Oh the wankery!

[ipman]

I admire your patience. And I mean it 

[Frangible]

You left one out:

"If you can't measure what I'm describing with your equipment, it means your equipment is defective"

[metalphreak]

I find the "gold plated" connectors on optical TOSLINK cables the best.

[mikeselectricstuff]

And when the audiophools have bought all the junk cables and amps, whet next...
A clock of course.... only $2000

http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/us/Products/pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=Accessories&ProductId=MCLK12

[Mechatrommer]

A clock of course.... only $2000

maybe a good niche.

[tekfan]

Why a clock when you can probably get the amplifier for almost the same price. I don't think McIntosh is a good example for audiophools. They actually took proper measurments of their amplifiers:

[HLA-27b]

I may have struck the goldmine.

behold...



http://audiograb.wordpress.com/

[Alex]

I think even the author of that page could not make sense out of the speaker wiring.

[Mechatrommer]

I may have struck the goldmine.
behold...

what the heck!

[tekfan]

I may have struck the goldmine.
http://audiograb.wordpress.com/

Why do I giggle at every single picture?

And are those copper tapes covered in clear sticky tape held together by drinking straws suspended in mid air by sticky tape an sticky taped to the wall?
They must be using some sort of special anti-resonant sticky tape. The wall must be made of special anti-resonant bricks as well.

[PStevenson]

these people all need shaving, sterilizing and destroying.

I am dying to know what they think those stupid little brass weights they've got everywhere are supposed to do.

[david77]

Am I seeing things or are they actually using these home made wank wires as mains leads?
If they do: brave and stupid in equal measure.

[PStevenson]

Am I seeing things or are they actually using these home made wank wires as mains leads?
If they do: brave and stupid in equal measure.

no, it's even worse than that, they have wrapped wankery leads up in sellotape or whatever the hell it is, so they've probably spent $10,000 on an IEC cable and then sellotaped it up

[deephaven]

Looking through that website, how could something called "Horning Eufrodite Ultimate Zigma Plus" not be the most wonderfull thing in the world?

[Ferroto]

I wonder if component manufactures still do limited production runs for valve amplifiers specifically for audiophiles.

Also is it too late to jump on the bandwagon.

[david77]

I'd hazard a guess as to what those brass weights are supposed to do:
They put them on all kinds of flat surfaces to dampen mechanical vibration. They might actually physically do that but why you would need that in a home hifi setup I don't know.

[Mechatrommer]

They might actually physically do that but why you would need that in a home hifi setup I don't know.

They put them on all kinds of flat surfaces to dampen mechanical vibration (your quote). i dont understand why you dont know the thing you already know.
let me add the guess, the antenna shape like weigh is to absorb resonance got loose in the air. it is extensively studied/researched and cost you another thousand. and i suspect its "super fine grade" wood, not brass/metal, since wood absorb vibration better than metal.

[david77]

What I don't know is why it would matter if, say the top cover of the enclosure of an amplifier, would start vibrating a tiny bit. I can't think of a scenario where this would matter. Maybe they are scared of a mechanical feedback loop? As I said, I don't know.

What antenna shaped weight are you talking about? Do you mean the "pylons" they string their wank wire along? They keep vibrations from the floor off the wires, you know how sensitive electrical impulses in copper wire are to vibration, they get all shaken up and drop out the other end of the wire in a random fashion .

[Mechatrommer]

thats why you cannot understand that because you are not audiophoolery, same as me, we only can assume. who knows what the tiny physical vibration can do to the opamp feedback. yes that antenna on the floor i was talking about. there must be reason why its shape like antenna, they can always put different shape to make the wires off the floor, and tell different story about it.

[Zero999]

I'm getting worried, I keep thinking some of those replies might be serious so I'll post, just in case there's a gain of seriousness there or someone reading it takes it seriously.

It's obviously all bollocks. An electrical wire needs to be in a magnetic or electric field in order for a current to be induced in it due to mechanical vibration. Even if you count the earth's magnetic field, which is far too tiny to have an effect, no current will be induced because the wires are parallel so the fields cancel.

I think someone did some tests on various special audiophool grade  cables vs ordinary copper cables with different capacitances/resistances and found some of the more expensive cables to be worse and under certain circumstances cables with lower resistance/capacitance can be worse. In reality the best cable will have as low a DC resistance possible and the same characteristic impedance as the speaker but there's no need to worry as speaker cables in a home will be electrically short and will need to be hundreds of meters long before it makes a difference and at that distance it will sound shit anyway.

Regarding those silly mains filters: if the amplifier has such shit ripple rejection then throw it away. A standard EMC filter and proper shielding of all the small signal cables should get rid of all of the EMC problems.

Of course, there's no point in explaining any of this to an audiophool.

Sorry if I've ruined the fun.

[HLA-27b]

It has always puzzled me how audiophiles (and audiophools alike) are brain locked in their gear. They don't seem to be interested in the music as an art form.  You won't find photos of happy audiophiles enjoying music. You will see musicians preforming live at audiophile shows but they are there for comparison purposes so audiophiles can compare live sound to reproduction. The whole thing seems like a very elaborate way of not enjoying themselves. I'd like to dive into psychology here but my command of English is not enough.


There might be lessons to be drawn here regarding marketing and product placement. What I noticed so far is as follows

- Quality of production is always top notch. Even when they are selling wooden voodoo sticks they are of superb fit and finish.

- Good industrial design. They care that what they sell looks good even if it accomplishes nothing.

- Things that accomplish anything command ridiculously high prices. Price escalation is prominent.

- All audiophile gear has impeccable sales and marketing. Graphic designs, marketing material etc all top notch.

- Audiophile arena is separated in a few camps. All camps have their religiously zealous magazine editors.

- Voodoo snake oil items sometimes cost substantially less than expected. They use low price as a surprise element to suck in customers.


There is however one publication which has remained reasonably sane amidst all this. If you care to distinguish between philes and phools it might be an interesting reading. There are lengthy articles about whether cables make a difference and other such things. I think the cable tests mentioned by Hero999 above are the very tests published in the issue 16 of this magazine. (look at the back issues section) They are all available free in PDF form.

The Audio Critic
http://www.theaudiocritic.com/

[alm]

It's obviously all bollocks.

Agreed.

An electrical wire needs to be in a magnetic or electric field in order for a current to be induced in it due to mechanical vibration. Even if you count the earth's magnetic field, which is far too tiny to have an effect, no current will be induced because the wires are parallel so the fields cancel.

Ever heard of the piezoelectric and triboelectric effects? Both can produce electrons due to mechanical vibration. One due to stress, the other through rubbing. I'm sure these effects are many orders of magnitude lower than what the audio guys are using (you usually worry about this kind of stuff with low level measurements, like in the pA and fA range).

[Zero999]

Ever heard of the piezoelectric and triboelectric effects? Both can produce electrons due to mechanical vibration. One due to stress, the other through rubbing. I'm sure these effects are many orders of magnitude lower than what the audio guys are using (you usually worry about this kind of stuff with low level measurements, like in the pA and fA range).

I've never head of the piezoelectric effect in PVC cables before.

Triboelectric, yes but that wouldn't that only happen if one cable conductor rubbed against a different material? If the whole cable were rubbed then the charge would ore or less evenly around the whole cable making both conductors at the same potential.

[deephaven]

It's obviously all bollocks.

Agreed.

An electrical wire needs to be in a magnetic or electric field in order for a current to be induced in it due to mechanical vibration. Even if you count the earth's magnetic field, which is far too tiny to have an effect, no current will be induced because the wires are parallel so the fields cancel.

Ever heard of the piezoelectric and triboelectric effects? Both can produce electrons due to mechanical vibration. One due to stress, the other through rubbing. I'm sure these effects are many orders of magnitude lower than what the audio guys are using (you usually worry about this kind of stuff with low level measurements, like in the pA and fA range).

I've experienced microphonic cable before now, it can be quite pronounced. Maybe the audio interconnect cables should be surrounded by acoustic material so that they don't pick up the sound waves from the speakers? Pipe lagging should do the job. but it would have to be audiophile quality, maybe Polish goose down or something.

[Zero999]

I've experienced microphonic cable before now, it can be quite pronounced. Maybe the audio interconnect cables should be surrounded by acoustic material so that they don't pick up the sound waves from the speakers? Pipe lagging should do the job. but it would have to be audiophile quality, maybe Polish goose down or something.

I'm cynical.

Decent cable shouldn't be microphonic, PVC certainly isn't and the copper wire inside definitely won't be. I don't know about other insulators such as silicone but I seriously doubt it.

Mechanical vibration can definitely affect contacts in plugs though. Some ceramic capacitor materials are peizo electric so will be microphonic, an effect which can cause distortion and even oscillation, if used to couple small signals.

I think it's more likely you have a problem with any of the connectors or capacitors rather than the cable itself.