I would disagree with the initial premise that it's about the pursuit of "perfect sound reproduction". There's many people who do that, but that's not what the audiophile world really has become. It's about a bunch of hand waving and big checkbook spending to impress other audiophiles. Oddly, that describes a lot of "hobbies".
Nobody who feels that a $4,000 power cable is important has any semblance of sanity remaining. It's the homeopathy of consumer electronics.
As someone who spends far too much money on 20+ years old cars, I think I have to agree with you. Being an audiophile is a bit like being a car enthusiast: there really is nothing rational about spending so much money on something that most people don't see the value of, something that is so subjective that you can't explain it to them. I think in the end, it's more about the joy you get out of the idea of being able to spend that kind of money on something that so few people are willing or able to do. Subliminally, it affects your perception of how awesome the car or the audio setup actually is, if you ask an outsider, chances are he or she doesn't see or hear anything better that what 'normal' people are using.
But it's not about cheap and expensive, and it's only partly about measurable performance. It's just as much about style (this car was designed with the "perfect" stance) and about personal preference. Things you're not going to get everyone to agree on, and occasionally are plain irrational.
> At least you could tell the difference between a cheap car and an expensive car in a blind test.
If I show my car to people, most of them don't see a 'modern classic', a 'rare limited edition', a 'real drivers car' or a 'high performance vehicle' with 'upgraded specifications'. They just see a re-sprayed 20-year old clunker without satnav, double airbags or cupholders ;-)
Sure, but you can still tell the difference. Not even audiophiles can distinguish much audiophile equipment from more mundane equipment in a blind test.
First off, that begs the question: how reliable do you consider a comment on a forum? Are you going to condemn an entire industry based on that? But that doesn't really matter. As I mentioned in my reply to mikeash, that's just not enough evidence. I'm not going to repeat myself here. You can read my other comment to understand why one piece of evidence isn't conclusive.
To address the Engadget article, it took one paragraph of that post out of context to make a narrow point about Monster cables. If you read the rest of the post (and probably the rest of the forum thread), it's clear that the author is not advocating that there's no difference between any stereo equipment. In fact, the thread that he's posting in is about how to choose the right loudspeakers. The paragraph that was taken out of context is just part of the author making a point to the other forum participants.
In another post (in the same thread), the author writes: "Some systems sound boring, some are absolutely alive (such as on large horn speakers). Others are polite, compressed, but accurate (Martin Logans, Quads). Then again, others are explosive and extremely good at creating 'illusion' of reality such as Wilson Wamm, and like speakers in the $50,000 to $125,000.00 bracket. They draw you into an altered state of mind (hypnosis)" [1]. It seems to me that he's saying he can hear the difference between speakers, which is exactly contrary to the conclusion that you're using his words to support. "Audiophile equipment" and "mundane equipment" includes more than just speaker cables.
I can't find the original, because the author took it down. Not because he realized he was wrong, but because he was getting too much hate mail. In a followup post (now also unavailable, for some reason), he completely stood by his original conclusion:
"As in, demonstrably more refinement in the upper ranges; more extended harmonics; better separation and superior articulation across the range. The generic cable sounded warmer, fuzzier, less distinct - actually blurry. The biggest differentiator was arguably the additional information above the upper midrange."
(That's from page 2, which is accessed by a not-entirely-obvious "next" link at the bottom.)
No, I didn't make that up. This reviewer is reporting substantially better audio from using a high-end USB cable. You know, a digital connector, where data either arrives or it doesn't. And he's not reporting that the cheap cable loses any data, because that would show up as clicks, pops, static, or worse. No, he's reporting that the cheap cable is "fuzzier", and the expensive one shows "more refinement". From a digital cable.
I have no doubt that there are people out there who actually understand audio equipment and spend good money on stuff that actually makes a difference. However, I doubt most of them will self-describe as "audiophiles", because that word has been largely co-opted by a crowd that operates on the same level as homeopaths and palm readers.
If anybody can reliably distinguish the expensive SATA cable from a regular one in a proper blind test, then I will cheerfully retract all of the above.
Thanks for the links. They were entertaining. But I'm afraid they don't provide evidence to support the claim that audiophiles can't tell the difference between audiophile equipment and more mundane equipment.
You've shown two anecdotes of audiophile reviewers making claims that a high-end digital cable improves audio quality. We both know that those claims are bunk. But picking a couple of anecdotes doesn't qualify as conclusive evidence. For example, I could find a few scientists that claim that global warming isn't real. But those scientists have a dissenting opinion from the rest of the scientific community on global warming. Hence, the anecdotes don't indicate the overall trend.
Every field has its share quacks. Showing me a couple anecdotes doesn't convince me that an entire field is filled with quacks.
> If anybody can reliably distinguish the expensive SATA cable from a regular one in a proper blind test, then I will cheerfully retract all of the above.
I appreciate that you're approaching this with skepticism. I think that's the right approach. I highly doubt that anyone will ever be able to distinguish between SATA cables in a blind study, so I think our conclusions about digital signal cables will hold.
The lack of skepticism on the part of the reviewers is the real problem we're seeing here. This quote from your second ZDNet link is telling:
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.
I wouldn't be surprised the reviewer really did hear a difference, but it was probably in his head. (Even though he admits that he knows its impossible.) Enjoying music is a psychological process, which makes it even more important to do double-blind tests when doing a comparison in order to remove expectation bias.
This problem, I admit, is prevalent among hi-fi reviews. I've read a lot of reviews of different stereo equipment and not once seen a reviewer use a double-blind test. I've heard that a lot of times, reviewers have a financial incentive to post glowing reviews. I don't know how true that is. If it is true, that will probably make it harder to get reviewers to adopt double-blind testing. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes (ZDNet author) should be commended for taking Malcolm Steward (hi-fi blogger) to task over his SATA cable reviews. I'd love to see hi-fi reviewers take a more scientific approach.
However, it does not follow that all audiophiles are incapable of discerning the differences in equipment. First of all, the evidence we've looked at so far only concerns reviewers. We haven't looked at hobbyists. Do hobbyists accept everything that the reviewers write? It's one thing for a reviewer to write a glowing review for a new product (especially when the manufacture pays a lot of money for ads in their magazine). It's quite another for someone to actually spend hard-earned cash on that new product. Lastly, we've only discussed digital cables so far. Which isn't really fair, because that's not a component that can make a difference. What about DACs, amplifiers, and speakers? Do you honestly think that audiophiles can't tell the difference between a good speaker and a budget speaker? Even better, do you have any evidence that that's true?
I honestly don't know the answers to these questions. If I was a betting man, I would bet that a lot of people can tell the difference between cheap and mid-range, but I have no clue about mid-range and high-end. (Say, for example, $30 headphones from Best Buy versus $300 Sennheissers versus $3000 planar magnetic headphones.) So it's also going to depend on how we define "audiophile equipment" versus "mundane equipment." Are we comparing the $3000 headphones to the $300 ones or the $300 pair to the $30 pair? I suspect it will make a difference which ones we decide to compare.
My point in all of this is that more evidence is needed to substantiate a claim as large as, "n...
My comment is really about audiophile equipment. I say that audiophiles can't tell the difference with much equipment in blind tests, because nobody can, because it makes no difference. There are plenty of other examples out there of crazy high-end digital cables like the two examples I showed. People do buy them. I was intentionally vague with the word "much", only meaning to point out that there's a lot of this stuff out there, not make any quantitative statement about just how much.
As for your goal of building a better stereo system, I'd say your best bet is to avoid any community that self-describes as "audiophile". I imagine you know enough about audio to know what makes sense and what doesn't, so see how people evaluate stuff and go for the people who use sane benchmarks. Avoid anybody who talks about stuff being "warm" or similar, especially in the context of changing digital components, and look for people who provide measurement of sensible numbers.
You still seem to be hung up on digital. Digital is only a small segment of audio equipment.
> I say that audiophiles can't tell the difference with much equipment in blind tests, because nobody can, because it makes no difference.
That only holds true for digital equipment, but not for analog. If that's your definition of audiophile equipment, then your position makes sense. But that doesn't fit my definition of audiophile equipment, and I think a lot of audiophiles would disagree, too.
> As for your goal of building a better stereo system, I'd say your best bet is to avoid any community that self-describes as "audiophile".
I appreciate you're advice. I mean no offense by this, but I'm going to pass. I'm just not going to avoid an entire group of people because some guy on the internet (who I've never met) has some unsubstantiated claims about that group of people.
I think there are two main sects in audiophile-land, really: perfection and experience.
The perfection side has scopes, meters, and blind testing among its tools. The goal is in fact "perfect sound reproduction". The problem here is that between the original source (microphone, usually) and the listener's brain is all of this stuff that distorts the sound. Removing it completely is really hard, and replicating that quality repeatedly is even harder.
The experience side has experts, rituals, and demos. The goal there is to reach the limit of audio experience, literally to hear what wouldn't otherwise be heard with lesser systems. The problem on this end is that "near-perfect" systems deliver less exciting and engaging experiences than what the experience experts deem to be better. They don't enjoy the systems calibrated to perfection as much as their own custom systems with tweaks and rituals applied.
These two sides really are in a bit of opposition, but it's nice to have both to drive the high-end market of audio equipment.
I have a $2500 setup so I may not be a sane voice on this issue, but I honestly think part of it (the mid-range?) is partly about setting up an environment in which "just" actively listening to music is acceptable (as opposed to watching TV or a movie).
I think that's something that's misunderstood by a lot of people. When actively listening to music without other distractions, the distortion in low-end systems becomes very apparent and detracts from the experience.
When listening to music in the background and while doing other things (cleaning the house, cooking, driving, socializing with others, working out at the gym, etc), distortion is easily lost in other background noises (and you're not paying as much attention to it anyway). For a lot of people, I think this is the only way they ever listen to music, and so it's understandable why they wouldn't see the value in higher quality components.
For someone like yourself, who will actively listen to music without other distractions, it makes sense to spend a few thousand dollars for a better experience. With more expensive systems, I think you start to see diminishing returns. (But I'm not as dismissive as other commenters in saying that there's no difference.)
I also question the sanity of anyone spending that much on equipment and seemingly nothing on room treatments. If your goal is accurate sound reproduction, your room is going to be one of the biggest sources of problems (phase smearing, standing waves/room nodes, flutter, etc), especially in smaller square-shaped rooms. Spending $10k on a sound system and zero on room treatment is like putting monster truck tires on a lawn mower. It's no coincidence that studio control rooms, especially ones that do commercial-quality mastering, use all kinds of room treatment tricks to ensure the mastering engineer can accurately hear everything in a mix.
And while I don't think audiophiles are just about spending money to impress friends, sometimes they go about things in incredibly inefficient ways and pretend they are not susceptible to placebo effects.
Agree, a real audiophile is not one who pays 250k his system. After a few thousand dollars there is no real difference.. I'm sorry but I've been mixing/mastering for over 10 years and for 2000$ plus a great room, you have it, the best sound you can imagine. Buying more and more expensive stuff is more like a drug than a true need. Audio entertainement (and) professionnal are two of the most overpriced fields.
"Nobody who feels that a $4,000 power cable is important has any semblance of sanity remaining."
This line of argument is one of the most common attacks against the 'irrational snake-oil' that audiophiles purchase. Yet, I have to disagree. Its not that I believe that a $4k power cord has any/significant technical advantage over a $4 power cord. You used the words 'feels' and 'important'. The feeling of listening to a $4k power cord is clearly internal and subjective as is the determination of its importance. If the listener 'feels' that the $4k cord makes a difference, makes the experience better, then it has value to them and I think that they certainly have the freedom to assign how much importance it has. If audio is your passion, then perhaps there is real value, if perhaps only symbolically, to devoting large sums of cash to it in tribute. In my experience, audiophiles aren't simply gullible rich guys mindlessly blowing money on $4k power cords. Many have very deep relationships with music and with their stereo equipment. This relationship is often complex and rich enough that spending large amounts of money on a new 'X' would almost be like purchasing your wife a gold bracelet. Almost.
I thought that way for a long time too - but ultimately I think the limited/artificial soundstage with headphones has to hold them back a bit, in the realm of merely "very good" rather than "nearly perfect".
My headphone rig objectively sounds better than my speaker rig, but the speakers ultimately sound more natural, even if by objective measurements (e.g. frequency response) they're markedly inferior.
(Neither rig is super high end, not too far above the ~$1000 system at the end of the article, but they are all properly chosen and installed components.)
You can fix the soundstage somewhat using an xfeed filter. It's simplistic, but does help move the soundstage out from inside your head to being perceived more in front.
It's pretty easy to set this up for most software sources, sadly not typically supported by hardware players or phones.
One of the best crossfeeds is the VST plugin hdphx from Refined Audiometrics Laboratory. They don't offer it anymore on the original site but you can still find it. I am sure crossfeeds built into an amp are better but for a software solution it sounds the best to my ears.
Well, the xfeed filter is really only trying to mimick the way the far ear can hear more energy from a speaker at frequencies low enough that the head doesn't shadow it. So it doesn't need to be a particularly complex filter. Trying to make the correction curve too detailed will likely just result in clearly heard artifacts.
Am I crazy for actively preferring the inside-the-head soundstage? It's one of the main reasons I've switched to using headphones even when speakers would be more convenient.
Yeah, what I meant by "amp" was integrated USB DAC + amp. I use a Headroom Total Bithead, which isn't the best, but isn't the worst. I am not really sure what the best in various price ranges would be.
There's huge variation in quality of headphone-out on computers. I'm sure some are good, and most Apple products are at least ok, but I've usually found even the lowest end (CMOY, Filo, etc.) is a big improvement.
(plus, the amp is really helpful for high-impedance headphones. Mine range from ~30 to ~600 Ohm.)
This would be true if they used a head simulator for recording. Since they don't, you will get the wrong projection. All headphones sound more like "the concert is happening between my ears" than "the concert is happening on a stage in front of me".
Before laying down any money, I'd recommend heading over to hydrogen audio (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/) and reading around for a while, or asking questions. As part of their terms of service, they require listening test data to back up any claims of audible differences. It makes for some pretty interesting discussions, and it's changed my outlook quite a bit. It's also probably saved me quite a bit of money.
The logarithmic scale is the key insight. It would be interesting to ponder whether there are any hobbies that involve buying stuff regularly that don't feature this. I know from experience wine is very similar (and, of course, value can be had if you know what you want to compromise).
Usually priceonomics provides statistics from a large poll of customer/purchase record, .etc. That is information you couldn't gain elsewhere. Somewhat like an analytics publication.
This article is just a description of a shopping experience, together with the research result you have to do before you buy something that is a new category to you.
Audiophile & Student checking in here. Most people don't realize that there is gold on craigslist that older crowd is throwing out due to their wives nagging ("These speakers are too big.." etc) I've put together an amazing system using Polk SDA-2b's, Parasound HCA-1200, & Onkyo TS-DX787(as a preamp)(donated) and behringer uca-202 DAC for under 300 dollars. Cables are all monoprice and it blows my mind that people pay more for snake-oil cables.
Being an audiophile is rather cheap once you gather the knowledge on forums (audiokarma.org) and patience at craigslist/thriftstores/ebay.
Yep, some of that gear from the 70's and 80's is still very very excellent, pair it with a good DAC (nuforce say) and you've got great sound for small $$'s.
In this day and age, you can just look up the model number and read a review on it, and find plenty of reviews on forums. After a short while you find out what makes a quality model and not (construction quality, driver quality etc). Best way imo is to start looking stuff up and reading.
I question the long term survival and accuracy of the capacitors in electronics that old. You often have non-fatal (to the device) but defective caps in say, filters, etc.
I built my system in a similar way (e.g. a great Threshold S200 amplifier from the 80's cost me $700).
One frustration I had was never being sure what is a good price. In part to scratch that itch (as well as the "learn Haskell" itch), I've built http://kruipen.com to track used audio equipment prices.
"At the same time, it’s hard not to think that audiophiles are on the wrong side of history. As the rest of the world joyfully listens to Spotify and Pandora on their iPhones, audiophiles still listen to CDs! The march of technological progress has many casualties, and sound quality may just be one of them. The product desires of audiophiles are so idiosyncratic and contrary to popular tastes; they have an uphill battle to protect sound quality against faster, cheaper and more social access to music."
This is not how I see it going down. There are a couple reasons why older formats of music aren't going anywhere and will always serve as compliments to the newer digital formats.
The biggest difference between buying CDs/Vinyl vs. a subscription to Spotify/Pandora is ownership. For the foreseeable future there will be a significant market of people, including audiophiles and DJs who want to own the music they buy rather than lease it. And it's now possible for regular to receive the benefits of both formats by buying CDs, ripping them to a media server and then streaming them to your phone or tablet using services such as Audiogalaxy and Google Music.
The other reason is the lack of innovation in high quality audio formats. As evidenced by the failure of SACD, the demand is simply not big enough to support the research and marketing of new physical mediums designed solely for music. In the future we will be forced to rely on CDs (which are never the weakest link anyways in an audiophiles system) or piggyback onto other, more popular formats such as Bluray for 5.1+ high quality audio.
I can't help but think that for the average person this guy is right. The audiophiles are going deeper and deeper into owning high-quality media to play on their high-quality systems.
I have several large boxes of CD's which I know look at with scorn. I haven't used a CD or even a ripped copy of them in years. I've tried Audiogalaxy, Google Music, iTunes Match, and Amazon MP3. It takes a lot of effort to migrate your music to each of those services.
What I've found by using subscription services is what the author is saying: cheaper, faster, and more social access to music. Audiophiles will continue to have their niche but I tend to agree that that is not the way history is going.
There is conclusive data on what we want from reproduction systems: [1][2]. Sad that a place calling itself priconomics can't even google for the most straightforward econometric study on the topic.
Engineering for the above metrics is straightforward, and not particularly costly. Even a 10k system can tie for top rank in blind tests if you pay attention to the details that actually have leverage against perception. If you're paying 250k for a home audio system, you're being sold an expensive trinket through a narrative of fetishism.
By the time most people could afford any of this equipment their hearing has probably degraded to such a point that they can only hear 12kHz to 14kHz anyway.
Although unscientific, I played some tones on youtube in the office and the twenty somethings could hear almost 20kHz and the forty somethings couldn't hear anything by the time the frequency sweep was just below 15kHz.
Very high quality audio reproduction can be hacked too, and audio enthusiasts like myself know how to find deals and hacks to get superior performance with much less money. For example, I have a circle of friends who upgrade the OPAMP chips on their sound cards ($10) or use Sonic T-Amp ($30 triclass T-Class digital amp rivaling hifi tube amplifiers) paired with passive studio monitors from Wharfedale, Celestion, or Tannoy (around $200 on ebay when recording studios upgrade to powered monitors).
Um... You COULD spend a lot of money, or you could learn some basic electronic and woodworking skills. I built a set of ZDT3.5's (Google it) for $250. I built (from various kit pieces) my own T-amp for $75 to power them. Your Mac already has a great sound card capable of extreme sample playback rates. A couple of FLAC recordings later, you're in business.
You know, blind testing is a really nice mind hack. For instance, I've discovered that I can't tell the difference between two brands of tea I liked, one of which is cheaper and easier to find.
This is a huge win! I haven't lost Refinement Points because I don't need to buy fancy tea. But I have gained money and convenience.
If you're an audiophile, wine lover, or anyone else who spends a lot for quality that "others can't appreciate", I humbly suggest that you put yourself to a test. If you pass, your sophisticated taste is validated. If you fail, you can spend a lot less money and be content knowing you're getting just as good an experience.
I really think you have to go through the experience of blind testing to really get it at a visceral level how wrong your gut feeling can be and how much you're projecting what information you know onto your sensory experience.
I don't understand what you're saying. The harm is that you're losing money. Even if you're a complete materialist/hedonist and happy with that, this makes sense for you. The money you save on tea can be spent on music, or massage, or sushi. Why wouldn't you want that?
It's also possible that you'll find you actually like the more expensive tea better, which is fine. Then you'll know it's money well spent.
If you really get enjoyment out of expensive stuff because it's expensive, I'd be happy to sell you some milk for $300 a gallon. Trust me, it's the best. I'll put a fancy label on it and everything.
Most times I value my time higher than my money and hence skip the research and enjoy my tea. And don't care one bit if there is a cheaper brand of tea out there that would be of higher quality.
OK, I totally agree about the time vs money tradeoff, but in my case I was taking extra time to special order something which 5 minutes' experimentation showed was unnecessary. Same could be said for an audiophile looking for perfect speakers instead of buying whatever is at the store.
If working in the audio industry and studying the topic at university has taught me anything about audiophilia, then that would be the fact that audiophiles tend to fail to take room acoustics seriously.
Realistically, any half decent source and amplifier will introduce practically no distortion compared to what the combination of the speaker (and placement) and the listening room introduce. The only thing that makes loudspeakers viable really is our uncanny ability to make sense of room acoustical distortions. Thus, we can sense the true sound even though it has been mangled by echos, reverberations and room modes.
However, we can still hear the distortion--and much more so than the comparatively small distortions introduced by sources, amplifiers or cables.
The thing is, if you really want some stellar sound from your home stereo, it does not make much sense to spend more than a couple thousand bucks on audio equipment without significantly improving your room acoustics. A $1000 sound system in a good room will always outperform any system in a bad room. So if you really want to improve your sound, you should probably look into room acoustical measures.
I have heard some > $40k sound systems in purpose-built rooms. The result is really amazing. If you close your eyes, even a trained ear will have difficulties discerning the recording from the original. In one recording studio, they had a $100k sound system. However, they also had a room to match it: The room was physically decoupled from the outside world (the whole room was standing on rubber feet, so to speak), it had special double windows, a purpose-built air conditioning and above all, loads of sound absorbing material and architecture.
And frankly, if you really are serious about sound quality, this is the kind of effort you have to make in order to get there. Spending the same money on more expensive speakers won't help.
The premise of "perfect sound" is almost antithetical to the current state of the audiophile world. Some of the most expensive, well reviewed "audiophile" systems have worse specs than your run of the mill, mid-fi system. Heck, look at the obsession with vinyl, no matter which way you look at it, no matter how much superstition you have, the simple fact is that it has poorer fidelity than a CD. That "magic" quality that makes vinyl sound better than digital? Distortion. Albeit a quite pleasing distortion, but a distortion non the less. Plain and simple.
The world of audiophile gear is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. The human ear, just like the human eye, is.. well, rather poor. We have a very small spectrum in which we operate. So these magazines like stereophile will plop an osciliscope onto the latest piece of gear and marvel over the fact that it's flat from 0 to a kazillion and then talk about its "creamy, refined mids." Someone please kill me.
Audiophile USB cables, audiophile mode-correcting rocks, audiophile amps with .00000000000001% THD, that damn marker to color your CDs with? All hooey. I once read in a forum an anecdote about a guy switching from Monster, to some other overpriced cable and being able to tell the difference from a room away. This was not a tongue in cheek post.
The big problem is that this stuff is eerily close to religion. A bulk of the hard-core, $7000 CD player audiophiles I know are actually rather well educated -- engineers of one type or another, but they slip into cognitive dissonance when it comes to anything relating to audio. A phrase uttered far too frequently is "You can't measure what I'm hearing." Once that mindset is adopted, confirmation bias is king. Here's a $4k pear audio cable. It'll increase the air in the high end by around 15%.
I could (but don't) call myself an audiophile -- I love the world of sound around me.
I notice the aural qualities of every room I enter; when I'm in a small space with hard walls, I hum a bit to identify the pitch that will make the room resonate. (I'll bet some with perfect pitch could measure the space between two walls quite accurately with their eyes closed by learning the wave sizes...).
I notice when someone's speech or laugh in my house causes sympathetic vibrations on the strings of my acoustic bass guitar in the corner. Or on the metal cover of the radiator.
I've spent decades learning to produce sound, from various instruments including the built-in ones (like whistling, body percussion, various forms of vocal music including Tuuvan throat singing), to making music from objects never intended to be instruments. When I listen to others making music I pick it apart in my head.
There are lots of people with better-trained ears than I have, who make better music as well -- so moving on: how much money have I spent on audio reproduction equipment?
Probably less than $500 in my lifetime.
The music I'm listening to the most right now are performances of the Brandenburg Concertos, from YouTube, played from a Macbook Air speaker in another room, while I march up and down the stairs with a baby over my shoulder.
I like the way it echoes up the narrow stairs, and how there's one spot partway up that's more resonant than anywhere else. I can't hear subtle details -- so what? I know what that sounds like already; my brain can fill in the missing bits. And there's no possible playback that can reproduce actually performing music -- imagine tje cello vibrating against your body and filling your ears, the thrumming pushback of the bow against your hand -- and these are the things worth having in your head when you listen to someone more accomplished playing a piece.
I'll probably get a decent set of speakers someday (though I can't imagine paying more than I'd pay for an actual well-made instrument), but any playback is unavoidably a shadow of the actual performance; I can't imagine caring deeply about getting a perfectly crisp shadow (as long as I get a reasonably clear one) when I'm just using it to imagine the real thing anyway.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadNobody who feels that a $4,000 power cable is important has any semblance of sanity remaining. It's the homeopathy of consumer electronics.
If I show my car to people, most of them don't see a 'modern classic', a 'rare limited edition', a 'real drivers car' or a 'high performance vehicle' with 'upgraded specifications'. They just see a re-sprayed 20-year old clunker without satnav, double airbags or cupholders ;-)
That's a pretty broad generalization about a large group of people. Do you have any facts to back it up?
First off, that begs the question: how reliable do you consider a comment on a forum? Are you going to condemn an entire industry based on that? But that doesn't really matter. As I mentioned in my reply to mikeash, that's just not enough evidence. I'm not going to repeat myself here. You can read my other comment to understand why one piece of evidence isn't conclusive.
To address the Engadget article, it took one paragraph of that post out of context to make a narrow point about Monster cables. If you read the rest of the post (and probably the rest of the forum thread), it's clear that the author is not advocating that there's no difference between any stereo equipment. In fact, the thread that he's posting in is about how to choose the right loudspeakers. The paragraph that was taken out of context is just part of the author making a point to the other forum participants.
In another post (in the same thread), the author writes: "Some systems sound boring, some are absolutely alive (such as on large horn speakers). Others are polite, compressed, but accurate (Martin Logans, Quads). Then again, others are explosive and extremely good at creating 'illusion' of reality such as Wilson Wamm, and like speakers in the $50,000 to $125,000.00 bracket. They draw you into an altered state of mind (hypnosis)" [1]. It seems to me that he's saying he can hear the difference between speakers, which is exactly contrary to the conclusion that you're using his words to support. "Audiophile equipment" and "mundane equipment" includes more than just speaker cables.
[1] http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/15419-post31.html
A review of audiophile SATA cables (yes, the digital connectors that let your hard drives talk to your computer) quickly became infamous:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/dont-buy-into-the-expensi...
I can't find the original, because the author took it down. Not because he realized he was wrong, but because he was getting too much hate mail. In a followup post (now also unavailable, for some reason), he completely stood by his original conclusion:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/that-sata-cable-saga-the-...
Please read the quotes from the original post, they are absolutely priceless.
Here is a similarly hilarious review of a high-end audiophile USB cable:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/entreq/usb.html
A choice quote:
"As in, demonstrably more refinement in the upper ranges; more extended harmonics; better separation and superior articulation across the range. The generic cable sounded warmer, fuzzier, less distinct - actually blurry. The biggest differentiator was arguably the additional information above the upper midrange."
(That's from page 2, which is accessed by a not-entirely-obvious "next" link at the bottom.)
No, I didn't make that up. This reviewer is reporting substantially better audio from using a high-end USB cable. You know, a digital connector, where data either arrives or it doesn't. And he's not reporting that the cheap cable loses any data, because that would show up as clicks, pops, static, or worse. No, he's reporting that the cheap cable is "fuzzier", and the expensive one shows "more refinement". From a digital cable.
I have no doubt that there are people out there who actually understand audio equipment and spend good money on stuff that actually makes a difference. However, I doubt most of them will self-describe as "audiophiles", because that word has been largely co-opted by a crowd that operates on the same level as homeopaths and palm readers.
If anybody can reliably distinguish the expensive SATA cable from a regular one in a proper blind test, then I will cheerfully retract all of the above.
You've shown two anecdotes of audiophile reviewers making claims that a high-end digital cable improves audio quality. We both know that those claims are bunk. But picking a couple of anecdotes doesn't qualify as conclusive evidence. For example, I could find a few scientists that claim that global warming isn't real. But those scientists have a dissenting opinion from the rest of the scientific community on global warming. Hence, the anecdotes don't indicate the overall trend.
Every field has its share quacks. Showing me a couple anecdotes doesn't convince me that an entire field is filled with quacks.
> If anybody can reliably distinguish the expensive SATA cable from a regular one in a proper blind test, then I will cheerfully retract all of the above.
I appreciate that you're approaching this with skepticism. I think that's the right approach. I highly doubt that anyone will ever be able to distinguish between SATA cables in a blind study, so I think our conclusions about digital signal cables will hold.
The lack of skepticism on the part of the reviewers is the real problem we're seeing here. This quote from your second ZDNet link is telling:
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.
I wouldn't be surprised the reviewer really did hear a difference, but it was probably in his head. (Even though he admits that he knows its impossible.) Enjoying music is a psychological process, which makes it even more important to do double-blind tests when doing a comparison in order to remove expectation bias.
This problem, I admit, is prevalent among hi-fi reviews. I've read a lot of reviews of different stereo equipment and not once seen a reviewer use a double-blind test. I've heard that a lot of times, reviewers have a financial incentive to post glowing reviews. I don't know how true that is. If it is true, that will probably make it harder to get reviewers to adopt double-blind testing. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes (ZDNet author) should be commended for taking Malcolm Steward (hi-fi blogger) to task over his SATA cable reviews. I'd love to see hi-fi reviewers take a more scientific approach.
However, it does not follow that all audiophiles are incapable of discerning the differences in equipment. First of all, the evidence we've looked at so far only concerns reviewers. We haven't looked at hobbyists. Do hobbyists accept everything that the reviewers write? It's one thing for a reviewer to write a glowing review for a new product (especially when the manufacture pays a lot of money for ads in their magazine). It's quite another for someone to actually spend hard-earned cash on that new product. Lastly, we've only discussed digital cables so far. Which isn't really fair, because that's not a component that can make a difference. What about DACs, amplifiers, and speakers? Do you honestly think that audiophiles can't tell the difference between a good speaker and a budget speaker? Even better, do you have any evidence that that's true?
I honestly don't know the answers to these questions. If I was a betting man, I would bet that a lot of people can tell the difference between cheap and mid-range, but I have no clue about mid-range and high-end. (Say, for example, $30 headphones from Best Buy versus $300 Sennheissers versus $3000 planar magnetic headphones.) So it's also going to depend on how we define "audiophile equipment" versus "mundane equipment." Are we comparing the $3000 headphones to the $300 ones or the $300 pair to the $30 pair? I suspect it will make a difference which ones we decide to compare.
My point in all of this is that more evidence is needed to substantiate a claim as large as, "n...
As for your goal of building a better stereo system, I'd say your best bet is to avoid any community that self-describes as "audiophile". I imagine you know enough about audio to know what makes sense and what doesn't, so see how people evaluate stuff and go for the people who use sane benchmarks. Avoid anybody who talks about stuff being "warm" or similar, especially in the context of changing digital components, and look for people who provide measurement of sensible numbers.
> I say that audiophiles can't tell the difference with much equipment in blind tests, because nobody can, because it makes no difference.
That only holds true for digital equipment, but not for analog. If that's your definition of audiophile equipment, then your position makes sense. But that doesn't fit my definition of audiophile equipment, and I think a lot of audiophiles would disagree, too.
> As for your goal of building a better stereo system, I'd say your best bet is to avoid any community that self-describes as "audiophile".
I appreciate you're advice. I mean no offense by this, but I'm going to pass. I'm just not going to avoid an entire group of people because some guy on the internet (who I've never met) has some unsubstantiated claims about that group of people.
The perfection side has scopes, meters, and blind testing among its tools. The goal is in fact "perfect sound reproduction". The problem here is that between the original source (microphone, usually) and the listener's brain is all of this stuff that distorts the sound. Removing it completely is really hard, and replicating that quality repeatedly is even harder.
The experience side has experts, rituals, and demos. The goal there is to reach the limit of audio experience, literally to hear what wouldn't otherwise be heard with lesser systems. The problem on this end is that "near-perfect" systems deliver less exciting and engaging experiences than what the experience experts deem to be better. They don't enjoy the systems calibrated to perfection as much as their own custom systems with tweaks and rituals applied.
These two sides really are in a bit of opposition, but it's nice to have both to drive the high-end market of audio equipment.
When listening to music in the background and while doing other things (cleaning the house, cooking, driving, socializing with others, working out at the gym, etc), distortion is easily lost in other background noises (and you're not paying as much attention to it anyway). For a lot of people, I think this is the only way they ever listen to music, and so it's understandable why they wouldn't see the value in higher quality components.
For someone like yourself, who will actively listen to music without other distractions, it makes sense to spend a few thousand dollars for a better experience. With more expensive systems, I think you start to see diminishing returns. (But I'm not as dismissive as other commenters in saying that there's no difference.)
And while I don't think audiophiles are just about spending money to impress friends, sometimes they go about things in incredibly inefficient ways and pretend they are not susceptible to placebo effects.
As with most hobbies.
This line of argument is one of the most common attacks against the 'irrational snake-oil' that audiophiles purchase. Yet, I have to disagree. Its not that I believe that a $4k power cord has any/significant technical advantage over a $4 power cord. You used the words 'feels' and 'important'. The feeling of listening to a $4k power cord is clearly internal and subjective as is the determination of its importance. If the listener 'feels' that the $4k cord makes a difference, makes the experience better, then it has value to them and I think that they certainly have the freedom to assign how much importance it has. If audio is your passion, then perhaps there is real value, if perhaps only symbolically, to devoting large sums of cash to it in tribute. In my experience, audiophiles aren't simply gullible rich guys mindlessly blowing money on $4k power cords. Many have very deep relationships with music and with their stereo equipment. This relationship is often complex and rich enough that spending large amounts of money on a new 'X' would almost be like purchasing your wife a gold bracelet. Almost.
(I'm a little wary of buying used headphones, at least without replacing all the soft parts and cleaning thoroughly, though.)
My headphone rig objectively sounds better than my speaker rig, but the speakers ultimately sound more natural, even if by objective measurements (e.g. frequency response) they're markedly inferior.
(Neither rig is super high end, not too far above the ~$1000 system at the end of the article, but they are all properly chosen and installed components.)
I'm using it on Linux (alsa) for my in-ear-phones.
From /etc/asound.conf:
There's huge variation in quality of headphone-out on computers. I'm sure some are good, and most Apple products are at least ok, but I've usually found even the lowest end (CMOY, Filo, etc.) is a big improvement.
(plus, the amp is really helpful for high-impedance headphones. Mine range from ~30 to ~600 Ohm.)
This article is just a description of a shopping experience, together with the research result you have to do before you buy something that is a new category to you.
Oh well.
1. USB DAC 2. Magnepan Speakers 3. Stereo Receiver
For movies or games you'll want surround and a sub
Being an audiophile is rather cheap once you gather the knowledge on forums (audiokarma.org) and patience at craigslist/thriftstores/ebay.
http://www.antiqueradio.org/recap.htm for some things on checking old caps.
This is not how I see it going down. There are a couple reasons why older formats of music aren't going anywhere and will always serve as compliments to the newer digital formats.
The biggest difference between buying CDs/Vinyl vs. a subscription to Spotify/Pandora is ownership. For the foreseeable future there will be a significant market of people, including audiophiles and DJs who want to own the music they buy rather than lease it. And it's now possible for regular to receive the benefits of both formats by buying CDs, ripping them to a media server and then streaming them to your phone or tablet using services such as Audiogalaxy and Google Music.
The other reason is the lack of innovation in high quality audio formats. As evidenced by the failure of SACD, the demand is simply not big enough to support the research and marketing of new physical mediums designed solely for music. In the future we will be forced to rely on CDs (which are never the weakest link anyways in an audiophiles system) or piggyback onto other, more popular formats such as Bluray for 5.1+ high quality audio.
I have several large boxes of CD's which I know look at with scorn. I haven't used a CD or even a ripped copy of them in years. I've tried Audiogalaxy, Google Music, iTunes Match, and Amazon MP3. It takes a lot of effort to migrate your music to each of those services.
What I've found by using subscription services is what the author is saying: cheaper, faster, and more social access to music. Audiophiles will continue to have their niche but I tend to agree that that is not the way history is going.
Engineering for the above metrics is straightforward, and not particularly costly. Even a 10k system can tie for top rank in blind tests if you pay attention to the details that actually have leverage against perception. If you're paying 250k for a home audio system, you're being sold an expensive trinket through a narrative of fetishism.
[1]: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=12794
[2]: http://www.waynejones.net/wayne/documents/T&MW_Harman_Ar...
Although unscientific, I played some tones on youtube in the office and the twenty somethings could hear almost 20kHz and the forty somethings couldn't hear anything by the time the frequency sweep was just below 15kHz.
edit - added references:
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/sonicimpact/t_2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_T_amplifier
http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/opamp_intro.php
This is a huge win! I haven't lost Refinement Points because I don't need to buy fancy tea. But I have gained money and convenience.
If you're an audiophile, wine lover, or anyone else who spends a lot for quality that "others can't appreciate", I humbly suggest that you put yourself to a test. If you pass, your sophisticated taste is validated. If you fail, you can spend a lot less money and be content knowing you're getting just as good an experience.
Retail therapy works, sadly. I personally think that anything that gives you enjoyment and does not harm others is a good thing.
Seeing that expensive tea is just as good as cheap tea will just make me depressed about our economy ;-)
It's also possible that you'll find you actually like the more expensive tea better, which is fine. Then you'll know it's money well spent.
If you really get enjoyment out of expensive stuff because it's expensive, I'd be happy to sell you some milk for $300 a gallon. Trust me, it's the best. I'll put a fancy label on it and everything.
Realistically, any half decent source and amplifier will introduce practically no distortion compared to what the combination of the speaker (and placement) and the listening room introduce. The only thing that makes loudspeakers viable really is our uncanny ability to make sense of room acoustical distortions. Thus, we can sense the true sound even though it has been mangled by echos, reverberations and room modes.
However, we can still hear the distortion--and much more so than the comparatively small distortions introduced by sources, amplifiers or cables.
The thing is, if you really want some stellar sound from your home stereo, it does not make much sense to spend more than a couple thousand bucks on audio equipment without significantly improving your room acoustics. A $1000 sound system in a good room will always outperform any system in a bad room. So if you really want to improve your sound, you should probably look into room acoustical measures.
I have heard some > $40k sound systems in purpose-built rooms. The result is really amazing. If you close your eyes, even a trained ear will have difficulties discerning the recording from the original. In one recording studio, they had a $100k sound system. However, they also had a room to match it: The room was physically decoupled from the outside world (the whole room was standing on rubber feet, so to speak), it had special double windows, a purpose-built air conditioning and above all, loads of sound absorbing material and architecture.
And frankly, if you really are serious about sound quality, this is the kind of effort you have to make in order to get there. Spending the same money on more expensive speakers won't help.
The world of audiophile gear is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. The human ear, just like the human eye, is.. well, rather poor. We have a very small spectrum in which we operate. So these magazines like stereophile will plop an osciliscope onto the latest piece of gear and marvel over the fact that it's flat from 0 to a kazillion and then talk about its "creamy, refined mids." Someone please kill me.
Audiophile USB cables, audiophile mode-correcting rocks, audiophile amps with .00000000000001% THD, that damn marker to color your CDs with? All hooey. I once read in a forum an anecdote about a guy switching from Monster, to some other overpriced cable and being able to tell the difference from a room away. This was not a tongue in cheek post.
The big problem is that this stuff is eerily close to religion. A bulk of the hard-core, $7000 CD player audiophiles I know are actually rather well educated -- engineers of one type or another, but they slip into cognitive dissonance when it comes to anything relating to audio. A phrase uttered far too frequently is "You can't measure what I'm hearing." Once that mindset is adopted, confirmation bias is king. Here's a $4k pear audio cable. It'll increase the air in the high end by around 15%.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/audio-designline-bl...
I notice the aural qualities of every room I enter; when I'm in a small space with hard walls, I hum a bit to identify the pitch that will make the room resonate. (I'll bet some with perfect pitch could measure the space between two walls quite accurately with their eyes closed by learning the wave sizes...).
I notice when someone's speech or laugh in my house causes sympathetic vibrations on the strings of my acoustic bass guitar in the corner. Or on the metal cover of the radiator.
I've spent decades learning to produce sound, from various instruments including the built-in ones (like whistling, body percussion, various forms of vocal music including Tuuvan throat singing), to making music from objects never intended to be instruments. When I listen to others making music I pick it apart in my head.
There are lots of people with better-trained ears than I have, who make better music as well -- so moving on: how much money have I spent on audio reproduction equipment?
Probably less than $500 in my lifetime.
The music I'm listening to the most right now are performances of the Brandenburg Concertos, from YouTube, played from a Macbook Air speaker in another room, while I march up and down the stairs with a baby over my shoulder.
I like the way it echoes up the narrow stairs, and how there's one spot partway up that's more resonant than anywhere else. I can't hear subtle details -- so what? I know what that sounds like already; my brain can fill in the missing bits. And there's no possible playback that can reproduce actually performing music -- imagine tje cello vibrating against your body and filling your ears, the thrumming pushback of the bow against your hand -- and these are the things worth having in your head when you listen to someone more accomplished playing a piece.
I'll probably get a decent set of speakers someday (though I can't imagine paying more than I'd pay for an actual well-made instrument), but any playback is unavoidably a shadow of the actual performance; I can't imagine caring deeply about getting a perfectly crisp shadow (as long as I get a reasonably clear one) when I'm just using it to imagine the real thing anyway.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/coat-hanger-wire-is-just-...