💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 335 captured on 2023-06-14 at 18:20:35. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

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Expensive Cables

~stargazer

Slides soap box to the center of the pub stage *

Grrr... why can't audiophile people understand basic electronics and simple physics? Power and signal cables do NOT change the way music sounds!!! I don't care what crazy marketing schemes audiophile publications come up with, copper is copper, and electrons flow through the cheap copper just as well as expensive copper. As long as they are reasonably sturdy and are of a sufficient gauge so as not to have too much resistance, or in the case of signal cables, a reasonable amount of shielding, you are good to go! I would challenge ANY audiophile to a blind test with the cables of their choice and a set of $10 department store cables from my junk drawer. Spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for a power cord or RCA cable only shows your gullibility and lack of research. If you are the owner of said thousand dollar cables, I would recommend you change their snake oil at least once a year in accordance with manufacturer's recommendation :)

Slides soap box off of the pub stage and exits left *

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~uirapuru wrote (thread):

I find all these stories very absurd and funny, but when talking to my brother he told me there are people that go even further than this. look:

https://gizmodo.com/obsessed-audiophiles-in-japan-are-installing-their-own-1785291714

Audiophiles in Japan installing private power poles to get the "purest" energy, they swear it makes all the difference to their listening experience!

~kyle wrote:

It is called "scam"...

~abacushex wrote:

This became even more bizarre when these same companies started to sell "audiophile grade" Ethernet cables for use with in-home streaming setups, etc. They were challenged on this by Ars Technica, to explain how it could possibly make a difference when it is a stream of data over a packet switched and error-checked network that doesn't "know" the data is audio, and the manufacturer's responses were hilariously ludicrous.

~inquiry wrote (thread):

I get the feeling true audiophile power/signal cable psychopa.. I mean believers are the SEO believers of their time....

~edisondotme wrote:

I recall an article from a while back where they did a blind test of expensive audio cables versus a regular coat hanger.

Results: "Audiophiles" could not tell the difference

~pr1ba wrote:

Carry out several thousand dollars in the urn. You come home and convince yourself that the music has become better!

~tffb wrote (thread):

Haha, yes! I see tons of stuff about cabling (usually from Stereophile, or some other affiliated entity) about how "great these cables sound!" like they are a pair of speakers! lol! I, too, thought there was something to it, but then just realized that it was/is a placebo effect (putting it nicely, much more like an audible hallucination) on the part of the listener.

I go as high as AudioQuest cables (the cheaper ones, not the ones that costs hundreds of dollars), simply because I want durability, decent longevity to the product. Not because they "sound" better.

I've even seen audiophiles talk about how the material beneath the isolation pegs beneath their audio components can "make or break" a song. As if a rubber mat will bring a whole new tier of fidelity to a song, as opposed to a plastic mat. Silly, really.

Good to see ya stargazer :)