I Love The Smell of Audiophoolery In The Morning

[Sionyn]

The letter is the best bit
http://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/top-ten-signs-an-audio-cable-vendor-is-selling-you-snake-oil

[daqq]

I'd sum it up:

You're being scammed if it's more than 20 USD/meter.
You're being scammed if there is more than 0 audiophile/pseudoscientific buzzword (fidelity, quantum, special, resonance, cryogenetically, ...) in the sale description.

[German_EE]

I collect examples of Audiophoolery and looking through I have about eighty links so far, these vary from extra special cables that are thousands of dollars a yard to wooden knobs that are supposed to "elevate the sound" when used to replace factory fitted items on the front panel.

My audio system? Home made pre-amplifier and power amplifier with 40A*** electric cable connecting a pair of Wharfdale speakers. Only the CD player came from a factory.




***You don't need to use 40A, 20A will do at a pinch but this was an end of reel pulled from a skip.

[dannyf]

-20A-

do you know if the bonding wires inside of those transistors, or PCB traces, or speaker coils can handle that kind of current?

[NiHaoMike]

Photonicinduction tested a "2kW" subwoofer and found that it could only handle 2kW for a few seconds. On disassembly, the coil is made of pretty thin wire.

I just use CAT3 or CAT5 with all pairs connected in parallel for speaker wire. It should be more than enough until you get into really absurd power levels.

What would be interesting is to repeat the Photonicinduction test but with a thin piece of wire in series, the goal of which is to have the wire fail first. Most likely even 24 AWG will outlast the sub.

[G0HZU]

My audio system? Home made pre-amplifier and power amplifier with 40A*** electric cable connecting a pair of Wharfdale speakers. Only the CD player came from a factory.

I have never ever spent any money on any formal 'HiFi' equipment in my whole life i.e. never wasted money on a new or used record player, CD player, amp or speakers. The only stuff here was given to me by my dad when I was a student and it is still going strong! eg Trio receiver/amp and turntable and Wharfedale speakers. I've forgotten what brand the CD player is.

[SeanB]

20A because it is cheap and convenient to use regular mains solid or stranded house wire for speakers, which is rated for installing in the walls. I cheated and used the fancy Audiophile cable for the ends where they were visible, just to fool the viewers who though I had actually used the expensive stuff for 30m of run, as opposed to only using 4m in total which had come as a sample. Only reason was the stuff was flexible.

[German_EE]

Exactly, power cables are much cheaper than expensive speaker cables and they even come in a variety of colors should you need to match the wallpaper or carpet (gray in our case). Somebody asked about the power handling capability of the amplifier electronics, well, the output MOSFETs are about 20A and there are six per channel with the connections made using either 2,5mm wire or PCB with tinned copper wire soldered into the tracks. The speakers are 100W per channel.

I have always believed that if you can lift your audio power amplifier on your own then it isn't big enough. That way fidelity is preserved even in the loud passages.

[SeanB]

Well, tried the HMA9500 I bought for scrap price at the scrapyard, and it turns on, does not blow up, and lights up "protect" light. I can just about lift it, it is 27kg.

[dannyf]

"If  you can lift your audio power amplifier on your own then it isn't big enough."

Then put some cobble stones in it,

With new technology, weight isn't a valid indication for all power amps.

End of the day, a power amp's job is to recreate sound. So sound quality should be important in determine if an amp sound good or not.

[jancumps]

I'd sum it up:

You're being scammed if it's more than 20 USD/meter.
You're being scammed if there is more than 0 audiophile/pseudoscientific buzzword (fidelity, quantum, special, resonance, cryogenetically, ...) in the sale description.

I thought fidelity wasn't a buzz word because there is a DIN norm for it (hifi DIN 45500).

[G0HZU]

My old freebie system makes 'sounds' when I put a CD in the CD player. It kind of makes the sounds I expect to hear and I don't know what type of speaker cable it has (apart from it being grey twin cable and skinny and cheap and old)

Do I care if it sounds 'true' ? (no)
Am I deluded enough to think it 'matters' if it doesn't sound true? (no)
Has any musician anywhere ever produced recorded sounds that I want to hear as accurately as possible? (no!)
Would I be able to tell if the sounds were accurate anyway? (no)
Can I adjust the controls on the system to alter the sounds to make the sounds more pleasing to me? (yes)
Which is most important? Pleasing sounds or accurate sounds? (pleasing of course)

There are parallels with audiophoolery on forums like eevblog. I find the voltnuts, calnuts and timenuts to be just as deluded (and just as entertaining) as audiophools. i.e. there is the same pointless search for perfection with the same brand/model related dickwaving and circle jerking as they each shell out their £££ to climb their chosen social ladder. Just what is so important about seeing 5.00000V on a DMM display? Do they spend their evenings comparing 6th digit accuracy and drift on various models of HP or Fluke DMMs?

At least the audiophools get to listen to some music

[skipjackrc4]

There are parallels with audiophoolery on forums like eevblog. I find the voltnuts, calnuts and timenuts to be just as deluded (and just as entertaining) as audiophools. i.e. there is the same pointless search for perfection with the same brand/model related dickwaving and circle jerking as they each shell out their £££ to climb their chosen social ladder. Just what is so important about seeing 5.00000V on a DMM display? Do they spend their evenings comparing 6th digit accuracy and drift on various models of HP or Fluke DMMs?

At least the audiophools get to listen to some music

Sure, but what the voltnuts do is actually measurable (by definition...).  Audiophoolery is not.  There is an enormous difference.

[G0HZU]

Sure, but what the voltnuts do is actually measurable (by definition...).  Audiophoolery is not.  There is an enormous difference.

I would argue that (for the home/hobby enthusiast) the difference is irrelevant.

To me the most relevant thing is that the audiophools get to listen to music.

Are there also 'metre' nuts and 'kg' nuts?
You can envisage some kind of annual jamboree where they all meet up and show off their 1 metre long sticks and 1kg weights.

[MasterBuilder]

Yes Audiophoolery is real,

but
MP3s and radio sound crap
Analog Synth filters and oscillators sound better than digital ones 
Lower quality DACs, analog sound signal paths and transducers sound shit
(all of the above are generalizations)

HiFi has its place, but excellent can be had for 10s or 100s not 1000s or more

IMHO the biggest Audiophoolery is Beats by Dr Dre who painted up some average Headphones and *5 the price

[G0HZU]

HiFi has its place, but excellent can be had for 10s or 100s not 1000s or more

Yes, it's all about knowing when to stop. This also applies to time and voltage nuttery. The same applies to other hobbies like photography. Some people just aren't able to 'stop' at a rational point and it then becomes an all consuming goal to elevate their social status (i.e. elevate their dick waving) within the chosen field to ridicuous and pointless levels of (real or imaginary) precision.

But at least the audiophools get to listen to music and the photographer can take pictures. I don't understand the visual appeal of a collection of calibrators and DMMs that can produce/display 5V very accurately. Maybe it gets more interesting and more rewarding after you look at the same meters showing 5.00000V for several days/months/years?

[dannyf]

...sound crap
...sound better ...
...sound shit

The key to understanding this all is to recognize that what sounds "crap", "better" or "shit" is highly subjective. What sounds crap to you can sound great to others; and vice versa.

So no point in getting too worked up about, or worse yet imposing one's judgment on others.

[skipjackrc4]

HiFi has its place, but excellent can be had for 10s or 100s not 1000s or more

Yes, it's all about knowing when to stop. This also applies to time and voltage nuttery. The same applies to other hobbies like photography. Some people just aren't able to 'stop' at a rational point and it then becomes an all consuming goal to elevate their social status (i.e. elevate their dick waving) within the chosen field to ridicuous and pointless levels of (real or imaginary) precision.

But at least the audiophools get to listen to music and the photographer can take pictures. I don't understand the visual appeal of a collection of calibrators and DMMs that can produce/display 5V very accurately. Maybe it gets more interesting and more rewarding after you look at the same meters showing 5.00000V for several days/months/years?

You seem to have some sort of vendetta against people with high resolution equipment.  While I agree that a lot of hobbyists get far too caught up in needless precision, saying that owning precise equipment (and a reasonable means to verify its accuracy) is "ridicuous [sic] and pointless" is a complete fallacy.  There is often a very real need in the analog sensing world to detect a 10uV change riding on a 5V (or whatever) DC bias, and if you see this change, you need to be sure that it is real and not drift in your equipment. 

[Rufus]

You can envisage some kind of annual jamboree where they all meet up and show off their 1 metre long sticks and 1kg weights.

Which would be so much worse than people showing off their collection of stamps, or coins, or rocks?

Plenty of people go to trouble and expense because they like having things they don't need.

The problem with audiophools is the trouble and expense they go to to not get anything and the lies and delusions claiming otherwise. If they called themselves collectors of wallet space (you know, where the money used to be) I wouldn't have a problem.

[dannyf]

There is often a very real need ...

Just as there is this very real need for you to so precisely measure something, there is also this very real need for those audio folks to so precisely listen to their music via those expensive "audio-grade" cables.

What I think some here are having trouble understanding is that value is a relative thing. What's worth to you may or may not be worth to somebody else.

So calling others "fool" because you fail to comprehend their value systems makes you more of a fool than you may think.

[zapta]

There is often a very real need in the analog sensing world to detect a 10uV change riding on a 5V (or whatever) DC bias, and if you see this change, you need to be sure that it is real and not drift in your equipment.

[/quote]

Often? Real need?

[G0HZU]

HiFi has its place, but excellent can be had for 10s or 100s not 1000s or more

Yes, it's all about knowing when to stop. This also applies to time and voltage nuttery. The same applies to other hobbies like photography. Some people just aren't able to 'stop' at a rational point and it then becomes an all consuming goal to elevate their social status (i.e. elevate their dick waving) within the chosen field to ridicuous and pointless levels of (real or imaginary) precision.

But at least the audiophools get to listen to music and the photographer can take pictures. I don't understand the visual appeal of a collection of calibrators and DMMs that can produce/display 5V very accurately. Maybe it gets more interesting and more rewarding after you look at the same meters showing 5.00000V for several days/months/years?

You seem to have some sort of vendetta against people with high resolution equipment.  While I agree that a lot of hobbyists get far too caught up in needless precision, saying that owning precise equipment (and a reasonable means to verify its accuracy) is "ridicuous [sic] and pointless" is a complete fallacy.  There is often a very real need in the analog sensing world to detect a 10uV change riding on a 5V (or whatever) DC bias, and if you see this change, you need to be sure that it is real and not drift in your equipment.

In a physics lab or a cal house yes. But not for a DMM collector/sniffer in suburbia.

[sic] 

[G0HZU]

You can envisage some kind of annual jamboree where they all meet up and show off their 1 metre long sticks and 1kg weights.

Which would be so much worse than people showing off their collection of stamps, or coins, or rocks?

Plenty of people go to trouble and expense because they like having things they don't need.

The problem with audiophools is the trouble and expense they go to to not get anything and the lies and delusions claiming otherwise. If they called themselves collectors of wallet space (you know, where the money used to be) I wouldn't have a problem.

Err... Yes, I see more relevance and value in collecting rocks or stamps. Having a very precise 1m long stick in the house seems a bit silly in comparison.

[Richard Crowley]

Often? Real need?

Probably for some (many?) people here in their day job at their employers' office/lab.
But I agree that most people would be hard pressed to justify "often" or "real need" at their home/hobby bench.

Certainly there may be SOME people who are self-employed and whose livelihood depends of working to that degree of precision from their home-based shop.
But that seems like a small fraction of the people we see here with test-equipment fetishes.

We used to use a fresh carbon-zinc cell as a reference for 1.5V  I wonder if there is a better modern readily-available reference like that?
Or even if modern cells are uniform enough to use for better than +/- 10% accuracy?

[Rufus]

What I think some here are having trouble understanding is that value is a relative thing. What's worth to you may or may not be worth to somebody else.

The phools can't observe any audible difference between $10 and $1000 speaker cables (if they could they wouldn't run a mile at the mention of ABX testing). It is not a question of people valuing things differently. If they can't tell the difference between two cables there isn't anything to be valued.

Of course they can tell the difference between two cables, it is written on the price tag and they probably look different but that is not the difference they claim to be valuing.