Do you consider yourself an audiophile?

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

You should have no remorse for these dickwads. What I dont understand is how they can all be kidding themselves? They must know. The daft mags that review these things must know? The people who buy them??? How can anyone who makes that amount of money to splash around be so utterly stupid????

Also isn't there / shouldnt there be a law that stops these companies from making their crazy claims?

 

[Termite Man]

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.



Anyway, this was my response:



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



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.

what are those High Definition Links actually supposed to do, and how are they supposed to do it.

 

[Termite Man]

I've just been reading up about those walker HDLs and found a review which contains this classic audiophile bollocks

With Links in, the Sextet’s instrumentalists sounded about perfect: remarkable warmth, harmonic detail, and soundstage distribution. But here’s where it got interesting: With Links out, it wasn’t so much a question of what I could hear in the way of glare -- and I could, though the differences weren’t abundantly obvious -- so much as the sense of discomfort I experienced. I became rather antsy, with an urge to be elsewhere.

 

[BigTom]

You should have no remorse for these dickwads. What I dont understand is how they can all be kidding themselves? They must know. The daft mags that review these things must know? The people who buy them??? How can anyone who makes that amount of money to splash around be so utterly stupid????

Also isn't there / shouldnt there be a law that stops these companies from making their crazy claims?

Once you've spent £25,000 on some cables, you've invested quite a lot of belief that they work. No-one really wants to waste £25k.. everyone else makes money from it - the hi-fi mags sell because they tell these people what they want to hear.

There is some kind of law, didn't one of the big ones (Andrew something?) get fined over their claims? And there's the new stuff coming in about psychics etc..
ultimately though, what are you going to do? The claims are someone's personal opinion and as long as they believe it to be true, they are not, techincally, lying - even if you can empirically/objectively prove that there is no difference to the audio/soundwave.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

what are those High Definition Links actually supposed to do, and how are they supposed to do it.

That's what I asked, and that's the answer I received. I think they're magic.

 

[starfish2000]

After the age of 25 the human ear Degrades anyway

Im sure spending money on a good hifi makes a a lot of sense, im sure you can hear a difference but im not that keen on a lot of modern albums that are overcompressed and noisy, but i find a lot of hi fi types to he idiots. I used to sell electrical retail 20 years ago and we'd always be able to spot the audiophiles a mile off.....

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Does your music sound shit? I bet it's because your wall sockets simply aren't good enough!

You need an ULTRAsocket

 

[spitfire]

fucksakes. they're knocking out 4mm earth wire for £1.10 per metre.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

they are the best-sounding UK mains sockets we’ve ever auditioned

Srsly.

 

[fractionMan]

£79.00

 

[spitfire]

they sounded more open, smoother and bass was tighter and cleaner, with more weight.

ya, srsly

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Just the thing to enhance your ultrasocket, a Zapperator

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Holy fuck.

£250 for a pair of Neutrik XLR sockets.

http://www.russandrews.com/product....&customer_id=PAA1103040712361ZOUKYBPPGCZCTPOM

 

[spitfire]

So what have they added to the XLR?

 

[Rogue_Leader]

So what have they added to the XLR?

Looks like they've sprayed their branding on the side.

 

[spitfire]

That's gotta be worth £248.50

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

So what have they added to the XLR?

I'd love to get hold of a pair and find out, I'm guessing nothing

 

[jjne]

.

 

[Crispy]

Plug some transports (and by this I don't mean 'cheap', just some models) into a recording device via SPDIF, and you will not get the same file twice for a given track. I'm not just talking about offsets here either; some transports (presumably because of badly-implemented error correction) are not sending the exact bitstream reliably. The Philips CDM12 series seem to be particularly guilty of this, and they're used in some very expensive CD players!

Now that is interesting. Got a decent link?

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Now that is interesting. Got a decent link?

...with this been done several times and the results given a blind test etc

 

[spitfire]

There's a "white paper" on this page. I managed 2 and a half pages before my brain melted.

http://www.russandrews.com/category...3040712361ZOUKYBPPGCZCTPOM&cat_id=zapperators

 

[Crispy]

...with this been done several times and the results given a blind test etc

I'm just interested to see how much of a difference it makes to the waveform.

 

[jjne]

.

 

[jjne]

.

 

[jjne]

.

 

[BigTom]

Does your music sound shit? I bet it's because your wall sockets simply aren't good enough!

You need an ULTRAsocket

pfft. what's the point of spending £80 on an ultrasocket when it's still connected up to that nasty interfering wiring behind your walls? You need a complete rewire of the whole house if you are really to eliminate high-frequency interference from the mains with your soundscape.
BigTom's audio-electrics service will come to the rescue. Just take the normal fee for a rewire job, multiply it by 100 and that's my price.. If you aren't satisfied then it means your hearing isn't really good enough - anyone who has really good - and I mean top-notch - hearing and a discerning approach to audio will immediately find their sound output improving in all the ways they felt it was lacking before - and some they never even realised were lacking in the first place. Bargain.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

pfft. what's the point of spending £80 on an ultrasocket when it's still connected up to that nasty interfering wiring behind your walls? You need a complete rewire of the whole house if you are really to eliminate high-frequency interference from the mains with your soundscape.
BigTom's audio-electrics service will come to the rescue. Just take the normal fee for a rewire job, multiply it by 100 and that's my price.. If you aren't satisfied then it means your hearing isn't really good enough - anyone who has really good - and I mean top-notch - hearing and a discerning approach to audio will immediately find their sound output improving in all the ways they felt it was lacking before - and some they never even realised were lacking in the first place. Bargain.

Hah. I'm starting a petition for my city council to rewire the whole town with NORDSTROM reference cable and Anaconda Massive Tool power transports. While they're at it they can replaced the pylons with Dark Field Cable elevators.

Why should I suffer dirty power and static EMF from inferior Zyklon FFIs just because I'm in the top one percent of the audiodextrous?

 

[BigTom]

We can be as skeptical as the next audiophile when it comes to premium power cords

 

[Rogue_Leader]

I found no difference whatsoever between the SPDIF outputs of various PC optical outs, or media players'...

You should be wary of this. I was using a cheap optical out from my MBP. I dumped the output to file and discovered that some of the '1's were at best 0.96s and some of the zeroes weren't quite zero.

Once you've noticed that, it's impossible not to hear the noise floor and the transambient jitter in the highest quality lossless recordings.

 

[Boycey]

While they're at it they can replaced the pylons with Dark Field Cable elevators.

the Dark Field elevators may seem kind of tweaky at first, everyone who used them wanted to keep them.