Fictionist
Serving Eargasms....
I'm so far ahead that at some future point you will experience the 'Doh I'm a deaf fuckwit' effect.
Do you consider yourself an audiophile?
- Thread starter Doctor Carrot
- Start date
I'm so far ahead that at some future point you will experience the 'Doh I'm a deaf fuckwit' effect.
Fictionist
Serving Eargasms....
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
I'm so far ahead that at some future point you will experience the 'Doh I'm a deaf fuckwit' effect.
I really don't think so, unless of course the laws of physics change at some point.
And if they did, I'm not sure they would bother for speaker cable.
Not only are 'audiophiles' deluded bullshitters but they are also some of the most boring dullards on the planet. To them, music is merely software to test the capabilities of their super-expensive gear.
The only possible explanation of super-expensive cable is that there are some insanely gullible people out there. I can understand pro users spending a bit more on connections - but not due to 'sound quality', rather because the kit is used in a harsher environment and has to be more durable than the home user's cable that will be moved perhaps once every decade.
I defy any 'audiophile' to differentiate, to a level greater than mere chance, in a blind test, between my £5 per metre speaker cable and the super-expensive stuff linked to earlier on in the thread.
And it's not only 'audiophiles' who buy into this garbage - I've seen people claiming HDMI cables can produce 'deeper blacks' and other such bullshit.
The only possible explanation of super-expensive cable is that there are some insanely gullible people out there. I can understand pro users spending a bit more on connections - but not due to 'sound quality', rather because the kit is used in a harsher environment and has to be more durable than the home user's cable that will be moved perhaps once every decade.
I defy any 'audiophile' to differentiate, to a level greater than mere chance, in a blind test, between my £5 per metre speaker cable and the super-expensive stuff linked to earlier on in the thread.
And it's not only 'audiophiles' who buy into this garbage - I've seen people claiming HDMI cables can produce 'deeper blacks' and other such bullshit.
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
...and oddly they don't use test tones and spectrum analyzers, which would soon show them the answer.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Yeah, but that's probably because they're worried it will give them "the" answer they don't want to hear.
Not without good reason, either.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
So. What system are you using VP?
Tell me why it matters, and I'll happily give you a run-down of every last component in the sound-chain of both my separates set-ups.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I've known a few audiophiles who were well into their music.
Most of them, though, did get more pleasure from the kit than the tunes.
Pro-users generally don't spend masses on connectors, though.
The most significant enhancement to interconnects in the last 50 years wasn't oxygen-free copper, it was gold-plating connectors to prevent oxides forming. One thing I really hate (and which you often find on shop-bought patch cables) is moulded jacks. If the solder joint fails you have to chuck the cable, rather than just opening the plug up and re-soldering the joint.
As for hardware, the difference is generally in the quality of the components, in the fact that the circuit board is often mounted with rubber stand-offs to add a degree of impact resistance and that the exterior of the kit may be "ruggedised".
They can't. We know they can't, so do they, but they have to pretend otherwise, or the cognitive dissonance inherent in spending a fortune of a few metres of cable would overwhelm them.
I heard someone coming out with that, too. I think the shop manager was pissed off with me bursting into laughter.
Actually, custom-made interconnects for the terminally-gullible could be a right good money-spinner if I could be arsed to dig out my soldering irons.....
mattie
missing in inaction
Where do people think the tipping point is reached with these things? I've certainly noticed differences between thousand pound set-ups and my old couple of hundred quid one. This is not just the detail (I do find hearing the breaths of the singer more odd than engaging) but also the sound-staging - the individual musicians sound 'placed' and you can easily follow certain movements (or whatever the phrase is) within the overall passage.
How far you'd need to go I'm not sure, as the only expensive set-ups I've heard were all 'pride of place' - anyone who's thrown that much money at a hi-fi is likely to have arranged their room around it, unlike me where my speakers go wherever they won't get in the way.
I bought a 200 quid amp to go with a decent CD player (a Marantz PM44SE which I sadly killed by spiking the speaker cable when it was on) but it sounded superb in contrast to the old midi system I was using before.
I'd entirely agree that two grand cables are a nonsense, but I could well believe certain components would greatly benefit from improved build - capacitors in the amps, magnets, cabinets etc in the speakers and the physical build and the stylus of a turntable. For cables, well, I can see how impedance etc could have an effect but surely not over a few feet?
How far you'd need to go I'm not sure, as the only expensive set-ups I've heard were all 'pride of place' - anyone who's thrown that much money at a hi-fi is likely to have arranged their room around it, unlike me where my speakers go wherever they won't get in the way.
I bought a 200 quid amp to go with a decent CD player (a Marantz PM44SE which I sadly killed by spiking the speaker cable when it was on) but it sounded superb in contrast to the old midi system I was using before.
I'd entirely agree that two grand cables are a nonsense, but I could well believe certain components would greatly benefit from improved build - capacitors in the amps, magnets, cabinets etc in the speakers and the physical build and the stylus of a turntable. For cables, well, I can see how impedance etc could have an effect but surely not over a few feet?
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I wonder if there is a tipping point. I'd imagine that quality of output audio (as presumably measured by increasingly sophisticated equipment) will tend to increase asymptotically as a function of the £££ spent on it as it approaches "perfect" - so the improvement between £100 and £1000 would probably warrant £10000 being spent to achieve the same degree of improvement again. I think that a lot of what drives this desire to spend eyewatering amounts on hi-fi components is a kind of unconscious reversal of that concept - "if I pay squllions for my hi-fi, it must therefore be excellent" - with everything from listening experience to quasi-religious defence of their position following on from there to protect this rather fragile worldview.
Which is why, I think, many of the "audiophile" contributors are tending towards gamesmanship and debating tactics rather than hard facts to press their point.
But all this fails to take into account the non-upgradable component, which is, if there has to be a "tipping point", the main influence on where that might lie. Our ears have certain technical limitations, but they are also highly subjective and variable in the way they respond to sound; not to mention that most of the sound processing we do is in our brains, anyway, and quite a lot of it is learned behaviour and experiential, so hugely subjective.
This is, after all, exactly the principle on which most audio compression schemes work: the psychoacoustic models that tell the compressors which bits of the subjective sound experience the listener is least likely to miss. And maybe that's part of the reason why people insist that they can tell the difference between, say 256kb/sec and 320kb/sec - it's a bit like wanting to tell people you've got a nice big dick - positive acknowledgement of some above-average characteristic, anyway
.And, just as the guy who's a bit self-conscious about his dick size might tend to go out of his way to avoid situations where comparisons might be made, so our audiophile friends will go to strenuous lengths to evade any kind of argument based on objective comparisons.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
Loudspeakers are definitely worth spending some money on.
I have been permanently spoiled by living with stacked Quad ESLs - full range electrostatics are like nothing you've ever experienced. My speakers have a diaphragm area equivalent to twenty 12 inch speakers, but they only move a millimetre or two - so are a direct connection to what you feed into them - even with the matching transformers - In my average living room, it's almost like wearing headphones.
My current two pairs cost me £700 ten years ago. Being 30 to 40 years old, they have a few gremlins - so really need rebuilding. I'm not ruling out spending hundreds, to several thousand having them serviced or replacing them with the modern equivalent. But that will have to wait another ten years when I'm safely installed in my retirement home - ideally with a spare cottage with no neighbours to set them up in.
Sadly there is no cheap way to ESL ownership. I have a book somewhere that shows you how to build your own with tensioned wires and clingfilm, but I don't have the patience. I ended up owning my first pair after considering making my own electrostatic headphones.
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My rather expensive CD player, at the time made a big difference - though I didn't listen to that many to compare. Ten years on, doubtless I could get the equivalent quality for a lot less than the £1,000 I paid for it.
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I think I will always want valves between the two - they behave so well when overloaded - which is pretty well inevitable when you play music at any level. My current one (manufactured in 1965, rebuilt by me 30 years later) may well see me out, but I probably ought to think about replacing it - for £500 / £1000 :-
http://wduk.worldomain.net/acatalog/AmpKits.html
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As for wire.....
My CD player delivers 2 volts into 2 ohms, my valve amp is 100mV in 1M ohm for full power - though there's a 47K pot in a box between the two.
I don't anticipate any characteristic of wire getting in the way.
I have been permanently spoiled by living with stacked Quad ESLs - full range electrostatics are like nothing you've ever experienced. My speakers have a diaphragm area equivalent to twenty 12 inch speakers, but they only move a millimetre or two - so are a direct connection to what you feed into them - even with the matching transformers - In my average living room, it's almost like wearing headphones.
My current two pairs cost me £700 ten years ago. Being 30 to 40 years old, they have a few gremlins - so really need rebuilding. I'm not ruling out spending hundreds, to several thousand having them serviced or replacing them with the modern equivalent. But that will have to wait another ten years when I'm safely installed in my retirement home - ideally with a spare cottage with no neighbours to set them up in.
Sadly there is no cheap way to ESL ownership. I have a book somewhere that shows you how to build your own with tensioned wires and clingfilm, but I don't have the patience. I ended up owning my first pair after considering making my own electrostatic headphones.
--------------
My rather expensive CD player, at the time made a big difference - though I didn't listen to that many to compare. Ten years on, doubtless I could get the equivalent quality for a lot less than the £1,000 I paid for it.
--------------
I think I will always want valves between the two - they behave so well when overloaded - which is pretty well inevitable when you play music at any level. My current one (manufactured in 1965, rebuilt by me 30 years later) may well see me out, but I probably ought to think about replacing it - for £500 / £1000 :-
http://wduk.worldomain.net/acatalog/AmpKits.html
-------------
As for wire.....
My CD player delivers 2 volts into 2 ohms, my valve amp is 100mV in 1M ohm for full power - though there's a 47K pot in a box between the two.
I don't anticipate any characteristic of wire getting in the way.
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
Ethan Winer?
Any chance you can make some sense?
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I googled him, but couldn't bend a vague reference into any kind of point.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Speaker cables and interconnects have a simple role: To facilitate the passage of a signal from A to B with the absolute minimum of signal degradation. All cables degrade the signal, some more than others. IMO if you hear a tonal difference using one cable over another, and one cable gives the tone more "presence", the cable is fucking with the signal, because the difference should be (and generally is) infinitesimal.
Interconnects that colour the sound are either crap interconnects, or artefacts of the buyer's fantasy life.
audiotech
wav, aiff, mp3, ogg, flac
Which I have on my Sennheiser headphones. Last time I purchased a replacement lead it cost £13.95.
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
I know who he is, I just can't quite work out what on earth Fictionist is getting at...
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Me neither. Perhaps he's being quasi-cryptic to go with his quasi-cryptic quantum signalturbulative interconnects.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
bmd
Island in the stream.
I used to have a Rega turntable with a Linn arm on it and I saved for ages and bought a Goldring cartridge for it that cost about £50. I took it home, thinking about what I would play on it first and fitted it to the arm. Then went to get myself a cup of tea to relax with whilst I listened to the magnificence that was my all new sound.
I got back in the front room and my 2 year old daughter had tried to help me by grabbing the end of the arm and had yanked the needle out of the cartridge and mangled it up with her tiny lovely hands. Bless her.
This cured me of any audiophile pretensions.
I got back in the front room and my 2 year old daughter had tried to help me by grabbing the end of the arm and had yanked the needle out of the cartridge and mangled it up with her tiny lovely hands. Bless her.
This cured me of any audiophile pretensions.
audiotech
wav, aiff, mp3, ogg, flac
ATOMIC SUPLEX
Member Since: 1985 Post Count: 3
I had a dream about soldering cables last night. They were all really dodgy and crackled when moved but no amount of solder would fix them.
It was one of those anxiety dreams as there was a time limit and clients involved.
It was one of those anxiety dreams as there was a time limit and clients involved.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
*indicates couch in corner and gets out Bumper Book of Rorsach Inkblots*
I diagnose interconnect envy. There is only one solution: you must replace all of the cables in your house with zero-oxygen unobtanium/copper alloy cables, insulated with a special layer made from the noses of orphaned baby otters.
As it happens, I've got some in stock - to you, guv, £293.47 a metre.
stupid dogbot
Haughty and Superior
You won't really be able to hear any difference, but you can pretend that you can on the internet to make you feel better... 
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Anyone else asking themselves why fictionist appears to be avoiding the thread? 
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Well, he's probably decided that it's pointless trying to convert such a recidivist bunch of incorrigibles to the True Cause, and has cast us asunder into the Pit of Ignorance.Anyone else asking themselves why fictionist appears to be avoiding the thread?
Did you have an alternative explanation...?
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
He's probably off somewhere indulging in erotic asphyxiation with one of his £2000 cables, furiously masturbating to Barry White playing through his £3000 amp driven £10000 stack.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Well, he's probably decided that it's pointless trying to convert such a recidivist bunch of incorrigibles to the True Cause, and has cast us asunder into the Pit of Ignorance.
Did you have an alternative explanation...?
Well, for a little while I thought he might be too embarrassed, but then I realised that someone who hears tonal differences in interconnects probably doesn't "do" embarrassment.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
