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Calling Shenanigans On Super SATA's Claimed Audio Qualities
nk497 writes "Veteran Hi-Fi journalist Malcolm Steward has pushed newfangled Super SATA cables via his blog as a way to improve the sound quality of music, saying: 'My only guess is that the Super SATAs reject interference significantly better than the standard cables and in so doing lower the noise floor revealing greater low-level musical detail and presentational improvements in the soundstage and the "air" around instruments.' If that doesn't sound right to you, you're not alone. As PC Pro blogger Sasha Muller argues: 'How on earth can a SATA cable delivering 0s and 1s to their respective destination have any effect on those 0s and 1s? The answer is, it can't. Unless it's a magical one made of pixie shoes.' So maybe don't invest in Super SATA cables unless you have proof they're magical first."
This reminds me of the Slashdot story on several-thousand-dollar ethernet cables from Monster a few years back. *sigh*
Le français vous intéresse?
This will not stop best buy from have monster cable sata cables and a big time geek squad up sell when buy systems there.
And all that low-level musical detail from an mp3!!!!!
Wonder why he disabled the comment on his article...
Why do we care?
Seriously... some people are just idiots.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Since when does a SATA cable deliver 1s and 0s? It delivers an analog voltage, that happens to be determined as a 1 or 0 by noise thresholds. They could be making a better cable, the problem is once you meet the noise margins for this digital interpretation all extra improvement are for nothing.
Steward Says Super SATA Sound Swindles Some Suckers
I have some 700$ RCA cables you would love. A 1200$ toilet seat that I swear will make thinks "move" easier. Just swipe your credit card here....
Wait until he installs the pure ivory motherboard standoffs!
The transmission through the SATA cable is certainly unaffected, but close-by analog systems may receive interference from the SATA signal. On the other hand, if you have analog signals anywhere near SATA cables, you don't know what you're doing anyway, so the quality of the cable is really not the parameter to optimize.
People used to think that hooking your DVD player and amp up with an optical connect versus a coaxial connect would make for better sound.
Of course, it was the same thing. Since both are carrying digital data, how is one stream of digital data any better? The reality was, it wasn't in any way shape or form.
Same applies here -- it's still digital. Now, the SATA cables might be faster, which could lead to some improvement in music. Generally, though, this smacks of snake oil.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Don't ignore the placebo effect in audio perception. Placebos have been proven to work, and it has also been shown that higher priced placebos are more effective.
You conjugation need work
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
and i think he's good at it.
Where the comments section would be, we get this instead: "I have disabled Comments on this post so that respectable visitors do not have to read the remarks made by a small number of extremely ignorant, rude, malicious and disingenuous individuals who cannot tolerate people expressing opinions that do not concur with their own. "
Or in other words: "I have absolutely no fucking clue what I'm talking about and really don't like being corrected."
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Actually phone conversation I've had (multiple times in face):
Me: Hello?
Him: Hey what HDMI cable should I buy?
Me: The cheapest ones you can find?
Him: Really? Because they have some for $30 and some for $90, aren't the $90 ones better?
Me: Where are you?
Him: Best Buy, they have the good stuff.
Me: Just turn around and leave, buy them off the internet for $5, or at least go to Target or Walmart.
Him: But they have some for $90 here, they wouldn't charge more if they weren't better.
etc. etc. etc.
The author now has this up:
I have disabled Comments on this post so that respectable visitors do not have to read the remarks made by a small number of extremely ignorant, rude, malicious and disingenuous individuals who cannot tolerate people expressing opinions that do not concur with their own.
Which really means "I'm an ignorant, lying, idiot, and dont want people pointing that out on my blog, so I have closed commenting and deleted all comments, since they all pointed out my stupidity."
Ah well...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
So expressing opinions on a blog is only okay if it's your blog. Got it.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
It could succeed or fail to deliver the 0s and 1s with their souls intact.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
A normal SATA can only carry 0s and 1s, but Super SATA carries 0.0000s and 1.0000s. Thats 4 digits of precision beyond the bits that normal SATA can represent.
Audiophiles frequently find differences where none exist...and in other news water is wet.
In this economy? Good luck.
This reminds me of the blue marker on the rim of a CD trick from the 90s. Of course that was bogus too.
Any sufficiently advanced scam is indistinguishable from blind ignorance.
It's pretty obvious that these cables are a scam preying on people who care about their sound systems but who don't understand enough of the technical aspects to avoid buying overpriced crap. This Stewart fellow is probably getting paid to plug this cable on his blog, but it's possible that he's just an idiot.
Heh. I guess Slashdot has a new, young editor who hasn't run into the audiophile community yet. All you young readers consider this article an introduction to a treasure trove of laughing stock :D
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
A coat hanger would be still better.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
It makes digital connections MORE digital with LESS digital interference!
Me: You're absolutely right. But don't buy those crappy $90 cables. I've got a special stash of $150 cables I can let you have for $200.
Reminds me of an interview I saw with a musician a long time ago (I think it was David Bowie) who claimed that the CDR's made with green dye sounded better than the ones with blue dye.
It's as true now as it was then: one bit doesn't sound better than any other bit. The claims of audiophiles and their ridiculous expenditures have likely long been just as silly then as they are now, it's just that now we can provide a friggen mathematical proof that they're full of shit. Before we just had to rely on "subtle nuances" to get our point across.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
At least that got you drunk on days actual stores wouldn't sell booze.
Buying these just gets you laughed at.
As far as I've ever been able to figure out, the only claim someone might legitimately make about 'higher quality' digital cables is that you can run longer cable lengths before the signal degradation gets so bad that the 1's and 0's get truly corrupted so the signal can no longer be read reliably. So, optical cable you could probably run very long lengths (like across an auditorium, gym, large classroom, etc) without a problem, but perhaps with a long bit of copper wire, the signal loss would be too great.
Of course, that doesn't stop sales guys (who aren't usually technical people, which is how they ended up in sales to begin with, and often don't really care about the truth anyhow - they just care about the margin) from trying to sell people on the idea that 1 meter of optical or 'super' or 'monster' cable sounds better than 1 meter of regular cable.
For a humorous spin a related snake oil product, check out the Amazon reviews for the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable. Many of the reviews are absolute comedy gems.
While I would not expect that the drive cables should affect the audio in any way, I have been in hardware development long enough that when a software person makes some strange claim like"the circuit changed and I didn't do anything" that often there is something behind it. In short, these things are complex. Not that the cable should not make any difference. Maybe in his motherboard, the terminations are not good and the EMI in the board is affecting the audio. This cable may be a better match. I am not saying this is the case, but do not write off these things just because they do not make sense. That said, the writer should also try to replicate on several platforms etc etc
All the same points were made, and shenanigans called.
There was a lot of interesting stuff said in the old discussion - a lot of it had to do with the fact that when people review this HiFi/Audio stuff - the testing is all very subjective, and is never done as a blind trial. Thus, one can boast the virtues of the $500 Ethernet cable - as they know they are listening through one - but one would never do a blind-sound test between a $500 and a $5 cable.
Too bad they don't sell that "Isobase Cradle for Laptops" anymore. Thankfully, the manual is still available for download. My favorite part from it:
Whenever you want to play music or watch video with improved quality, place the laptop on the three rounded footers. You will see an immediate improvement in color saturation and pastel shading, shadow detail and edge resolution. On the audio side, whether youre listening with headphones, computer speakers, or a full high end stereo system, you will her deeper and much cleaner bass, warmer and more detailed midrange and extended, cleaner treble.
IIRC, they were only charging a few hundred bucks for it!
(Confirmation Bias) + (Rich Idiots) - (A Double Blind Trial) + (Reality) = Hilarity! I find that this is almost always true.
Aww c'mon, can't a purported 'expert' attempt to sound relevant and learned without drawing the snide retorts of those with proper training anymore?
The cables aren't going to be altering the data passing though them (else you would see CRC errors and the transfer would retry). The only plausible explanation is that the cables are better shielded and normal ones' EMI could cause problems with the soundcard or DAC. However, given the super high frequencies involved, I imagine it would be unlikely to cause any effects in the audible range. A more reasonable explanation is that high end audio people have been sold on expensive cables, and this is simply an extension of that (regardless of any real benefit).
Audiophiles are just dead convinced there are all sorts of magic ways to improve your sound quality. Sometimes it is just pure, 100% made up bullshit like the "brilliant pebbles" thing. Other times there is a kernel of truth from long in the past that they over apply to everything.
With digital cable, that's the case. So S/PDIF is the major transport for digital audio. It is slowly being superseded by newer things but it was the big one forever and is still used a lot. Turns out S/PDIF isn't all that well designed with regards to having a solid clock signal. So what happened was back in the day (and still occasionally) you'd have devices that didn't reclock an incoming signal, they use the clock off of the wire. This meant they were sensitive to clock skew, which would happen if your cable wasn't tightly controlled to 75 ohms, in particular with a long distance. The kind of distortion caused by this is quite audible. S/PDIF has no real error correction, and no retransmit so any errors get played. Thus, for long runs (as you find in studios) good cable was needed, even for digital.
Obviously there are a lot of ways around this, the most common these days being just reclocking the signal you receive with an internal clock. Also better standards came about (like AES/EUB which runs over balanced cable). Doesn't matter, once and for all time people were convinced that cable quality mattered. It still crops up too, because you get audiophile devices that are poorly designed. They go for a "minimal component" design. So you'll have a DAC that doesn't reclock and thus is sensitive to clock skew.
Of course snake oil salesmen seized on this and started selling "high grade" cables that offered nothing.
Now of course when you get to SATA, none of this shit matters because it isn't a synchronous, no-retransmit system. If an error happens, the data will be resent. This is easy to do since everything is operating so much faster than the audio signal, and is further buffered by the system. If there are any errors on the wire, you never know, the system handles it behind the scenes. Also none of it affects the analogue audio signal, as it isn't clocked and converted until it hits the soundcard. Internal to the CPU, it is all just data.
The 0s are zeroier, and the 1s more one-ey!
Here I figured he used them as speaker wire and found they were better quality than what he was using. After reading FTA, it turned out, nope, he is just using them as a hard drive cable.
The Hi-Fi world is full of nut-cases, but I also strongly suspect that the wacko positive cable write up has some economic hidden agenda. The profit margins on cables are huge, especially in the Hi-Fi world.
That said, good Hi-Fi enhances the listening experience. A good, cheap stereo amp from NAD and some Dali, or B&W speakers can be had for a reasonable price and will sound very good. My own NAD 3155 amplifier is more than 20 years old and still sounds excellent.
--
Regards
As $5 cables do exactly what they're designed to do anyone who forks out significantly more for a "brand" is a sucker.
'How on earth can a SATA cable delivering 0s and 1s to their respective destination have any effect on those 0s and 1s? The answer is, it can't. Unless it's a magical one made of pixie shoes.'
Actually, even the pixie shoes just make the 0 and 1's more fancy lookin'.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If he has a really poorly designed motherboard and his old cables were really crappy(I.E had NO SHIELDING). The old SATA cables may have been injecting noise into the analog back end of the sound card.
tach315
The reason is that most optical cable you get is plastic, POF cable. It is great because it is flexible, durable, cheap, and can be made the size of the TOSlink opening. The problem is it is lossy as hell. Really poor transmission characteristics. Well this matters not at all when your DVD player sits on top of your receiver, as is so often the case. However if you have a setup where the devices are far apart, sometimes you discover that it doesn't work at all, or you get dropouts. You can, of course, replace it with real glass fiber but that is real expensive. Coax, on the other hand, works just great. A good 75ohm coax cable will go as far as you'd ever need in a home.
Also has the advantage that it uses the same kind of wire as video. Any 75ohm coax cable suitable for video is also suitable for S/PDIF.
If your SATA cables are working as they should, then the sequence of 0s and 1s your computer reads into memory is exactly the same as the sequence stored on the disk. You can't improve on that.
If you SATA cables aren't working as they should, then the sequence of 0s and 1s will be different -- but as your quote pointed out, this would affect everything. The cable doesn't know whether it's transmitting a WAV, an MP3, a JPG, or an EXE. If your cables are corrupting data, your computer probably won't even boot!
But, as the quote also pointed out, there are systems in place to detect and correct errors. Even if your cables are corrupting data, it's extremely unlikely that your computer will think it's getting the correct data and proceed to play it. Instead, it will retry, and the symptoms you'll see are slow or stalled transfers (just like a bad network connection).
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I personally love how you can buy a DVD player at Best Buy for under $100, and then when you need a HDMI cable to hook it up? Over $100. Why does the cable that just sits there cost more than the DVD player it connects, when the DVD player has moving parts, a laser, and a remote control?
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
He also explained why it can't. The SATA cables only transmit 1's and 0's. If any of those 1's and 0's were switching or degrading on the SATA cable, you would have serious computer problems and audio quality would be the least of your concerns.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Um, it can’t because the 1s and 0s in a .mp3 (or whatever it is that audiophiles listen to) are fundamentally no different from the 1s and 0s of your operating system’s core kernel, and it’s a hell of a lot more vitally important that the 1s and 0s in your operating system’s core kernel can be read correctly with no errors. So, they have built cables that can transmit 1s and 0s with virtually no errors and they furthermore built error correction systems to detect and correct any errors that should occur, however unlikely that is. If your OS can boot, there is absolutely no justification to believe that your SATA cable is getting anything less than 100% accuracy in its data transmission, and buying a better SATA cable can’t improve on 100% accuracy.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Shameless plug: I've angrily lambasted this asshat already: http://thisiswhyihatepeople.org/
--untwisted
Reminds me of the infamous $500 'ethernet' audio cable from Denon
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/22/amazon-reader-review.html
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Reading this description I was imagining that guy cutting the ends off a SATA cable, and using it to transfer analogue signals. That would make sense right?.. kinda.. wait nevermind.. -_-'
Having suffered through the consequences of idiots making decisions, I've come to the conclusion that I actually admire these people. They are living the dream of separating fools and their money in a legal manner.
If anything, I'm jealous.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I've seen in retails stores (Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Microcenter, etc) spindles of CD-Rs labelled as "Music" CDs-R. WTH is a "Music" CD-R? I can't conceive of any way it would be different from a normal CD-R, unless perhaps it was manufactured to last longer before developing errors, and be more scratch resistant or something?
I've never actually bought them, since the packaging never gave me any good explanation of how it was different. I've always figured it was just a scam to charge people 20% more?
Which is a fine thought, and could stand some actual proof backing it up.
There seem to be a lot of /. discussions about obviously stupid things. The comment thread fills up with people competing for the Score 5 (funny) comments. What's the point here, other than ego stroking and karma boosting? Inflated senses of superiority?
Now before anyone answers, I've got some Super SATA stock to liquidate.
This is an article about a CD coating that improves audio quality of CDs (which are ones and zeros) As it turns out, the signal intensity of the ones and zeroes has an affect on the audio quality. I don't see how these SATA cables would be any different. They improve the signal intensity by reducing noise on the line, and thus increase the quality of the sound.
http://www.audiophilia.com/hardware/yamamura.htm
"I tried Q-151 on La Luna by the Canadian Guitar Trio [Skylark 9802 CD] because I am quite familiar with the disc and have been listening to it a lot while breaking in the Welborne Labs Apollo I amps. A quick A/B comparison was possible, and with my modest NAD 502 CD player in the dead of night when the house is totally quiet, I really did hear a difference. The music sounded more relaxed, detailed and subtle inflections were revealed. There was more spaciousness to the studio acoustic and lower frequencies became richer and more substantial. This is the sort of improvement people often would use to justify an upgrade of CD player or outboard processor. You have little risk in trying it for yourself. This one really works. "
No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the audiophiles.
In AD 2101 war was beginning
Your bad SATA cable has degraded your English... HELP HIM! ANYONE!! HELP
No, it can't because anyone with a working brain and any remote clue about how high-speed serial links work and how ECC protects data integrity says it can't.
Since when does a SATA Cable deliver analog voltage? It delivers a stream of electrons. You see, we can keep going to a lower level of data abstraction, but since we're talking about digital computers, what matters is the ones and zeroes.
Take an EE course, then moderate.
I have disabled Comments on this post so that respectable visitors do not have to read the remarks made by a small number of extremely ignorant, rude, malicious and disingenuous individuals who cannot tolerate people expressing opinions that do not concur with their own.
Looks like someone commented about how asinine that the premise these cables could matter to sound quality.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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for i = 1 to 200
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'WScript.Quit ' End of WMI Example of a Kill Process
There is a too low price level. I bought a hdmi cable of ebay for $3 including shipping. Surprisingly enough they didn't work at all.
This reminds me of a guy in a thread who was convinced that files ripped from newfangled "Blu-Spec" CDs were better than files ripped from regular CDs. He posted a few tracks for comparison, and of course the CRCs and MD5s were the same. When he said he didn't trust the CRC, a bit compare was done. Still insisted there was a difference, gotta keep an open mind, etc. I'm convinced that these people are on the wrong side of the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" divide.
There is a permanent disc application flag that reports some arbitrary value. Music CDs have a different value than Data CDs, and settop recorders refuse to burn to anything but a real "Music CD-R".
Cables cannot cause clock skew, because again long term the cable would have to somehow create or delete samples and a cable just can't do that. Cables can cause jitter, but the effect is vastly overstated.
Not reclocking data is a better way to deal with skew than reclocking is. Because if you reclock you have to drop samples or resample to deal with the long-term drift between the input clock and the reproduction clock.
Jitter on the input data can show up if you go straight to a DAC. But you can redesign your DAC to avoid it.
AES/EBU is a data format like S/PDIF. Either system can run over different forms of cable. AES/EBU is not an improved follow on to S/PDIF as you state. They were developed in parallel.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Something... happens with them.
(For the lazy readers out there: http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM)
...until they show up on Woot. Then I'm in for 3!
ad astra per alia porci
Here are some sources for reading about bit error rates, and how they are dealt with on each side of a connection, rendering the interconnect (the cable) moot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_error_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/3/10G_study/public/july99/chang_2_0799.pdf
http://blog.lewan.com/2009/09/14/sas-vs-sata-differences-technology-and-cost/
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Maybe this cable actually does work better for him. The problem is that he accepted the situation as-is, and stopped there. If it were me, I'd be really suspicious and start looking for interference from components within the NAS. Also, what was his source material? John Cage's 4'33"? Is he really an audiophile? I thought those guys posted pages and pages of signal analysis and comparisons on their blogs.
There's a difference between magical-thinking and predicting behavior based on knowledge of how a system actually works.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I bought a network cable from dollar tree once (yes it was cheap and crappy quality, but i had no idea it did not actually WORK)- there was some sort of break in one of the wires evidently and thus i was troubleshooting for a while before i replaced the cable. it was the first time i got a bad one from there and i bought several. Moral: don't post stupid shit on slashdot about how you got ripped off at dollar tree
In Canada a fee is levied on all Audio CDRs. Data CDRs don't have the fee levied. However, good luck finding "Data" CDRs nowadays -- seems everyone has switched over to the new-fangled "DVD+-R".
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Perhaps having less "noise" from the drives themselves over the soundcard, etc might be a possibility with higher-quality shielded cables. However, having a better sample ON-DISK is bullsh*t. 1's and 0's... either they're correct or they aren't, but there's no "in between"
. . .buy his speakers from a guy in a white van?
You know... the $1000 MSRP Glorified Ethernet cable ?
It must improve sound quality, speed, performance, or something.
This disproving the suggestion of this post that a cable can't improve the quality of 1s and 0s...
I mean.... why else would people spend so much on a special link cable, if it were not better than your run of the mill Ethernet cable?
Surely such a reputable manufacturer would not consider trying to sell people a useless product. Right?
I mean... look at all the cabling/media choices we have even for just plain Ethernet cable Cat3, Cat5, Cat5e, Cat5e 24 AWG, Cat6, Cat6a, Cat7.....
We can also use the cheap connectors, or the gold plated ones.
There's gotta be some reason people are willing to spend the extra for gold plated Cat6a or 5e, for their home networks....
I hope your response went something like: "I can take two piles of dog shit and slap a sticker for $30 on one and $90 on the other. Just because the other says it costs $90 doesn't make it a better pile of dog shit"
The people who visit sites like pcpro and /. already know it's BS, and the people who would fall for the BS aren't the type of people who frequent those sites or look for hardware reviews online. We're preaching to the choir as it were.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
It's true! In spite of the fact that we were using the same hardware, and same software player, somehow the OS must have more cleanly delivered the audio signal!
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Could it be that his audio jacks are picking up EM interference given of by moving electricity through SATA cables? could the new SATA cables reduce the amount of interference they emit? Its plausible.
No don't use logic, that just makes audiophiles angry! The GP is probably going to lock comments on his comment now :(
While the bits are surely ambivalent to how they are transmitted, perhaps there is more going on...
We've all hear a cell phone make our speakers pop, hiss, and beep. Perhaps he's getting EMI leakage that these spiffier cables do a better job shielding? An audiophile's ear is a lousy check (unless in a properly double blinded test, and even then...). Measuring the signal to noise and distortion (SINAD) of a known test file with traceable test equipment would be the proper method to see if there is any difference at all.
If there is a measurable improvement in the SINAD, I would go thrash whoever designed the DAC board and electronics for improperly grounding and/or inadequately shielding things to keep EMI from making its way into the audio base band.
My gut feel however is that this poor bastard is deluding himself, and might as well waste his money on gold plated 10 gauge power strips, because "Audio quality starts at the wall socket."
The subject may be "obviously stupid" to you, but perhaps others have interesting things to add. I've already read some informative and insightful comments in this thread about audio/video cables, interference, hum, etc., which I would not have learned had I decided that the discussion was too "obviously stupid" to follow.
"Competing"? Why do you think it's a competition? Maybe an amusing thought just popped into their head and they decided to share it. Obviously some people enjoyed them or they wouldn't have been moderated "Funny". You seriously need to get over yourself.
That's interesting I bought $0.59 cables plus $1.95 shipping from Amazon marketplace and they work beautifully. There might be a bit of a crap shoot involved when you get to sub $5 cables but even if I had to purchase 2 or 3 $5 cables in order to get a good one it'd still be better than spending $30 on the cheapest Best Buy/Wally World offering.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I'm not needing convinced. I largely agree. But if you, dear poster, can posit these facts in a few moment's effort, why not the author of TFA?
That's my point, right there.
Not a big fan of $1000 cables, but I will add my 2 cents, first I buy the cheapest cables I can find, generally speaking its monoprice dot com for me; that said, 'super' sata cables *might* increase your audio quality if a set number of other dingbat conditions exist.
1. the cables they replace are CRAP, 0's and 1's might transmit fine but if your cables give off RF and....
2. your audio subsystem is subpar, not shielded properly, possibly analog out from the PC (use the TOS, though certainly someone is going to scream about optical 'SUPER' cables next, or it is subject to....
3. the power supply on your mains (house) or computer is CRAP, again, noise in, noise out.
so, buying quality isn't the same as buying SUPER, if you have CRAP in your equation SUPER cables might help you but really no more than cables that at least meet the spec for what your doing (cat5e or cat6 for gig, not 5 or 3 cause it works, it works all right but not as well as you think).
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
There's a difference between magical-thinking and predicting behavior based on knowledge of how a system actually works...
...and expecting the readers to merely take one's word for it without using any actual argumentative technique.
And that is a slim difference, indeed.
I have no idea what the linked article is talking about, because the site is not responding for me. However, in theory, quality of a digital signal cable can in fact affect the quality of subsequent analog output.
Signals are actually analog on the cable, and circuitry reads those signals and classifies them into 0s and 1s. That power consumption of that circuitry is going to change depending on the characteristics of the analog signal that is encoding the digital data. If the digital information is being transmitted using a protocol that includes ECC information, and the poor cable is causing bit errors requiring correction, that too is going to cause variations in power consumption. So you end up with small variations in the power draw of the digital parts of the system. That can cause the power output of the power supply to have small variations. Those could show up as noise in the analog components of the system, such as the audio outputs.
Is this likely? Probably not. But it is possible.
Somebody set up us the bomb!
Because he’s an idiot?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Yes you have. They believe in God.
A lot of people who pay into their church do it to support the church (e.g. community building, which has a favorable statistical payoff) and the works of the church (e.g. feeding the homeless, because they care about others). I know very few who do it for any other reason.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Perhaps if you had filtered SATA data AND power cables it might prevent some RF noise from interfering with the audio out (my PC has a slight hiss when the volume is turned up) but this could be completely eliminated by using the digital optical out instead of analogue outs (thus removing all electronic interference)
Just be sure to use monster optical cables tho, they use 1" thick lead cladding to make sure no gamma ray photons or cosmic ray particles can interfere with the laser light :)
"(T)hey are are irradiated, I am told, to vapourise any moisture that has found its way into the molecular structure of the conductors."
Just read that aloud and try not to laugh.
I imagine we'd use miniature unicorn horns to thread the mobo to the standoffs.
Marker on the rim from the 1990s was bogus, but marker on the second session was for real.
I personally love how you can buy a DVD player at Best Buy for under $100, and then when you need a HDMI cable to hook it up? Over $100. Why does the cable that just sits there cost more than the DVD player it connects, when the DVD player has moving parts, a laser, and a remote control?
3. Profit!
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Check out a similar 'review' of an office chair and subsequent exposure and shit-storm:
http://wosblog.podgamer.com/2010/07/26/exciting-benchmark-reviews-update-5/#more-5041
Popularity contest, then?
Monoprice. There is little reason to buy cables anywhere else.
Umm, I admit haven't read the article, but if the guy is talking about the cable between the amp and the speakers which is carrying an analog signal, then everyone's blathering about digital 1's and 0's is irrelevant.
Is the guy saying SATA cables have better analog signal transmission properties than standard audio cables? That's what I assumed from the headline. Maybe I should give it a read.
Dirty cables make dirty sound. That's just logical. If you want the best audio quality, you need to use supplies made by the most discriminating audiophiles. That is just common sense.
Now, think back. Have you ever seen a goldfish with a stereo system? Of course not! Goldfish are well known as the ultimate audiophiles. They don't have stereos because they know all too well that even the best will fall tragically short of their expectations. So much so that they prefer none at all.
Now, for the first time, you can get a special contact cleaner made with real goldfish tears. It's expensive because collecting a liquid under water is hard, but at only $10,000/ml it's clearly worth it! Get yours today and enjoy such supreme audio quality that you'd have to be a goldfish to know it's pathetic.
Skepticism is now defamation?
They're claiming he's wrong, not claiming he raped a truckload of cats. If he is really sending anti-defamation letters, he's just being butthurt that someone is calling him out.
...it uses a series of tubes.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
No, it's that he quite simply relegates everything regarding how computers work (or digital information as a whole) to being magic that nobody can possibly explain. This despite the very basic fact that there are millions of people who understand this quite well.
I once shot an elephant in my pajamas.
Ok, perhaps not. However the idea that a digital cable could affect your systems sound is perfectly valid, as that digital signal-- even if remaining bit perfect between sender and receiver-- is emitting EM radiation that could affect the analog components of your computer. If people started using magnetrons for SATA cables, or other such absurdum, this issue could indeed become valid. Notching it down from absurdity, a well shielded cable will by definition cause less interference to the surrounding system components than a poorly shielded cable, and that is worth something. Whether SATA interference could manifest audibly is a question I wont attempt to entertain.
Ok, so how do these cables sound compared to other cables?
Has anybody listened to them? With you ears.
It also depends on what you are using the cable for. If you are only doing 1080p at 60hz at 24bit depth then you will be find with the cheap cables.
However, if you are sending higher resolutions and higher color depth then you need a cable that can handle all that bandwidth. Cheap cables start to show sparkles on the screen when the bandwidth hits it's limits.
Other reasons why you need to spend more is if you want features like support for the full list of CEC commands, audio return channel, 3D support and Ethernet channel over HDMI.
These features rarely work on cheap HDMI cables and never work on the cheapo's at lengths greater than about 15' or so.
Trust me, I've bought them from Monoprice and they did not work. But Monoprice has a great return policy so I was able to upgrade to the cables that I needed and that actually worked in my setup.
I'm not an audiophile in the slightest. This mob mentality stuff is shameful. I agree with the assertion that the cables making any difference is absurd. I simultaneously stress that anyone making such a claim is obliged to PROVE it.
Imagine Mythbusters where they stand there, cross their arms and say 'nuh uh' over and over.
I always get a kick out of the subjective nature of audio and video quality tricking people into hearing things they aren't. I really applies equally well to many other things, and to anyone that wasn't a complete boob, the complete nonsensical nature should be obvious. "I swapped my Ethernet cable and now my email is so much clearer!" "I got a more powerful wireless router and now websites aren't filled with static!"
Reminds me of that children's story book. As long as you believe something is better because someone said it was better, and you have payed more for it.
Way #1: Inferior cables corrupt more bits causing bad data.
Way #2: Inferior cables corrupt more bits causing the ends to throttle traffic.
Either way, you are talking about a cable that doesn't measure up to the specification.
By definition, there is no difference between two cables if they both comply with the spec. The ends won't try to "drive" the cable harder than the spec says, so any extra-goodness goes to waste.
Now, for specs that do allow for real-time quality-of-cable negotiation which allow the ends to negotiate, then the media can make a difference. Old-school dialup modems are a good example of this. Networking protocols are also examples of this to the extent that they treat the layer below them as "a wire whose data-carrying qualities vary over time."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The discriminating audiophile with unlimited funds insist on fibre channel adapters with optical connections. Perhaps EMC should get into the audio market.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
that audiophiles listen to the equipment, the rest of us listen to the music
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It seems to be a matter of region,I suppose.
I sir, prefer the Ripple!
I agree on the MD 20/20 wholeheartedly though.
I once watched a guy beat up a tree that was 'messing with him' while being drunk on MD 20/20!
Come on, thousands of winos can't be wrong, can they? ;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I tried but she said no
They also like high end power cables. Just Google around for it, you'll find audiophile IEC power cables that go from a couple hundred dollars to near ten grand. Now one has to ask why would that last 2ish meters matter, compared to the couple hundred in your house, and the miles and miles outside (much of which is aluminum). Doesn't matter to the audiophiles, they are again convinced that it makes a difference.
This again comes from what I'd talked about in another post that they conflate a possible difference with high end cables mattering. So, in some setups, you hook up an "audiophile" power cable and you find that the sound does improve.... What the hell? Well what you also discover is that most of the audiophile power cables don't feature a ground pin. What you've done is lift the safety ground. In many audio systems, this can clear up a ground loop, which causes hum (had that problem myself for awhile). Of course just busting off the ground pin of a normal cable would have the same effect, and the same safety implication.
However, they then take that to mean that more expensive power cable = bettar than, and won't be swayed.
Lisa, I'd like to buy your pile.
There is no such thing as analog and digital, only electricity and gravity.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Yeah, I bought sub $5 ones from Newegg and just got as many as I could before the shipping cost went up (three). I've only had to open one.
I'm going to pistol whip the next guy who says "Shenanigans".
Basically the system had a grounding issue, probably a ground loop. Those things are the bane of my existence when doing audio. The answer though isn't to try and shield a cable, since the noise may well be induced through the ground itself, the answer is to clear up the problem. It can involve isolation of some sort, like an isolation transformer or moving a DAC outside of the computer. It can also involve getting audio devices that don't use a separate safety ground. You can get amps, receivers, etc that only use two pins and that's why, the safety ground is a massive ground loop problem. Apparently you can build the device to still pass FC and UL standards and just use the positive and negative wires. Probably more complicated grounding system but it works.
At any rate the issue is with grounding, not with shielding.
I understand why the initial reaction to these stories is always "omg this is crap". One point that I would like to raise though (which may or may not be relevant in this particular article, but certainly is true for other digital connectors) is that just because you are sending a digital signal does not mean that what goes in one side HAS to the same as what goes out the other. If you are talking about moving files around your hard drive, or the internet for that matter, then sure, a copy is a copy, bit for bit. That doesn't happen by accident though, rather it requires error checking and frequent retransmission (read about TCP/IP for example and you'll see what I mean). When you are working with a DAC however, such error correction and retransmission is not necessarily present. DACs take streams of 0's and 1's and convert them into a electrical potential at regular intervals. If a bit is wrong, the corresponding analog output will of course be wrong. Since there was signal before and after this erroneous one, however, the effect on the soundwave might be minimal. Think of a record that skips - you lose and regain signal. If the timespan over which this occurs is sort, you might not notice (or your system may simply be unable to respond). If this is the type of setup you are working with, then the quality of cable may in fact matter. A bad cable could mean internal reflections, dispersion, extinction, etc. For an internet connection this would mean higher average ping and lower bandwidth. For audio, it would mean reduced quality of sound reproduction.
wouldn't close comments because a small (lol) group of people disagree with his expert opinions... he simply wouldn't!
My other sig is a knife wound.
Swedes already made such a cable: http://www.sweclockers.com/imagebank/200803/Wolv3000001.jpg?t=articleFull&k=46b40d6b
price is approx 203 USD.
If there is a more gullible group of people than audiophiles, I haven't met them.
How about buying coffee beans that are eaten by rodents (actually a civit) and pooped out. "The most expensive coffee beans can cost up to $600 a pound"
This very likely doesn't apply to SATA, which is very application agnostic, but the idea of a better digital cable improving digital audio quality is not quite as ridiculous as it sounds.
Audio is a real-time application. Once you've started playing the audio, the player needs to get the bits for the next second before the next second arrives. So you don't always have time to ask for the data again if it arrives full of errors over a crappy cable. Instead, the player will simply guess what the missing bits should be, which lowers the audio quality. In other words, timeliness is prioritized over data integrity because as harmful as guessing the missing bits is to audio quality, stalling is much, much worse.
Again, SATA doesn't know it's sending audio, and the audio player on the other end doesn't get to fix any SATA errors, so I very much doubt a claim that you should buy Super SATA cables to improve your audio quality. But there are direct digital audio connections where you very much have to make sure your cables are of very, very high quality. That has been a sticking point for the adoption of those connections, actually. And it's certainly not true that because a connection is digital you can use some shitty low-end, no-name cable and it's just as good as a quality, name-brand cable. Bad analog cables introduce analog errors, and bad digital cables introduce digital errors, and there are always consequences, whether you can detect them immediately or not.
Couldn't interference from the SATA communication interfere with analog components somewhere along the chain of hardware that converts "1s and 0s" to "sound waves colliding with my ear drum"?
I know that when I have headphones plugged into my computer, occasionally I'll get interference that seems to match up with disk usage.
Once you have separated the hard drive from the chassis by magnetic bearings in vacuum, so that its vibrations wouldn't transfer and create noise, you still need a super-SATA cable to suppress all mechanical vibrations along its length. Just don't forget about super-Power cable to go along with it!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
...but only if your current cheap cables don't allow you to feel the purple taste of your sound.
As an owner of 20 hds, I had to exchange all SATA cables due to length and somehow I don't have anymore interference in my FM radio. This radio is independent of all hardware, just an old radio. Now, explain that.
benefits in the afterlife ? there is a bunch right there. Cablesare small potatoes in comparison.
Deleted
Remember when Monster Cable first came out? In a store you could throw a switch so the speaker in front of you went through a roll of 16 gauge Monster Cable or a roll of 20 gauge zip cord. Each roll was the same diameter, you guessed it, the Monster was much shorter in length and therefore resistance etc.
Nice sales tool.
Look for stories about Gordon Gow of the McIntosh company.
If these stories are true, well, save your money.
No brain, no pain.
Is your computer on and not crashing? Congratulations, your SATA cables are working perfectly. The reason people are responding like this is because of how obvious it is. The same cables carrying your music are also carrying more important things. If you're getting noticeable signal problems when loading relatively small music files, imagine what that many errors would do to the kernel. Another thing to remember is that if there was this kind of problem happening, and somehow you managed to boot, you wouldn't get minor differences in sound quality, you'd get very noticeable random noise (assuming your media player can even open the file).
You should hear how much better the music sounds when you use a USB interface implemented in vacuum tubes.
Myself I'm an electrical engineer and things like optical cables with golden connectors, monster hdmi cables don't make much sense.
Sure this guy is an audiophile and he isn't that technical but a Super SATA cable could potentially help if the sound card he is using is crappy. Normal SATA cables can be noisy and this can easily influence the DAC on the sound card. Depending on the quality of the circuitry it can have a big influence on the noise level and hence the audio quality. Just decent SATA cables would likely do the trick already if it really has an influence.
IMHO one of the best articles explaining the audiophile consumer phenomenon of flushing money down the toilet is the following:
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#gordongow
Basically, Gordon Gow (of McIntosh audio, nothing to do with the computer company) built a system to demo at trade shows whereby 50 feet of his "mistery" speaker cable could be A/B compared against the "high-end" cables from companies like Monster. Nobody could tell the difference.
Gordon's cable was two pairs of heavy-gauge Radio Shack lamp cord twisted together, at something like $0.18/foot. Basically, he proved that if the speaker cable is heavy enough to handle the power & impedance, and non-corrosive so it doesn't turn nasty colors after sitting in a humid basement for 6 months, then it is really all that is necessary for any audio setup. ...and this is in the analog domain. Denon sells a farking "audiophile" ethernet cable for $2500. The product reviews are hilarious BTW.
... I'll just ask the audiophile if they know what kind of cables the recording studios uses for their mics. Like this one...
http://www.computer-audio.info/?p=350
It all starts at 0
The guy is moron. *Claims shaking cables before using them improves sound. Having connections pulled out 1-2mm stops vibrations and improves sound Placing the amp/preamp on old cd cases improves the sound.* http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/?page_id=1009 How the flying f ck did this guy EVER get to write anything?
Two words (crammed into one) with a .com applied to the end...
monoprice.com
Excellent cables, cheap prices. (No, I was not paid for this. Personal experience.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I thought they were being sold by "Pear".
Not that everything that has the "Monster" label on it isn't completely overpriced. It is and the hell of it is that they've almost cornered the market on audio/video cables in certain stores (*cough* Best Buy *cough*). (At least when I go looking for a cable theirs are the only ones on the rack.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Nahh, he just needs a gold-plated keyboard cable.
How did it get in your pajamas?
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Good reason to buy a 2000 $ cable.
"Here, listen to this one I made myself, can you hear any difference? It sounds just as good but it's yours for 700 $!"
Just remember to return the 2000 $ cable afterward.
...use them with this motherboard.
DealExtreme must be perfect for cables. No?
Atleast they call the cables what they are:
Gold-plated: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.31951
Premium: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.33981
Designers: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.41027
All of them claimed to "Provide highest level of signal quality", so nothing wrong there :)
Please tell me why people replace the power cables of their receivers or whatever and then leave the tiny cables inside the box? Not to forget everything in their walls and so on :D
So. Uh. Like, for a minute there, I thought he was using it to connect up an amplifier or something? But no. It's just a SATA cable. There is no possible reason why this would make a difference unless the old cables were incredibly badly-shielded and the sound card was similarly cheap (AND using analogue outputs), especially considering if it's coming from a NAS, the information shouldn't be travelling through the SATA cable at all.
But that's been pointed out to death already.
Hooray for snake oil! Just like the Denon AK-DL1.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
haha 510 people with crap hifi's who 'got ripped off' because they bought expensive cables and it didnt sound any better - yes is does make a difference but it depends on on the rest of the equipment also - and the quality of the source - also the quality of the original recording .. so no your girls aloud mp3 wont sound better, lmao imbeciles ...
Thanks for the information.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I bought four for a little more than $2 each on Amazon. Granted $10 shipping but that was more or less fixed, I could have gotten more cables and reduced the shipping % of cost.
I could not agree more on the HDMI cables. When I got my HDTV I was desperate to have my first HDMI cable so I bought an "XBox only" $30 HDMI cable at Best Buy, rather than the a $90 Monster. Of course I have had no issues with that cable either.
Enuf said.
Glass packs are DOT legal mufflers but blow the fiberglass out and against the sides the first time you rev a healthy motor resulting in open pipes (they game the DOT noise test).
They are also dirt cheap.
The only way I can make sense of your statement is regarding glass packs on a bone stock motor.
That will only get the driver hassled by cops with basically no power gain unless they also pull the cat. Cat backs of all stripes are about noise.
A good air filter will gain them more power. A cold air intake much more.
But to really rock on roll your motor has to breath in and out.
Glass packs have served that purpose well for longer then I have been alive.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Hi, this is Malcolm for SlapChop.
I'm gonna slap your troubles away.
Stop having a boring breakfast, stop having a boring life.
We're gonna make America slim again, one slap at a time.
You're gonna love my nuts.
There was a time when you could be an audio geek. You could pontificate for hours on the wonders of tubes versus transistors and what kind of motors stopped your turntable from rumbling. There was a huge amount of deep knowledge to be gained.
Then along came digital - with which a $5 solid-state component can produce audio that is better than the human ear can possibly resolve - and it can do it digitally so there is zero risk of errors. Our storage systems can hold more music than you'd need in a lifetime.
So what happens when a geek's passion in life just "goes away"? Most of them gave up and did something else - but some just couldn't - and those are the idiots who think that you can improve on digital audio quality with gold-plated hard drive connectors - or whatever crazy idea they come up with next. They use mysterious terms like "presence" to describe the supposed improvements they think they are hearing - fortunately for them, nobody can build a "presence-o-meter" to prove them wrong.
I think about what would happen if programming and programming languages just became utterly obsolete overnight - if someone came up with an AI program that could write you any program you wanted - perfectly, 100% efficiently intuiting what you wanted by reading your brainwaves or something. I'd have no job - nothing I'm much good at in the world - no hobby.
Might I try to convince myself that first person shooters that were programmed by hand in C++ had more 'presence' than the new kind? Probably - yes.
I shed a small tear for the audiophiles. It's sad.
(But if they think they can sucker people into gold-plated SATA cables...they have another think coming!)
-- Steve
*waves money in air* I'll give you $85 for your best pile of dog shit, and not a penny more.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I wasn’t aware that Google-fu made a person attractive.
I demand a refund. It doesn’t seem to be working.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't digital music play from RAM anyway?
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Is it just a problem on my end, or did he delete the entry? (See first link in TFS; I get a 404 now).
:P
Google Cache to the rescue! And just in case, Coral cache of Google cache.
You're a tiresome pedant. Try to relax and have some fun.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Looks like retracted the story
How did it get in your pajamas?
One leg at a time.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
That is funny.. every kid at best buy says the same thing about grossly overpriced HDMI cables
Of course I can hear a difference! If admitted I couldn't hear the difference between a $700 and a $2000 audio cable, then my reputation as an elite audiophile would be ruinated!
Don't sell them to him, I'll pay $250 for them!
Make your time.
Reminds me of a joke, something like:
A: Can I borrow $50?
B: $40?! What do you want to borrow $30 for?! I can't afford $20! Nope, no $10 for you.
Don't forget SF Cable for anything you can't find at Monoprice.
I doubt that interference from the SATA cable is an issue as some have suggested, since anyone half-serious about PC audio that’s using a PCI SoundBlaster should be slapped. It’s not expensive to get a decent, high-bitrate sound interface that operates via USB, FireWire, or a PCI interface that lets you put the analog guts halfway across the room from your noisy computer. Yes, PCs put out a bunch of EMI, but the CPU and video card are much worse culprits than an SATA cable ever could hope to be. I don’t claim to be an “audiophile” (for obvious reasons) but I do produce music and own a 10000 watt concert system, and have been paying attention for many years to what REALLY makes a difference in sound.
I've been saying for years that there is a new kind of wrong-headedness that people in today's society apply to factual matters - that if they don't understand the reasoning behind a factual statement, then they just claim its a matter of opinion. I think this is overcompensation for when we were taught in 2nd grade that sometimes facts are actually opinions. Well, the less intelligent among us have extended that to mean "sometimes things you don't understand and make factually incorrect statements about are 'just opinions'
Everyone is welcome to an opinion, but certain matters aren't a matter of taste. Example:
"Red is better than green." This is an opinion because you could like red or green or whatever color with essentially no justification and nobody questions you on it, because its purely a matter of taste.
"The color red has a wavelength of around 300nm" would be a factually incorrect statement, not a matter of opinion. Red has a wavelength thats more like 550-650nm or something like that... I wanna say 300nm is violet or ultraviolet. (I might be wrong on that one, but it still illustrates the point). Some people never learned the difference between "A factually untrue statement" and "an opinion." And 'magical cables make sound better!' is a factually untrue statement, not an opinion. It just takes more verification than the average jerk audiophile can be bothered with.
Disclaimer: My expertise is audio design/engineering, so the above comments may be tainted with objective fact.
I hope your response went something like: "I can take two piles of dog shit and slap a sticker for $30 on one and $90 on the other. Just because the other says it costs $90 doesn't make it a better pile of dog shit"
I think I will definitely take your word for that. I dont think that's a study I'd like to conduct. :-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Please, PLEASE use sarcasm tags. Or in the case you are serious, please castrate yourself so your defective genes will never spread.
You just don't get a crappy connections do you?
EVEN if error correction works as you describe (and it doesn't, you are thinking network error corrections) then a crappy cable would REMAIN crappy ALL the time and therefor the corrections would also fail and you would never get any data ever.
In networking, you can indeed request resending of lost data but this DOES NOT WORK if your connection is down. This simply reroutes around crappy connections by waiting until it is gone (this doesn't happen when the cable at the end point is bad) or by re-routing around it. Problems with your MODEM in the past when you noticed it go slow at times happend because of the ANALOGUE part of the connection, not the digital path.
Error correction in for instance CD's and memory (ECC) works by having more bits which tell the hardware what the bits should be arranged. One of the most basic is for an extra bit that indicated that the majority of other bits must be like. If that isn't correct, then there is something wrong. More complex ones can actually correct the mistakes. This isn't a resending of data, the data itself contains the error correction. The idea a HDMI requests for a resending of data is so insane, so stupid, so misguided that I think you heard something somewhere once and apply it to everything without understanding it.
The idea that bad digital cables can introduce digital errors is valid enough, but it would cause such massive errors that the signal would be completly unusable. A digital cable either works or doesn't work. When it works, it works perfectly. There is no such thing as a better digital signal. SATA cables are designed to spec, they transmit far more then just the data you requested, the command instructions are also send over it. If there was interference your HD would throw a hissy fit from having to do insane commands, most of which wouldn't even make any sense or even be commands at all. Digital audio/video itself has an oddity that a bit flip might still be valid audio/video. But if I start bit flipping in HD commands I endup talking gibberish.
Really mate, LEARN something about computers. What next, a bad light bulb in a morse code flasher might cause problems in the morse code? No. Either the light goes on and off as it should or it does not go on and off at all and then there is no morse code.
Stop trying to reason that you didn't get scammed with your monster cables.
Digital signals just don't work that way.
What next? MP3's stored on a cheap drive sound worse then ones on a proper SCSI drive? Personally I prefer the old time sound of MP3's stored on a floppy. It just sounds richer.
Digital is simple, it either works or it doesn't. There is no grey area with digital. Your MP3 player doesn't go "mmm, well this could be a 1 or a 0. oh well, I make it 0.5 and nobody will be the wiser."
But go right ahead, draw an arrow on your cable so the bits know how to flow (on a two way connection), just be prepared to be seen as a fool by everyone else. Crappy cables don't get sold. If they were crap they would be returned by anyone because even normal people can tell the difference between a cable that doesn't work and one that does.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So if I drop them on an altar, I will see if they are blessed, uncursed or cursed.
Beware!!! If they are cursed, you will be unable to remove them from your rig, once put in action.
Audio carried via the SPDIF spec either over copper or optical are obviously immune to classic interference style degradation of audio since it is digital media and you can tell if the audio has errors or not.
That said, if you're running cables in RF noisy environments, the chances of bit errors over copper are infinitely higher than over optical. There is truly a clear benefit to using optical over copper in this case. Same even goes for Ethernet cabling, when making a nice long run across a building where we couldn't avoid RF interference, we could not achieve full gigabit speeds over copper, so we switched to fiber and all was good.
A better comparison is using a $1.99 10 foot optical cable vs. a $100 10 foot monster cable optical cable. While the monster cable might be better manufactured and could theoretically survive a shallower turn radius, in reality, the quality difference between Monster and Radio Shack brown packs is zero.
The only time I spend extra money on cables anymore is for the ones I keep in my laptop bag. I prefer a more durable molded cable which bends easier (you know those nice soft ones that feel almost like microfiber on the insulation?) so that they don't get destroyed while I'm bouncing around my almost never well packed notebook bag.
This was apparently on a NAS. Is it not possible that if using UPNP at the transfer protocol, the NAS would change the bitrate of the music according to the harddrive transferrate?
I wouldn't put this off so easily...
I can hear every mouse movement & hard disk access as interference on my audio-card as long as the volume is up quite a bit. It annoys me greatly, especially because its not a cheap mainboard. However i would not say that it is caused by bad "less shielded" whatever data cables. Power distribution on the main-board seems more likely a cause.
- Folken
If you pay the right persons, you can spin doctor this in a manner that is plausible. Digital or not: good quality cable will have matched impendance to the connectors, good shields and constant group delay. The net effect is that the signals are well-preserved at the receiving end except for time delay. The result of that is reliable reception without jitter and without the need of faithful error correction (which leads to the original bit patterns, but may cause difference in power consumption and/or jitter).
In short, it is slightly conceivable that a good cable connection can slightly offset the results of a bordercase or crap decoder.
That's a bit of theory. I doubt that you could turn it into statistical relevance in a double-blind test (the person plugging the cables has no contact with the tester and the person recording the test results).
If you have audio interference from system activity, it is far more likely to be cross-coupled down the power supplies than it is by radiation. Most really good audio cards have on-board regulators and decoupling, with in-line inductors in the power supplies as well as the usual shielding.
Hum can be caused by currents flowing in the cable grounds as well. Back in the good ol', we would make sure that the audio system components were grounded at one point (a 'star' earthing point) to avoid ground loops where audible signal currents could be induced. Not wishing to try to do the same with my PC and attached stuff, I isolate the PC from the amp by using a digital output (dirt cheap bit of old coax and a couple of phono connectors). Ta-da!
From the blog:
I have withdrawn the article that appears to have upset so many computer enthusiasts.
I realise that the opinion I expressed in it was contentious but the reaction from some individuals was way too extreme. I think that wishing death upon someone because they wrote how they witnessed a change in the way their hi-fi sounded when they swapped a cable in a NAS is a bit of an over-reaction. Anyone in my office, including my wife and children, can read my email and they were not impressed by this and the volume of similarly aggressive correspondance.
I know full well that it is ‘scientifically’ not possible for a data cable to exert such influence but I know what we heard and hoped that maybe someone might be able to throw some light on what might be going on. While a couple of people kindly wrote and did just that most people simply said “It’s just ones and noughts, you stupid (expletive),” which wasn’t especially helpful.
Pretty sad.
assignment != equality != identity
You conjugation need work
I've been chuckling over his comments for a few years now and I'm beginning to think that Joe The Dragon (967727) is not the Engrish-bearing Oriental comedian I originally mistook him for.
Actually Google became sentient years ago and Joe The Dragon is just an instance using Translate to fool the stupid humans for its own amusement..
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
However in this audiophile's case, it would still be bullshit, as he replaced the cables in the NAS appliance where his music collection resides, rather than in the PC where the soundcard lives. Two different (hopefully shielded) boxes => no interference.
Any SATA or Ethernet, for that matter, cable will do it's SATA or Ethernet digital work.When it's done, it's done - 1's and 0's are moved where they should. Then again, there is an electromagnetic noise around them. In audio world, noise could enter in many ways. Noise, million times less than the signal is still perfectly audible. Billion times - well, not perfectly, but still audible (even not by everyone).
So, a the real challenge in digital audio is not the digital part, but making the digital one to not mess the analog part instead. This is much harder and involves a lot of work on both the digital and the analog side. $500 ethernet cables - well, at least I can't hear THAT much. SATA vs SuperSATA - well, maybe...
http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/?p=2495
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The SATA Cable Saga
Posted by Malcolm Steward on 8/20/10 Categorized as Audio
I have withdrawn the article that appears to have upset so many computer enthusiasts.
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etc. He claims that he received death threats. Some people have too much time on their hands, and/or take things way too far.
Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
There is a too low price level. I bought a hdmi cable of ebay for $3 including shipping. Surprisingly enough they didn't work at all.
And the part of the cable that was malfunctioning was the price?
That’s great to hear! Please let us know what you think of it. I am greatly enjoying it, myself. Thanks for the update. http://www.worldpixelmile.com/
That vibration shakes the ones and zero's so hard, they get confused and spew out jitter!
I'll have to order a dozen of these cables!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Hmmm... 666 comments on this story. It's a sign! :P
(I'm sorry... I couldn't resist!)
Because they compete on price on the main items. Therefore they make little profit on those directly.
However once they have you in the store it gives them the opertunity to sell you overpriced extras such as extended warranties or hookup cables. They bet on the fact that once they have you in the store you'll buy the bits and peices there too.
Plus there are idiots who think high price means high quality for things like cables. May as well part those fools from thier money by selling them even more overpriced acessories.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Ah, DealExtreme. Why buy your cheap Chinese crap from Wal-Mart when you can buy it directly from China for cheaper?
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
I had a tab opened from yesterday when I was reading it. Just because he deleted the article doesn't mean you have to miss out on the fun:
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Super SATA Cables on Sale Soon
Posted by Malcolm Steward on 8/17/10 Categorized as Audio
The Super SATA cables I recently tested proved to be real shockers. Every logical thought was telling me that the wires that transmit the raw digital data between a hard disk and the motherboard in a NAS simply could not influence the sound that emerged from the player – after the music has already subsequently passed through metres of CAT5.
But they do.
I listened to the cables in my NAS feeding my Naim HDX/DAC/XPS and clearly identified easily perceptible improvements through my highly revealing active Naim DBL system. Quite what it is that wrought these improvements I do not know. My only guess is that the Super SATAs reject interference significantly better than the standard cables and in so doing lower the noise floor revealing greater low-level musical detail and presentational improvements in the soundstage and the ‘air’ around instruments.
The most marked and worthwhile difference, I felt, was in the increased naturalness in both the sound of instruments and voices, which seemed more organic, human and less ‘electronic’, and in the music’s rhythmical progression, which was also more natural and had the realistic ebb and flow that musicians exhibit when playing live. In short, recordings sounded more like musical performances then recordings.
As you can see the cables do not look anything special even though they are far more robust than the standard issue flat cables, and they are are irradiated, I am told, to vapourise any moisture that has found its way into the molecular structure of the conductors.
The photo here shows the original, Generation 1 cable but there is now a more advanced, wider bandwidth Generation 2 version that is soon going to be available from the same American manufacturer. They will, of course, be more expensive than ‘ordinary’ SATA cables – the red and grey insulated flat cables that come free with hard disks or sell for around £2.99. But their superior performance easily justifies the extra expense.
When I have a definite price on the new cables and the URL from which they will be able to be purchased, I will post the information here. I cannot wait: I only have one of the generation 1 cables and wanted a dozen more for other hard disks and SATA peripherals. Now there is a supposedly ‘better’ version I cannot wait to evaluate it and if it is, as I am told, substantially superior, get my order in for a dozen of those.
I have disabled Comments on this post so that respectable visitors do not have to read the remarks made by a small number of extremely ignorant, rude, malicious and disingenuous individuals who cannot tolerate people expressing opinions that do not concur with their own.
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Included photo:
http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Critical-SATA.jpg
Critical SATA
I didn't read all 708 comments but has it occurred to any of you that cables always emit radiation when data
is transferred through them? Maybe the added shielding in the $$$ cables emit less radiation that interferes
with the sound system. Please, don't go around making claims that someone is wrong unless you have made
your own measurements proving otherwise. There can always be more than meets the eye.
I've found out BASF Ceram Guards and some other CD's with the same type of dye survive a lot longer than their counterparts.
The same as those black disks; the audio quality and skips are unexistant while other cd's (with a different color dye?) crack and skip all over; especially at the end of each CD.
This aging does affect the quality of the sound (cracks).
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The difference is GROUNDING. My studio is connected towards my TV set through an optical connection. A digital connection shares the same ground as all other machines connected to these; creating a humming noise at the analog side of the studio and/or television. With a digital connection this grounding issue is no more.
The output of my studio (sans monitors) goes optically directly to the optical connection of my home surround system.
It's the only way to use vinyl and digital together without bothering of hum-correctors (which sounds essentially worse, instead of purely correcting it the digital way)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
That's because "you get what you pay for" is so often repeated, even though it's completely untrue in many cases; you DON'T always get what you pay for. Why pay $2 for a can of Green Giant beans when a can of white label beans are eighty cents? Beans are beans, they probably came from the same bean field. But people have the stupid idea that a more expensive item is better. I've found that often the cheapest available is higher quality than the most expensive.
Free Martian Whores!
Your PC must really smell .. bad!
I don't want to know how it smells, heat up.
Lets me remind those school years all over again!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
She's easy.
I don't know if they are cheaper, couldn't find anything for as low as someones mentioned 3 $.
On the other hand they offer affiliates and free shipping world-wide even for single cheap items and shipping got to cost them something.
Anyway I live in Sweden so we've got no Wal-Mart and probably not something just as cheap/big either. DealExtreme got cheap screen protectors, DS flash-carts and other accessories, batteries, card readers and such and with free shipping I rather buy there than here. Isn't it weird? :D
I like them thought some products is weird. For instance they list many cables as "female-to-male", for instance "female-to-male hdmi cable", but then the actual came got female and male parts. So it's more of a male to male cable as far as conversion goes :)
And of course some items are genuine crap or less good than others / don't have the best price in the world. But there's not much they can do about it if they didn't knew about it.
High-end SATA cables are pointless unless he also got some anti-vibration pads for his NAS cabinet.
Edith Keeler Must Die
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You should see the kind of psychotic letters the major high-end magazines get routinely. Sometimes they have to take out orders of protection against certain readers.
High-end audio is a form of mental illness that only afflicts men over the age of 40. They are massively insecure, and usually affluent--but they comprise a VERY small group.
If Slashdotters had some actual brains, they'd sit on their hands. Because the more they squawk about "double-blind tests", the more attention (and sales) high-end gear makers and high-end publications get.
Because nobody loves a troll, right or wrong.
PS: Mr. Steward got death threats. Nice going.