Do you consider yourself an audiophile?

[ItWillNeverWork]

It's a photoshop job imo, vapourware until ordered.

shit, just read those testimonials!

Of course, it still might be a photoshop. The testimonials could have been paid for.

 

[Orang Utan]

http://www.russandrews.com/product....&customer_id=PAA0120023412632HHZYDEPPBHTWFVFQ

We held off with the silver SuperKords for a little while because although they sound amazing, the cost of the silver wire used does make them very expensive (we weren’t sure how many people would want them). We kept being asked for them, however, so we couldn’t resist adding them to the range!

We love the sound the better silver conductors bring about – we heard more detail, space, better dynamics and – above all – much more of a sense of the musical message. If you’ve got a real top-flight system, these cables are, in our opinion, a must-have upgrade.

Putting the price into context – our opinion
On the face of it, our Silver SuperKords may look very expensive, but put the cost of them into context. Say you have a system with a £5,000 CD player in it, which you love the sound of. But what happens when the upgrade bug bites? You might find that to upgrade your sound, you might need to invest in a player costing upwards of £10,000. Now, in our opinion, upgrading your £5,000 CD player’s mains lead to a Silver SuperKord Classic-SD II will bring about an even bigger upgrade than upgrading your player to the next model… and it’s cheaper. In that context, surely the Silver SuperKords offer extremely good value for money?

well if you put it that way..

 

[pogofish]

This has to be the most honest and appropriately named company in the entire audiophile arena!

http://schiit.com/

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

http://www.russandrews.com/product....&customer_id=PAA0120023412632HHZYDEPPBHTWFVFQ

well if you put it that way..

Honestly, stop being such a cheapskate and get this one instead:
http://www.russandrews.com/product....&customer_id=PAA0120023412632HHZYDEPPBHTWFVFQ

This has to be the most honest and appropriately named company in the entire audiophile arena!

http://schiit.com/

love the blurb:
And yes, that is our name. And yes, it’s pronounced exactly like you think. Shee-tah. It’s a proud German name, host to a long line of audio engineers who slaved away in crumbling Teutonic fortresses as lightning lashed the dark lands outside, working to perfect the best amplification devices in the world . . . Or, well, no. Yep, Schiit is our name. As in “Hey man, that’s some really cool Schiit.” Or, “We like music and Schiit.” And now that we have your attention, can we show you some Schiit?

 

[Rogue_Leader]

I've been lurking for a while, but this thread finally pushed me to sign up. It's been running for two years and hasn't sagged in quality. It has been a masterclass in credulity and the continual resurfacing of unsinkable rubber ducks. Many parallels to homeopathy, spiritualism and other types of woo.

The AES lecture someone mentioned a few pages ago is here:


Also, what's with the penny-pinching? You should treat your ears with respect or you won't be allowed to keep them:

http://www.highendcable.co.uk/Nordost ODIN Speaker Cable.htm

25 grand. Sterling. For 6 metres of cable and four plugs.

What? Don't you CARE about music, you cloth-eared ignoramus?

 

[twentythreedom]

Fuck me, that highendcable site is genius!! One or two sales a year and the cunt 's laughing

 

[Rogue_Leader]

^^^^
I do wonder how much he makes on wholesale, and how much he keeps in stock. I'm assuming the manufacturers are raking the cash in too.

 

[twentythreedom]

I'm sure the profit margins are respectable at both wholesale and retail

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

love the gifs on that site

There will of course be a free 7 day Burn in. For more info

of course...

and google brought me there:

looooove the comments

 

[Rogue_Leader]

These cables allow deeper insight into the textures of the critical mid-range, leading to improved intelligibility of vocals, greater resolution of acoustic spaces around the instruments, more real-sounding instrumental timbres, etc. It’s not only beneficial on acoustic instruments – it also gives greater insight into studio techniques, the timbres of synthesisers and guitars etc. Nuance and emotion in vocal and instrumental performances come to the fore.

http://www.artisansilvercables.com

Artisan cables. Artisan. Cables. No doubt lovingly crafted by Catalonian peasants from self-milled whole-ore silver by the dying light of the village forge.

 

[stuff_it]

"Magical cable
This cable is of excellent quality and can be as thick as your wallet (up to $1000 per meter). Only those gifted with golden ears reading audiophile magazines and chanting superlatives can hear the magical transformation of sound quality."

 

[ViolentPanda]

Fuck me, that highendcable site is genius!! One or two sales a year and the cunt 's laughing

We're in the wrong game, mate!

 

[ViolentPanda]

^^^^
I do wonder how much he makes on wholesale, and how much he keeps in stock. I'm assuming the manufacturers are raking the cash in too.

Had a look around on Google for silverplated flat OFC cable in 4-way config. couldn't find any example over about £15 per metre, and FEP is just the latest in a long line of efficient insulators, but not noticably more efficient than PVC or PTFE.
If you add on the connectors and those cutesy little wooden spacer blocks, at the most he's got to be paying £30 a metre at wholesale, and that's if he's letting himself be robbed.

Sometimes I realise that my conscience gets in the way of me being rich.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Artisan cables. Artisan. Cables. No doubt lovingly crafted by Catalonian peasants from self-milled whole-ore silver by the dying light of the village forge.

I can just see the Catalan grandmas, in their traditional black dresses, sitting on their verandas with their spinning wheels, spinning the raw silver into strands to be spooled up, ready for the Catalan mamas to weave into cables.

 

[High Voltage]

What about the simple local blacksmith hewing the metal end'y pluggy bits then - those won't come cheap now will they?

 

[Boycey]

The AES lecture someone mentioned a few pages ago is here:

thanks Rogue_Leader, was hunting all over the place for that. welcome to the boards

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

This video is awesome and begins with a sexy model to show us in to his "listening room". Before this, linda was a hod carrier.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

Why would you show off your listening room on Youtube when YT's sound quality is so rubbish?

Unless it's about the expensive gear rather than the sound...surely not?

 

[ViolentPanda]

This video is awesome and begins with a sexy model to show us in to his "listening room". Before this, linda was a hod carrier.

I hope he's got the power supply to that tube amp isolated, or part of his perfect listening experience is gonna be mains hum and/or a nice crackle every time he switches on his cutesy table lamps.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Why would you show off your listening room on Youtube when YT's sound quality is so rubbish?

Unless it's about the expensive gear rather than the sound...surely not?

Surely you're not proposing that this gear is some kind of ego-compensation for the owner having sub-average penis length?

 

[Rogue_Leader]

I hope he's got the power supply to that tube amp isolated, or part of his perfect listening experience is gonna be mains hum and/or a nice crackle every time he switches on his cutesy table lamps.

He's probably replaced the power cable to the lamp with kevlar-protected oxygen-free 99.999999% pure copper twisted pairs insulated with NASA-designed composite carbon fiber and teflon polymers. You'd certainly hope that at least he's got a lead crystal bulb with a heat-aligned tungsten-magnesium filament.

Audiophile light bulbs. *There's* an idea...

 

[Rogue_Leader]

Surely you're not proposing that this gear is some kind of ego-compensation for the owner having sub-average penis length?

I would never, ever resort to such insensitivity.

Well, not often anyway. Once or twice a day at the most.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

http://www.dvdrewinder.com/

 

[Rogue_Leader]

http://www.dvdrewinder.com/

Bah. It's a spoof.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

Blimey. I've just remembered that you can get those rubberised bulbs from Ikea that feel quite pleasing and high-quality. All it'd take would be a bit of marketing and a fine nail file to rub the branding off.

It really isn't hard to make money, is it? All you have to do is care about literally nothing else: ethics, compassion, intelligence, solidarity, family, friends. All you need to do is betray every single one of them and making money is a piece of piss.

Oh, brave new world, that has such people in't...

 

[BigTom]

We're in the wrong game, mate!

idea for a business: be an electrician. Audiophiles spend (apparently, I'm still not convinced anyone is that deluded) hundreds of pounds on a kettle lead. Imagine how much you could charge to rewire their house with super special electrical cable that will reduce ambient interference with the soundscape. Bang in some standard 3-core in a custom sheath and laugh all the way to the bank.
All you need is a website with the right style of bullshit and some cash to bung at one of the commentators.

(wonders if this idea has already happened. Or if it will now it's written down somewhere).

 

[Rogue_Leader]

idea for a business: be an electrician. Audiophiles spend (apparently, I'm still not convinced anyone is that deluded) hundreds of pounds on a kettle lead. Imagine how much you could charge to rewire their house with super special electrical cable that will reduce ambient interference with the soundscape. Bang in some standard 3-core in a custom sheath and laugh all the way to the bank.
All you need is a website with the right style of bullshit and some cash to bung at one of the commentators.

(wonders if this idea has already happened. Or if it will now it's written down somewhere).

Then when you said to them "What about the cheap wire in the rest of your house" they could smugly sneer: "I paid £65000 for an audiophile wiring job, NORSTROM cable throughout."

All you'd have to do would be to do a freebie for one of the more gullible HiFi 'journalists'.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

Surely you're not proposing that this gear is some kind of ego-compensation for the owner having sub-average penis length?

are you suggesting I should invest in some high end audiophile equipment?

 

[Rogue_Leader]

Check out this reply I received from an enquiry about those stupid Walker Audio HDLs

It's a bit tl;dr, so I imagine that most people won't bother to read it.

Hi Dxxxxx,

I’m a little surprised that of all the products we sell, this particular product got your goat, since there’s solid electrical principals behind it, the technology is easily explainable and fairly well established with a variety of other manufacturers purveying their own versions of RF reducing circuits similar to this one. We’ve also sold variations on the HDL theme from a couple of manufacturers over the last 10 years with virtually no returns (we do have a 30 day money back guarantee) and many satisfied customers as well as some pretty stellar industry reviews from reputable sources. I’ve personally owned several sets of the HDLs over the years and I’ve heard their effect on every speaker I’ve ever tried it on and I’m not easily impressed or swayed.

Perhaps it is the price to which you object? Although that wouldn’t necessarily qualify this as snake-oil, $750 a pair is quite a lot of money and at first blush might seem to be quite a high price for such a slender and lightweight product; until you take into account a few things. First, these are all hand-made at Walker Audio, here in the USA. Each HDL is painstakingly assembled using hand-built capacitors of a proprietary design, pure high-grade silver is used for the frames and internal wiring as is silver solder etc. Point to point wiring internally makes these quite a bit more fiddly to build given the small size of the parts and requires great care less parts be broken or pulled out. The copper foil sheilding is elegant and effective but those willing to pay the purchase price of the HDLs will not accept physical blemishes or unintended creases, thus an improper fold or a scuff on the finish results in discarded product, which raises the actual cost of manufacture for each one. Second, the materials used are actually quite expensive in the small quantities which Walker Audio is able to purchase. Small amounts of silver wire, silver solder, copper foil, the tiny caps, small wooden parts and the cryogenic treatment of each element drives the cost up. If Walker Audio was a multi-million dollar company, I’m sure economies of scale would apply, but there’s just not that large a market for these, which brings us to the next point. Third, you’re just not going to sell that many of these, regardless of price. Although we’ve sold dozens of sets of the HDLs over the years, it’s still a very small market of people who are going to be willing to even try a product like this, so some of the price paid goes to ensuring parts are available for future production of the product.

Although no one would ever accuse the Walker HDLs of being a bargain, there is quite a bit of value there and for those with truly reference systems looking to eke just a little better performance from their already outstanding systems, the Reference HDL is an outstanding complement.

Best Regards,

Anyway, this was my response:

Jxxxx,

Be assured that the price is not the thing I object to. If you send me the results of the double-blind tests you've conducted, and which must have been the basis for the assertions below, I'm sure the numbers will speak for themselves.

Regards,
D.

Amazingly, it seems that no double-blind testing was performed, as he responded with this pile of fucking hokum:

Dxxxxx,

Do a google search for Zobel networks. The purpose and efficacy of these circuits is unquestioned, their effects both measured and audible have been quantified ad nauseum. Although the Walker isn’texactly a Zobel circuit, the electrical principals and affected frequencies are similar enough to merit comparison. In fact, I believe there are several recipes on-line for building your own, should be fairly inexpensive and easy to do. Perhaps you might try a few designs and see if you hear any change whatsoever, any decent system will readily show the difference.





-Jxxxx

Much as I've enjoyed wasting his time, I think I'll leave it there.


I like this. It's very much like 419 baiting.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

I had baiter's remorse for a while there. I no longer have it since reading this:

If you have the older model Mark IIs or Ultimate/References, you should consider trying the new Mark IIIs or new References. We believe you will be impressed.

"We know we convinced you once to buy that load of barmy old cack, but I'm a bit short of cash, so please will you buy these? They'll have exactly the same effect on the sound of your stereo, mind."

Remorse gone.