Never ever believe anything you read in What Lie-Fi? magazine

[Butuz]

Yep - and they are.

I dont see your point - how can you say something is rubbish if you aint tried it.

Explain to me in electrical terms why braided Cat5 / Cat6 cable is any worse than any other copper wire?

Butuz

[spazman]

My uncle has a nutty ecpansive HiFi and you can tell the diference if you plug it straight into the mains with a crappy power lead. But you need kit that is going to be able to use the power cable. No point sticking it on a £50 hi-fi from argos.

[Rave]

HOWEVER.....we could be onto an APRIL FOOLS for next year here....
Get this headline <snip>

LOL! I'm still considering whether I should be attempting to stop this ripoff or jumping on the bandwagon......and overclockers are a market I hadn't even considered! I guess the performance benefits will be harder to sell, Sandra ain't that easy to fool, but I could claim 'longer uptime....better display quality....all round smoother computing experience'. Try proving those claims wrong!

and yes, a better digital coax cable will give better sound. you might not understand why but it does, so just accept it.

The world is flat. I might not be able to explain why, but it is, so just accept it.

Seriously mate, you need to work on your scepticism. People who are attempting to sell you stuff don't always tell the truth. The point is that it's an absolute piece of piss to sell utter crap to audiophiles because they're so suggestible. Your ears are really not that good; if you swap a big fat cable for a cheapo £1 interconnect between a CD player and amp, and tell people it's better, then they will attemp to hear the difference and invent reasons why it's better. I used to be 100% convinced that I could hear the difference between my £40 Cambridge Audio Studio Reference interconnect and the £10 Atlantic ones....until my friend forced me to shut my eyes while he swapped them, and proved that in fact I couldn't even tell the difference between the £40 cable and the free cable supplied with the player, let alone between the £40 and £10 ones.

Unless you can prove to me that you can tell the difference between components, cables etc. in a BLIND test (or preferably double-blind) then I simply am not going to believe you. I know only too well from my own experience that your ears cannot be relied on if your brain knows what they are listening to. The only components that I'm confident that I could easily tell apart in a blind test are speakers/headphones. You can guess where most of the money was spent in my system.

I had a really excellent audio myths page bookmarked somewhere but gogle can't seem to locate it for me. I'll see if it's on my computer at home if I can ever get it going again.

Rich :¬)

[Butuz]

It is true that blind testing is the only way to go.

I was on holdiday with a bunch of mates - and we were all drinking some random vodka and one m8 swore by red lable smirnoff. In the end afer lots of arguing i forced a double blind test on the boy with all the other lads watching he tasted both cheap and expensive stuff. After much mming and arring, he picked out the no name vodka as being best. He wouldnt actually believe the result, tho i swear to this day - he did prefer the cheap stuff. His brain believed his eyes (the fancy lable on the bottle) and his common sense (espensive vodka must be better than cheap vodka) more than his tasebuds were capable of identifying. As Rave says - thats exactly what happens with non blind hi-fi testing. You think it looks better and cost more, so your brain automatically forces you to believe it is better, your ears just sit there saying "cant tell sod all difference mate".

You have to be careful that you do not get into the scenario of doing so much fiddling that you end up listening to your system rather than to your music

Butuz

[Zathras]

yes, a better digital coax cable will give better sound. you might not understand why but it does, so just accept it.

Wow, listen to the quality of my MP3s on my PC now I've replaced my IDE cables with 99.999% pure copper oxygen-free gold plated ones at £150/metre.

[Butuz]

Arrgggh ive been looking for OFC ide cables for years! Where did you get yours from Zathras?

Butuz

[5lab]

if you dont understand the technology then dont try to take the piss out of them. ide cables can be cheap because of something called ERROR CHECKING. coax cables shouldnt be, cos there is no ecc over coax, i believe this is because it would add latency to the system which is unwanted. an ide cable would work perfectly well if only every other bit made it through, a coax cable wouldnt.

[Moby-Dick]

5lab - you claim to understand technology , yet you dont understand why CAT5 makes good speaker cable ?


hint: skin effect

[5lab]

i understand why it can, but i strongly doubt its better than ~£10 a meter stuff. if it was then why doesnt some company make it and flog it, and make a shedload of cash?

[Rave]

i understand why it can, but i strongly doubt its better than ~£10 a meter stuff. if it was then why doesnt some company make it and flog it, and make a shedload of cash?

That's the entire point of this thread: They are, and they are. There's nothing special about a £100 mains cable beyond the fact that it has a turned aluminium plug and some snazzy braiding round the outside. There's nothing particularly clever about most speaker cable either.

Rich :¬)

[Moby-Dick]

no, its not.. cos if it was, some company would be rebadging it as quality speaker cable, upping the price 200% and making a fortune.

Butuz's Reply...

Yep - and they are.

http://www.hometech.com/techwire/audio.html

can't find any more at the moment , but I need to work out what they woudl have sold the cables as. ?

[Zathras]

5lab - learn the technology yourself. Have a look at the error checking data in Dolby Digital and DTS. As for PCM if your cable wasn't good enough you'd get audio dropouts and noticable clicks rather than subtle changes in the audio data. The range of conditions for flawed yet continuous digital data transfer using coaxial cable is so minute as to be ignorable. Yes, I have studied this... a large part of my undergrad university course involved theory and practise of communication over noiseless and noisy channels, and PCM was something studied.

[unrealrocks]

Yeah - Its a DIGITAL CABLE which means the signal is either going to get through or it isn't (ie dropout) because its 1s and 0s, not a variable signal like an analogue signal.

Can you tell me this - people who belive they can hear the difference on mains cables ... why would 1meter of fancy cable make up for the miles of cable connecting your wall outlet to the national grid fix everything?

These are the same companys giving you a gold plated TOSLINK plug - now explain that

[Crazy Cricket]

As I have said before tonight, I am none too sober ATM, so this post is likely to come out as straight as me, I.E not particularly

As far as speaker cable goes, you can spend upto £3000 per meter on the stuff, if you are rich and mad enough.

Flashy cables aren't the holy grail a lot of hi-fi mags make them out to be.

Let me put it this way, at an industry consumer electronics show, where companies have to show of their latest and greatest, they certainly don't spend on the cables. Given that these small two day shows often cost millions, and everyone wants give their best, what does that tell you?

Unless you have the cash to burn, your money is normally better spent on some new CDs.

It has to be said tho that mag reviews are better than they used to be.

One manufacturer that I worked for a while back got a glowing review for one of it's cheaper micro systems in 'What Hi-Fi?' This confused me somewhat, because said system was nothing to write home about, even for an el cheapo. When I asked the guy who was responsible for sending the test unit of about this he just laughed, and asked me if I really thought he sent of a stock unit. Turns out that the sample that went out had sturdier speaker cabinets, with better drivers and porting, and had a better D.A.C and amplifier componentry.

That sort of thing is dead and buried, least to my knowledge.

As for buying equipment, I stick to the age old simple rule. Buy audio equipment with your ears, and visual with your eyes.

By all means use magazines as a rough guide, but if you are spending a serious amount of cash, arrange to listen first,and take some of your own music/films.

At the end of the day, even if something gets poor reviews but you like it, then that's the one to go for.

To give an example, when I worked for said company mentioned above, we had a new pre production flat screen (crt) telly in.

Got it tuned in and was presented with a vividly coloured picture, to vivid for our eyes. When the spares manager saw it, he loved it, commenting on how bright and vibrant the colours where. Whist the picture wasn't true to life, it can't be said that he was wrong to like it, different strokes for different folks.


The other factor to think about with audio equipment, especiallyy speakers is to make sure they fit the room they're to go in. No point shelling out thousands on a big pair of rear ported floor standers only to shove them in a small room where they can't breath. In this case you could go for a far cheaper set of stand mounted speakers and not only get a better result for the room in question, but a wedge left over to spend on new music.

Anyhow, enough random keyboard dribbles from me

[Zak33]

although this thread kinda wandered off a bit I'm bringing it back up because

A: its good and makes me laugh....

B: I learned stuff from it...

C: I'm keen to know if anyone has their ears SYRINGED regularly....cos I do

and it is WITHOUT A DOUBT the best audio upgrade.....and its on the NHS!

Without a word of a lie.....my new speakers sounded WORSE after my ear holes got blasted out by a Nurse with a Jet Wash.....cos they were all setup wrong on my sound card settings.,.....cos I had so much cack in my ears.

I re adjusted it all.......and then...6 months later....had it done again......and had to fiddle again.

Your ears GET USED to a certain "thing" that you like.

Its IMPOSSIBLE to make it "right" cos you can't.....we all hear differently.....even our inner ears are different shapes with SUNGLASSES ON....and when I listen to a band LIVE sat right in front of them....I attempt, for several days...tto get my audio at home to get close.

Yeah...right Zakky boy......that's gonna work.

NOT

So....I play around DAILY now....cosmy ears change daily....and one day it sounds superb..the next crap and thats JUST cos I slept all night on the wrong side of my head! and squashed my inner ear

So.....in all honesty.....the power lead aint gonna do it for me!

The COAX lead WILL however....but whether its better or not.....hmmmm .just different.

Feel a poll coming on

[Howard]

I know what you mean Zak.. When I've got a cold my speakers sound much different, probably something to do with all the sinuses getting clogged up or something! Lol