What annoys me today in marketing and media that too often today then talking on hi-fi, science is replaced by bizarre belief structures and marketing fluff, leading to a decades-long stagnation of the audiophile domain. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Hi-fi world is filled by pseudoscience, dogma and fruitloopery to the extent that it resembles a fundamentalist religion. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
Business for Engineers: Marketers Lie article points tout that marketing tells lies — falsehoods — things that serve to convey a false impression. Marketing’s purpose is to determining how the product will be branded, positioned, and sold. It seems that there too many snake oil rubbish products marketed in the name of hifi. It is irritating to watch the stupid people in the world be fooled.
In EEVblog #29 – Audiophile Audiophoolery video David L. Jones (from EEVBlog) cuts loose on the Golden Ear Audiophiles and all their Audiophoolery snake oil rubbish. The information presented in Dave’s unique non-scripted overly enthusiastic style! He’s an enthusiastic chap, but couldn’t agree more with many of the opinions he expressed: Directional cables, thousand dollar IEC power cables, and all that rubbish. Monster Cable gets mostered. Note what he says right at the end: “If you pay ridiculous money for these cable you will hear a difference, but don’t expect your friends to”. If you want to believe, you will.
My points on hifi-nonsense:
One of the tenets of audiophile systems is that they are assembled from components, allegedly so that the user can “choose” the best combination. This is pretty largely a myth. The main advantage of component systems is that the dealer can sell ridiculously expensive cables, hand-knitted by Peruvian virgins and soaked in snake oil, to connect it all up. Say goodbye to the noughties: Yesterday’s hi-fi biz is BUSTED, bro article asks are the days of floorstanders and separates numbered? If traditional two-channel audio does have a future, then it could be as the preserve of high resolution audio. Sony has taken the industry lead in High-Res Audio.
HIFI Cable Humbug and Snake oil etc. blog posting rightly points out that there is too much emphasis placed on spending huge sums of money on HIFI cables. Most of what is written about this subject is complete tripe. HIFI magazines promote myths about the benefits of all sorts of equipment. I am as amazed as the writer that that so called audiophiles and HIFI journalists can be fooled into thinking that very expensive speaker cables etc. improve performance. I generally agree – most of this expensive interconnect cable stuff is just plain overpriced.
I can agree that in analogue interconnect cables there are few cases where better cables can really result in cleaner sound, but usually getting any noticeable difference needs that the one you compare with was very bad yo start with (clearly too thin speaker wires with resistance, interconnect that picks interference etc..) or the equipment in the systems are so that they are overly-sensitive to cable characteristics (generally bad equipment designs can make for example cable capacitance affect 100 times or more than it should). Definitely too much snake oil. Good solid engineering is all that is required (like keep LCR low, Teflon or other good insulation, shielding if required, proper gauge for application and the distance traveled). Geometry is a factor but not in the same sense these yahoos preach and deceive.
In digital interconnect cables story is different than on those analogue interconnect cables. Generally in digital interconnect cables the communication either works, does not work or sometimes work unreliably. The digital cable either gets the bits to the other end or not, it does not magically alter the sound that goes through the cable. You need to have active electronics like digital signal processor to change the tone of the audio signal traveling on the digital cable, cable will just not do that.
But this digital interconnect cables characteristics has not stopped hifi marketers to make very expensive cable products that are marketed with unbelievable claims. Ethernet has come to audio world, so there are hifi Ethernet cables. How about 500 dollar Ethernet cable? That’s ridiculous. And it’s only 1.5 meters. Then how about $10,000 audiophile ethernet cable? Bias your dielectrics with the Dielectric-Bias ethernet cable from AudioQuest: “When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio.” I see this as complete marketing crap speak. It seems that they’re made for gullible idiots. No professional would EVER waste money on those cables. Audioquest even produces iPhone sync cables in similar price ranges.
HIFI Cable insulators/supports (expensive blocks that keep cables few centimeters off the floor) are a product category I don’t get. They typically claim to offer incredible performance as well as appealing appearance. Conventional cable isolation theory holds that optimal cable performance can be achieved by elevating cables from the floor in an attempt to control vibrations and manage static fields. Typical cable elevators are made from electrically insulating materials such as wood, glass, plastic or ceramics. Most of these products claim superior performance based upon the materials or methods of elevation. I don’t get those claims.
Along with green magic markers on CDs and audio bricks is another item called the wire conditioner. The claim is that unused wires do not sound the same as wires that have been used for a period of time. I don’t get this product category. And I don’t believe claims in the line like “Natural Quartz crystals along with proprietary materials cause a molecular restructuring of the media, which reduces stress, and significantly improves its mechanical, acoustic, electric, and optical characteristics.” All sounds like just pure marketing with no real benefits.
CD no evil, hear no evil. But the key thing about the CD was that it represented an obvious leap from earlier recording media that simply weren’t good enough for delivery of post-produced material to the consumer to one that was. Once you have made that leap, there is no requirement to go further. The 16 bits of CD were effectively extended to 18 bits by the development of noise shaping, which allows over 100dB signal to noise ratio. That falls a bit short of the 140dB maximum range of human hearing, but that has never been a real goal. If you improve the digital media, the sound quality limiting problem became the transducers; the headphones and the speakers.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article says that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. I can agree with this. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article makes good points on design, DSPs and the debunking of traditional hi-fi. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Legacy loudspeakers are omni-directional at low frequencies, but as frequency rises, the radiation becomes more directional until at the highest frequencies the sound only emerges directly forwards. Thus to enjoy the full frequency range, the listener has to sit in the so-called sweet spot. As a result legacy loudspeakers with sweet spots need extensive room treatment to soak up the deficient off-axis sound. New tools that can change speaker system designs in the future are omni-directional speakers and DSP-based room correction. It’s a scenario ripe for “disruption”.
Computers have become an integrated part of many audio setups. Back in the day integrated audio solutions in PCs had trouble earning respect. Ode To Sound Blaster: Are Discrete Audio Cards Still Worth the Investment? posting tells that it’s been 25 years since the first Sound Blaster card was introduced (a pretty remarkable feat considering the diminished reliance on discrete audio in PCs) and many enthusiasts still consider a sound card an essential piece to the PC building puzzle. It seems that in general onboard sound is finally “Good Enough”, and has been “Good Enough” for a long time now. For most users it is hard to justify the high price of special sound card on PC anymore. There are still some PCs with bad sound hardware on motherboard and buttload of cheap USB adapters with very poor performance. However, what if you want the best sound possible, the lowest noise possible, and don’t really game or use the various audio enhancements? You just want a plain-vanilla sound card, but with the highest quality audio (products typically made for music makers). You can find some really good USB solutions that will blow on-board audio out of the water for about $100 or so.
Although solid-state technology overwhelmingly dominates today’s world of electronics, vacuum tubes are holding out in two small but vibrant areas. Some people like the sound of tubes. The Cool Sound of Tubes article says that a commercially viable number of people find that they prefer the sound produced by tubed equipment in three areas: musical-instrument (MI) amplifiers (mainly guitar amps), some processing devices used in recording studios, and a small but growing percentage of high-fidelity equipment at the high end of the audiophile market. Keep those filaments lit, Design your own Vacuum Tube Audio Equipment article claims that vacuum tubes do sound better than transistors (before you hate in the comments check out this scholarly article on the topic). The difficulty is cost; tube gear is very expensive because it uses lots of copper, iron, often point-to-point wired by hand, and requires a heavy metal chassis to support all of these parts. With this high cost and relative simplicity of circuitry (compared to modern electronics) comes good justification for building your own gear. Maybe this is one of the last frontiers of do-it-yourself that is actually worth doing.
1,785 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
valves are for “special” cases that look for that dystorted harmonics sound. Anything MOSFET based will be 100% better
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/12LbwivoidU/
Tomi Engdahl says:
On most tube amplifiers the tubes and transformers are the source of some distortion. With tube amplifiers there is generally more pleasing sounding distortion while mosfet amplifiers have less amount of distortion (that distortion has less pleasing sound)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tomi Engdahl True Even-order distortion is more pleasing to the human ear vs odd but that’s based on the design of the amplifier. You can design a solid state amplifier to exhibit even order harmonic distortion too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The devil is in the details, or in this case, the lack of.
Full story: https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/04/5-reasons-audiophiles-avoid-bose/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bose and Sony are the only two brands that make ANC headphones with their own proprietary tech unlike any other which uses qualcomm’s builtin functionality in their SoC which is a whole lot inferior
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bose stands for:
Buy
Other
Sound
Equipment
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nah. Mostly hated because it’s inexpensive stuff that relies on lots of trickery, whereas expensive stuff that relies on lots of trickery is lauded.
It’s like Porsche guys looking down on VWs when they’re basically the same thing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
B(uy) O(ther) S(ound) E(quipment)
Audiophiles think Bose isn’t expensive enough……
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bose are actually quite good at one thing and one thing only IMO: Big sound in very small package.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I Tested Audiophile Isolation Tweaks. You Won’t Believe The Results!
watch now >>> https://youtu.be/32DrKCqLWkk?si=jWBHRfvCKESXUWpn
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#homeaudio #highendaudio #hifiaudio #luxurylifestyle #hifisystem #hifisound #hifidelity #audio #audiophile #technology #TechInnovation #technews #homeaudio #HomeEntertainment #stereo #musiclovers #amplifier #speaker #speakersystem #highendaudio #hometheater
Tomi Engdahl says:
Vinyl fans are using smartphone apps to shame $5,000 turntables, and the results are brutal: https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/04/vinyl-fans-smartphone-apps-shame-turntables/
Tomi Engdahl says:
No highs, no lows just Bose
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here’s a look at the audiophile headphones Hall of Fame: https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/10/most-iconic-audiophile-headphones/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is it real or just the latest flavor of snake oil? That is the question.
Full story: https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/10/high-end-outlet-promises-better-sound-quality/
Tomi Engdahl says:
EQ= Ego Quantity
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/161zKpjgog/
notice that audiophiles talk about “processed digital audio” like it’s somehow unhealthy to listen to?
For awhile, there was a group on several forums who called it “digititis” and claimed listening to digital made their ears hurt and caused headaches.
Like processed food?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Numbers don’t lie… or do they?
Full story: https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/01/obsession-measurements-leading-worse-sounding-gear/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here’s why wireless headphones will never sound better than wired (and why it usually doesn’t matter): https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/01/wireless-headphones-never-sound-better-wired/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“My question is: is there anything to be gained by installing a DAC? Lots of people raving about them.” The hifi journey is what attracts many to the hobby, the constant upgrade-itis. Most of the folks raving about dacs are those that have switched over entirely to streaming etc. The obvious upgrade paths remaining for those indiviuals seems to be dac chipsets, cables etc. They go on about differences in “DAC sounds” being more ‘liquid’, ‘velvety’, ‘analogue’ and so on. Actually what differences they hear are likely down to the circuit implementation not the dac chipset. I’d even go as far as saying the differences are so subtle, that if they discern a difference it is down to their mood, how tired they are, the strong effects our mind and body state have upon our hearing acuity from day to day.
Tomi Engdahl says:
They’re iconic, they’re beloved… and they sound kind of awful.
Full story: https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/04/songs-crushed-bad-mastering/
Tomi Engdahl says:
One of these is so iconic it got rebooted 50 years later.
Full story: https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/04/most-wanted-vintage-stereo-pieces/
Tomi Engdahl says:
They say the sound quality was unlike anything they’d heard before
Full story: https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/03/lost-beatles-audition-tape-sound-quality-found/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nelson Pass’ thoughts…
https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/1enlf3v/nelson_pass_thoughts/?rdt=60550
I just read this incredible passage in the last Stereophile, Nelson Pass is one of the amplifier gurus of our time, with his work in Pass Labs as well as his quirky and much more accessibly priced First Watt designs he has deserved the speak his mind.
“For a very long time, there has been faith in the technical community that eventually some objective analysis would reconcile critical listeners’ subjective experience with a repeatable laboratory measurement protocol. Perhaps this will ultimately occur, but in the meantime, audiophiles largely reject bench specifications as an indicator of audio quality. This is appropriate; the appreciation of audio is a completely subjective human experience. We should no more let the numbers define audio quality than we would let chemical analysis be the ultimate arbiter of fine wines. Measurements are certainly critical, they can and do provide a measure of insight, but are no substitute for human judgment of that which is pleasant.
“As in art, classic audio components are the results of individual and collective efforts that reflect a coherent underlying goal and philosophy by the major participants. If successful, they make both a subjective and an objective statement of quality, which is meant to elicit appreciation in the final product. It is essential that the circuitry of an audio component reflects a philosophy which addresses the subjective nature of its performance first and foremost.
“Lacking the ability to completely characterize performance in an objective manner, we should take a step back from the resulting waveform and take into account the process by which it has been achieved. The history of what has been done to the music is important and must be considered a part of the result. Everything that has been done to the signal is embedded in that signal, however subtly.”
Wonderfully said. I wholeheartedly agree.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unfortunately, this is very misleading. Vinyl doesn’t necessarily sound better, it sounds different. But this thing I keep reading about analogue master tapes is complete nonsense. Converting these to digital makes no difference whatsoever.
Andy Johnson yes I have and what you say can indeed be true. However, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the format itself , it’s due to the mastering. A properly mastered CD will outperform vinyl in every department, but what happened in the early days of CD is that the vinyl master was put onto the CD which was a bad idea.
Calum Powrie tree, it’s the mastering technique used that’s the difference, for example many Yes vinyls sound way better, it’s pretty much hit and miss.
Andy Johnson It’s not dumb. CDs are superior. Vinyl has eq limitations that CDs don’t. You CAN make a CD that sounds exactly like a vinyl record (you simply record the record). The problem is the music industry didn’t really try to do it ‘right’ until they started remastering (which brought the loudness wars, which contributes HEAVILLY into this ‘fight’ over which format is better and sounds better).
However, I have done it.
I recorded my LP digitally, then burned a CD of it and I was able to A/B the two on my home system. Aside from volume difference, the CD I ripped sounded EXACTLY like the LP.
If the LP sounds better than the CD, blame the industry for not doing a good job, don’t blame the format.
It also has a lot to do with the quality of the recording: “When people claim to hear significant differences between 16-bit and 24-bit recordings it is not the difference between the bit depths that they are hearing, but most often the difference in the quality of the digital remastering. And most recordings are engineered to sound best on a car stereo or portable device as opposed to on a high-end audiophile system. It’s a well-known fact that artists and producers will often listen to tracks on an MP3 player or car stereo before approving the final mix.
The quality of the recording plays a far more significant role than the format or resolution it is distributed in. But to increase profits, many modern recording studio executives insist that errors be edited out in post-production, significantly compromising the quality of the original master tapes. So no matter what format these recordings are released in, the music will always sound mediocre, since you can never have higher performance than what is on the original masters.
In contrast, some of my favorite digital recordings were digitally mastered from 1950s analog recordings. Many of these recordings were done as a group of musicians playing in a room with one take per track and no post-production editing. Though these recordings have much higher background noise being limited by old-school pre-Dolby 60dB dynamic range master tape, they retain an organic character and in-the-room harmonic cues that can’t be duplicated any other way.” From this article which is an interesting read https://www.mojo-audio.com/blog/the-24bit-delusion/
All vinyl has going for it is essentially large cover art. That’s it.
I think it’s fine to prefer the sound of vinyl, but I would never claim it’s objectively better than digital. It’s inherently flawed, but maybe that’s what people enjoy about it.
Vinyl has a warm sound, but to me, digital sounds (almost) always sounds better…. I love vinyl, because you put the needle on a record and listen to the music! With digital music, I skip to much.
Vinyl has 60-70db dynamic range, 16bit CD has 96db, 24bit 144db.
Streaming is crap, vinyl is tinged with nostalgia, CD is best
I’d say better is subjective, different is objective.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Here are more memes every music lover will feel deep in their soul: https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/11/memes-every-music-lover-feel-deep-soul/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Valhalla loudspeaker cable: $4200/m pair
The Valhalla speaker cable represents Nordost’s first use of micro-monofilament conductors in a speaker cable. Although the Valhalla is similar in appearance to the SPM Reference—a flat, ribbon-type configuration 2.125″ wide by 0.039″ thick—the conductors themselves are very different. The SPM uses 32 silver-plated OFC copper conductors running in parallel and directly encased in the Teflon ribbon.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/nordost-valhalla-interconnect-speaker-cable-valhalla-loudspeaker-cable
The Valhalla, on the other hand, uses 40 silver-plated copper conductors, each polished and wrapped with a monofilament spacer prior to encapsulation in the Teflon ribbon. The capacitance and inductance specs of the Valhalla speaker cable are 11.8pF/ft and 0.096µH/ft, respectively, compared to the SPM’s 7.9pF/ft and 0.12µH/ft.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Opamp tests
https://youtu.be/qmj_SyVmfkU?si=QU7Yggf4-5GyRQRw
https://youtu.be/A9PvxRd8HAk?si=lWuPv__3BNL-oJXD
Tomi Engdahl says:
Opamp noise
https://youtu.be/kAZRFcc1RJg?si=dK00lzzhZIXzdqKT
Ultimate opamp
https://youtu.be/BKA5ESd0IJs?si=klfYLlcraM4UNuIy
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oh dear, more of the flat speaker wire nonsense. “Let’s maximize our antenna cross-section and noise rejection for no good reason.”
…. Not that noise rejection is in any way important for speaker level signals, but that’s the exact kind of audiofool BS that they seem to care about so much.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reason Why Wired Headphones Are Better #headphones #headset #audio #audiophile @3DGAMEMAN
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gmUDGTPfpT8
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.edn.com/unconventional-headphones-sonic-response-consistency-albeit-cosmetically-ungainly/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple might have just solved a decades-old DAC problem with this new technology.
Full story: https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/07/apple-patent-dacs-promises-sound-quality/
Tomi Engdahl says:
So Apple reinvented “dynamic element matching” introduced by Philips in the late 70′s. Great job.
Incidentally, DAC’s from Burr Brown / TI, AKM, ESS and Cirrus Logic also have using this for decades.
One would need to read carefully to see if the Apple patent is actually valid, given decades of prior art and what exactly is the patented claim.
Tomi Engdahl says:
30 songs crushed by bad mastering that audiophiles still defend: https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/04/songs-crushed-bad-mastering/