Is that digital vs analog? No. Its mastering.
This is 10000% true!! I worked as a mixing and mastering engineer for a while, and lemme tell you… the loudness wars never ended. This is why I still collect vinyl, the medium is kinda shit, but the masters are so much better that it’s hugely worth it for a about 2/3 albums I own (1/3 are duds; I can live with that).
That’s awesome! I got paid a few times but never really done it as a job. Always wanted to but I always wanted an organic approach while bands wanted to be absolute radio perfect periphery style and I’m just not into that.
Yeah exactly. I mean, vinyl is amazing for the art, and if you keep it super clean its going to sound very good. CD is fine if only they wouldn’t destroy the damn master !!
A tube amp isn’t necessarily expensive and they sound very good.
We transport audio digitally today but it still is all analog in the end.
True!
The one time I was absolutely blown away by a pair of headphones that are not in the insano area, are the beyerdynamic dt1990. They aren’t cheap by any means but not insanely expensive. When I listened to music I’ve listened to hundreds of times, somehow they showed me even more detail I haven’t heard before. For example a Nena 99 red balloons LP, the amp was still the same as always but I couldn’t believe the amount of detail there was in the background, the soundstage those headphones were creating.
It’s a rich playground for the price-equals-value fallacy, and there are plenty of well-heeled rubes that’ll fall for the technobabble.
It’s been like this for decades, according to my dad. Well before the internet.
well obviously, all this proves is that copper wires are just as bad as wet mud. Every audiophile knows you need gold oxygen nitrogen purified wires blessed by a voodoo witch doctor.
I’ve got these cables. Yes, they are expensive but they are absolutely fantasti… wait, did you say voodoo witch doctor? Mine were blessed by just a witch doctor. Have I been ripped off?
Hoodoo is 3dB better than voodoo according to my tests.
Hoodoo? You do! Do what? Remind me of the babe!
Voo-doo hoo-doo what-you-don’t-dare-doo…
Silver is the better conductor. Even if it is priced so that peons can afford it.
Sheeeit not recently, shot up to $120/oz recently, and it’s back down to ~$80/oz right now, but that’s still more than ~$35/oz last year. Not that gold didn’t also follow that trajectory or anything, it’s still more, but GODDAMN.
Fun fact: this is where the “banana connector” came from. Before copper was discovered, early humans used bananas for all their audio connections. The name stuck, even though wires are made of metal today.
Additional trivia: The term “banana republic” originates from countries best known for exporting high-end audio equipment back in the day.
“banana split” stems from a failed experiment where scientists tried to split audio frequencies by sticking the connectors into ice cream and running the audio through it
And Bananarama was so named for their high-fidelity recordings which were performed, mixed, and recorded entirely on bananas.
Banana boats were named for the ancient egyptian practice of drying and lashing together bundles of banana skins in what was, at the time, a highpoint in marine engineering. It did, indeed, play a role in the stealth technology used today, due to the naturally radio absorbent nature of the material. Dont believe the people who tell you they sealed the hulls with the pulp - itd just wash off once underway.
Yup. Failed spectacularly, which is why they went for mixing boards as a backup solution instead.
The ensuing explosion took out two thirds of New Jersey
Bosenana AudioBananica DolBananAtmos Bananaheiser
Bravo
This will now be a standard AI response. Well done.
O noes!
Just ask an audiophile what they think about blind tests. If they argue against them you’ve found a snake oil salesman.
“You can’t trust blind tests for audio, that’s the wrong sense bro. You need double deaf studies, obvs.”
Now if they’re deaf tests on the other hand…
Most people can’t tell the difference between a 320kbps mp3 and lossless, but hey if folks really want to waste their money on snake oil like gold-plated cables then I say let ‘em.
At that quality of MP3 you’d really need either a track that specifically pushes the limits of the codec on technicalities, or a one in a million hearing + high precision monitors.
Albeit FLAC is generally a better option still because it compresses things losslessly, reducing raw file size 50-70% (comparable to MP3 at 128kbps bitrate) and is a royalty-free, meaning it can be freely implemented as a hardware codec.
For example, a bunch of microcontrollers in the ESP32 family have built in FLAC codecs that outperform their MP3 counterparts, meaning a FLAC library can be directly streamed to them, and with the right DAC combo, one can build inexpensive, low power adapters to hook their existing AV systems up to Sonos-style streaming. And with many AV systems supporting bidirectional RS232 (or other serial) communications for controlling the system and querying it’s state, you can literally smartify them completely AND provide high quality audio streams to them.
128kbps files are roughly 90% compression from raw, so not comparable. I’ll admit that I haven’t bothered with FLAC much, but in my limited experience it generally is pretty rare to see much above 50-55% compression from raw.
Anything that requires remuxing multiple times pretty much requires lossless compression. Else it’d become like screenshots of memes because the compression adds up.
That being said, last time I was working with professional audio people, they still preferred WAW as their intermediary format.
they still preferred WAW as their intermediary format.
Probably because of habit?
Thing is, storage isn’t at a premium anymore, so there’s no reason not to use lossless even if you can’t hear the difference.
Thing is, storage isn’t at a premium anymore,
U sure about that?
Old mp3 players used to measure space in megabytes, so yes, I’m sure of that.
Good for you, i had one of those.
Now go check the storage prices now and please define what “premium” is, 'cos last i checked they’re being overhyped - not as much as RAM, but on a similar trend.
I think FLAC is considered lossless so the comparison should be with WAV; whereas for lossy you have MP3/Vorbis.
MP3 patents expired a while ago i think, but for the longest time i’ve used Vorbis because of that.
I did a blind test, and found it depends on the genre.
Slow, chill music is completely transparent when compressed, no matter how hard I “audio peep.” It’s not even a question.
But something “dense” like System of a Down has audible distortion. It loosely (not always) coincided with the bitrate of the flac files, which kind of makes sense, though even the extreme end is hard to notice unless you know the particular song very well.
Also… a lot of recordings kind of suck. It’s crazy to worry about tiny bits of distortion when a bit perfect master is already noisy and distorted.
Audio codecs like MP3 usually do a Fourier transform to move the sound into the frequency domain, discard any frequencies that you’re unlikely to notice, and encode ‘rate of change’ for the remaining ones. So the encoding problem is usually sound with fast changes in intensity or frequency, which is basically what percussion is.
System is quite percussion heavy, so will sound bad.
Recently moved from Spotify to Qobuz, because fuck Dan Ek, and the fact that they’ve got better bitrates across the board really makes the difference for jazz and jazzy stuff. Neglected, sounds crap on Spotify. Sounds great on Qobuz. But that’s the change from ‘bad’ to ‘quite good’ bitrates; additional bits are very much a case of diminishing returns.
That makes sense.
Heh. Spotify used to stream 384K Vorbis, which should be sufficient. But now the web app is apparently AAC. And the app-apps are conspicuously listed with “equivalent to” bitrates, whatever that means:
https://support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/
Very high: Equivalent to approximately 320kbit/s
Heavy classic music is a beast too, vivaldis energetic parts in the 4 seasons for example. Or Rimski Korsakoffs the flight of the bumble bee I’d wager. Or painkiller/turbo lover/… by judas priest 😁
The funny thing is that the people who can afford all that overpriced garbage are usually so old, they can’t hear all that well anymore.
I found I can detect VBR but yeah at that bitrate I really can’t tell the difference between 320 and flac, always thought it was just my ears!
Most people don’t have proper home stereo setups any more either, and they prefer shitty overcompressed music through earbuds. They don’t know any better, sadly.
And Ive probably spent less than 400 dollars on my home setup. But it blows away anyone who hears it. Just takes some smarts in setting stuff up and getting good used equipment.
Just another part of the cheapening of everything in society , and why music isn’t appreciated as much anymore. No wonder everyone has depression.
Reminds me of the lengths people go with their peripheral purchases to save 1-2ms of input latency for playing games with like a 20 TPS tick rate on a wifi connection
Depends on the song really, if it’s just a standard pop song it’s mixing will usually come through just fine on a shitty MP3. The more layers a song may have the muddier it gets at lower bit rates. Like I’ve found the noisier spectrum of punk always benefits from higher bit rates.
I noticed something similar with video. Like, if I am paying attention, the difference between the highest quality encoding and the next level is usually visible.
However, I have a harder time telling the difference if I don’t do a side by side comparison.
And even when I can easily tell the difference, once I’m watching the thing, I get into the story and I don’t care anyways.
Obviously a slightly different criteria compared to music, but people do make a big deal out of stuff that even they don’t actually care about.
I kinda want to start a snake oil audio cable company. It’s gotta be one of the easiest paths to retirement
Yep, and an especially fun fact is that people with high-end equipment prefer MP3 over lossless.
I recently switched from 320kbps to lossless, and there are very few moments where I can tell a difference. The biggest one is in the cover of “Tom’s Diner” by AnnenMayKantereit. There’s a section of the song at 320kbps where it goes almost silent, other than faint whispers of the band counting out the silence, but in lossless you can hear them actually singing the song quietly
Behold:
5.4 Electrical Conductivity Measurement This method includes electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and dielectric analysis (DEA). The physical state of a material is measured as a function of frequency in EIS and the frequency ranges from 100 Hz - 10 MHz. It is simple and easier technique used to estimate the physiological status of various biological tissues49-52. Experimental frequency response of impedance is characterised by electrical equivalent circuits of materials. The physical properties of materials can be quantified by monitoring the changes in parameters at the equivalent circuit, among various equivalent models proposed53-54. DEA measurement is used in high frequency areas, generally 100 MHz - 10 GHz. DEA is used in moisture estimation and bulk density determination
So a overripe banana is an interesting high-pass filter, kinda like a capacitor, though the big takeaway is the conductance vs ripeness.
So if you want to test if a banana is ready to eat, hook it up… preferably with several other bananas in series. If the music is too loud, they are ready. Too quiet, and it’s not time yet.
The moment you give me a link to a banana tree/MP3 player/ripeness tester/EQ:
I only listen to music with overripe bananas. It sounds best that way. Copper wire just doesn’t sound as good. Believe me: My ears are very sensitive and superior to yours.
You get much better conductivity with plaintains because the cross-sectional area is bigger.
But because my ears are so discerning, I only put my audio jacks in jackfruit.
You are ears of very fine taste.
The advantage of good wire is isolating the signal from interference. However, if you aren’t in an electrically noisy environment, anything that can conduct electricity will do just as well.
Something in my computer monitor isn’t shielded and will alert me to a incoming cell phone call a second or two before the phone rings.
Your monitor is like the blinking stickers we used to put on our phones.
Yes my knees creak, why do you askMy old speakers used to do that.
Are you implying that gold isolates better from interference than copper?
He’s talking about the electromagnetic shielding in a cable, not the contact-points. Usually a copper mesh sheath housed underneath the outer-most rubbery layer and runs around and along the entire length of the signal-carrying wires inside the cable. Works like a Faraday cage, helps prevent electromagnetic interference from large power sources, other unshielded cables running parallel, or anything else that can generate an electromagnetic field near the cable.
Very important to protect signal integrity, widely used even outside the audiophile world (although there are of course plenty of audiophile gimmicks related to shielding).
Basically, if you have a bunch of live unshielded cables bundled and zip-tied together along with your speaker wire, you’ll definitely hear it. Run the signal through an oscilloscope, and you’ll even see it
Seems like you know what you’re talking about. If I may ask, how do ferrite beads figure into this? Do those actually help protect signal, or is it less effective?
Simply put, both protect against certain types of interference in different ways, and each is effective in ways that the other is not.
Mesh shielding is going to help prevent electrical interference from being introduced via the wire itself from an external source. Like other cables carrying signal and running very near/parallel, or electromagnetic fields generated from other devices, certain electrical components, household appliances, etc.
The ferrite beads protect against radio-frequency interference (RFI) via induction, acting like low-pass filters which attenuate specific bandwidths of very high frequency signals. Essentially, they intercept and absorb high-frequency electrical noise, and convert that energy into a small amount of heat instead of letting it pass through further down the signal path. This kind of interference can be from an external source, or generated internally from the various electronics/components in the signal path (which mesh shielding would do nothing to protect against). They also help dissipate any RFI that the mesh shielding itself may be carrying, so you often see both ferrite beads and mesh/foil shielding, like on laptop chargers or USB cables for example.
But the article is about what material is used as a conductor
Yeah, but the comment you replied to was making a point that the conductor doesn’t really matter if there isn’t any noise present. What makes a good cable has much more to do with proper shielding, because electromagnetic interference is what will muck up your signal, not a lack of gold plated connectors
The benefit of gold is that it doesn’t corrode
As I understand it gold is used as it doesn’t tarnish or corrode - it’s not there to benefit the sound in any way.
Exactly, silver is a better conductor I believe, but tarnishes like copper does
I thought audio quality was more to do with the source and the destination. If you have a shit needle on a record or a speaker made of wood then its gonna sound like ass.
I never once thought it had anything to do with the cables. Unless they were frayed or damaged in some way.
But i am not an audiophile, i record my own music and mix etc, but never worried about cable quality before.
I was buying a receiver and speakers in 2020 and when it came time to pick out speaker wire, the salesperson walked over to where the wire was and began the pitch…
Salesperson: so when the frequencies are higher the electrons end up traveling only on the outer layer of the wire instead of in the middle…
Me: yeah, skin effect, I did electrical engineering
Salesperson: ah, so I guess you know you don’t need this then (pointing to gimmicky monster speaker cable that had a single strand of wire in a spiral around the main bundle with a clear jacket so you can see it)
Me: correct (grabs the cheapest 16awg)
Exactly this, the cables never mattered. They’re the least significant part of an audiophile system and I doubt anyone could tell the difference between a crappy cable and a good quality cable. People get good quality cable for durability rather than sound quality.
As long as its not too crappy. Otherwise you’ll wonder why you’re picking up radio.
I’ve literally used lamp wire in a pinch before…sounded great 😆
Cable quality only matters in long distances, when the dumping of the signal is noticeable.
If the distance is so short that there is not any voltage drop and still out powering the external noise. There is in effect no influence
Oh yeah, for sure. I didn’t include that part because an audiophile setup rarely has a need for long distances.
I think the term audiophile has changed in the last decade or two, because now i keep seeing being used to mean “someone who likes music more than the average person”. Before it was more “had an entire room dedicated to music listening and if you move their chair a millimetre they will literally murder you”
That’s the kind of person who swears that can tell s huge difference based on cable (but, of course, never in a blind test).
There are websites dedicated to selling them things they don’t need. A 1m audio cable can cost several tens of thousands of pounds/dollars. And they’ll buy them and swear that they make a significant difference to the timbre of the hi hats on track 3 of The Joshua Tree
Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s a cable, for home use. 8ft. Yours for the low, low price of £98,770
That’s not a pair, btw…
I do mean “person with a huge setup dedicated to music listening”. An audiophile who actually knows what they’re talking about will tell you to get any cable from a reputable brand.
But of course you also have “audiophiles” who have no idea whatsoever.
Even more than the actual contact with the media, the entire system breaks down at the ears. If your ears aren’t well-trained, then you don’t even know what to listen for. You might think loud bass is good, or booming drums, and never notice that you can’t hear any mids.
So in a blind test like this, some people just might prefer a sound that this experiment has little impact on, so they wouldn’t be able to notice any differences.
A well-trained ear might be able to detect differences between them, but still not have a real preference. Besides being able to hear all the different frequencies, you have to know what the instruments sound like in real life to know if those frequencies are reproducing accurately. Again, if you don’t what it’s supposed to sound like, you really don’t know if ANY change in components makes a positive or negative difference in the natural sound, you only know the difference relative to your personal preference.
TL;DR: This “experiment” doesn’t prove anything. It’s just funny.
Interesting, do you know where I can buy a set of trained ears? - Audiophiles, probably.
Some of it is genetic, but a lot of it is years of training in hearing and teasing out all the frequencies.
I spent years in the audiophile record business back in the transition days from analogue LPs to digital CDs, and spent a LOT of time with beyond top-of-the-line audio gear, including high end stuff that wasn’t even on the consumer market.
My ears got trained from many years in bands and orchestras, then recording sessions, then hearing the final recordings on CD, as well as thousands of other recordings, and many live performances by some of the greatest orchestras in the world. I know what it is supposed to sound like at every stage of the process.
Bottom line, cables aren’t going to be a major issue. Guarantee you’ve got at least 10 other variables making a bigger difference, and most of them can’t even be fixed.
Yes, so my well-trained ears prefer noisy sound, something like 48kb mp3s I downloaded from the web in my childhood (born 1996). Because that’s less likely to cause migraine through them than a good record with some annoying sounds in it, preserved by a more precise lossy encoding. And things you want to hear are kept well enough even by 48kbit mp3s.
And this surprisingly keeps with analog things, like headphones and speakers. I prefer something cheap and noisy that makes sounds softer to something quality and with crisp sound, but somehow too crisp.
And I do have good ears, I can hear a lot of things, a cat walking on a neighboring plot in countryside during wind, things like that. Hence the migraines.
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Speakers are made of wood, the good ones are at least.
Unless your referring to the actual drivers, then yeah wood wouldn’t really work in that case.
Solid natural wood is a horrible material for loudspeaker cabinets. Granted, this fact isn’t limited to just speakers. Wood expands and contracts with humidity, which means making boxes of any type out of solid wood complicated. Cabinet doors have floating panels in the center for exactly this reason. That’s why you should use breadboard ends if you want to frame a wood table, otherwise your table will risk warping and cracking. There’s also the whole non-uniform density thing. Most loudspeakers use something like MDF as a substrate and will veneer the outside. MDF is both stable and uniformly dense, which makes achieving a “dead” (or non-resonate) enclosure a lot easier.
Yes you’re 100% right. Solid wood will warp and split, I did mean MDF and should have said as such
Well, paper is a very popular material in speaker cones, including high-end
Yeah, i meant the cone, not the case
Once in a while I come across shorts of this audiophile showing of his gear. The cables he uses look like under sea cables, like he’s pulling 40kV out of his wall socket. It’s so ridiculous
EDIT: This fucking shit. I guess that they’re using XLR cables at the very least but cmon man what the fuck are those cables (especially the second setup)
It’s not about sound quality, it’s about wasting money and showing off. Maybe some placebo effect, too.
Cables give resistance… thats all…
I heard one guy talk about the importance of cable shielding and connector material and shit once, but the ones I actually know just talk about the other hardware (speakers, mixing pults, lots of terms I couldn’t recite).
To be fair, the signal is only going through these suboptimal conductors for a very short distance.
Try wiring up your stereo with 50 feet of bananas, and you might start having problems.
There’s always music in the banana chain… or something like that
To be fair, “audiophiles” are morons.
There’s a big difference between a $100 sound system and a $1000 sound system. I’ve gotten the “audiophiles are dumb” lecture for suggesting someone upgrade from 2x4" computer speakers to actual studio monitors for working on their music. But their speakers literally could not reproduce some of the frequencies thru were trying to make, so they mixed the bass WAY the fuck too loud.
But yeah, diminishing returns start to kick in around that point. Quickly becomes the eternal story of a Fool and His Money.
What do you mean? I always pay extra for the audiophile version of vinyl records!
Can’t wait til 3d printers get good enough to make records so i can stock up on audiophile filament!
Don’t forget to also get the audiophile grade nozzle! Can’t have your expensive fancy filament squirted through some cheap hole-in-a-nut nozzle, what will give you a dull and wobbly sound.
Gonna turn an old vacuum tube into an extruder nozzle to keep that nice, warm analog sound.
Depends. If you’re streaming Dire Staits on a $250,000 stereo. You’ve probably missallocated funds approaching a moronic level from a functionality perspective. However, if you’ve got half a billion in the bank, I’d say it’s a far more wholesome idiocy than for example, real estate. Money inherently means less to rich people. The difference of a few thousand to tens of thousands are, bewilderingly, fairly inconsequential to many people. I’d just assume they put that money into listening to music rather than super pacs or something. Hell, maybe they’ll actually hear what the musicians are saying and they’ll actually grow a little.
The issue with audio is the same issue with all hobbies. Spending a lot doesn’t make you an automatic expert, let alone even know what you’re doing. An expensive bat doesn’t make a bad player good, an expensive stove doesn’t make a bad cook good, expensive clothes doesn’t make an ugly person beautiful, an expensive running shoes don’t make an out of shape person healthier.
I find shitting on audiophiles particularly annoying because it’s smugness on both sides of the equation. The people who buy in think they’re better than everyone just like the people who see the con think they’re better than the rubes. If I had to pick a side though, I’d honestly pick the audiophiles, because at least they’re having fun.
But morons with money to spend! The best kind of moron.
I love seeing this story… it reminds me of 30 years ago when I worked in the telephone industry. Heard about telephone copmanies rolling out service in very very rural areas - running signals over barbed-wire fences because it was too expensive to run dedicated cables. That did degrade the signal, but it worked.
I know it’s a completely different thing entirely, but it just gave me nostalgia remembering hearing about that.
I know I has nothing to do with your story. But I just spent the weekend removing barbed wire fencing. And I just want to say, fuck barbed wire. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put that shit up should be wrapped in it and pushed down a steep slope.
And by whoever I mean my great grandfather. But also everyone else involved. All the way to the factory making it.
I’ve put barbed wire up, I’ve taken it down. It ain’t that hard. Just cut it into lengths you can easily coil by hand if you don’t have a winding machine.
Personally I think woven wire fencing is a bigger pain in the ass. All that grass and weeds growing through it and then rolling it back up.
I did use a winding contraption. I don’t hate it because it’s annoying to remove. I hate it because it’s terrible for the animals that get injured by it.
I’m jealous of people who can’t tell the difference and have no need to buy audiophile grade SSDs
that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen lol. I’d love the know how audiophiles think ssds work if they think this could actually make a difference.
If you think this is dumb wait until you find out about the audiophile network switches
Coming soon to a retailer near you, this exact same price on a regular SSD.
Everybody say “Thank you AI!”
I used to be an audiophile. I spent a lot of money on speakers, and amplifiers, and DACs. But I always found the audiophile cable crowd a bit nuts. And the people that are buying audiophile versions of stuff in the digital domain are full on delusional.
I say “used to be” for two reasons. One, hearing everything does not always mean better. A lot of the time it just reveals imperfections in the recording. And depending on the space, and ambient noise, more headroom can be worse because it just pushes the quiet stuff below the background. And, you are going to have to listen to music in places that you do not have your gear and it is going to sound bad if you get too used to the good stuff. So your music life may be worse overall.
But the biggest difference is that I am older. I just cannot tell the difference as well as I used to.
But most people spend too much money on the equipment and not enough on the sources. You do not need a $20,000 setup if you are listening to badly encoded MP3 or AAC files for example.
But if you have high quality FLAC or Opus sources (or really high-end analog), you do not have to be an audiophile to tell the difference. Same with linear power supplies. You can hear the difference even if you do not spend so much money.
Like wine, audiophiles often make it more about the money they spend than the quality they are getting or the experience they are having.
That said, I can still hear well enough to know that 80% of the people that play music around me turn it up past what their amp can handle and it clips like crazy. I do not know how people listen to that.
Most people DO NOT hear the difference between FLAC and MP3s, which are 320kbs encoded. Most people that claim that do, can’t do it in the blind test.
But if you have high quality FLAC or Opus sources (or really high-end analog), you do not have to be an audiophile to tell the difference
The analysis showed that there was no statistically significant difference in quality between the un- compressed signals and AAC-LC 320 kbps compression, which means participants did not perceive difference between two formats
https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP384.pdf
Could be they were both shit lol. I couldnt see (on mobile) what playback system was used.
I retired from being an “audiophile” when I had 5 drivers stuffed into one earbud. It does sound nice compared to a single driver though, especially for gaming.
A good interview with Bob Carver if you like audio history https://podcast.asknoahshow.com/25
This just shows that bananas and mud are materials for excellent audio equipment. I am looking forward to my gold-plated banana.
I worked at an online shop for high end audio equipment. It was always both amusing and painful when customers asked about the sound characteristics of various power cables in the price range between $100 and $10,000 that we carried, or the same with USB and optical digital cables. Some came with the firm belief that they needed better power cables to enhance the bass of their setup. They even bought gold plated “audiophile fuses”.
I know a dude who has had me fix 2 separate 800$+ DACS and then listens to only YouTube music rips on his 500$ headphones through the DACS. he swears his 1300$ setup makes a difference on his 128kbps aac YouTube downloads…
I am in the wrong goddamn business, I need to be selling $9,000 kettle cords to music morons.
These people spend a crap ton of money to set up over priced equipment in untreated rooms.
Some of them even improve their rooms accordingly but are never satisfied.
Some search for the listening experience they had when they were in their twenties and discovered their special music for the first time. They think if they just spend enough money on improving the equipment, the goosebumps of the days of yore will come back automatically.
Music gives me goosebumps all the time. Even the things I’ve been listening to for over 30 years. I believe it’s a physical thing, not everyone has it. I didn’t know it could go away, at least that’s how I’m reading your last line.
I described it somewhat metaphorically. I also get goosebumps repeatedly and again.
I simply noticed during several customer interactions at the hi-fi shop that some people seem to be looking for idealistic audio experiences with a fixed idea of how it should be and believe that’s a purely technical problem. As if a certain cable or amplifier could solve that.
Someone once asked me which cable he should buy to make the music sound really captivating. I dunno, maybe listen to some other music?
No need to treat your room when you use headphones. No matter how good a speaker setup is, it always stinks compared to decent headphones for me.
