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James Randi Posts $1M Award On Speaker Cables
elrond amandil writes "James Randi offered US$ 1 million to anyone who can prove that a pair of $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables is any better than ordinary (and also overpriced) Monster Cables. Pointing out the absurd review by audiophile Dave Clark, who called the cables 'danceable,' Randi called it 'hilarious and preposterous.' He added that if the cables could do what their makers claimed, 'they would be paranormal.'"
... are listed here. Those wooden knobs are a real bargain! Only $485!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Unless you happen to love debunking the falsely-claimed-paranormal, you're probably like me and had no idea who the hell James Randi is/was/will be. Here's his Wikipedia page, here is his standing $1,000,000 challenge for a demonstration of true paranormality, and here is his Education Foundation (on "the Paranormal, Pseudoscientific, and the Supernatural").
Also, here's a video of him in action.
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Isn't it true, as you build an audio system with very high end components, you need better cables?
;)
While I think THESE cables are way over the top, I think only an audiophile would possible hear the slightest difference.
To the average consumer though, regular cables, even somewhat expensive cables should be sufficient.
These cables are probably marketed to a certain segment, the high end audiophiles.
Just me $0.2, which is why I won't go near these cables
James Randi is putting his talents where it really matters!
I want to see him take on the tubes vs. solid-state thing next. Oh-- and those black ebony (teak?) hockey puck things they sell for $100 a pop that are supposed to improve the acoustics of your room by placing them wherever.
I find the audiophile phenomenon to be mighty amusing, even though I'm guilty of throwing away a few extra dollars for an "oxygen free" guitar cable or two. But holy crap, that's quite a price difference -- and for what? If anybody ever gives me crap about getting a Cinema Display instead of a Dell monitor, I'll just think of the Pear Anjou cables. Getting a monitor to match your workstation's case at least has "interior decorating" to justify the difference in cost, but who's ever going to see your speaker cables? Yikes!
P.S. Did you know that if you mark around the edges of your CDs with a sharpie that the music sounds better? ;-)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
So, the JREF Challenge has been upgraded to not jut paranormal psychic claims to ridiculous marketing claims? Well, he hasn't lost his money yet, so he's a pretty good gambler.
I love the concept, I just pray that it will change the marketing practices (Monster cables are HOW MUCH?... there isn't enough loss over 6' for me to not just buy some radio shack [also now overpriced, but not as much] cables instead)
Sadly, like the Music companies, I think ad-makers are set in their ways, and we won't see any change soon. I just hope it wakes people up to how much their ignorance can hurt their wallet.
[ 7000$ (danceable) + 700$ (feet-tap-able) + 70$ (head-nodable) ] ( 7$ + some good sh*t )
Companies like monster cable rely on ignorance to stay in business.
As a long-time (+20 years) audiophile, I can tell you right now that many of the tweaks and products in the business has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with psychology. But that's ok. If Speaker Cable A sounds better than Speaker Cable B to me, why souldn't I buy it? It makes me think I've bought the better product.
Ofcourse - the whole industry is based on me thinking that there's some better product out there that I still haven't bought... Just around the corner is Eternal Bliss ®
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Outrageous claims in the series that can surpass any fantasy by some speaker cables. Anybody remember that chapter where someone from the future cames back to kill himself in the past, due to the "properties" of the compound X... read dichloroethane ?, hilarious.
He claims that it is not the best sandwich ever made despite the fact it was "Forged in darkness from wheat harvested in Hell's half-acre, baked by Beelzebub, slathered with mayonnaise beaten from the evil eggs of dark chicken forced into sauce by the hands of a one-eyed madman, cheese boiled from the rancid teat of a fanged cow, layered with six-hundred and sixty-six separate meats from an animal which has maggots for blood. And mustard...DIJON mustard!" Apparently, he takes issue with the lack of bacon.
...or is copper wire pretty much copper wire? Aside from things like selecting the appropriate gauge to ensure that the amount of signal you're pumping through is getting through with the most minimal degradation possible, how, exactly, are over-priced cables going to improve sound quality?
And as far as I'm concerned, audiophiles who claim that they can 'hear' differences between this brand and that brand of similar gauge speaker cable are just mental. Literally. The difference is in your head. Normal human hearing range is remarkably narrow.
My blog
Aside from systems whose price tags are similarly "preposterous", you might want to look at Crutchfield's guide to speaker cable selection. There are oodles of other guides out there, but this one covers everything pretty nicely.
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Randi is a real character. If you don't know who he is, check out James Randi on Wikipedia or The James Randi Educational Foundation. One of his boosters is comedian and magician, Penn Jillette, whose TV show, Penn & Teller: Bullshit! he frequently appears on. He's ruffled quite a few feathers over the years by being the poster-boy for skepticism, especially with respect to "mystic" or "supernatural" claims, so don't expect there to be many objective takes on him out there.
... simply by measuring the electrical characteristics of the cables and comparing them to the typical cables? Certainly if the values are sufficiently different, there should be some merit to the claim, but if not, then it's just a load of hooey.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Tell the floor sales guys at Best Buy about this. Every single one of them will try to cash in with a "sales pitch".
adventure-today.com
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Show those speaker cables are better than $0.49 a foot lamp cord.
I tried back when I worked in stereo showcase. double blind tests and even testing with high end equipment showed that the $100.00 a foot directional low-oxygen speaker cables were no different than the lamp cord.
Audiophiles typically are some of the stupidest people on the planet. they buy into the snake oil festering bull that any company comes along and pushes in any of the magazines.
Want an awesome example? Richard Gray power conditioners. They cost upwards of $5000.00 and do NOTHING a $49.00 one will. the sales people also make sure to tell you that you will not notice a change when you plug it in, it takes a few weeks for the capacitors and electronics in your equipment to re-learn how to run with clean power.
yes audiophiles fall for that kind of blatent crap!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Or homeopathy for that matter. As for me after shooting too many shotgun shells without ear protection, I would tell the difference if they used electrical cable for speakers.
Blasphemy! The Martians are gonna eat your signal!
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
In other news, Pear Cable has been named the sole supplier of audio cables to the Department of Defense.
The reviewer claimed nothing paranormal about the cables. He described them technically and then claimed they were "danceable." Taking poetic license is not the same as making claims of the paranormal. The author clearly wasn't referring to a mystical property of the cables.
Are the cables worth it? I don't know. But I think Mr. Randi might have too much time on his hands.
You know, you do not want your speaker cables to be resting on the floor. That results in distortion of the sound. Make sure you are using cable towers to hold the $900 per foot cables off the floor.
This nutball spends thousands of dollars on SILVER POWER CABLES. http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue15/walkeraudio.htm Silver POWER CABLES. And he even uses one of these from the wall to his solid-oak-case brass-stool line conditioner. I suppose the Romex in his wall is silver too? I challenge any of these people to submit to a blind test without and with this $12,000 waste. I bet he wouldn't. Any amplifier worth its salt has an immense amount of isolation from its power input anyway. Silver audio cables are just as stupid. How cares about the .000000000003 watt you gain in the decreased resistance in the line!? Silver ain't gonna help against interference.
Randi's pretty cool. I've seen his lectures live a couple of times; very entertaining.
He contributes a segment to the SGU podcast each week.
The SGU rocks!
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
Those speaker cables look analog.
I'm not saying that it's at all possible for any human to detect the difference, but I suppose it's theoretically possible that if they are simply audio cables, there might be some measurable difference in the sound, even if no one could tell.
HDMI is where it's truly insane -- yeah, let's gold-plate a cable that transmit a digital signal. Digital is different -- either it worked or it didn't. HDMI even moreso -- if it didn't work, your entire audio/video is likely to cut out all at once, probably for a second or two, until it can be reestablished. If the video works at all, you have a good enough HDMI cable.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If you sell an idiot $5 cables, you only get $5 from him.
If you sell an idiot $7,000 cable, you get $7000 from him.
This proves that $7,000 cables are superior to $5 cables.
Where is my million?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The only reliable way to test matters of subtle perception (be it food or sound or whatever) is the ABX test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABX_test. It works like this: present two known different samples -- call them A and B. Then present an unknown sample -- call it X that's either identical to A or to B. Can the listener or taster or whatever reliably classify X? If so, you have evidence of a perceptible difference. If no one beats chance over a reasonable number of trials, you have evidence that there is no perceptible difference between A and B.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
I'm glad to see this offer. I am on the email list of a business that sells classical recordings and also apparently does a big business in turntables and various ridiculously priced gizmos to improve the sound of vinyl records. I like their email because sometimes they have SACDs or DVD-Audio discs for sale that I am interested in, but I abandoned records back in the late 80s. Apparently there are quite a few people out there with more money than sense who are convinced that "digital = suxor" and "vinyl = great". These people think nothing of spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on gizmos like record clamps and such to supposedly "improve" the sound of their records. The choice is yours - you can buy the CD for $15 or you can buy the record for $30, the record clamp for $1994.99, the stylus force gauge to adjust your turntable needle for only $195, and so on. I'm not going to provide a link as I think they don't deserve to be Slashdotted. Nobody forces their idiotic customers spend so much money on turnables and accessories when they could just buy the CDs for a fraction of the cost. There are huge drawbacks to records - surface noise, every play of the disc technically causes it to degrade if only a little, less dynamic range than CD, and so on, yet apparently there is a group of rich boy vinylphiles out there who really can't spend enough money on things to improve the sound of their records. I congratulate Randi for calling b.s. on this whole subculture, but expect it to make no difference and for no one to take up his challenge.
The ability to spend $5k on a cable indicates to females that you have higher social status than the rest of the ordinary spuds who only spend $5.
Deleted
Okay, that post officially made my morning.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I know a few audiophiles, I know a lot of Windows evangelists, I know open source evangelists and I know quite a few evangelical Christians and all of them sound the exact same to me.
It all comes down to faith and the feeling that "I'm better than you."
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
I've been a self described "audiophile" for quite a long time now, and it never ceases to amaze me just how much cash you can drop on upgrades for a sound or theater system. Speakers, woofers, tweeters, 2 way and 3 way setups, room design, cables, terminations, power cleaning... the list of products can go on and on forever. Some of these guys are really and truly nuts. I spent about 2 hours one day talking to an "expert" at a Tweeter and he firmly believed that due to the current flowing through the speaker wires you should have them elevated above the floor (on paper cups that are turned upside down and have a trench cut through them to support the wire) and leave them "at rest for at least a few days before pushing current through them to settle the magnetism radiating from them". The amount of money that can be spent on something as simple as speaker cables completely boggles the mind, and almost all of the marketing is spooky ghost stories about how this one works better than another one due to umpteen factors that nobody even really knows anything about. The problem is that it's difficult to scientifically PROVE that one cable isn't better than the other (at least as far as I'm aware), which is likely why he's put up this challenge. Proving the performance of a speaker cable beyond simply resistance, length and loss is hardly an exact science and often is open to the interpretation of the listener. Perhaps a blind test with a large amount of subjects would help but then you're still dealing with opinions which can hardly be substituted for fact.
Almost all aftermarket Rims, are out of true in at least 2 dimensions if not all of them. My mechanic makes a fortune dealing with problems associated with these $4000 rims including tire wearout, alignment problems and a whole host of expensive problems.
The interesting thing that I noticed in reading up on the cable was that Pear is local to me.
So I looked up their address listed, and it's residential. From the appearance, this appears to be a virtual company, in a nice Tony neighborhood, and all the owners have to do is sell a hundred cables and the house is paid for.
Oh, and the first and final word on speaker cable is from McIntosh's Rodger Russell.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
We had a good laugh at work about this balanced headphone amp: http://www.headphone.com/products/headphone-amps/the-max-line/headroom-balanced-max-amp.php
We were thinking if there are really people paying $4k for this stuff, we're in the wrong business (Analog Integrated Circuits)
Audiophiles are idiots. The issue is they have more pretension than technical acumen... so they are easily taken.
Carl
I'm sorry, everyone agrees there's a difference in the distortion characteristics between tube and transistors. It's both measurable and audible. More likely you can prove that digitally modeled valve software sounds nothing like the analogue equipment it's emulating ;-)
> those black ebony (teak?) hockey puck things
Usually done with neoprene rubber and an acoustically inert material (marble, ceramic) - it works. Not sure about teak and for most listening environments the audible improvement will be negligible.
The real fun is with cables, try proving OFHC copper makes any significant electrical difference. Then look at cable capacitance; it's only relevant for passive guitar and Microphone cable (for long runs). Once you have an suitably amplified signal, cable capacitance audibly effects the signal by the same amount as the alignment of the planets or something.
The cable kooks are where it's at, if anyone deserves your scorn it's these guys.
"In extended listening sessions, I found the cables' greatest strength to be its PRAT."
No wonder they cost $8000. :D
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
I don't have experience with speaker cable quality, but I know form a small hearing test that there can be a difference between a thin very cheap cable and a thick , slightly more expensive to connect a cd-player to the tuner/amplifier.
However "more dance able" certainly is a very creative way to describe a cable. You ought to give the man some credit in that area.
Seriously, is the article linked not just a joke?
If not, can someone please define PRAT for me?
I never had cables with PRAT. I guess that's why I don't listen to music as much as I used to. Without PRAT, the joy of listening deminishes with time. I will go to the shop tonight and ask for cables with PRAT! PRAT is where it's at!
But I have one question for Dave Clark. I was told by my audiophilic colleagues in the late 1990's that as a true audiophile it is important to:
1. Check which way your amplifier is plugged in. Having the main power plug in the wrong way wreaks havoc on the sound,
2. Switch on your amplifier at least half an hour before even thinking about playing music, even if you have an amplifier that is devoid of any tubes whatsoever,
3. Put a second CD on top of the CD you want to play,
4. Keep your CD's in the freezer at all times.
This is all very very important for getting the best sound quality. Did you do all those things Dave? If not, I can't take your review seriously, sorry.
-- Cheers!
Forget all you know about fanboys. Nintendo-fanboys, Sony-fanboys, whatever...
Audiophile are far more than just religious about their shit. Their ears bleed when the brand is wrong. And the only way to stop the bleeding is turning money into music.
Frankly, the drug dealers were our best customers - they just wanted something loud and they didn't f**k you around by insisting you order the latest greatest cable as reviewed by their favourite HiFi magazine. Paid in cash too.
If you can make money off of the $5 idiots, the $50 idiots, and the $7K idiots, you'll get rich!
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
By offering 1 million to hoaxers to prove their claims true, he has debunked more scams than anyone else with effectively a budget of $0.
...if you would fully understand how the human ear works. The point is, we don't. Sometimes a minimal distortion results in a pain for the ear, on the other hand you can throw away 80% of the signal without much loss of quality (aka ogg vorbis).
Trust me, I work for the government.
Even more absurd than the speaker cables (where there are some minimal real issues such as gauge and quality of connectors), people shell out big bucks for "high end" power cables, presumably not thinking about the fact that the power company's wiring, and the wiring in their walls, is the cheapest basic copper wiring available.
Just so completely full of it. So full of BS, as showcased in this part of the review:
Cotton is strategically placed within the cable as a dampener to arrest resonance. Finally, the geometry of the cable itself has been designed to minimize the force that conductors exert on each other when current flows.
Thats as bad as speaker and patch cables claiming to be "Directional". If you buy "directional" speaker or patch cables I have a bridge here in brooklyn I would like to sell you cheap.
For those who might argue that, please go spend some time studying the principles of Alternating Current.
And as for someone who pays $2k/ft for speaker cables that use interspersed cotton to dampen the the wires resonance? Well, I guess you are getting just what you deserve.
dimes
"In extended listening sessions, I found the cables' greatest strength to be its PRAT. Simply put these are very danceable cables. Music playing through them results in the proverbial foot tapping scene with the need or desire to get up and move. Great swing and pace--these cables smack that right on the nose big time. In this area, they are simply way better than anything else I have heard prior to their audition.
...being different and such, nothing extreme--more of slitting hairs and such. Yeah, the Audio-Magic Clairvoyant 4Ds are more dimensional than the others, the KS are bigger and bolder, the Dynamic Design Nebulas are more refined and smooth... and the Anjous are more danceable.
...and there's plenty more of this horseshit, too.
Compared to my other reference cables (all of differing designs: Kubala-Sosna Emotions, Audio-Magic Clairvoyant 4D, and Dynamic Design Nebulas) the Anjous are very competitive (even at their $2750 for a 3 foot pair, they are right up there with the others). Differences became issues of, well
With the Anjous in the system, the bass was fast and clean with great agility and slam. It went deep with a nice natural punch and growl. Music that goes low did so quite well with the Anjous. Nothing to fault here, but are they as good as the others? The Kubala-Sosna Emotions come across as being a bit more robust, with the Audio-Magic Clairvoyant 4D being even a bit more so, though with them this is more in terms of fullness or bloom, than slam and punch. With the Audio-Magic Clairvoyant 4D in the system the bass is propelled out into the room, while the Kubala-Sosna Emotions do this trick with a bit more finesse and control--they come across as being a bit more linear. Music with the Anjous in the system is closer to that of the Kubala-Sosna Emotions, though it is perhaps a bit less robust and full. With the Anjous the bass sounds a bit more restrained and less visceral. Which is right? Ahh... depends on one's system and how it is balanced. Or at the very least one's system, preferences, and music... remember that there is no absolute."
Wait a minute! You mean, my cousin who sells this stuff to pay his mortgage, lied to me when he told me "cables are the most important part of any sound system." My cousin would never lie to me. Even if it's in his financial best interest to do so.
[/sarcasm]
I like to use mil-standard aircraft "Tefzel" wiring wherever I can for all my audio connections. It's a bit pricier than common hook-up wire if you buy it new, but I get lots of scraps for free (some very long "scraps" too!) from a friend who does avionics wiring in airplanes. Apparently whenever he re-wires an aircraft, they always remove the old wiring and use complete runs of brand new wires off the spool, and never splice or re-use old wire even if the old wire is in perfectly good shape.
Tefzil has a teflon insulation on it that is incredibly tough and resistant to abrasion, chemicals and oxidation from ozone or UV light deterioration. The stranded copper wire inside is oxygen-free and has a small percentage of silver alloyed in it to reduce the voltage drop per foot and it is tin-plated too, for corrosion protection and ease of soldering. This stuff lasts for over 50 years easily and retains like-new appearance and performance for decades.
With Audiophiles there really are two groups, one group is the people with too much money who will buy whatever they think is best, and the other group that are just music lovers. Most people seem to lump them all into one group but that is really unfair, i would classify myself as an Audiophile i can play, Clarinet, Alto Sax, Piano and Guitar all reasonably well and have since i was a young kid, but i wouldn't go out and spend a ridiculous amount of money on useless equipment. Another example i went along to my sisters recording night and the guy that ran the studio one of her best friends was defiantly a real audiophile he was able to pickup the slightest timing errors just using his ears that i defiantly would have missed! So don't mix up the people with too much money and the people who just love music and understand the difference because not all Audiophiles deserve the bad wrap they seem to get.
While I agree that spending that kind of crazy money on speaker cables is...well...crazy...there are some times when those nicer cables make a difference.
Case in point, for my birthday this past year my girlfriend got me the monster component and optical audio connection cables for my 360. While the audio sounded mostly the same, there was a definate and noticable improvement over the stock A/V cable that came with the 360...the image overall just looked better (42" 1080i Samsung, btw) More accurate colours, better contrast, less saturation, etc.
Not sure if it looked ~$60 better, but it definately did look better. Same thing goes with speaker cable...while I'm not about to rush out and spend money on monster speaker cables, I did replace the two $10 100ft 16ga spools of the speaker cable that I got at Target with two $35 100ft 12ga spools I got from a local speaker shop...definately less "hiss" in the speakers, and there was a MARGINAL improvement in the low-end (barely perceptible, but it was indeed there...I measured this both by ear and by noting that the wall behind my setup rattles slightly more now at the same volume lol)
In all, there is actual difference between super cheap cables and not so super cheap cables, but it ain't much...you definately hit the ceiling fairly quickly in terms of when it becomes a waste of money.
Living With a Nerd
personally, I prefer to use AC power cables as my speaker cables. They are cheap and big enough to carry plenty of current.
I've actually bought one of headphone.com's headphone amps (listening through it right now) - their entry-level ones, $100 or so. I do find it makes a perceptible difference, if small. The crossover does help a lot.
:)
I'm not a total idiot, the first time I tried a pair of > $20 headphones and was blown away, I spent a couple of hours trying *every* pair in the shop, and walked away with the cheapest pair that I could still hear the difference with (about $100. They went up to $350). But I do think there is a big difference between those $20 headphones and my $100 ones. Or rather, the $200 ones I now have, 10 years later.
(To Headphone's credit, even they on their site says most of their high-end products are "totally unnecessary", but just there for someone who wants to blow several thousand on a stereo)
You obviously have a lot more knowledge of electronics than I do, could you spare a minute to explain why a balanced input headphone amplifier would not make sense? A few words on what you reckon about headphone amps in general, and whether you think the electronics behind their low-end and high-end (non-balanced) would make a difference, would be very good reading to me as well.
Thanks
Absolutely not. Mere lab-quality bench instruments cannot sense the magic imbued in the cables.
Kythe
I've personally attended a "skeptics" meeting where he was giving a talk. One thing that struck me was how much hero-worshiping was going on. Some guy spent a good 20-25 minutes telling us about how well he knew James Randi, how close he was to James Randi, how he could pick up the phone and call James Randi, yadda yadda.
This was after waiting about 30 minutes for them to start- they had to get a laptop working with various videos of James Randi on (mostly asian) TV. Each video, of course, did not play properly, or they played the wrong ones (ie, the same thing over and over.)
His work is worthwhile and he's decent showman, but he's also grossly over-sold and over-hyped. The devotion (if not downright worshiping) is hilarious, given that it is being done by a bunch of people who call themselves "skeptics."
Please help metamoderate.
Yeah, lemme tell you, high-quality cables (and cd-r's) make a big difference when you're streaming MP3s and other digital formats. Those ones? They're really ones, baby. And the zeros? Don't get me started on how zero-y they are. But when you use cheap cables? You're lucky if your ones are more than a .85.
Can be found in the world of power smoothing. Granted, the average household power supply is pretty noisy, and you really want to reduce the possibility of mains hum in your speakers but these +£10,000 inline blocks of metal are pushing it a bit, along with the claim that different units make identifiably different changes to the sound. Danceable indeed.
Don't even get me started on Monsters... ...and all those demos in hifi shops (well, Future Shop here) prove is that a nice shielded $100 3' Monster cable yields better video than a $10 15' generic cable looped around next to a power transformer...
I'm an IT guy - if I need a cable of a certain spec, I get the cable, I get the ends, and I make it. It takes about as little soldering skill as one could usefully have.
The only real improvements I see from hi-fi cables are:
- Heavy gauge wire.
- RF Shielding - this can be as simple as being wrapped in foil. It's not rocket science.
- Gold-plated connectors. These look nice, but I find they make little difference and on digital connections they're just retarded - the ones and zeroes are already pretty unambiguous. Protip: Gold is expensive, but the amount they use to plate cables is actually very cheap. If you did it yourself in gold leaf (don't try...) it'd probably cost about 5 cents. We're talking incredibly small amounts here so making the cables more expensive is a joke. They probably won't corrode though... if you have a problem with that? I certainly don't on my cables from 10-15 years ago. Oh that's right - they're either chromed or stainless steel so they don't corrode anyway!
- Oxygen free? - Interesting... I suppose in theory they could carry a larger max load? I say BS but by all means prove me wrong...
None of you have read the whole article by the sounds of it.
A speaker cable carries an analog signal from the amp to the speaker (where a magnet resonates to create compression waves in the air, which in turn impact upon the ear, which in turn generate a signal to the brain). There is a lot that can go wrong in that chain, from crappy cable, turbulance or accoustic imbalances in the ear, through to ear wax.
Have a look at those 1 inch cables again - and notice the big prongs of pure copper coming out the ends. Those cables carry an analog signal from the amplifier, and those prongs can connect directly to the human brain. Bypassing the whole messy speaker magnet / air wave compression / ear drum vibration problem.
The idiot reviewer, Dave Clarke, inserted those thick prongs (one up each nostril mind you), and thrust them deeply into the ever-so-soft tissues of the cerebral cortex, in order to experience the ultimate 'danceable rendition' of his fav tunes.
For $7000 odd, its one of the best ways to increase your musical appreciation without resorting to recreational drugs. For the rest of us, dropping a $20 pill remains the best way to make several hours of music sound soooo much more 'danceable'.
Apparently the founder of Solid State Logic Colin Sanders used to have big old 15 amp wires to his speakers.
All this oxygen free, multicore stuff is overrated!
Is to avoid corrosion, not for any sound quality. It works well, and gold plating is cheap, so having gold plated HDMI cables (well, connectors) isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as the cables are still low-cost.
It's well worth reading the other stories on the linked-to page. Best of all, a U.S. court seems to have accepted that "haunting", "poltergeists", "spirits" and so on actually exist. As a non-American this seems really odd, but then I keep seeing stories about your new "creation museum" that shows dinosaurs and "adam+eve" living together before the "flood", and reading statistics about how many people believe in UFOs, god, etc. Does this sort of fundamentalism from the courts seem acceptable over there?
Dave Clarke is my GOD!
EVEN ORDER, not odd order harmonics... TRANSISTOR gear has a higher ratio of odd harmonics to even, comparatively. Especially a triode vacuum tube in a single ended circuit design will have almost no 3rd harmonic signal compared to the second one.
Actually, there is a difference in HDMI cables, even though they are digital. Digital signals are not sharp 1's and 0's. When you start sending 1's and 0's very fast, they begin to look like waves. At a certain point, the digital signal will degrade and digital error artifacts will appear in your image. Look at this test that Gizmodo posted, where some HDMI digital cables are shown to fail at real world resolutions. Monster's cables actually transmitted the digital data better* and performed beyond their specs. *Better: steeper transitions between 1's and 0's... poor cables had more gradual and smooth transitions between 1's and 0's. Ideal case would be a vertical transition between 1's and 0's. Article here: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/hdmi-cable-battlemodo/the-truth-about-monster-cable-part-2-268788.php
New webcomic updated on Sundays: HERE
Maybe he has body odor, too.
What does this have to do with speaker cables?
Everyone on the planet has dirty laundry. If that bothers you, you'll never get anywhere.
What does that mean?
What the hell does that mean?
on second thought...
I don't even want to know what the hell that means.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Sorry, this one has you beat by about 25AU
...
To Quote:
The Teleportation Tweak is the phenomenal new product from Machina Dynamica. The Teleportation Tweak is an advanced communications technique discovered and developed by Machina Dynamica for upgrading audio systems remotely -- even over very long distances. The Teleportation Tweak has a profound effect on the sound and is performed during a phone call to Machina Dynamica; the phone call can be made via landline or cell phone from any room in the house. The tweak itself takes about 30 seconds.
The effects of the Teleportation Tweak are instantaneous and the improvement to sound quality will be audible immediately. The Teleportation Tweak excels in 3-dimensionality, lushness, inner detail and air. Bonus: The picture quality of any video system in the house will also be improved - better color and contrast! Customer should pay via Paypal or check/MO (payable to Geoff Kait) prior to calling Machina Dynamica via landline or cell phone. Machina Dynamica's Teleportation Tweak $60.
Transation: They will call you, for the bargain price of $60, and not only make your entire audio system sound better, but it will improve the picture quality on your televisions!
ALL THROUGH A SINGLE 30-SECOND PHONE CALL
Science just jumped out the window, and took Logic and Reason with her.
How about predicting the future? The magic 8-ball has been predicting "Outlook not so good" since inception. Obviously it foresaw many of the issues that came to be with that horrible pretender to an email client.
I've always been amused by the cable thing. Even "high end" gear tends to use RCA phono jacks, which they gold plate, rather than BNC connectors, which are known to be flat to 50MHz and don't come loose.
Even Monster Cable for speaker cable is silly. All you need is heavy-gauge copper. Nothing else matters.
I was amused some years ago to find that Monster Cable didn't make VGA cables, where signal degradation is a real issue for long cables. That's a high bandwidth analog signal, and they'd have to actually work to make a good one. Eventually, they did get into VGA cables, which they overprice as usual. A high quality 5 meter VGA cable can be obtained for about $8, but Monster will charge you many times that.
The "tubes vs. transistors" amplifier thing is amusing. Back in 1990, Bob Carver, who designs amplifiers, challenged two high-end audio magazines to give him any audio amplifier at any price, and he'd duplicate its sound in one of his lower cost transistor amps. Two magazines took him up on the challenge. He won. Then, almost as a joke, he built the Carver Silver 7 amplifier, which is all tube and sold for $17,000/pair. Each amp has two chassis, one for the power supply, and the thing is chrome-plated. Audiophiles bought the things. Then he came out with a transistor amplifier with the same transfer function at 1/40th the price.
There are things that do matter, like read error counts on CDs, but they're usually hidden from consumers. Early CD players had error counters, but the industry agreed to hide that information when people started complaining. Now, most CD players reread and buffer, so it's less of an issue.
Double-blind tests have proven that there is no perceptible difference between 16 gauge lamp cord and high-end speaker cables. The electrical differences at audio frequencies are too small to be perceived by the human ear.
Double-blind tests also show that $30,000 hand-built amplifiers cannot be reliably distinguished from mid-range (~$700) amplifiers (in normal listening environments). I suspect that 99% of people couldn't hear the difference between a $100 amplifier and a $30,000 amplifier (again, at normal volume, in normal rooms).
There are dramatic differences between speaker systems; but those differences are not necessarily correlated with cost. Speaker placement in the room is crucial. Buy some mid-priced 2-way satellites with 1" silk dome tweeters and 8" mid/bass drivers, paired with a decent powered subwoofer, move them around until they sound nice, and be happy.
Folks, you have to understand the audiophile mentality to realise why these things are out there. There are a lot of things going on in the signal chain from source to brain, and a lot of places where the signal could get degraded. Unfortunately, that leads to a lot of potential for snake oil, something that seems to be worse in high end audio than any other field of which I'm aware.
First of all, there's the science. Cables can be engineered to push all of their flaws several orders of magnitude beyond the limits of human hearing, fairly trivially. Both speaker cables and interconnects have their own challenges, but can be overcome. With decent cables, any audible degradation is the result of bad equipment design. It is, for instance, possible to design gear so badly that cables make a difference--this is not a desirable goal, unless you're in the snake oil business.
How can you prove the audibility (or not) of cables? There are essentially four ways:
1) Rigorous double-blind ABX testing.
2) Measuring signal loss/distortion across the cable.
3) Subtract the post-cable signal from pre-cable signal and study the residual signal.
4) Listen to a system and make arbitrary comments about the cables.
One of these is not a valid proof, but is the one that gets promoted aggressively over the other three. Can you guess what it is?
In my mind, there are essentially two schools of audiophile: There are the 'absolute signal purity' geeks who want a perfect reproduction of the signal from source to speaker, and are willing to buy overengineered equipment to do it. These are the folks who buy Rotel, Bryston, Krell, and the like. Then there are the 'absolute musical purity' folks, who don't care about the signal per se, so much as the music in it. They're the ones who buy 3-watt triode amps (like the insane but gorgeous Moth S2A3) and the (new) Magnum-Dynalab tube tuners, and shun CDs. This group tends to fall into the audiophile 'tweaker' mentality more readily, but both groups have their extremes. The one thing about the extremists from either school is an absolute refusal to consider things rationally. It is the love of the irrational that keeps them happily tweaking, and keeps the snake oil salesmen in business.
The problem that leads to the endless search for audio nirvana is partly that audio is a perception issue, and one that is chronologically linear. You can't listen to two sounds simultaneously and decide which is better, or whether they're the same. (ABX testing is the closest you can get, but most hardcore audiophiles won't participate.) Worse, you can get into endless discussions about what constitutes hearing. If you put something in the chain that makes no change to the signal, but you believe that it sounds different, are you hearing something different or not?
As a final note, I highly recommend finding a copy of two articles in Audio Ideas Guide (an audiophile tweak-happy publication) by James Hayward, a retired engineer from Canada's National Research Council. In them, he discusses the actual physics behind audio cables, and points out what actually CAN lead to audible degradation by cables. (Hint: It isn't easy, but there are some on the market which qualify.)
1. Making The Connection: A Closer Look At The Role Of Interconnect Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Summer/Fall 1994
2. Making The Connection, Part Deux: A Closer Look At The Role Of Loudspeaker Cables, J.H. Hayward, Audio Ideas Guide, Winter/Spring 1995
You can read a short summary of the articles on Bryston's website.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
You must not have broken them in. While many prefer to break in their cables for a week or two using the preferred content, I find that the best uniform results occur with a volume-modulated version of pink noise for 10 days. Once that's done (and it only needs to be done once) you can sub-condition for yuor content. For example, if I'm going to listen to classical, I'll run some recordings by the same composer and orchestra for a day or two first. Afterwards, I'll cleanse the path with at least 4 hours of pink noise before either changing composer or orchestra. I prefer 12 hours or more of pink noise if I'm going to switch to jazz or rock.
You see, by not properly conditioning your cables, you made a mockery of the entire double blind test. These are sensitive, precision pieces of equipment, and can't simply be handled the way zip cord can.
You'll have to excuse me now, it seems my tongue has seriously bruised my left cheek.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Without a doubt, the very best speaker cables money can but is 10 AWG romex available from Home Depot or any other hardware store. Just make sure to keep the length of the cable less than resonance for any High Frequency Band transmitter in your area.
BTW, has anyone really ever removed the covers from their high quality high priced amplifier equipment? If so, you may need to consider what type of wire is internally connected to those shinny high priced output terminals.
I piss off bigots.
This is totally unrelated to the story. I'm looking for 50-60 people who can claim that they're audiophiles, for a short-term very well paid job. Thank you for your attention.
Regarding "lamp cord" as speaker cables - YES, there is a difference. I, too was skeptical, but after 10 years of using high-grade speaker cable ($2/foot - not this psycho shit) I am certain it does perform better and there are reasons for it.
1) At high audio frequencies, electrons travel more efficiently on the _surface_ of a conductor. Using speaker cable with a high number of strands (hundreds as apposed to 20 or so in the twist) provides more surface area for conduction.
2) OFC cable (Oxygen free copper) is more flexible, making it easier to lay, strip and terminate. Better termination reduces resistance and gives better bass response (again - more surface area in contact with the speaker terminals, etc.)
This is not voodoo - it's physics.
That said, I do find it vastly humorous what lengths some people (not me) will go to on their stereos. My father has put together a great system that is vastly superior to any consumer-marketed equipment, but at a microscopic fraction of the cost of the upper-eschelon hi-fi (I think he has maybe $700 in it). Of course, he likes to build his own equipment -- you can find GREAT designs for IC-based power amps and pre-amps on the 'net.
-Josh
But Wikiality seems to differ in opinion since their article still claims that high-end cables are better than normal ones...
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Anyone who even buys over priced Monster Cable speaker wire is just throwing their money away. I use RG8X mini foam dielectric coax cable for speaker wire. It will handle around 600 - 800 watts, is more flexible and has better self shielding properties than 'zip cord' style wire. However, using high quality RCA interconnects is always recommended. People spending $7250 for speaker wire need to pass the pipe, because it's quite obvious you're smoking some good shit.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
They just can't hear what younger listeners can. My hearing >15KHz became a thing of the past when I was in my 30s.
-- Boycott Shell
I don't know about the $100 a foot stuff. But I have a set of Audioquest Type-4, factory terminated cables at home.
The difference? They're bundled in a nice blue case, and have lugs at the end that nicely attach to my speakers and amp. So they look nice, and are easy to connect.
Sound? That I don't know... They just look pretty.
I have a nice set of HDMI interconnects I'd like to sell you, only 15K
If it wasn't for the RIAA producing such crap, I may have succumbed to becoming an audiophile.
Dear Madam or Sir, I am contacting you in the strictest confidence, because I know you to be an honest and reliable person. I happen to have *SCIENTIFIC PROOF* that brand Pear Anjou speaker cables offer greater quality audio than ordinary speaker cable. This proof would win me US$1000 000, which I am prepared to share evenly with you. I only need a brand Pear Anjou speaker cable, but since my family's assets have been frozen by an evil, oppressive regime, I can't afford the cable or the necessary expenses. If you could can finance me with US$8000 I want to give you US$500 000. Thank you for your confidence! Cecil Rhodes, Nigerian Audiophile
Lemon curry???
I generally am the first to point out the emperor has no clothes whenever he does not. However I used to work in a high-en hi-fi store where we sold Transparent Cables for obscene dosh. Doing an A/B comparison between typical copper Monster cable and even the low end cables from Transparent is *dramatic*, even on $200 speakers. I bought some after hearing. The theory is sound (oops, pun). Your cables are antennas for noise.
reminds me of the penn and teller bullshit on bottled water. if you tell a sucker that he is getting an ultra fancy product, his ego makes him believe you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPAjUvvnIc
Retro-tube data drivers with shaped-anode 12AT7s in a balanced push-pull configuration yields a more pleasing data stream. The rounded bitshapes harken back to a time when mobile data was delivered to your '57 Chevy by pretty girls on roller-skates.
Data today is just too harsh.
'Nuff said.
Stan the Man
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
About friggin time someone put them to the test. I don't think I've ever seen a true double blind test of cables. The tests that I have seen using an oscilloscope suggest that there is such a little difference between standard speaker wire and ultra high grade. I'd love to read more about takers to the challenge (and their failure to collect). Just go to home depot, buy some lamp cable (make sure it has ridges or markings on one half) and you'll be solid for .25cents a foot or so.
www.wildpad.com
..check out the wonderful little magazine The Audio Critic, it takes a science approach to audio equipment and in the downloadable back issues there's more about the myths preached by the audio reviewers and the debunking by double blind tests.
Even reading some of the reactions to this by the reviewers make me think they's quite the religious group, but I have to admit that the editor can be very harsh too.
(one of the best examples is a NY high-end dealer refusing to pay the reward for proving he couldn't hear the difference between his 5 figure amplifier and a 100$ Pioneer receiver)
home
He's not some crazy old coot going around ranting and demanding that people perform miracles on demand (as the crazies would have you believe).
He puts real money on the line and all his tests are completely fair with the testees consulted every step of the way, signed papers that testees are completely happy with the setups before the tests start, signed papers that they were happy with the test when it finished (before results are revealed), etc., etc.
He's been doing this since the 1960s and has heard every possible excuse as to why {...whatever...} didn't work that particular day. The bottom line is it never works *any* day.
This HiFi thing is nothing new. He's done speaker cable tests before, it's just that the press seems to have taken an interest this time around (and that's good!)
No sig today...
For those of you that didn't catch the story in the UK press, or in the US thanks to Newsweek and The New Yorker, you can read about the story in Wiki.
...but there's a level above the objective, and that's where a lot of these self-proclaimed 'experts' spend a lot of their time. Just as I can't detect hints of winter and a dash of eggnog in a wine, or tell you which work of 'art' (elephant dung hammered to a Virgin Mary painting versus a house filled to the top with concrete) I probably couldn't detect the difference in sound between a really good music system and a really good (but much more pricey) music system. Even if I tried. And I seriously doubt that anyone else could to any objective degree.
Summary: British man (and possibly the piano-playing wife too), invented a touching history of his wife's past (involving invented people, churches, university departments and meetings) so he could pass off classical music recordings by other people as his wife's playing. Some of the tracks were sped up or slowed down slightly (0.02% was one number cited in the New Yorker article), but the scam was discovered when one of 'her' CDs, sent to a music buff in the States, showed as another piano player's work in Gracenote / CDDB.
One facet of the story that interested me was the way that reviewers were swayed by Usenet opinion after she became well known in classical music circles. Works by other pianists that were shrugged off as being technically stilted and lifeless were (when re-reviewed by the same person a few years later, but this time under Hatto's name) suddenly praised to the extreme. The music came with nuances and layers that were formerly not there.
I'm not saying there isn't a definable distinction between an OK piano player and a maestro (there is, just as there's a discernable difference between guitar players of different skill levels)
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
"People are hungry for this kind of thing," Randi said. "Knowledge of the future represents power, and people are looking for power, so they pay money to astrologers and 1-900 numbers, not realizing that if the astrologers and operators of the 1-900 service really had all this power, they'd use it for themselves and not have to do all this marketing to others."
Not sure what kind of speakers Nostradamus may have been using, tho.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
The problem with all this stuff is not that the evil audiophile magazines are duping perfectly normal, rational people...Quite the contrary. These people are looking for some fantasy to dump their money into, and the magazines and manufacturers are providing it.
This is exactly the sort of thing James Randi loves to get involved in, and the sad thing is how few people actually seem to care when the object of their irrational belief is held up in front of them. Look up the whole "Uri Geller on the Tonight Show" clip, where they set up a clean set of props for him to do his psychic schtick on, and he flopped so hard he left a hole in the stage...and it didn't end his career.
People want to believe irrational stuff. Read The demon haunted world by Carl Sagan...He goes over tons of stuff like this.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
More money for something means it is more valuable, say, for resale. This cable is more costly, and hence more valuable than monster cables, hence they are better.
Pay up
The cables didn't make any difference in the sound from my stereo system.
But all the spoons in my house were mysteriously bent, and the front lawn has developed unexplained circular patterns cut into the grass.
Audiophiles are in the same class of idiot as people who believe in homeopathy and copper bracelets. The only difference is that the audiophile isn't harming anything but his own obsessive-compulsiveness, and creates an efficient money transfer conduit from the stupid to the clever, namely the people who market this overpriced junk.
Audiophiles are also the ultimate disproof of the idea that "wealth equals intelligence", so when your dad asks why you why you aren't rich if you're so smart, you can tell him that at least you didn't spend $7,000 on speaker cable and the two of you can laugh about it over a beer. Just don't let him bring up the neon tubes and Arctic Silver conductive paste and water-cooled RAM in your own bedroom.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
It doesn't matter. Randi is notoriously known to hecle and intimidate his test-subjects, so there's no chance anybody is ever going to pass his tests. Basically, the whole thing is scientifically unsound: Randi is declaring all the rules, and may change them at will and will basically threaten you if you start doing well. He is far from objective about the whole test, and is acting as both executor, judge and bank.
No sensitive person is going to stand being around him. Randi is a piss-poor loser. Paranormal sensitive types or audiophiles, I don't think that's going to make a difference because of this. If you're in a bad environment, how are you supposed to be sensitive and soft? It is just lack of understanding, both of the subject and testing-process itself. For people who dabble in the subtle realms, this is both sad and hillarous.
Myself I am not audiophile, but I have observed "paranormal" phenomenon which science cannot - or will not explain, and which I _know_ where quite real and perfectly natural (although very rare nowadays) (which is another part of the whole scheme of Randi - How can anything be proven to be "paranormal", ie. unnatural. That is impossible.) It's just that you have to tune in to it, to really have the experience, let it come to you and not be impatient. This cannot be forced by our male-dominated will, but will descend on you when you are ready. Someone with over-active intelligence and too much scepticism will just not be aware of what is really happening (at any moment really). When you start becoming aware, life suddenly becomes much more interesting and amazing. It is especially amazing how much people speak about which they have not experienced themselves (second-hand stories for instance. Why waste time & energy on fantasies, when reality is much more interesting..)
The whole Randi scheme is a scam and a fairy-tale for adults, and those adhering to the dogma of science is falling flat-nosed over it..
I really hope someone is strong enough to beat him at his own game though and he'd be forced to pay up (btw, he doesn't even have the money...) It's just that the very people he challenge, sensitive people, are also notorious to escape life and not be balanced in their approach to life either - or the really superior ones will not see the point getting harassed and accused by Randi of cheating etc. Be not mistaken: It is a power-struggle, and it gets really dirty. It's simply not compatible with eachother (but free-thinking science is very much compatible with spirituality - and the very best thinkers always researched different paradigms and understood science to be just an incomplete model in the human mind. People like Einstein, Newton and many many more were both religious (without dogma) and researched Vedic texts and other sources of wisdom).
I know this all might seem ridiculous, but there IS more to life, if you are willing to really investigate (instead of ridiculing other viewpoints you have not researched yourself). I know, because I have experienced it many times, and everyday life is different for ever for me. I am healhy, good fit, have tools to get more energy and know how to get what I want / need. I probably earn double what other people earn, partly thanks to a different approach to life, but also thanks to good luck and good blessings. And most important, all that is totally unimportant to me, because I can never really lose ME - and this is imortality, which is granted to everybody to realize when they are ready. By realizing, you don't really gain anything, but you lose the illusion that you are a human body. Even if this is just on the intellectual level, it is a great freedom in it. How long will we be here? Just a few years, most of us have probably between 20-40 years left, then the body leaves us. How can we then be so bound to this illusion that we are a human body?
And no, it can neither be proved or disproved. It can only be realized, and even this is not a gain - just a realization of who we really are as energetic
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Perhaps- but jerks often get good results. When dealing with wackos, it's sometimes nice to have an 'equal and opposite' wacko.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Did any of these audiophiles ever consider the stuff they are buying at times is likely more expensive than the stuff they used to record whatever they are listening to? I sincerely doubt that anyone is using a $7,000 microphone cable in the studio connected to the mixer/recorder/computer/whatever. I knew a guy would bought cables that were flat and made of silver. They were about $300/foot. I always get a laugh when on the 'high-end' recievers that the gold jack on the back on the unit simply ties into a standard tin-lead trace on the circuit board!!!!
I wonder if this is the same Dave Clark that's raved over Geoff Kait's Machina Dynamica ?
If no one's taken a look you really should -- by placing these little orange-stickered Casio clocks in the same room you reap amazing improvements in sound quality. Kait will also upgrade your stereo over the phone....
Browse around a while, it's priceless!
contains factually false hearsay intended to sway peoples opinions in favour of materialisim
Please explain this. I'm not sure what it has to do with exposing scam artists many of whom exist just to increase their own material wealth.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
The distinction that you try to make is only absolute within the simplest interpretations of chemistry (such as that taught in grade school). The fundamentals of inorganic chemistry teach that chunks of metal, like the conductor in a signal cable, are composed of highly rigid lattices of atoms in at least one regular pattern. In impure or poorly formed lumps of metal, the patterns are sustained for fewer repetitions and more interfaces between individual lattice regions and impurities, and between adjacent lattice of different alignments or patterns. Electrons flowing straight through the lump of metal tend to pass more efficiently through individual lattices than between lattices due to the increased probably that a nucleus will be in the way of an electron when it crosses a physical lattice boundary. In some applications, it may be more convenient to treat a current running through a lump of metal as a long series of valence electron displacements along adjacent atoms than to treat the current as the same group of electrons entering and leaving the lump of metal.
For these and related reasons pertaining to crystal structure, much work has been focused on drawing silicon and refining ingots of increasing purity for semi-conductor production.
I have no idea how decreasing internal resistance and possibly capacitance of the cable would qualitatively affect sound output, but there is strong scientific evidence that lumps of metal with those properties can pass quantitatively better signal than a poorly formed lump of metal. I also have no idea how the cables mentioned in the story are internally structured.
In any case, the AC post to which you respond (along with this post) are reasonably big picture accurate in as far as no/minimal inaccessible jargon has been used.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Mod-up parent please, first accurate post I've seen here. People who think HDMI cables are immune to signal loss don't know what they are talking about. You can usually get away with cheaper cables for six feet and under but once you go above that you really need to look at the quality of the cable. If your unsure of what you need do a little research before you head out, my favorite place to shop is still monoprice.
Hmmm... Pie...
Does marring the woman who once told me that hell would have to freeze over before she would date me count?
I don't think there's anything to "very expensive cables" - but there's certainly bad cables, and cables that are more or less susceptible to interference. My brother and I played around with this for a while with a variety of cables - we even borrowed some fairly expensive ones from a high-end stereo dealer.
We got the best results out of some bulky network cable we stole from work. Not in some vague musical-flavor sort of way, but in a very noticeable improvement in quality over our worst cables (some very thin Radio Shack stuff).
I'd certainly agree that audiophiles swallow some ridiculous garbage, but the converse isn't true. It isn't all garbage - and I'll never understand the people who believe that all equipment sounds the same (or that their ridiculous, quiet, tinny little Bose speakers are the best speakers on the planet).
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
They have to make claims. Regardless of truth they want to appear as "knowledgable" and "informed". They also need to prove that they did something.
I trust paid reviewers as much as I trust a politician... which ain't saying much
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
And thank you very much for your comment, that's some great info :)
I'll probably buy their mid-range amp and some new phones when I have the cash (looking at AKG 701s), but I didn't know much about balanced inputs. Thanks!
There are a huge number of threads I could reply to on this topic, but I'm doing so via an iPod Touch in a McDonald's.
First, the three most profitable items we sold were:
1: Extended service contracts
2: Cables
3: Speakers
At the yearly Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Monster would put onthe best parties - open bar, great food and top entertainment.
Someone made the claim that HDMI "just either works or doesn't". I've had bad ones. But a broken one shows up as missing bit planes in the digital signal. Not a subtle difference.
99% of the power conditioning market is indeed bullshit. But 1% is not. In pro audio we use balanced power for some applications. 2 60 volt sources, 180 degrees different in phase to the normal "hot" and "neutral". The same system is used in submarines to reduce the electromagnetic signnature. This can reduce the noise floor of the connected equipment as much as 20 db. Measurable, not snake oil.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
and a hit of blotter acid is a pretty danceable combination too.
Think of all the Audiophiles who will go and purchase these $7000 cables to try to claim Randi's $1,000,000 prize. Randi may have actually increased the number of people who will hear about and purchase these overpriced monstrosities.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
to the perceived sound.
Because sound is perceived. It is a function of the brain. What you hear is not what comes in your ears, it's what comes in your ears overlaid with all the extra features your brain adds.
In this case, the brain knows that it's owner has paid a huge sum of money for cables. The brain expects the sound to be better. And lo and behold, it is!
It may be psychosomatic, but don't knock it. To a believer, it's as real as a measured signal. Who are you to question the ways of faith?
Your mistake is thinking of a human as a simple unidirectional processing machine. Humans are actually complex, self-referential systems. See Godel, Escher and Bach. So only a few thousand dollars to make your hi-fi perfect may be a cheap bargain?
(it is if you pay in dollars, given how they're falling at the moment!)
So after spending $20,000 on an amp, $35,000 on the speakers (each) and a cool $10k on speaker wire, now I ALSO have to get an AIR PURIFIER and Q-Tips?!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
This one is straight from a driver manufacturer:
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm
I.E.: its all about vanilla 12ga wire!
Ah, you live in south florida, don't you?
The obvious counter is that you have to run this incredibly delicate analog signal through your ABX switch.
Now, if you believe that a $7000 cable improves the sound quality, what sort of requirements are you going to put on the construction of that ABX switch, and what do you think the odds are that you'll be satisfied by it?
Someone arguing, "The ABX switch won't harm the audio signal." will probably be using the same reasoning he uses to conclude, "A $5 cable won't harm the audio signal more than a $7,000 cable." In a way, the ABX argument is circular.
Skeptics and audiophiles haven't sorted anything out between them through ABX tests yet, and I doubt they ever will.
On the upside, I bet you could sell a fancied-up ABX switch for upwards of $50,000.
Randi missed his target - cause Monster cable is the same trick - just a lower price point.
My twin-lead is working just fine - and with the same frequency response as the monster cable at 20Khz.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Comment removed based on user account deletion
While I enjoy Penn & Teller's "Bullshit" as much as the next guy, you need to recognize that they are entertainers, and they purposely slant their productions to maximize entertainment value. Anyone who trusts their shows enough to have it color their opinions on political or economic issues is making the same mistake as people who get their ideas about science from "Mythbusters". I like both shows, but really they are no more trustworthy than TV wrestling.
It seems to me that Randi, despite being overhyped and rather entertaining, is more than just a sideshow; he's actually willing to rigorously apply the scientific method and he allows his detractors the opportunity to try to prove their claims.
But trying to correct human ignorance is like pissing in the wind. The wind is still blowing and now you're covered in piss. He will keep his million dollars and the cable companies will make many more millions bilking fools. Given that those fools obviously have more money than brains, I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it. It'd be nice if there was some sort of safe word you could use to make these people STFU when they start gushing at you about the improved signal quality from their digital cables, though. Something like "Stop that! Telecommunications major here!"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There's a rather important typo on the summary. TFA lists the cables at $2,750 a set rather than $7,250 a set. It's "only" a factor of 3...
OFC wire has a use in audio, but not for speakers. Oxygen-free copper has almost no copper oxide crystals in its makeup hence there's no piezoelectric noise generated when the wires flex. It makes great cable for microphones and guitars and other instruments that move during a performance and which carry low-amplitude signals. The difference in resistance between regular copper and OFC is almost immeasurable.
Speaker wires shouldn't move when they've been laid into place. Even if they did they carry high voltages and significant current which dwarfs any induced piezo noise from oxide inclusions.
As for the skin effect also mentioned by somebody above, it only comes into play in the multimegahertz frequency range. Radio amateurs buy silver-plated coax for this reason but it only makes a noticable difference in attenuation at VHF frequencies and above. At audio frequencies there's no skin effect worth mentioning. Multicore wire doesn't enhance the skin effect as it's an electromagnetic effect and the skin effect would tend to concenetrate the current flow in the outside of the entire wire bundle, not on each individual core.
If you want really good speaker wires get the heaviest solid twin-core mains wiring you can get your hands on and use the shortest single runs you can lay down between the amplifier and the speakers. Screening the cable from mains pickup may do some good but is usually pretty irrelevant given the currents running in the wires. Solder the speaker wire directly onto the speaker connections or the crossover unit in the speaker cabinet, don't use interconnects.
If you're paying more than a dollar a metre for speaker cable, you're paying waaay too much. Home Despot is your friend.
I read your post waiting for an example, but didn't find any.
Of course, if he's taught you to be more skeptical of everything INCLUDING HIS OWN CLAIMS that really is the ultimate goal of a proper debunker.
Don't know if you just chose that at random or were actually trying to make a point - but IME SSRI's don't seem to impair ones mental abilities. YMMV.
About the cables I agree with you of course...
Medium cat is MEDIUM.
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Does the term "waving the chicken" ring a bell?
Did you never do something because "I dunno why, but if I don't do it it won't work"?
Did you never recompile something, hoping that for some odd reason it might suddenly start to work (with unchanged source and libraries)?
Did you never restart Windows... ok, bad example.
Did you never restart Linux, because, well, it works with Windows?
Did you never unplug something and replug it in an attempt to fix it?
Did you never replace more than just the damaged part "just in case"?
Did you never use high performance thermal grease which supposedly made your computer faster or cooler (and maybe even did by a degree for about 10x the cost, i.e. for zero tangible gain)?
Did you never buy a brand name instead of a generic part because "it just is better" (i.e. not some real stability problem with the generic stuff)?
Did you never defend some piece of hardware because some arbitrary test claims 10 points more performance (i.e. 10,010 instead of 10,000), or some other undetectable "performance improvement", which is at least 50% more expensive?
Don't try to justify it with some pseudo-technical reasoning, because usually there is no good reason to do ANY of those things. That doesn't make the audiophile bullcrap worth a cent, it just means we're falling for pretty much the same deals.
In fact, we do the same bullcrap. The only difference is that we rely on some arbitrary test results, to which hardware creators try to match their hardware, so we can be BSed into believing their hardware is actually better than some other hardware, because they get about 1% better results than their competitors. It's the same kind of BSing, though.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's "more DOLLARS than sense."
See how that works? Cents? Sense? Ha-ha?
Bending a spoon helps who? Not many other than the spoon-benders own pockets. I agree.
;)
So-called psychics, who make people depend on _them_, and not their own judgement? Not in the longer run.
But the teacher needs ignorant pupils.
The doctor needs sick people.
The world is full of diversity and "exploitation". It is indeed necessary for the world to function, so nothing to fret about.
Nevertheless, it doesn't help _us_ to get disturbed all the time thinking about all the problems.
It actally hinders our _own_ objective investigation and proper judgements...!
I have no doubt it is possible to bend a spoon, with our without physical force, but it is just a trick nonetheless. Wether it is by warmth, by some exotic particles, by quantum potentiality or brute-force and trickery, I know still that what happened is perfectly natural.
I also know that debunking one, does nothing to debunk every claim. It is a hopeless crusade based on flawed logic and knee-jerk reactions to the world.
The way Randi goes about science, if you are interested in the scientific method, you should condemn such practice. The means doens't justify the ends. It is a scam, and too many here are swallowing it and crying for blood, in much the same flawed way people swallow religious dogmas or try to use the Bible in scientific schoolclasses. It actually hinders real investigation by making a circus out of it. You can never test something having already decided on the result. How many scientists have falled in this pit, and still do? The man is a perfect example who should NOT represent science.
The man who is open for the result, is a _real_ scientist, that deserves praise and respect. Most important discoveries have been accidents with bieffects caught by the acute awareness of the discoverer.
If you're REALLY interested in science, DON'T be on _anyone's_ side.., or be on _everyone's_ side! Keep your mind open.
Btw, sceptics never ever came up with a new discovery. Only free-thinkers ever managed that (per definition you can even say
Sorry, for such a long OT note above, I just got inspired. I hope it can inspire someone to investigate that there really is more to life than what they're being told. I also write this because there seems to be a herd mentality here about the subject, which is also quite unhealthy for scientific progress.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
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I repaired somebody's Krell preamp, and I used cat5 throughout.
He never noticed a thing.
I can only see this happen if your cables are plugged into different amplifiers, possibly playing different music.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
McIntosh used to be a big audiophile company. They're still around, but bought up by a Japanese company.
They used to do unintentionally-humerous impartial anaylsis of other manufacturer's absurd claims about their equipment.
I'm aware of one where a competitor was claiming solder was unusable - it created so much impedance! All joints should be clamped, not soldered. McIntosh responded by making the "world's biggest solder joint", a speaker cable made out of pure solder, to test these claims. Sure enough, they discovered a lot of distortion - that was, until they discovered the cable was picking up a local AM station.
They added some simple electronics to filter out that distortion, and, low-and-behold, there was no measurable distortion caused by several hundred feet of tin+lead.
Pardon me if I don't believe in the hype over these cables that use "quality materials" like "copper, air and teflon".
Try convincing 99.9% of the population that over-the-air HDTV is actually /superior/ in quality to what they pay $200/month for over their highly reprocessed overly compressed digital cable. This I think is the entire reason for this annoying marketing and lobbying campaign. "Competition works?" Right, which is why they're trying desperately to ensure most people don't even know they can get HDTV over frakking rabbit ears and they certainly don't want them to know that 80% of the HD content they'll get over paid subscription is available for free, without having the contrast and color saturation bumped to cover the horrible compression artifacts.
I have a friend that works in a recording studio in NJ and essentially all of their audio gets put to magnetic tape before being digitized. People seem to prefer the color the tape gives the sound than accuracy.
And luxury car makers? Video cards? What about political philosophies? Religion?
The world is full of utter bullshit. Shooting fish in barrels isn't worthy of respect. Everyone already knew audiophiles were full of shit.
The trick to making a solid state guitar amp sound like a tube amp is a bit more involved than just the even order harmonics and clipping profile issues. Tubes have a native slewing rate that can be several orders of magnitudes greater than any solid state device. For those who don't know what a "slewing rate" is, it's a measure of the ability for a voltage amp to "accelerate" or "decelerate" the rate of change of voltage levels between low to high voltages coming from its output signal respective to the fluctuations of the input signal which is inputted to that voltage amp. Also, solid state devices are natively "current amps", whereas tubes are natively "voltage amps" and even though you can make a voltage amplifier using a current amplifier with a resistive output load and applying Ohms law, but that just further compromises the audio qualities. There is just no substitute for a tube-type power amp that uses inductive transformers to couple the output to the speakers.
Hello??? It's a digital protocol, it either makes it through or it doesn't.
Correct, and if the data doesn't make it through, it has to be resent (talking specifically about USB cables now). So even with digital there are certainly many states between something working perfectly or not working at all, and they usually have to do with throughput.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Once, someone who was in my studio laughed at my directional cables. (3.5mm TRS patch cables with arrows indicating the signal direction.)
However, when I showed him the patchbay with, on the order of 250 cables, the reason sunk in. When you are dealing with something like this,
and when a single lost signal can represent thousands of dollars of financial loss, it makes sense to really test every cable and to make them with care and consistency.
Ideas like this that make sense in a production environment are often taken straight out of context and put into the "audiophile" world. And then you get things like directional cables where someone tries to claim that the electrical signal itself is directional. Or you get extreme amounts of quality control. Or you get people who *claim* they apply extreme amounts of quality control when all they are really doing is rebranding some industrial product.
Know what works really well for speaker wire in permanent installations? Romex 12 gauge copper house wiring. Incredibly durable, solid wire, lays flat, tends to be very pure copper (costs more to make alloys), easy to fish, and it's hard to pay more than $.50 a meter.
Line signal cables have different issues from speaker cables of course, but the $7500 wires in the article are speaker wires.
In the blind test, one control I'd want to do is to have the subject hook up the system with the really expensive wires (play up the whole packaging angle, use really fancy connectors, etc.) but the signal they actually listen to is going through $0.29/meter lamp cord.
If these were signal routing lines for a mastering studio, the cost per foot would still be extreme, but the idea that quality matters this much would be a little more reasonable. You typical studio probably has a kilometer of cables, mostly on the hard to reach side of patch panels. You want to get these right the first time. This can be expensive. For an IT analogy think "fiber interconnects where a downtime incident costs millions and you get fired." There are plenty of situations like that in audio production and broadcast. Other examples of really high cost items, lamps for stage lighting where it would be a real nightmare if one lamp failed without warning.
Anyway I rant. I realize there are thousands of audio and broadcast engineers on slashdot, pro musicians, people with home studios, people who work in pro studios, lighting and camera folks, etc. I think they know where I'm coming from on this. I just hate seeing these things, because if one thing is insanely overpriced and has ridiculous claims, the response tends to be applied to all kinds of other things. (You *can* have a preference among $3000 microphones; minute individual variations in signal impedance or shielding *can* mean a ruined production; tube circuits and solid state circuits *do* have different coloration effects on a signal, etc.)
But will there be a double blind test on the speaker wires in the article? Don't hold your breath.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I see no indication at all that he is a mathematician. Point me at some serious mathematics he has done.
consider a $100000 stereo
...
now imagine lamp cord running across the $40000 rug
not a pretty picture
BTW, if you care about price, it's because you're poor.
all the superior non-audiophiles who dissed those who waste money on audio sure don't mind wasting money on cars faster than can be driven legally, stereos louder than safe to listen to, designer clothes, accessories and gaudy bling. I just mean, stupid products abound. But it sure is easy to dump on those who are different, eh
Because chick *always* check out your audio cables...
Quack, quack.
How did this score as 4/Informative? Was it summarizing how signal travels from amp to the human ear? Was it sharing the secret of how to bypass the speaker altogether (hint, don't try this at home)? Or was it mentioning how a $20 pill makes music sound better and more danceable? Mmm... $20 pill...
Working in the cable manufacturing industry, I have first hand knowledge on how easily people want to be screwed over. While we don't do audio cables, it's hilarious to see how companies are immediately willing to pay a hefty extra on a cable, just because it has a different name and imprint. E.g. power conduits for wind power get a 150% mark up over their "standard" variant, which is subject to exactly the same manufacturing process, quality of raw materials and QA.
Perhaps you really are a scientist. But telling people about connection to mathematics/engineering (a.k.a. "Computer Science"), is going to confuse people with its non-sequitorsequeiosity. It's like saying, "I'm a gourmet chef, see?" while pointing at your baseball card collection.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
The over-priced Monster cables have a life-time warranty. Break 'em, they replace them; that least that is what their ads say. That generally warrants a higher price.
Of all audio gear, speaker cables and power cables are probably the ones that have the least effect, if any, on sound quality. I'll grant right off the bat that any difference probably won't be audible. But before everyone gets all comfy in their religous prejudices, consider the history of absolutism - it usually fails in the long run.
We saw it with CD players. 25 years ago it was easy to find hordes and hordes of scientifically-minded folks who proclaimed that CD players were all identical and perfect. They reproduced as high a frequency as the ear could hear. They did so with perfect digital repeatability. They were perfect and identical. That was an unassailable scientific fact. It was even a marketing slogan for Phillips; "Perfect Sound Forever" was their first ad campaign for CDs.
Audiophiles said different. They said they heard differences. When challenged to do double blind, ABX testing, they often failed. They offered up only feeble excuses about how such tests are never structured properly, always being too short and normally using switchboxes that degraded sound. The skeptics and scientists had a field day exposing audiophiles as frauds and hucksters, as (at best) deluded simpletons.
Eventually, though, a funny thing happened. Research got done by audiophiles who were also engineers. They discovered various CD player problems (like jitter) that could be measured and fixed. When those problems were fixed, the audiophiles said the players sounded better. The audiophiles still failed ABX tests and still held to the same excuses, but changes were made, anyway.
Nowadays, anyone who knows what music sounds like (and, yes, that eliminates 98% of the populace right there) can easily tell the difference between a first-gen Sony CDP-101 and a current high-end CD player. There really are differences. Those people who absolutely knew that it was scientifically impossible for any difference to exist turned out to be painfully, embarrassingly wrong. (Nowadays, they tend to fall back on revisionist history: "Oh, we never really said you guys were wrong, just that testing didn't bear you out...etc., etc.")
My point is not to construct an elaborate straw man. My point is that keeping an open mind is a good thing. We have previously seen lots of folks loudly and authoritatively proclaim that a given phenomena does not exist and cannot possibly exist. They cite scientific reasoning (as they spout it) as unquestionable. But that is nothing more than a religous devotion to a position and I reject it.
Sure, the burden of proof is on the people who make claims that cable A sounds better than cable B. I doubt they'll ever succeed. But the vituperative, out-of-hand rejection of alternate views is more than just unseemly; it argues against (indeed, belittles) an inquisitive spirit.
Perhaps some Carl Sagan would be in order. His essay The Dragon in My Garage is right on point. When considering unverifiable and seemingly insane assertions, his advice is that: "...the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the ... hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion."
We've seen the mocking, "scientific" approach to audiophile claims turn out to be wrong in the past. We might do well to be a little less sure of ourselves when considering audiophile issues in the future.
Side note: Just to show that there's blame to go all around, note that the offer of the James Randi Educational Foundation folks is, as I have stated elsewhere, disingenuous as all hell. (See Rule 12, a proviso that makes it clear that the offer is only open to whoever they want to make it open to and gives the JREF multiple, too-easy excuses to reject any attempt to claim the reward.) The rules are set up so that the test will never happen. This is little more than a minor publicity stunt that's gotten picked up by too many 'net outlets and given far too much virtual ink, already.
At least one expensive (around a grand for a 10 foot pair) speaker cable manufacturer (MIT "Music Hose"d) claims that wire is directional-in other words the audio FLOWS from the amp to the speaker. How this works is beyone me-especially since audio is AC and the speaker come moves in and out in step with the AC voltage applied to it!
I was sent a 4-foot single run pair and after a short break-in (Adam suggested that the break-in is minimal, but even so I gave them 48 hours on the Cable Cooker and good two-weeks 24/7 of music prior to the audition)
Yeah, Davey, that made all the difference! ROTFLMAO!
My 128bps mp3s are less than danceable on my existing cables. This must be what I need.
most of the expensive guitar cables have pretty darn good warranties too; it's well worth spending the extra $20 or so on the cable and being basically guaranteed to be able to exchange it if/when it breaks.
Monster instrument cables are definitely dripping with hype mojo but they're still pretty affordable and have the great warranty. Mogami cables are even more ridiculous but I'm pretty sure they exchange too...
ìì!
Someone needs to point out that not all audiophiles believe that speaker cable makes a difference. You cannot use that as a strawman to show that all of the difference in the character of music that audiophiles claim is not valid or real. Just because speaker cable may not make any difference to the audible character of music does not mean that all differences in audio quality due to the nature of the components are mere illusion. Or that all audiophiles are gullible, stupid and rich. Individuals have different levels of hearing sensitivity. What is obvious to some people will not be detected at all by people with poor or damaged hearing. Just because you or I cannot hear a difference in some blind listening test does not mean that everyone else in the world cannot.
For some reason it seems important to those people with poor hearing that no one else on the planet can hear things any better than they. I am not sure why this is. It certainly doesn't happen with vision. There are people with 12/20 vision who can see things from far away that wouldn't seem to be there from our perspective and that fact doesn't seem controversial at all.
Every time any sound quality issue comes up on slashdot there are always large numbers of people claiming that no one can hear the difference between a 128kbps MP3 track (encoded with Lame of course!) played on a $3.00 pair of headphones and, well, pretty much anything else. I'm not sure whether to feel sorry for such people, just as perhaps people with 12/20 vision might feel sorry for me always having to wear glasses or contact lenses just to walk around. The fact that *you* cannot hear a difference does not mean that the difference is not there.
A similar situation can be found with food. 'Gourmets' are often looked at in a similar light from the POV of people with fewer or less sensitive taste buds who are quite simply blind to any subtle distinction in flavor. To them the gourmets seem to be deluding themselves about any imagined difference. But the differences are quite real to the ones who can detect them.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
They're not selling audio equipment at all. What they're selling is - quite literally - perceived superiority. The people that buy this stuff don't want better audio. They want to feel superior to other people with perceived "lesser" equipment. That's the real motivation. The more it costs, the more superior you feel! It's a fucking brilliant business model.
Most of the terms "audiophiles" use to describe sound aren't quantifiable in any way whatsoever. And when you dissect it sound is nothing more than compressed air hitting your eardrums, then conducted through bone, liquid, and hairs. These compressed air waves have amplitude and frequency. Nothing else. There are no more attributes to them.
Sound waves are not "warmer", "cooler", "clearer", "danceable" or anything else. They can be louder, or they can have a different frequency. Period. The quality of sound equipment is completely measurable in a quantifiable way. Frequency response. And that's mostly for speakers. The conducting wires have almost nothing to do with it.
I've actually heard that CAT5 cables are the best stereo cables around for two reasons: 1) Absurdly cheap per foot 2) The twisting of the wires in the cable reduces crosstalk and interference. Something that's actually got a basis in science. But still, what do I use? Whatever came with my speakers or I got at Walmart for the lowest price.
Question everything
Ironically enough I was having a conversation on the topic of (professional) audio cables in general late Saturday night, with about half the people in the rock band I run sound for sometimes. Snake-oil isn't limited to consumer-level audiophiles; there are predators out there targeting musicians as well, trying to convince them that they need to spend twice as much on specialized cables that are "tuned" for an electric guitar, or "tuned" for a bass guitar, or "tuned" for a synthesizer. What brought that subject up, was my pointing out the need for the band to own longer speaker cables for the mains -- a pair of them around 100 feet -- and that I was going to go price out something like this (it's appliance power cable) at the local building supply and build them myself, to save them money -- because there really isn't much difference that matters between that and what is sold as "speaker cable".
Oh, and by the way, what I used to wire the surround-sound speakers in my living room with? I used 18ga white lamp cord, purchased at Home Depot. Or if you prefer, I'll "certify" said same, and sell it to you for the amazing price of $10/foot; I'll even cut it to custom lengths for you and solder pretty little gold-plated connectors on the ends for you, if you like. ;-)
No, we're not.
Compare a Remington rifle to a Merkel. If you think that's comparing a mass-production item to a boutique item try comparing a Kimber to a Merkel. Compare the Remington to a Blaser or a Sako.
Compare a Smith and Wesson M41 target pistol to a Unique (out of business and French to boot, but still better than anything you can get from the U.S.), a Hammerli, or a Walter target pistol.
Compare the best revolver to ever come out of the S&W Performance Center to a Korth.
Compare the best semi-custom 1911-pattern target pistol you can get from a low-volume specialty manufacurer in the U.S. to a Pardini centerfire target pistol. Of all these comparisons, this one will be the closest, but only if the U.S. maker didn't have a bad day when they built your pistol.
No, the sad truth is that American gun makers don't take quality as seriously as the Europeans. It's true that you can't beat the bang-for-the-buck of the American brands. The Ruger .22 target auto is more pistol for less money than you can get anywhere. Unfortunately, it also looks like an industrial tool compared to the products of Europe.
For purely custom, incredibly expensive, one of a kind guns, you're as likely to find a suitable artist in the U.S. as elsewhere. But for combining mass production and high quality, no U.S. gun manufacturer can hold a candle to the best Europeans.
I use multiple strands of CAT5e adding up to 12 guage as my speaker cables and a double twisted pair with floating ground for my interconnects. I add $15/pr gold-plated RCA ends for the best sounding $30 interconnects on the face of planet earth. No seriously. They sound notably better (subjective I know, but I used to write high-end music reviews for a magazine some of you may remember called (are you ready?) Ultimate Audio. So I've spent *A LOT* of time listening to high end systems...) than anything else I've used excepting that time a borrowed a set of $1000/meter 99.9% pure silver cables from an audio-nut friend of mine. Insanity. CAT5e makes excellent audio cable :)
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
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Fapping is known to cause death in kittens, and if your cable only has 5 of them, with 9 lives each, well that won't hold up for very long. You should upgrade to fiber.
If Speaker Cable A sounds better than Speaker Cable B to me, why souldn't I buy it? It makes me think I've bought the better product.
Because even if you know that the difference is psychological, you are giving money to scam artists who sell these cables at a ridiculous profit margin and then turn around and scam people who honestly believe in their horsefeed.
In other words, you're giving money to con artists to help fleece other people.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Everyone knows that the smart people buy the optical cables with gold-plated connectors http://www.tvcables.co.uk/cgi-bin/tvcables/PGD563.html
I've read article after article after article on whether premium (montser) cables or even higher end cables make any sort of matter or difference. What pretty much ever article and review boils down to in saying is that 'it's all about the length of the cable run'.
For 95% of consumers, their A/V equipment will typically be 5-10ft. away from each other. In which case, which every review will speak to, it doesn't matter what cabling you use. Providing you use at least half decent cabling, you would never notice the difference between a $10 HDMI cable and a $400 Monster HDMI cable. However, if you're doing a 50ft. run through a wall to an electronics cabinet or a projector or something, there is something to be said for the higher end monster cabling. However, there were still cases where the differences weren't always noticable. If you're cabling through walls, it's probably better to spend a bit more on cabling anyways, as you'll have more interference, and you don't want to start ripping cabling out of the walls and replacing it in 10 years. So, there is something to be said for premium cabling (I'm talking monster, not the stupidly stupid $9000 athena cabling or stuff like that). But again, for 95% of consumers, it's hogwash. I used to work at a big-box electronics retailer many years ago, and all these cables boil down to is profit. Huge profit. And huge commissions. All so customers can get a cable that they really, truly don't need.
Basically the only time when you would need to use cables like that is if you're installing a multi-million dollar home theater or audio system for a rich audiophile. Audiophiles don't listen to music, they listen to the stereo. Then, and only then, would someone notice a difference (and I'm not saying that they would actually notice the difference, it would be in their head...).
A friend of mine who's a professional electrician who specialized in home automation installs used to work for a company that did only $500,000+ installs for rich clients. His advice - 'Only rich people and rich audiophiles need these kinds of cables - and they don't need them.'
All you really need to do is to buy a good quality bulk cable for most things, and make your own cable. You can buy a very good quality, quad-sheilded, FT4 rated coax that is on par with anything monster sells, and for a lot cheaper. For the cost of 2 or 3 monster cables, you can buy 500ft. of bulk cable plus the few tools you need for crimping, etc. Major home improvement stores typically don't sell the 'really good' bulk cables, but most specialty electronics stores will, or can order some for you. You can even order bulk cable that has all the same fancy wire-mesh shielding of the monsters. The only real time when you can't make your own cables easily is cases like HDMI. For that, buy pre-made. Beyond that, coax, Cat5/6, and simple paired wiring (speaker wire) will take care of 99% of anything you might need in your house. Coax, Cat5, and speaker wire is the mother of all cabling in the home - it can be used for virtually all things in a home.
'course the actual placebo could be just fancy looking sugar or lamp cord with a good marketing spin.
I've actually had problems with Monster Cables with over-tight, over-engineered connectors that are stronger than those on the device the plug into. If something is going to break when I am plugging and unplugging cables, I'd rather that it be the cable that the component (although with some Monster cables, the cost of replacing the cable can rival the cost of the component).
After all digital signals have ERROR CORRECTION built in. What happens whey they transmit over air, are they going to sell air sprays that make better audio?
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
I love these stories. I never know whether to be outraged that someone is ripping people off so badly or delighted to know that very rich, very pretentious people are being ripped off so badly.
To er is human.
I seriously doubt theres any skin effect issue with a 25KHz bandwidth signal.
So, if these cables can meet their claims, that makes them paranormal!
This is really good news for those trying to win that other Amazing million-dollar check that Randi carries around. Prove the cables can do it and you win both checks because you proved that paranormal exists!
Now, take that $2 million and invest it in a booster system that will take a small Lego robot from a high-altitude balloon all the way to the moon. When that little bot sends back video from the lunar surface, knock on Google's door and claim the $50 million prize they offered.
I dunno about youse guys, but I'm heading out right now to buy a pair of those audio cables. And a Lego Mindstorms kit...
In 1988, Philip Greenspun and I did a study of audiophile cables, as part of a Psychoacoustics laboratory course at MIT. Our paper was published in The Absolute Sound and the MIT Computer Music Journal (first page). The MIT version published several paragraphs and pages out of order, so you have to put the puzzle back together.
At the time, CD players were just out, and many audiophiles derided them, so we used 33RPM LP recordings, purchased new and played on a high-end turntable, and used expensive electrostatic speakers and a typical audiophile listening room, not an anechoic chamber, as audiophiles again had in the past not accepted such tests.
Rather than testing speaker cables, we decided to test the tonearm-to-preamp connection, where the signal as the weakest, reasoning that any effects would show up more profoundly there.
We tested a 1-meter long cable from Straight Wire (provided to us free, but costing about $100) and 24-feet of zip cord from Radio Shack (which we purchased).
To avoid any interference from switches or relays, I went into a closet with the equipment and the door closed, and Philip waited with the test subjects in the listening room. (This formally made our test single-blind, though it answered previous concerns from previous tests about signal depredation from switches. Still, we made sure that there was no way for subjects to find out during the test.)
Each run consisted of either AAAA or ABAB, with A or B being a one-minute passage played with cable A or cable B. AAAA or ABAB was etermined by coin toss. Before each minute passage, I unplugged the cables and plugged the cable back in, so there was no way for the subjects to tell which cable was used. We asked for each 4-minute run if the subjects thought it was A or B, and we asked after each 1-minute, if they preferred it.
We ran several groups of 5 subjects each, and did 6 runs with each. Our tests included audiophiles, musicians, and other random test subjects. We found no statistically significant ability for subjects either in preference or in ability to distinguish 1 meter long audiophile cable from 24 feet of Radio Shack zip cord.
If we discarded the first run for each group of subjects as a training run, we found an 80% confidence for ability to distinguish, which was still not significant. However, we did find a 95% confidence on preference, for the Radio Shack 24' zip cord!
Third movie.
Back to the Future, yes, but BttF III.
The scene whereby they were going over schematics and diagrams of the time machine, so that the damaged circuitry might be replaced. More trivia, the line referring to the fact that suitable parts would not be invented until 1947, is a lovely geek nod to the transistor. Is there anything those little gems can't do?
I've found Romex cable to be an inexpensive alternative when long runs are needed to high-powered speakers. Granted, it isn't very flexible, but it works great for in-wall speakers and terminal jacks.
...is that most people just don't know what is worth investing in when it comes to getting a better audio (and visual) experience. My speakers for my computer (which is also my primary music device) cost £100, my wireless headphones cost £35-ish. I have no idea if this is more than I need. Could I have got the same out of stuff that cost half that (in the case of the headphones maybe - they are Sony, I know, I'm sorry...). Would paying twice the amount buy something which sounds twice as good...? Would some Bang & Oulafson (I forget how that's spelt exactly...) sound 20x as good?
Where can you go to find out answers to these questions other than magazines which are run by audiophiles?
After I've bought them and realised it sounds the same what can I do? admit I've been a twat or claim they are genuinely better?... I think I'd be doing the latter
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
are soon parted.
Don't get me started on those. You can pay thousands of dollars for a glorified kettle lead - just google for "reference power cord" or something like that.
The reviews are hilarious, I even saw one where the guy claimed it sounded best after 90 days of "burn in".
Again, in blind tests it makes no difference whatsoever. Here's a blind test where "reviewers" chose a lead from a kettle as being best.
No sig today...
Thanks for clarification!
5. Say nice things to your equipment. Complement it once in a while. "Who's a good stereo? You are! You're a good stereo!" Spend some quality time with it. Take it out once in a while to someplace nice. Give your speakers a hug.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
These are ribbon drivers, crossed to two woofers, and are intended to be combined with a subwoofer for content under 80 Hz (mostly important for organ music and movie effects).
The thing with ribbon speakers is that they take the concept of the voice coil in a magnet and stretch that coil out into a single line, bonded to a thin film, like kapton, and hold it in a strong magnetic field. Every good slashdotter knows that current in a mag field results in force, and that moves the film (cone in a traditional speaker). Ribbon speakers have the advantage that they radiate cylinderacly instead of spherically, avoiding floor and ceiling bounce. They are hard to cross to cone speakers though, and do not far well much below 250 Hz. Absolutely amazing in the midrange (where the ear is most sensitive) and highs, though.
Anyway, back to engineering.
The force you get is proportional to the current in the wire and the strenghth of the magnetic field. IIRC, the old Carver Silver ALS used alnico magnets and had an attractive force of about a 1/4 ton between the front and read magnets. O.K. Add current. Lots of it. Ribbon speakers do not "blow" if you overdrive them: they catch fire from the hot wire igniting the film. The point is that they tend to be inefficient (88 dB/W/m is pretty good for them) and need lots of power, espescially at the peaks. They have low impedance as well.
So, you need an amp with low output impedance (though it's not so crucual that it have it at low frequencies unless your not biamping and are using it to drive the woofers and a passive sub as well (which was the Carver Silver ALS setup: 3 12" open frame subs per speaker).
The last thing you need is a wimpy speaker cable. Sure, one would think that a low enough gauge of wire would do, and indeed, Carver recommended 12 ga. lamp cord and to avoid expensive cables. Though, bigger is better here, when it comes to a long run of, say 20-25 feet. You really are best off keeping the amps close to the speakers, though then you have long interconnect runs where the cable capacitance starts to matter because of the high-impedance amp input. Digital amps, like the Tact Audio series avoid the long analog run, but are expensive. For most people, a long speaker run is better than a long analog preamp run. Of course, you can compensate for the high-end rolloff in a long preamp run in a good preamp, but unless you have the hearing of a young child (better than 20kHz), you likely won't notice.
So, back to the fat speaker cable capable of carrying a lot of current (and you do need a lot for a musical peak from a ribbon driver: hundreds of watts despite an average power level of around 100 mW: if the minimum listening level is 30 dB at 4 m from a ribbon driver, and the peak is 110 dB, that's a range of 80 dB or a power ratio of 100 MILLION. 30 dB at 4 m from a ribbon is 36 dB at 1 m, or 6 microwatts. 110 dB is 116 dB at 1 m or 645W -- about 50 volts at 13 amps driving a 4 ohm ribbon). A fat enough cable has lots of inductance. Guess what that does to your sharp drum strike (which has a quick attack followed by lots of low-frequency decay). It is no longer as sharp.
Now, 12 feet of 12 ga. cable has a resistance of about 0.23 ohm. Assuming the output impedance of an amp is 0.02 ohms (like a decent Odyssey Audio Stratos Plus at US$1300 or so), we have 4.25 ohms in the total circuit for a damping factor of 4/.25 or 16. That's pretty shitty, actually. 20 is the minumum acceptable, and 100 is grand. So, you shorten the cable, placing the amp close to the speakers, or get fatter cables (say 10 guage or even 8 guage), but then the inductance goes up. Yes, all this varies with frequency, but you get the idea (and inductance matters more at higher frequencies)
On top of all that, you have to deal with the mechanical connection of the speaker cable to the amp and speaker. That can b
You could've hired me.
Same reason I use a craftsman tape measure, lifetime warranty. It probably doesn't matter as much for a home user but for a musician who is dragging gear through all sorts of places cables break. A 20' monster guitar cable is a fine piece of equipment, there is no magic voodoo that improves my sound but it works just fine and is pretty sturdy. What makes it worth the 35 bucks or so I paid for it is that when they go bad you just take it to a guitar store and they give you a new one. The warranty card says they reserve the right to make you jump through some hoops but I've never had a problem. I've been through maybe 5 cables in as many years after only paying for the first.
Regarding fancy kettle leads:
"ESP has an interesting approach to break-in of its products, proclaiming that not only do its power cords break in, but so do the components with which they are used. "The power supply of the component (mostly the capacitors) that you attach the cord to undergoes additional break-in due to the enhanced dynamic capabilities afforded by The Essence Reference." Furthermore, according to Michael Griffin, switching equipment off causes capacitors to slowly return to their pre-The Essence Reference state"
You can't write comedy like that if you try...
Full text here
No sig today...
I have been reading about the Amazing Randi and all that he has done for a few years, what surprised me was finding out that Johnny Carson was a skeptic and very involved in the skeptics movement. Scientists are human and just as gullible as everyone else.
Ah neat, eye diagrams. People like to say that high-speed digital design is really analog design. It's quite true. What matters here is the cable loss and dispersion, which will be finite for anything except a perfect transmission line. Better cable = better transmission line.
To relate this to the topic, consider that HDMI cables need bandwidth of over 3 GHZ (cat 2), while audio signals only go to 20 kHz. Even if we generously extend the audio bandwidth to 100KHz, there's over 4 orders of magnitude difference. So it's not surprising that a cable for gigabit speeds needs tighter specs.
Sony ha
If you read the speck for sound cards you get the picture. Cards that "restore the audio quality lost during mp3 conversion". I think this says it all. I also like the matching of speaker wire to audio frequencies, and other RF facts spun down to audio frequencies. Again complete nonsense. However once can make the wire with a certain resonant frequency and then make it appear that their cable are better. They can show graphs until they, blue in the face, I'm not buying it. Ultimately, the difference in conduction b/w metals is insignificant. Finally, please not that gold is not the best conductor. Gold is a good connector for mating cycles (plugging and unplugging cables). If you never cycle your cables, gold is a wasted expense. Once I say this people typically make the corrosion argument. In the salt spray (corrosion test) nickel holds up WAY better than gold (both in flash and plate). That's my 10 cents, my 2 cents is free.
He is the best (I am subscribed to his mail shots). LOL. Great story.
for this type of reviews. They had review of 'smart clocks' or something like that. a clock which somehow magically improves the sound of your stereo.
One of the members of Positive Feedback, one Clark Johnsen seemingly never met any audio snake oil he didn't like. When pointed on obvious absurdity of the claims he always says something like "you can never say it wouldn't work till you try". Of course he like the others of his kind reject the double blink testing, so 'testing' according to him is to listen and say "yeah, I certainly hear the improvements".
Incidently, Clark Johnsen, Dave Clark and others are simply afraid of double blind testing since it certianly will prove that the emperor has no cloth. so they use every sophystry possible to claim that the double blind testing doesn't really work for audio.
I will never forget the review I saw I believe on 6moons.com, by some pair of idiots, with PhDs (in I wonder what). They were reviewing another snake oil, CD demagnetizer. The claim was that after moving CD through demagnetizer, that should make the sound better. Of course the reviewers said that they have heard definite improvements. There are two things to consider. First: magnetic field has no effect on a laser beam. Second: CD doesn't get magnetized, period. Well, they claim that some minute imperfections in the material CD is made with allows for possible magnetization, but when pressed for the exact values, they give something barely detectible. In fact, less than the Earth magnetic field. Duh.
Back in 1988 or so, He stopped into the pizza restaurant I worked at. I made his lunch. Does that make me a skeptic now?
I'm skeptical that it does... so I must be a skeptic. But something must have made me skeptical and he's pretty influential, so it's probably his doing. Yet... I'm still skeptical about this cause and effect.
Besides I forgot what he ordered.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
...how far off are you from purchasing the gear necessary to run superconducting cables?
It seems to me that at these stratospheric prices, your better off using something with absolutely 0 resistance; and as a side bonus you can run it as far as you like!
Seriously though; were does the madness stop, and who the *hell* buys this stuff? We work with a speciality provider of cables for aerospace products, and nothing they sell reaches into these ranges; even with the markup aviation and the military normally expects!
Good grief.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I remember way back circa 1982, when I bought my first CD player, some audiophile magazine did a test in which they had members of an audiophile club (or some such) listen to four different samples (two different kinds of music and two test signals) on different CD players. It was a double-blind A-B-X comparison test, so it wasn't designed to determine which sounded better, just to see if people could tell them apart. The result was that for music, no audiophile could tell the difference between the cheapest (around $200) player and the most expensive, a $1,100 model. Forget which one was better -- no one could tell the difference.
...may find any number of hobbies to obsess over. If it's audio, then the drive to constantly tweak can only be satisfied by buying more and more expensive equipment.
That said, how many people here who claim there is no difference in any CD player or audio cable have actually auditioned high end gear? I'd bet most people have only heard affordable, mass market equipment and have never actually sat in front of a $10,000+ system. Sure, there's a lot of hype-based products but there are also systems that will make you swear the musicians are sitting next to you. Those who honestly seek that level of performance will spend their money where it makes the most difference and are another kind of audiophile.
but that's bad/non-existent technology, too.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
I just wanted to point out to Slashdotters that the lesson here isn't that cables don't make any difference to sound systems. There's a reason Randi choose the already high-end Monster cable as the reference point for this comparison rather than the cheapest piece of crap cabling anyone could find anywhere.
In fact, I have a rather sad story about that exact same bias. My father was generally very conservative in his spending, but around 1963, he decided to splurge and buy a receiver and two stereo speakers from Acoustic Research. (yes, their well-known AR-3's.) Anyone buying Acoustic Research back in '63 was someone who'd done their homework and cared about sound, these were very well-regarded and expensive speakers.
My Dad was in vision research and taught introductory classes in sensory perception for experimental psychology majors, so he knew a thing or two about acoustics and what matters, and he designed and soldered up his own circuits for his experimental apparatus, so he knew a thing or two about electronics, too.
When he went to the store to buy the AR system, they tried to sell him very expensive cables, and he laughed and said it was a huge waste of money, and proceeded to go home and hook the system up with 24 AWG telephone cable, because the wires "don't make any difference." So he just used whatever was cheap that he already had around.
Anyone who knows much about stereos and electronics is probably already groaning at reading that. Good stereos push a high amperage current, and a 24 AWG wire is going to create a high resistance to that current, which is going to change the impedance the receiver is going to see trying to drive the speakers it was built specifically to be matched with. I don't know how to describe the specifics of the nasty effects on the signal that the speakers receive versus what was intended, but the effect on sound quality was tremendous. The system never sounded very good at all.
By the 90's that system was sitting in the basement, and my brother ended up taking the speakers and hooking them up to an inexpensive Sony receiver, and I ended up taking the receiver and hooking it up to some Linaum speakers. My dad ended up hearing the speakers and commenting on how amazing the improvement in receivers has been that those old speakers could sound so good when they never sounded anywhere near that good before. Then separately he heard my speakers being driven off the old receiver, and commented how amazing advances in speakers were, that they could sound so good being driven off that old tube receiver that never sounded any good...
Of course, really the whole thing came down to the fact that my Dad spent more than he has ever spent on a car on that stereo system, the reduced the sound quality to about that of a $20 clock radio by refusing to spend an extra $10 on cables. No, he didn't need gold Monster cables (not that they existed back then anyway), and it's quite possibly true that it would have been impossible to tell the difference between the expensive cables the guy at the store was selling and NM 14-2 household electrical cable from the local hardware store. But running telephone wire for speaker cables destroyed the sound quality. There is a difference in cables, if you don't know what you're doing, don't assume any old wire will be as good as any other. The basic point that I think loony millionaire audiophiles and conservative skeptical engineers can all agree on is that having a large enough gauge cable to easily handle the current is the most important aspect of the system's cables.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
So much for blind testing.
Time for another reading of Mixerman! He goes into this a little bit and if you haven't read the story it's worthwhile.
http://www.mixerman.net/diaries1.php
~S
Your wish is the NY Times command:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D06E1D61739F930A15751C1A96F958260
" John Dunlavy, who manufactures audiophile loudspeakers and wire to go with it, does think questioning is valid. A musician and engineer, Mr. Dunlavy said as an academic exercise he used principles of physics relating to transmission line and network theory to produce a high-end cable. ''People ask if they will hear a difference, and I tell them no,'' he said.
Mr. Dunlavy has often gathered audio critics in his Colorado Springs lab for a demonstration.
''What we do is kind of dirty and stinky,'' he said. ''We say we are starting with a 12 WAG zip cord, and we position a technician behind each speaker to change the cables out.''
The technicians hold up fancy-looking cables before they disappear behind the speakers. The critics debate the sound characteristics of each wire.
''They describe huge changes and they say, 'Oh my God, John, tell me you can hear that difference,' '' Mr. Dunlavy said. The trick is the technicians never actually change the cables, he said, adding, ''It's the placebo effect.''"
Good point.
That's pre 7-11 thinking....
http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13377&page=12
I own two of Danny's designs and he's pretty well versed and well known in the speaker design industry.
It's not "I'm better than you" -- those people are cool with being better than you. The problem is fear and envy: the problem is that if you have made a different choice than someone insecure, it casts doubt on that person's choice, and the person has to defend the choice and attack your choice as being wrong, in what amounts to self-defence.
People with superiority complexes are easy to deal with, in comparison to people with inferiority complexes who are compensating by attacking you and trying to drag you to their level.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
It seems a tad more than ironic this is about one month shy of the 20th anniversay of the great Usenet "Mercury filled speaker cable", um "contraversy".
They make music more "silvery". Not "harsh" like with copper. Imagine what Pear could have done if only they knew about this. Dancably silvery.
Saaaaaaay... The Silver Surfer? Nah, couldn't be.
Need Mercedes parts ?
No kidding. HDMI is a scam, pure and simple. It does not provide any better quality or any additional capabilities over component...in fact, it's worse. The ONLY purpose of HDMI is to let the media companies control what you watch and how you watch it via copy protection...and then the cable manufacturers get in on it and charge you $100 for a $10 cable. I have an LCD HDTV (1080p unit from Samsung), and when I got it I specifically got one that did NOT have HDMI or HDCP support (and as a result, saved some money). It does have a DVI port, but I don't use that either (though I may conceivably use that at some point if I want to hook it up to my computer for anything...sure beats composite or S-video if I want to do anything on the TV). I know DVI is pin-compatible with HDMI via an adatper, but mine specifically does NOT support HDCP (states in the instructions that the DVI port cannot be used with HDCP equipment). If I'm shopping for any higher end equipment, and it does not support component, and support FULL RESOLUTION output via component, I will not buy it. I will not even consider having a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player until there is one that supports full resolution output via component and basically ignores HDCP/ICT, and the formats are playable under Linux with completely free software (I don't care if it's legal or not). If this means I get left behind as far as media tech goes, oh well...I don't really care. I'm perfectly happy with DVD...If it gets to a point where movies are only playable via HDCP equipment, I will abandon them entirely, or watch the old stuff I already have, or read Slashdot all day, or maybe even go outside. Sure, from a technical perspective the higher resolutions of Blu-ray and HD-DVD look a little better, to a point...but the costs outweigh the benefits, right now neither format is worth touching with a 10-foot pole. And as far as audio, well CD's already go beyond the range of human hearing in both directions, anything more is a waste. Though I must admit, I haven't bought any CD's since the Napster fiasco started (even MP3, while vastly inferior to CD...I can definitely hear a difference...sounds "good enough" for most situations). The only actual hearable features that SACD and DVD-audio offer are Dolby Digital surround sound, but I don't need that for music. As far as movies go, DVD is likewise "good enough" for most situations.
Sadly, these sort of reviews are commonplace, http://www.stereophile.com/ being the worst offender. These people give us music lovers a bad name.
Luckily, there's http://www.theaudiocritic.com/. This great old guy measures gear using lab bench equipment and double blind listening tests at levels matched within +/-0.1dB, and posts the results on his website (all free).
I'm surprised no other /.er posted this. There must be some of out there who love music?
From http://www.pearcable.com/sub_faq.htm#8
8. Do I need to "Break-In" my cables?
You may listen to your cables directly out of the box and get most of the performance immediately. However, it will take approximately 1 day for the cables to mechanically settle after they have been moved or set up for the first time, which can have an effect on the sound. Some users do report a need for our cables to "break in" over time to achieve the optimum performance. Customers must make their own decision as to how long is necessary to "break in" the cables, but do not hesitate to listen to them immediately.
This object costs more than a monster cable. We are in a free market. Thus, these cables are clearly better. So me the money :)
That appears to be a Christian sex-toy site. No really, I think that's what it is. Ok then ... I think that's all I had to say on the subject.
I'm going to go spend some time off the tubes for a while, my brain hurts.
Can we mod this one to six? (or 11 (base 5))..
I *love* the CD/DVD demagnetiser. For just $417.92 you can buy the Furutech RD-2 Demagnetiser - all those pesky magnetic fields that have plagued aluminium/plastic CDs/DVDs for so long are no more!! To quote:
"You have to de-magnitize your CDs, CDRs, DVDs, Cables etc to get the most out of your setup! All kind of optical discs (CDs, CDRs, DVDs, SACDs and more) benefit from being demagnitized! The sound is clearer and with more dynamics and power. The same goes for cables! "
In fact *even* dye-based CDR/DVDR's can benefit! Now, wheres my VISA card..
Did you ever get the feeling you are in the wrong business? sigh..
"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Churchill
Unshielded Twisted Pair is not the same as Z-balanced cabling. UTP contains two conductors to form an electrical circuit. Balanced cabling does not form a circuit and is not analogous to UTP except in the sense that both transmit voltage oscillations that are converted into sound.
However, the PRIMARY advantage of balanced audio cabling is this... There's a hot lead and a cold lead. The hot lead carries the audio signal. The cold lead carries a copy of the audio signal, but phase shifted 180 degrees. That is to say the two signals, if combined in this way, would cancel each other out.
RF/EMI disturbance introduces noise into the signal along the line. In an unbalanced cable this noise travels all the way to the other end. However, in a balanced cable system what happens is that the noise is picked up by both the hot and cold leads. At this point the noise is in phase while the original signal is out of phase. Then, at the other end the cold lead's signal is flipped back in phase with the hot lead. Now the signal is in phase and the noise is out of phase! Voila... efficient noise cancellation.
Also I should note that POTS is assisted by coils that act as signal repeaters to amplify transmissions over long distances, but these repeater coils must be removed on lines supporting DSL as they interfere with the much higher bandwidth DSL signal. Consequently, DSL signals become severely attenuated at distances approaching 18,000 feet. In the case of Rate Adaptive DSL, the most common DSL around today, this translates into reduced bandwidth because the number of frequency-spread channels across which downstream traffic is transmitted start dropping out. This has nothing to do with the cable being balanced or not... because technically it's not a balanced cable, and it can't be because balanced cabling involves a phase shift where the two separate leads should not succumb to RF crosstalk. In the case of UTP, crosstalk is beneficial because the twists in the unshielded pair actually serve to increase the signal power (measurable in decibel-milliwatts, or dBm) and consequently improve SNR over rated distances. The higher the category rating of the UTP, the more twists per meter, and the higher the bandwidth capacity.
Also, it should be noted that structured cabling systems like SYSTIMAX are an implementation of UTP where not one pair but all four pairs are used simultaneously for transmit/receive, thus increasing the available bandwidth (e.g. CAT 5 UTP single pair would support up to 155Mbps whereas CAT 5 SYSTIMAX supported up to 655Mbps over rated distances).
Ok, so this topic is just up my alley. As a former editor for an unnamed Primedia publication I can let you in on a few secrets and also tell you why this article does not suprise me in the least. Now I don't know the "editor" of this audiophile mag, but I do use the term "editor" loosely as it infers some type of integrity. Here is the low down. Primedia is all about the bottom line and that generally leaves no room for the reader. The reader of a magazine is simply to boost numbers so the publication can show a potential advertiser how many readers they have and what the potential exposure for said company is, if they advertise. When I worked for one of their "magazines", I also use this term loosely since they are more like catalogs, I was often told to do a review of the product. When said review didn't live up to it's claims we either had to twist the truth and create enough hype that the shortcomming gets overlooked, or you call the advertiser and ask them if they want the article to run. The fact is the truth was obfusicated. In any case it is very easy to skew the results of any test. Also unless there is any test data they will usually just spit out manufacturer specs. I was actually fired because I pissed off some advertisers and published an article without checking to see if it was "ok" with the advertiser. This advertiser demanded my head for this and Primedia gave it to them. The $5000 full page ad was saved, praise be to Jesus. here is the deal and it is just like everything else, so get out the tin foil hats. Primedia doesn't care about it's readers. It cares about it's advertisers.
It doesn't matter what happens when the amplifier is overdriven, because anyone that cares the least bit about sound quality, lifetime of speakers and their own hearing will never drive a transistor amp to clipping.
Tube amps are usually terrible underpowered so they are routinely overdriven, so the soft clipping matters more.
Tube amps aren't really usable as anything other than an effect box.
While we are at it any competent power amplifier will sound exactly the same as any other, given that they are both driven to the same level and not overdriven.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
In sum, we are not making progress. A hundred years ago, they would laugh at an Oxford professor who went around attacking other academics for thinking that religion is better than science at revealing the truth about the world. But that's because the only people who thought this in 1907 were considered fringe loonies, not worth bothering with. Now, attacking the same loonie position is ... ooh, controversial. And Dawkins is what, brave for doing so? You call that progress?
Holy Smokes - - that is one of the most absurd things I've ever read.
You know what? There needs to be a mailing list of people who buy into this kind of crap. I want to sell these people all kinds of wonders of technology. Hey, once my mother-in-law got on the philanthropy "sucker list," we had to hide her checkbooks. We were inundated with begging letters from organizations ranging from Native American youth camps to puppy mill liberators. But people who believe that their audio cables need to be "broken in" electromechanically should be separated from more of their money as soon as possible.
They'll never miss it.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Wouldn't a woman be more impressed with $5k spent on something sensible? Or failing that, on something for her? Or failing even that, something a little more visible than speaker wire? I mean, if I cut off both my arms, would that prove to women that I'm so successful I don't have to work, or would it prove I'm a freaking idiot with no arms? Who the fuck looks at other people's speaker wire, anyway? You know, I could just tell women I meet that I paid $5k for my speaker wire. How many would even know the difference? Most women can tell the difference between, say, a Honda and a Porsche. Wouldn't that be a better choice for female-enticing extravagance?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I agree that everything I ever saw with the Monster Cable brand on it was constructed fairly well. Usually they have fairly thick insulation around the cabling, strain-reliefs on the connectors, gold-plating on the ends, etc. etc.
BUT, I personally experienced an interesting situation some years back, where we were trying to put a better car audio system in my vehicle - and were fighting a bad noise problem. (Despite having brand new plugs and plug-wires, and ensuring everything had good grounds, you got a spark induced hum on the speakers whenever the engine was running.) The installation techs (at a pretty reputable "mom and pop" type installation shop) fought with it for hours. They initially substituted the Rockford Fosgate audio cables running from the stereo to the power amp in the trunk with Monster Cable, expecting it would reject interference better. Turned out it was worse! I forget what we ended up with, but they found something in their parts collection that worked better at rejecting the noise than the other 2 brands (may have been some Kenwood-branded cables or something like that?).
So basically, some cheaper (but not "no name garbage") cables had better shielding than Monster did at a much higher price!
The summary says they are the ridiculous price of $7,250, while if you bothered to RTFA you'd see they're only $2,750 a pair, which of course changes everything. Why, I could win the money from James Randii, buy some of these danceable cables, and still have enough left over for some of those wooden knobs.
There are audiophiles and then there are audioobsessivecompulsivefiles. I'll happily admit to being an audiophile, but I don't spend thousands on stereo equipment. On the contrary, I spend quite a bit of money on DIY audio. I've built my own speakers. My own D/A converter. Eventually I'll build my own amplifier. (I'm working up to the high voltages!) Is this so I can improve the sound quality? Well, in theory, but it's really more about the hobby. At least, I'm learning about electronics. The problem with most audiophiles is that they don't know enough about electronics to know that they're being taken for a ride.
I *insist* that the screws holding the plate on my power outlet be solid gold. Let me know when they carry those.
hawk
If you use powered amplifiers, then you're running the signal through wire to the amp. Any noise the wire picks up gets amplified.
Some pro arena installations with exceedingly long runs such as a sports stadium in a location with lots of electrical noise (stage lighting, Mercury, lots of cellphones, and radio and TV remote broadcast) take the additional steps of using higher voltage so the noise pick-up component is a smaller portion of the overall signal in the wire.
Typical home stereo stuff uses about a quarter volt for interconnects. TV and Radio station studios use a higher level, which is often a balanced shielded connection to prevent ground loops and reject common mode noise pick-up.
http://www.murata.com/emc/knowhow/pdfs/te04ea-1/26to28e.pdf
Some pro sound installations go as high as 10 volts of signal from the console simply overpower the much lower noise pick-up on the wire.
The truth shall set you free!
It should be easy to debate with people who fall for this type of pseudoscience or the many types of superstitious garbage - after all, Randi has done quite well with people who take his challenge to demonstrate some kind of mystical power, and its difficult to see why such powers would not throw something testable up, in the case of these cables, something that would perform well in a comparison. Unfortunately magic hi-fi cables and this type of thing often boil down to people believing what they want to believe, even if it does involves lightening their wallets considerably. Anyhow, my favorite example of Randi in action is his debunking of a kung-fu master who tries to demonstrate telekinesis live on tv - spoiler warning - he doesn't http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7471941094792399305
You should check out the video of James Randi revealing the fraud behind faith healer Peter Popoff's scam. He was also well known back in the 70s for challenging Uri Gellar's psychic claims... he helped Johnny Carson completely stump him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7BQKu0YP8Y
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Are you sure they didn't fire you because you write like a 15 year old?
Real "editors", as you put it, can generally spell, put together coherent sentences, and know the difference between infer and imply.
I checked the USB 2.0 spec, and it actually only requires only twist per 60-80 mm... much less than Ethernet CAT 6! So my ugly home-made cable is actually within spec or nearly so ;-)
My bicyles
I've been down this road. If you're using powered speakers, why not just go digital (say, over fibre) to the speakers? Forget about copper. Have well-shielded, good-quality DACs and mono amps at the speakers. Transmit with error-correction if you're really paranoid about a clean signal: you get plenty of redundant bandwidth to play with on a fiber. And I suppose you'll want some way to adjust phase between the speakers. That's something you'll probably like to tune. Generally, minimizing the analog part of your signal chain is a simple solution. And wires aren't the only option: with ECC and some good buffering/caching, you could probably just stream the digital over WiFi. I haven't tried it but don't see any significant obstacles.
And if you look at where distortion enters an audio signal chain, the speakers are usually among the biggest sources anyway. It's not that difficult to find good DACs and clean amps. But the physics of speakers is unforgiving. There are plenty of exotic solutions to those problems. If I were an audiophile instead of an engineer, that's the hole I'd probably throw my money into. As it is, I use headphones attached to my laptop. With all the screaming kids rampaging through the house, that's as good as I need. And when they're grown, my hearing will probably be so bad that it won't matter anymore. Too much high-volume listening with headphones...
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
... that think CDs sound "grainy" compared to LPs because of the 44.1 kHz time quantization and 16 bit amplitude quantization?
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Though that still doesn't quite explain why I can get a cat 6 patch cable capable of 1GB/sec for one tenth the price of the cheapest HDMI cable of equal length that has to do only up to 1.5GB/sec at the very most!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OK, so from reading what you say and my experiences (plays/musicals/live sound/djing/recording & minor electric/tech nerd skills)... I believe you are 100% correct and informative.
Though as far as powered speakers go, I love the Mackie SRM 450 powered speakers connected to a Rane, Urei, Vestax or Allen & Heath dj mixer w/ balanced outputs. I think they sound wonderful and is a nice portable dj solution.
Anyway... I revere the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook like a creationist does the bible. What do you think of the book and do you reccomend anything else?
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
You actually spend that much time in a car?
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
In my years of pursuing a nice sounding stereo on a limited budget, I found a test that was rather simple to conduct and interpret. I checked the noise floor of my system by playing a CD, pressing pause, and cranking my amp up to -0db.
What I found was that there was substantial noise in my system. Most of which I eliminated with an optical cable between the CD Player and my Digital Pre-Amp. Getting the analog signal away from the CD Player's motor dropped the noise floor to a nearly imperceptible level. I'm sure the DAC was nearly identical in both components, but it was obvious that the internal analog wiring was sucking up noise whereas the digital pathway of my cheap Sony CD Player was immune.
As long as my other cables didn't have shorts or pass too close to a noise source, it didn't seem to matter whether I used the cables that came with the components, monster cable, zip cord or pricey oxygen free copper. I still have it all, it's at least fifteen years old now, and I'm sure manufacturers would recommend that I buy all new gear. But as far as I can tell, it's still clean, crisp, and true.
Of course, I sunk all the money I saved on cables into discrete, high-power components so it's probably a wash.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Given all that oxygen contaminated copper, the appallingly low-fi speaker and microphone, the 3kilohertz bandwidth.
Surely, it must be absolute TORTURE for them.
Poor bastards!
Someone needs to rape them out of their last dollar by selling them "Audiophile" quality telephones.
It's an untapped market! Think of the money to be made!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
http://www.stereophile.com/cables/1206tara/index1.html
scan for "Back on the ground" & pick your jaw off the floor
The summary claims that the cables are $7250 a pair.
They're actually $2750 a pair.
Still a ridiculously high price for what is almost certainly snake oil, but it's only a little more than a third of the price you claimed.
I believe you are 100% correct and informative.
Thanks. It comes from years of experience in the field.
Though as far as powered speakers go, I love the Mackie SRM 450 powered speakers connected to a Rane, Urei, Vestax or Allen & Heath dj mixer w/ balanced outputs. I think they sound wonderful and is a nice portable dj solution.
Excellent choice. It's durable, idiot proof (Mostly) reliable and immune to most power problems. They designed their equipment to be immune to most causes of system noise and disruption. It works well near RF sources and other sources of electrical noise. A word of caution. Never let the connectors get corroded from dampness. Your noises will start to appear.
In regards to the book, I have heard of it, but never bought it. It came out shortly before I changed careers. I worked audio from 1978-1992. It was published January 1988 after I was the old pro in the shop. It's a little technical, but the Electronic Engineers Handbook is a great reference My training was general electronics as a jack of all trades and focused on consumer electronics including VCR's, and camcorders when they first came out and pro audio. In these years I earned my journeyman ISCET certificate.
http://www.iscet.org/ I found out later I scored in the top 2% but that's probably because I took the exam later in my career and was helping an apprentice prepare for his exam. I sat the exam with him but I took the journeyman portion also.
Later I moved into 2 way radio working a Motorola shop (RF theory) and broadcast (TV and Radio). I finally got a job in R & D at about double the income, so I left that field.
Consumer electronics was a dying field overloaded with cheap unrepairable junk. You can earn a living fixing a $800 VCR that needs a $60 head replacement and 2 hours of labor, but people just don't do that for $60 VCR's where you can't even afford to stock replacement parts. The number of parts required to have on hand for an efficient shop to cover the many brands has exploded beyond reasonable, so most stuff is send it in or throw it away instead of take it to the local shop. My old job went the way of the buggy whips. They still exist, but volume is way way down.
If I get back into the field, I may get into DMX lighting systems instead of audio, or do both. It is unlikely I'll leave R & D.
The truth shall set you free!
ok, so how much can you trust a web article that has local file refs instead of normal http refs:
"[font face="Arial" size="2"]Pear Cable is no doubt a new name to you
(though Carl Hruza
[a href="file:///C:/FrontPage Webs/PFO/Issue21/pear.htm" target="_blank"]reviewed the Anjou interconnects[/a] back in Issue 21 and
Adam Blake the co-owner and chief designer cable-guru participated in
our [a href="file:///C:/FrontPage Webs/PFO/Issue30/pearcable.htm" target="_blank"]cable interview[/a] back in Issue 30), but they have been around for a
number of years making very high-quality cables for the home and
automotive audio markets.[/font][/p]"
(angles changed to brackets to show literal code)
link: http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue32/anjou.htm
file:///c:/blah.
niiiiice.
yeah, we believe you know what you're doing. yup.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
In the same way that: a rolex is better than my timex a viper is better than my firebird. Bill's 40,000 sf mansion is better than my 3000 sf mansion. The cost of the item in an engineering context is meaningless. The technical mumbo jumbo just makes the vanity less transparent. Overpaying for an item that very few other are able to afford is the whole point.
Then they concluded that it's bullshit that raw food contains superior nutritional value than cooked food.
The methods might have been flawed, but they were pretty safe in asserting there is no scientific basis for raw (as in prohibiting all cooked food) diets being intrinsically superior.
[begin raw food rant]
Does a cooked apple or cooked carrot have less nutrients than a raw one? Probably yes.
Then again, there are some foods that release nutrients only when cooked, and cooking in general aids absorption greatly. 50% absorption of 60mg is better than 10% absorption of 200mg, even though the cooked food "destroyed" 70 percent of the nutrients. Heck, there are some foods that are poisonous before cooking, even fatal. It's a trade off: some things are best raw, some best cooked. Restricting to just one side is stupid.
To address some of the "science" underpinning raw food theory: The idea that the body needs to take in active enzymes through the digestive system (a theory I've often been told) is ludicrous. It's all a bunch of "Enzymes are AMAZING! pseudo-science mumbo jumbo.
Very, very few proteins survive digestion long enough to be absorbed whole. Add to this the fact that there is NO plausible evolutionary explanation for the "need" to have undigested, uncooked enzymes absorbed whole: First, human diet has varied to much (and indeed still varies too much), for any one plant enzyme to be adapted for use. Second, they are *PLANT* enzymes, unless you are eating raw meat... Plant enzymes are highly specialized to do plant things, not human things.
IF (BIG IF) a plan enzyme managed to be absorbed whole, and even had the correct pH, osmolarity, co-factors and ligands to be active, then biologically there is either: a human enzyme already present better suited for processing that ligand; or that there is no need for an enzyme processing said ligand. What that means is that an active plant enzyme would probably just muck things up in a human cell.
Enzymes do not just go into foreign cells and "do magic"
[end raw food rant]
Biochemisty and Molecular biology FTW
You could probably sell cryogenic speaker cables for a lot of money. They'd have to look extremely cool, though, or sales would suffer. On the other hand, just the presence of the cryostat, water-cooling plumbing, and other paraphenalia would lend a sirious air to the while thing.
High-temp superconducting wires and cables are already commercially available, you "just" have to solve the packaging problem.
I've stripped and crimped a good deal of cat5, and there's not a lot of *actual* wire in there. Sure it's well insulated, but it's THIN. Very thin. I'd guess maybe around 18-gauge all combined, and half that if you wanted to use one cat5 for both + and -. That's NOT a lot of copper.
Unless you are combining a TON of cat5 to make fat cables, I don't see how this would work, though I CAN imagine how they might think the twisting of wire pairs improves sound signals.
Given the cost of plain-jane 12-gauge "99.99% oxygen free" copper speaker-wires, and bulk cat5, I don't see this being a "cheap" alternative in any way, unless very small gauge speaker wires are acceptable.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
If the cables in that advert are actually constructed as litz wire then they would be perfect for a tesla coil which needs to drive huge currents at high frequency (100s of KHz to over 1MHz if its an SSTC), where the skin effect would really happen. This is why they usually use copper pipe as the primary, because the current would be conducted along the outer layers of the conductor anyway. Of course there is no way I would pay that much for litz wire, but if it was maybe 10 or 20 dollars a foot then it might be worth it, who knows!
Most tube Marshalls, and all Music Man heads (among others) use diode clipping, so a lot of the time when people think they're hearing tube distortion, part of what they are hearing is solid-state distortion.
The only diodes in my JCM 800 Series 50W Marshall are in the power supply section. The "crunch" distortion is most definitely generated by 12AX7 (7025) tubes in the pre-amp section, where there are no diodes at all.
I used to be a guitar amp tech back in college and the overwhelming vast majority of Marshalls that came thru my shop were the tube-type ones, mostly JMP and JCM Series. The solid-state Marshalls were built well, but all sounded like crap.
Ok Pear goes to James Randi (whomever he is), and says hey, we spent a year (as stated by the Pear website) 'engineering' this product (more BS, it took over a year for the company to startup -- like to roll out the first set of cables with moderate 'testing'). Pear, buried in debt, gets Randi to submit an article to slashdot and other publications (who is Randi again??). If 142.85 idiots participate in this project @$7000 ea., Pear will gross that amount and probably reimburse Randi for the 1.2M giveaway (so Randi makes 20% just for being Randi). If 200 cables sell, Pear is now making profit (which they have yet to see). This is just a publicity stunt for Pear's cables. They know they have a grossly overpriced product, but they plan on capitalizing on it anyway. Don't expect pear to stay on the map long. This stunt is their last breath of air. Don't be stupid by supporting Pear or this contest. Dishonest businessmen deserve bankruptcy.
Well, I took a Logic & Reasoning course (in the Philosophy department) that covered content similar to Randi. It covered logic and the various types of reasoning (utilitarianism and whatnot). Not exactly the same thing since it doesn't teach a student to see through magic tricks, but it is useful versus health and audio quacks.
There are really lots of voodoo magicians in the HiFi scene; some even pretend that a $4,000.- DIGITAL data transfer cable sounds better than another one for $35.- ... well, maybe someone should explain to them what "DIGITAL" actually means and how it works.
:-/) and B&W and power amplifiers from Sunfire and Accuphase with some 6 mm and 4 mm cables, and even most high-end fanatics are surprised about how nice it sounds :-)
There is not much difference between a thick cable for $20 per meter and another thick cable for $400 per meter; get a well-shielded, thick cable with low resistance and everything is fine.
The biggest factors for sound quality are: room acoustics, the loudspeakers, the power amplifier, the preamplifier, any digital/analog converters, then the cables - in this order. Provided you already have GOOD components that fit together, if you really want to further improve the sound quality of your equipment, you have to exchange the weakest part in the chain first - and this will most probably be either the loudspeaker or the power amplifier, not your cables.
Personally, I use speakers from Infinity (the good old IRS series speakers they don't produce anymore
Has anyone else had someone try to sell them these? Happened to me at one of the major hifi chains in Australia. Extra $50 gets you an audio optical cable with gold plated contacts. Highly recommened by the sales guy.
"Why would I need those?" says I.
"The gold plating gives you a better contact therefore better sound" the sales guy says.
"But it's an optical connection" says I.
"Oh yeah. Probably the cheaper ones are just as good then" says he.
Personally I'm waiting for the audio grade dedicated power plant that runs by burning $20 bills. You know, you can't just rely on the power company to supply your stereo with clean power. There are voltage fluctuations, transients, the frequency is not constant short-term, etc... Power conditioners? Please. That's just treating the symptoms! The paper in money is carefully controlled and the ink concentration is constant. Finally an absolutely perfect power supply!
:P)
(I hope i'm not giving anyone any ideas
Bandwidths aren't measured in hertz. In your calculation you've neglected the fact that the transmitted audio signal is not digital. That accounts for over an order of magnitude difference. Of course, 3 orders of magnitude is still huge, but one shouldn't just carelessly ignore entire orders of magnitude.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Hmmm. Interesting thoughts and I certainly take your points. Here's my opinion on still more Euro brands:
:-)
Glock - In the words of Jeff Cooper, a "device for throwing balls." Also the most reliable firearm in that tactical niche. A defensive gun *needs* to be nothing more than a device for throwing balls that's reliable; everything else is secondary. My opinion is that the Glock is the finest fighting pistol ever made. 1911 purists feel free to flame me.
H&K - Great guns. I have a real soft spot for the PSP and (a little less so) for the P7. They make great battle rifles, too. Unfortunately for U.S. civilians, their horrendously bad customer service means that I won't buy from them. I'm a civilian, so if I send them a gun for service, they will work on it when they get around to it. Any gun that comes in from any government agency goes ahead of mine in the service queue. There have been horror stories of H&K literally holding onto civilian-owned guns for years without working on them because they never cleared the police and military work that took priority.
Russian guns - The Toz free pistol looks like it was hammered directly out of iron ore using a campfire for heat and a couple of rocks for forging tools. The thing also seems to magically shoot personal best high scores for any shooter who picks one up. They just feel right and the bullets go where they're supposed to. The thing is a legend. And what about the Makarov? Cheap, small, usually as reliable as a full-size Ruger (and that's saying a lot), it's a wonderful example of a pistol that just works. I'm so glad they are no longer rare in the U.S.. I can remember back in the 1970s when a collector would have to pay more than a grand to get one and all his buddies would look at it with awe, like it was a moon rock. Now you can have one for a couple of bills and actually afford to shoot it.
OK, back to work now. My break's about over.
Umm.... I guess so? How much time do I have to spend in the car before it's "ok" to want a nice stereo system in it?
Not only did a work as a courier for a little while, where I spent all DAY in the car, basically - but I worked doing on-site computer service, so I was driving around a lot for that too.
Currently, I work a regular 8-5PM weekday job, but the commute is probably 40-45 mins. each direction - and it's the only time I really get to listen to music, most days.
So yeah, I'd have to say I'd consider my CAR audio a higher priority than my home audio, really.
TV Wrestling (the WWF sort) is mock-combat in which the actors pretend to fight, but are actually just performing a series of well-rehearsed stunts. This is the sort of lie that we accept because it is presented as entertainment. Exactly like PTB, in which every interview is staged, every presentation edited, and every data point carefully selected to eliminate any semblance of a valid opposition viewpoint. P&T's Bullshit! is an advocacy show that attempts to promote Penn Jillette's arguably libertarian political and social ideas. It's honest about what it presents, and has never sought to present itself as news or anything of the sort. Although everything Penn Gillette is involved in does serve as a vehicle for his oil-industry sponsored right-wing views (a few of which I share) PTB is dependent, like every other TV show, on funding that will cease to exist if nobody watches. Presenting a balanced view of tantric sex practitioners, recycling, or environmental science would not be as entertaining as locating a select few nutbags willing to allow their foolishness and ignorance to be filmed, and then dubbing in voiceovers so that Penn can have a totally one-sided conversation with said nutbags. How can you call that "honest"? I certainly agree, though, that they've never presented themselves as other than what they are - completely biased stage magicians with some axes to grind. I very much like that about them - I especially like the running gag about finding excuses for female nudity on the show. Mythbusters is a reality show of sorts about a group of technical, but scientifically relatively untrained people attempting to validate or debunk urban legends. Again, the show has never pretended to be anything that it isn't, and for the most part they get their mythbusting right. Occasionally they take on a topic that has more hidden complexity than they realize (I recall frozen chickens hitting windshields being an example), but they certainly know more about basic engineering and physics than their average viewer. Which is the problem, in a nutshell. They make an entertaining show, but unless you know more than they do about engineering, physics, and history than they do (which actually isn't too hard - they mostly know about machining and crafting) you should assume that anything you see on their show has the same validity as TV wrestling. Unfortunately, unlike PTB, the "mythbusters" do present their activities as though they were real authorities (...Myth... BUSTED!...) which makes them considerably less honest than Penn & Teller's more blatant self-acknowledged manipulations.
I guess I'm saying that Penn and Teller are honest about their completely biased and unfair (but entertaining) presentations, while Mythbusters presents their excuses for contrived (but entertaining) video stunts as though these events were actually meaningful experiments, when they almost never are (usually due to a total disregard for the scientific method). Their Archimedes' mirror episode is pitiful, and a topic of much hilarity among scientists, but their presentation leaves no doubt that the viewer is expected to accept the show's conclusions.
PTB's best episode is where they have the Mexicans build the wall...
It's not accurate to say that bandwidths aren't measured in Hertz. After all, w = 2*pi*f.
/. purposes. When you work at a few GHz, you tend to think of anything below a MHz as "easy" (which it is). That's the take-home message.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the transmitted audio signal is not digital". If anything, digital signals need wider bandwidth than the baud rate. See Howard Johnson's "Black Magic" books. Losing harmonics means losing eye quality, to a certain extent.
My comment was meant to be a general comparison of engineering complexity. An accurate analysis is not worth doing for
Penn & Teller's "Bullshit" [...] "Mythbusters" [...] I like both shows, but really they are no more trustworthy than TV wrestling.
Urm... no.
TV Wrestling (the WWF sort) is mock-combat in which the actors pretend to fight, but are actually just performing a series of well-rehearsed stunts. This is the sort of lie that we accept because it is presented as entertainment.
Exactly like PTB, in which every interview is staged, every presentation edited, and every data point carefully selected to eliminate any semblance of a valid opposition viewpoint.
Point 1: staged... well, yes, there's a stage involved in many such interviews. What's you're point. Do you mean that the interviews aren't impromptu events with people they just happened upon? I guess you're right, but I'm not sure I see a point.
Point 2: edited... You're out on a deep limb here. Major network news, tabloid gossip shows and everyone in between edits interviews into the ground. They re-shoot all of the questions on a stage with an actor filling in for the "stunt head". This is almost always the way everyone shoots interviews. You can't call P&T:B dishonest for doing this alone. Now, if you want to throw rocks at the practice as a whole and start with the big boys, then I'm 100% behind you!
Point 3: carefully selected data... what part of my previous post did you not read such that this seemed like a unique point? It's a political show about Penn Jillette's political ideas. It's not a news show. Of course, he's picking the points he wishes to introduce carefully. Why would he not?
P&T's Bullshit! is an advocacy show that attempts to promote Penn Jillette's arguably libertarian political and social ideas. It's honest about what it presents, and has never sought to present itself as news or anything of the sort.
Although everything Penn Gillette is involved in does serve as a vehicle for his oil-industry sponsored right-wing views
HUH WHAT?
Penn Jillette is right wing now?! He'll be shocked!
You're really losing me here. This man is more libertarian than anyone I've ever met. I'd also love to see a source for your funding claims.
Mythbusters is a reality show of sorts about a group of technical, but scientifically relatively untrained people attempting to validate or debunk urban legends. Again, the show has never pretended to be anything that it isn't, and for the most part they get their mythbusting right. Occasionally they take on a topic that has more hidden complexity than they realize (I recall frozen chickens hitting windshields being an example), but they certainly know more about basic engineering and physics than their average viewer.
Which is the problem, in a nutshell. They make an entertaining show, but unless you know more than they do about engineering, physics, and history than they do (which actually isn't too hard - they mostly know about machining and crafting) you should assume that anything you see on their show has the same validity as TV wrestling.
Here you go again with the absurd hyperbole. How can you even suggest that you could compare the two? There's orders of magnitude more CORRECT information delivered in one episode of Mythbusters than in a season of Pro Westling, and let's not talk about the amount of outright FICTION in a single episode of such a spectacle (in which you are routinely asked to believe that Newtonian Physics is suspended by the application of an elastic rope). This is beyond meaningless as a comparison.
Mythbusters is no Scientific American Frontiers, but they do a damned good job.
You seem to have some serious hangups about TV science and politics. I suggest you take a deep breath and remember that a) people who disagree with you are allowed to have TV shows too b) people who get a lot of s
I can see it with that kind of transit time. I do on-site tech work, and finally justified putting a Sirus radio in my car. But, then again, I'm a tightwad.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
If you're using powered speakers, why not just go digital (say, over fibre) to the speakers?
Three things.. 1.. cost. 2.. Rich Audiophiles think the descreet steps of the D/A conversion will degrade the audio. Selling a digital solution to the tube amp CD rejecting purists is not a way to make money. 3.. Compatibility. Analog RCA connectors is universal. Digital standards between manufactures is anything but. In the pro field, extra boxes add complexity and another point of failure which is often hard to troubleshoot. In broadcast, digital is the only way for long haul program distribution and remote broadcasts. It's noise free and either works or it doesn't. (same for cell phones)
And wires aren't the only option: with ECC and some good buffering/caching, you could probably just stream the digital over WiFi. I haven't tried it but don't see any significant obstacles.
Several manufactures are going this route with a package.
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=318
http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1137028967848&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper
http://www.laptopmag.com/Review/Linksys-Media-Extender-WMCE54AG.htm
But the physics of speakers is unforgiving. There are plenty of exotic solutions to those problems. If I were an audiophile instead of an engineer, that's the hole I'd probably throw my money into.
Absolutely true. As such this is the part of my system that was the most involved in selecting and is the single most expensive part of my system. I used my speakers to demo why speakers make a big deal in the system. When asked about speakers, I would send them over to my speakers and ask them to knock on the back, sides, and top of them while the system was off, and then have them do the same with any other speakers they find. A speaker box is a wodden drum which the speaker drivers thump. Number 1 rule is find speakers that don't add their own sound. Speakers that sound like knocking on an empty wodden box are to be rejected. Most speakers are made this way because it is cheap, lightweight to reduce shipping costs and easy to sell at lower price points. A good speaker will sound the same as knocking on the cement sidewalk outside.
If you ever run across an old pair of the early standard in quality speakers, the Accoustic Research 3a's, take the time to knock on the back of them.
After the cabinet is properly built, the next item on the list is quality drivers with proper magnets, voice coils, and loose suspension. You don't want the speaker cones themselves to be a cheap drum. Good drivers are rarely put in cheap cabinets and the reverse is true. The quickest way to find good speakers at the local stereo showroom is to shut everything off and start knocking on some cabinets. Quite a few years ago some the passing cabinets was from Yamaha, JBL, Accoustic Research, Polk, and some Kenwood and KLH. Failures included most of the Pioneer (Except the premium line) Optimus, Sony, and most other consumer grade speakers.
Personaly I have a pair of Yamaha NS1000's and a pair of AR 3a.
http://www.arsenal.net/speakers/ar/classic/ar-3a/ar3a.htm
http://www.audioreview.com/cat/speakers/floorstanding-speakers/yamaha/PRD_120821_1594crx.aspx
These are all much dated as I am.. but gook well built equipment doesn't need to be in next years landfill. If I threw these on Ebay, I am sure I could get my entire investmet back unlike the cheap stuff.
If you want to have fun,
The truth shall set you free!
I reiterate - bandwidth isn't measured in Hertz.
Please read Cover and Thomas, or _any_ book relevant to the field.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I think I see where you're coming from now. I'll admit that Information Theory is not my strong point. However we appear to be arguing at cross purposes. I approached the issue from an engineering standpoint, and did the comparison in practical, real-world analog bandwidth. It's certainly valid -- countless microwave/RF/comms books will back me up.
You must have been approaching the problem from the opposite direction. So let me try my hand at this information theory business. As I see it, the sticking point is the information contained in the analog audio signal. We would have to choose a quantization that not everyone would agree with; 24-bit 192kHz is probably enough for most people. That's 4.608 Mbps, which is indeed three orders of magnitude off from 3Gbps.
I chose to do my comparison in analog bandwidth because the topic was speaker cables, which carry audio in analog form -- not digital. Also, the limitations of gigabit communications channels (such as HDMI) are analog in nature. So it makes more sense to do the comparison in real-world analog bandwidth.
Books will not support your view, or at least they won't support the calculation you performed in your earlier post. To view the bandwidth of an arbitrary audio signal to be numerically equal to the highest frequency you're interested in preserving is just plain wrong, which is what you first claimed. My initial sticking point was that you were talking about measuring bandwidth simply in hertz, and not in bits per second. If you had grasped the distinction between the two units, then it would have been immediately clear that the channel capacity (equivalently SNR, assuming worst-case gaussian noise) required to transmit an arbitrary audio signal would be related somehow to the number of bits that would required to represent the data digitally (even if you have no intention of ever representing it digitally).
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
From an engineering standpoint, your goal is to reproduce a signal over the frequency range of interest with as little distortion as possible. Hence, you only need to keep that frequency range. The theoretical information content of the signal is _irrelevant_ for our purposes. Rather, I was interested in the bandwidth (frequency, mind you) required for the aforementioned channels, implemented in a typical home living room. You're trying to force a definition that has nothing to do with the original comparison, which is why you're running into cognitive dissonance.
Try to look at it from the view of an engineer. You don't buy coaxial cable by bitrate. That's a measurement that is dependent on encoding. The most useful measurement is a frequency characterization: bandwidth.
You're still missing the fact that frequency != bandwidth.
You've forgotten little things like the fact that signals have an amplitude and there's noise on the channel.
You are not viewing things like an engineer at all.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I'm saying don't take Penn & Teller as unbiased sources of fact. I'm saying don't believe Mythbusters is real science. PTB would have no problem with that (in fact, I doubt they'd mind being compared with TV wrestling). Mythbusters, well, they unfortunately seem to think they are actually some sort of authorities on the scientific method, and do not freely admit their lack of scientific rigor in the way that PTB freely admit their lack of balanced presentation.
Now, what exactly are you saying? I don't see where we have a significant disagreement. Is it the comparison with wrestling that has you upset? I'm sorry I mentioned it, jeez. Pick some other entertainment form that offends you less. How about classical music?
As for Penn Gillette's funding and affiliations, last time I heard him talk about it he was a Fellow of the Cato Institute. The Cato Institute is pretty damn right-wing, although certainly also libertarian. The only left-wing positions I've ever heard them espouse concern the drug war. Their objections to current energy policies are not founded in a concern for public assets such as clean air and water, they are based on traditional right-wing dislike for market distortions created by secret back-room deals between corrupt governments and supposedly capitalist corporations. They are generally anti-civil rights, pro-zionist, pro-pollution, and pro-big-oil... they receive funding from the Coors family, from Exxon Mobil, from the Earhart Foundation (White Star Oil Company), the Olin Foundation (known for their underwriting of university professors who espouse neo-conservative views), the Bradley foundation (funders of global warming apologists) and for crying out loud they were FOUNDED by oil industry billionaire Charles Koch, who isn't exactly a green communist homo... little joke there.
I haven't said that Penn Gillette is trying to lie to anyone; quite the opposite, I'm saying he's using his (very entertaining) show to push his right-wing pro-oil pro-big-business anti-environmentalist views and he's being blunt about it. And since when is right wing such an insult anyway? I'm pretty right wing myself, certainly much more so than the big-government neo-conservatives currently in power.
Again, you insist on your definition. My definition is not the same as your definition. My assumptions are not your assumptions.
Your refusal to acknowledge that bandwidth is defined differently in the circuit design discipline is a sure sign that you're unfamiliar with the low-level analog aspect of things.
Do I need to quote chapter and verse?
Schwarz & Oldham, Electrical Engineering, p286: "The useful frequency range of an amplifier is called its bandwidth."
There's a whole library's worth more if you want it.
The problem is that your definition isn't useful to the problem in hand. In fact it quite obviously isn't even a complete definition, as it leaves undefined "useful". In order to define that, you'd start to need discussing the issues I mentioned above.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863