Hifi buffs...

[heathster]

Hi Rave. I largely agree with you about snake oil mains cables. Have you seen the £2k Nordost ones? They come in a lovely wooden box, worth more than the cable. BTW the dealer markup on cables is fantastic. However I also believe that signal integrity is important, including the mains. You can't expect a 50 pence IEC lead from CPC to perform as well as one made up with an MK plug, a decent IEC, with some decent cable. This will mainly be down to quality of construction, rather than materials. I make my own mains cables up, of the quality that sell for between £40 & £80. They cost around £6 to make, and use screened CY mains cable, as used in industry. It is of course reasonable to suggest they don't alter/improve the sound one bit, but for £6 I don't care.

However, the one place where cables do make a difference is interconnects. I have a Chord Chrysalis and the slightly dearer Chord Cobra, and there are distinct differences between them. I won't bore you with the details, but my wife can hear the difference, can she have the £500, or was that for mains cables only?

Also, an earlier thread suggested that a decent hifi was only any use if you listened to classical. Well, I have seven classical CDs, which I never listen to, out of a 600+ collection. This collection includes what could be termed as dance, Orbital, LFO, FSOL etc. Play these on a mediocre system and the bass will be muddy and un controlled, or else rolled off. On a good system, the bass goes way down, but it is tight, punchy and actually playing a tune. I just tire of the stereotype that all 'audiophiles' listen to Classical & Jazz. But then if you've been to hifi show, even the manufacturers seem to think this

[5lab]

Dunno if you're being serious here or not- but if you are- yes of course a benchmark is more accurate than your ears. Do computers have an incentive to lie? No. Do your ears? Yes, because you'd look a rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish admitting that your £100 cables have made no difference at all.

I seem to recall in my last thread betting anybody £500 that they couldn't tell the difference between cables in a double blind test. I still can't afford to lose £500, and I'm still up for it, because I know I can't lose. Step up to the plate, cable fans, and put your money where your mouth is, or else STFU.

his point, i think, is that neither makes a real difference. can you actually notice 52fps rather than 50? no, dont be daft. so in fact, if theres the slightest percievable difference to sound quality by spending an extra £100 on a cable, surely thats money better spent?

its the same with every aspect of life, the more you spend, the less extra you get, exponencially. the difference between a £1,000 car and a £10,000 car is huge, but the difference between a £80,000 car and a £100,000 car is pretty slim..

howard : ya might not be able to hear the difference, which is fine, leave your cables l ike that.. i've heard mains interfearance before, and it bugged me, so i re-wired the stuff behind my hifi, and it works better now. free fix, right? different people have different ears, so can pick different stuff up, but it's also a lot about education. if you look at my main telly (36" crt) against a cheap lcd without knowing much, average joe may not notice much, but as soon as you teach em what bleeding, ghosting, glare, black levels and so on are, he'll go for the higher quality set ever time..

ignorance is bliss, and i'd say those who think a £5 cable is no worse than a £50 cable are simply ignorant of the differences.. thus happy (not being insultative, simply the case). i'm ignorant of 'high fashion', so i'm happy with the clothes i bought 2 years ago..

[Howard]

I've had interference, through my sub and my telly. A simple reshuffle of the cables sorted it

Speaker cables won't pick it up though. Not unless you're running a 20,000 volt 600amp diesel generator right next to each speaker. Lol.

[heathster]

Hi Robert

I'll look out for you on the Naim forum.

I do mainly agree with your views about cables. Even if I won the Lottery, I wouldn't buy £2000 per metre mains cable, except perhaps to re-wire the kettle to see if it improved the taste of my tea But I do think that you shouldn't spoil the ship for a ha'pth of tar, and that if improvements can be made at reasonable cost, then they should be done. However, people should avoid getting sucked in to the subtle, but effective cable marketing machine. Speaking of snake oil, have you ever encountered a man called Peter Belt, he can be found at www.belt.demon.co.uk Read it and weep with laughter, especially the bit about freezing photographs

[Syd]

his point, i think, is that neither makes a real difference. can you actually notice 52fps rather than 50? no, dont be daft. so in fact, if theres the slightest percievable difference to sound quality by spending an extra £100 on a cable, surely thats money better spent?

its the same with every aspect of life, the more you spend, the less extra you get, exponencially. the difference between a £1,000 car and a £10,000 car is huge, but the difference between a £80,000 car and a £100,000 car is pretty slim..

Amen : The Law of diminishing returns kicks in and for more monery spent past a certain point you get a smaller benefit, a 30 quid cable will improve the sound by a lot and a 80 pound cable by a bit more.

My point was that if you have the gear that warrants it (not worth cabling your Aiwa midi with Nordost cables!!) and you want to spend the money then go for it, but try and demo the cables in a clean environment (local dealer) or most decent retailers will sell you 'Loan' stock to trial and return/change if you don't like it.

And yes there is a high dealer margin in selling cables probably 100%
in a lot of cases, but what do you think the margins are like with other specialist market products!!

Enough of this though, i'm off to further research my next purchase - a shiny Nikon D70s SLR, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[pr0p4g4nd4]

Anyway I'd rather get a BMW than B&W.

[Howard]

Anyway I'd rather get a BMW than B&W.

GET OUT

[mcmiller]

i dont know what the fuss is about, the weakest part of ne stereo system is actually the speakers and not the cables
with the directional cables dont electrons flow both ways and not just in one direction,

[Taz]

The weakest part of a HiFi system is the source (turntable/radio/CD). If it cannot pick up a signal off the audio medium then the sound cannot be heard regardless of the quality of the amplifiers or speakers.

As for directional cables, it simply means that the sound is subjectively better in one direction than the other direction.

[mcmiller]

The weakest part of a HiFi system is the source (turntable/radio/CD). If it cannot pick up a signal off the audio medium then the sound cannot be heard regardless of the quality of the amplifiers or speakers.

obviously im talking about there being a signal coming from the turntable

i used to use £20k active genelec speakers to make recordings on in studios and they were unbelievable.

i'd like to hear your linn system taz never really heard them, but i heard good stuff about them

[Syd]

Anyway I'd rather get a BMW than B&W.

Thanks for the input.

I drive an E90 325Sport.

[schmunk]

The weakest part of a HiFi system is the source (turntable/radio/CD). If it cannot pick up a signal off the audio medium then the sound cannot be heard regardless of the quality of the amplifiers or speakers.

However, a £30 DVD player is perfectly capable of extracting the digital data from a CD. It really isn't difficult, and an expensive player isn't better than a cheap player, as 10010100101 is 10010100101, whichever player decodes it...

As for directional cables, it simply means that the sound is subjectively better in one direction than the other direction.

It simply means that people are suggestible...

[Rave]

This is a forum, right, it's where people discuss opinions I think. Then why keep flaming others based on their views,

...Because your view is that it's sensible to piss away hundreds of pounds on cables that make sod all difference to the sound of your hi-fi. You could be directly responsible for people wasting tens/hundreds of pounds on cables that make no bloody difference. Hence, you are a dangerous troll intent on getting people to waste their hard earned cash on useless crap. That's just my opinion of course.

If I want to spend 200 quid on a cable, and I like it then that's fine, if I want to spend 500 quid on the latest, greatest watercooled graphics card to gain 3 extra FPS that makes very little difference to real gaming(and thats superceded in 2 months) then thats up to me too.

Yeah, and guess what: there's a very obvious benchmarkable difference between (say) a 6800 Ultra and a 7900GT. I dunno- Try any flavour of 3dmark, the standard Quake4 or Doom3 Time demos, The various Far Cry benches, Fear, UT2004, Battlefield 2 etc. etc.

All eminently repeatable benches. None of them rely on human judgement.

Too much bickering and bitching at each other can't be healthy

Too much pandering to unscientific bollox results in people wasting their hard earned cash

However, the one place where cables do make a difference is interconnects. I have a Chord Chrysalis and the slightly dearer Chord Cobra, and there are distinct differences between them. I won't bore you with the details, but my wife can hear the difference, can she have the £500, or was that for mains cables only?

No, I'm up for it any place, any time. As long as we have some independent observers I'll be happy to take the £500 off you whenever. I'm thinking 75% out of 20 tests would be beyond the doubt of statistical chance.

Edit: reduced angryness.

[heathster]

Schmunk, I've never heard such rubbish, next you'll telling me that mp3 @ 128kbps really is CD quality. A £30 dvd player may try to extract the same 0s &1s, but it's what it does with it that differs. The transport/laser will be nowhere near as good, and will require more error correction, the DAC will be a cheap DVD player on chip. A proper DAC as used in specialist hifi allows the designer to do more off board processing. The analogue stage will consist of an op amp, whereas the analogue stage of a high quality CD player is discrete, with much care lavished on its design. Also the £30 DVD isn't going have much of a power supply, delivering crappy DC, whereas all high quality CD players have fully regulated supplies. My own DAC has 11 regulated supplies. My £30 DVD player has none, and it sounds crap!

[heathster]

Rave, I think you need to calm down, it's only a piece of cable. However, I'm not setting my wife up for anything, I was merely informing you that she is a sceptic of hifi hocus pocus, but that she can hear differences between interconnects, much to her surprise.

I personally can't see the point of spending £350+ on the latest graphics card to get an extra few fps running 3D Mark, quantifiable maybe, pointless definitely!

[Clunk]

Also the £30 DVD isn't going have much of a power supply, delivering crappy DC, whereas all high quality CD players have fully regulated supplies. My own DAC has 11 regulated supplies. My £30 DVD player has none, and it sounds crap!

So are you saying that the £30 dvd player isnt 'cd quality' and your high quality cd player is better than 'cd quality'?

or are they both cd quality and you just like one better than the other?

im not having a dig, im just curious thats all