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Do you consider yourself an audiophile?

Are you an audiophile?

  • Yes

    Votes: 32 13.7%

  • No

    Votes: 84 36.1%

  • Audiophiles are deluded bullshitters

    Votes: 117 50.2%
  • Total voters
    233
alan_ said:
Yeah basic physics I'll grant you. However when people rubbish product on here, they never seem to analyse it in a scientific manner
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There's a long scientific tradition whereby those making the claims for something provide the proof. We don't have to prove that the unobtainium speaker cables do what the manufacturer claims; they do. And we're perfectly entitled to point and laugh when they can't. Science.
 
alan_ said:
Lets take the last two products mentioned on the thread, an individual utility pole and a set of XLR interconnects. You state that the latter are " a worse connection than a £10 mic cable from Maplin". How did you arrive at this opinion (bear in mind I am not talking value for money but rather basic physics)
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Read my post maybe?
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
Read my post maybe?
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I did. The two signal core can still be balanced/differential (ie 180 degree phase shift) even if the cores are separated. Perhaps you meant to refer to the fact that they would not be shielded by the earth if they are separate (to minimise interference), well if you read the brochure, it states that not only are they shielded but there is extra protection at entry and exit points.


existentialist said:
There's a long scientific tradition whereby those making the claims for something provide the proof. We don't have to prove that the unobtainium speaker cables do what the manufacturer claims; they do. And we're perfectly entitled to point and laugh when they can't. Science.
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I agree with you in the main and done my own pointing and laughing, but the fact remains that if these products do not perform as stated and truly are woo,it should be easy to debunk them in a scientifically rigorous manner and that is something that this thread does not do. Pointing at things and saying "thats shit" doesn't mean a thing even if it is shit.
 
Some things just don't warrant that kind of effort. I agree with you that, from an educational point of view, it might be worth deconstructing a particular type of claim, but going into a point by point refutation of why X bit of quantum woo is invalid often plays right into the hands of those who peddle it - they trade on the fact that science (especially quantum woo science) is often counter-intuitive and hard to understand, and on the fact that science types have the integrity to admit when they don't know something for certain - "Aha, they don't KNOW! So my quantum energy field unobtainium woo connectors can't be disproved by SCIENCE, so I must be right, that'll be £10,000 please."
 
alan_ said:
I did. The two signal core can still be balanced/differential (ie 180 degree phase shift) even if the cores are separated. Perhaps you meant to refer to the fact that they would not be shielded by the earth if they are separate (to minimise interference)
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No.

The whole point of a balanced cable is that any interference on it happens to both signal lines in exactly the same way. Then one is inverted again and summed, this cancelling out the interference. This is why you have them together. If you separate the cores you increase the chance of the interference happening only on one core, or it being slightly different on each core.

The whole concept of that particular cable is flawed.


I agree with you in the main and done my own pointing and laughing, but the fact remains that if these products do not perform as stated and truly are woo,it should be easy to debunk them in a scientifically rigorous manner and that is something that this thread does not do.
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Yes, it is extremely easy to debunk them and there are many examples on this thread where this has been done.

It gets to a point though where you don't need to go over things that have already been done. Another stupidly expensive cable is just that.
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
No.

The whole point of a balanced cable is that any interference on it happens to both signal lines in exactly the same way. Then one is inverted again and summed, this cancelling out the interference. This is why you have them together. If you separate the cores you increase the chance of the interference happening only on one core, or it being slightly different on each core.

The whole concept of that particular cable is flawed.
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In theory this would be straightforward to test by parsing each signal and comparing, but until someone does that, The Grateful Dead used a balanced pair of mikes positioned infront of their legendary wall of sound and ran them out of phase in order to negate the feedback that the enormous array would have produced. The thing is, the spacing for the two condensers was 60mm ie much more than the aforementioned cables and the sound was interferance free up to a quarter of a mile away
 
alan_ said:
I did. The two signal core can still be balanced/differential (ie 180 degree phase shift) even if the cores are separated. Perhaps you meant to refer to the fact that they would not be shielded by the earth if they are separate (to minimise interference), well if you read the brochure, it states that not only are they shielded but there is extra protection at entry and exit points.




I agree with you in the main and done my own pointing and laughing, but the fact remains that if these products do not perform as stated and truly are woo,it should be easy to debunk them in a scientifically rigorous manner and that is something that this thread does not do. Pointing at things and saying "thats shit" doesn't mean a thing even if it is shit.
Click to expand...

Are you suggesting people on this thread should spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on cables and other audiophile bullshit, run it through an oscilloscope or setup proper double blind tests just to satisfy you?
Even though such tests have been run on some pieces of kit showing nothing gained (do we actually need to test every different cable when dozens have been tested already to know they do nothing?), and even though it should be up to the manufacturers to do the tests and prove they make a difference?
 
BigTom said:
Are you suggesting people on this thread should spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on cables and other audiophile bullshit, run it through an oscilloscope or setup proper double blind tests just to satisfy you?
Even though such tests have been run on some pieces of kit showing nothing gained (do we actually need to test every different cable when dozens have been tested already to know they do nothing?), and even though it should be up to the manufacturers to do the tests and prove they make a difference?
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Absolutely not. You do whatever you want and hold whatever opinion that you choose to
 
However for anyone else who is interested in this stuff in a non judgemental way and has an open mind, I am willing to discuss
 
I thought I had already started. A poster posited that the separation of the two balanced signals would not efficiently cancel the interference when inverted. I gave an example where this showed not to be so.
 
alan_ said:
I thought I had already started. A poster posited that the separation of the two balanced signals would not efficiently cancel the interference when inverted. I gave an example where this showed not to be so.
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I don't see how that specifically validates the claims that were being made for those devices, though. For example, why their particular approach was scientifically better than the usual (and non-extortionate) option.
 
alan_ said:
In theory this would be straightforward to test by parsing each signal and comparing, but until someone does that, The Grateful Dead used a balanced pair of mikes positioned infront of their legendary wall of sound and ran them out of phase in order to negate the feedback that the enormous array would have produced. The thing is, the spacing for the two condensers was 60mm ie much more than the aforementioned cables and the sound was interferance free up to a quarter of a mile away
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Oh god.
 
existentialist said:
I don't see how that specifically validates the claims that were being made for those devices, though. For example, why their particular approach was scientifically better than the usual (and non-extortionate) option.
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I haven't made any claims about the overpriced devices. I have also not defended them in the slightest. Indeed I am probably as sceptical about them as most of the people on this thread, but the difference is I don’t dismiss out of hand unless I know for certain. Thing is if those speaker cables were 9.99 they would probably raise no eyebrows
I thought I may be onto a discussion with a poster about the separation of the two signal wires but after giving me his initial(unsubstantiated) opinion he seems to have fucked me off with an "Oh God"
Saul Goodman said:
Do expensive power leads make a difference to the audio quality?
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I really have not got a clue. Do you know?
 
alan_ said:
Well I dont know. Anything is possible I suppose
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Anything isn't possible. It's impossible to eat seven thousand tons of steel in half a second and shit out a perfect replica of the Eiffel tower. It's impossible to make music sound better (in double blind tests), by spending 20 thousand quid on a power lead.
 
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