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.
1,625 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
An argument that is constantly encountered is “trust your ears”. I have always opposed this as our human minds are extremely gullible. But how best to respond to this constant argument? I usually highlight the “McGurk effect, but it would be fun to replenish the supply with some more good arguments. What are your thoughts?
McGurk effect – Auditory Illusion – BBC Horizon Clip
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM&t=61s&pp=2AE9kAIB
this is a sensory hobby. the “gullibility” of minds isn’t relevant. What’s relevant is your subjective experience.
the best designers trust their ears. the best producers trust their ears.
one of the greatest production artists of all time, Quincy Jones, mastered Michael Jackson’s albums, by ear, using analog equipment.
Steve Hoffman isn’t heralded as one of the greatest because of his tools. He’s heralded because of his ears.
Even with all our fancy-pants digital gear, with FAR more sophisticated measurement equipment and visualization tools, we can’t produce stuff as well as either of them did.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Technical Article: Does Audio Cable Skin Effect Matter
https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/technical-article-does-audio-cable-skin-effect-matter.7157/
Tomi Engdahl says:
50 Painfully Hilarious Memes Only True Audiophiles Will Understand
https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/11/memes-true-audiophiles-understand/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Robert Patterson I would understand the point of having an analog source with quality pressed LPs reproducing original sixties and seventies analog recordings. But even then the newly released vinyl LPs of these original analog recordings are most often manufactured from copies of recent digital masters of these recordings, so I don’t see the point of investing in such equipment if the source material is more often 16/44.1 or 48 « slave » digital copies. True analog vinyls (engraved from slave analog copies of an original analog master recording) are very rare these days. All this is a big myth created by the industry to justify expensive turntables, cartridges and tonearms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What bugs me about turntables and LPs is that a modern music track produced with a digital 24 bit / 96 kHz multi track recorder, mixed and mastered in the same way and then processed using compression factors and final RIAA equalization and then transferred to an actual vinyl LP using an engraver and then read with an esoteric tome arm and multi thousand $ cartridge and stylus on a multi thousand $ turntable will sound a lot better, warmer, more natural than the same mixed and mastered digital recording transferred into a 24/96 Flac file decoded on a good average DAC … Uhm.. Uhm.. food for thoughts…
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pierre Tessier I like the audiophiles who just want straight wire with gain, but in order to hear what’s on the record, it has to be equalized with the RIAA curve. Plus who knows how much EQ is used in the recording process.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What bugs me about turntables and LPs is that a modern music track produced with a digital 24 bit / 96 kHz multi track recorder, mixed and mastered in the same way and then processed using compression factors and final RIAA equalization and then transferred to an actual vinyl LP using an engraver and then read with an esoteric tome arm and multi thousand $ cartridge and stylus on a multi thousand $ turntable will sound a lot better, warmer, more natural than the same mixed and mastered digital recording transferred into a 24/96 Flac file decoded on a good average DAC … Uhm.. Uhm.. food for thoughts…
Pierre Tessier I like the audiophiles who just want straight wire with gain, but in order to hear what’s on the record, it has to be equalized with the RIAA curve. Plus who knows how much EQ is used in the recording process.
Pierre Tessier if companies delivered the same uncompressed máster for everything (lp and digital) I would go for the digital every time, but normally the best mastering goes for the recorf
Tefo Frangulla For classical and jazz recordings they do. It is only pop records which receive mastering after final mix, to make them louder than the competition.
Cos louder is better, bruv, Innit
Iain Churches The main issue with LPs remains: most LPs are produced with a digital slave file that originate from a digital master and in most recent cases from a digital recording. So what is the point of buying LPs except if you want to impress or live a « vintage » experience ?
Pierre Tessier In my experience, the vinyl product has no “mastering” stage (except for the cutting of the acetate, from the final mix). In digital production of pop music that final mix is subsequently “mastered” by added EQ and multi- band compression to increase RMS volume, and thus perceived quality.
For this reason, the vinyl is usually closer to the original studio mix, while each successive digital mastering decreases the dynamic to appear louder and better.
So the point of buying the vinyl is to get a better and less processed product.
Pierre Tessier well.. no it doesn’t, it just sounds more distorted and you attribute those properties to that distortion.. you like the distortion, that’s fine, just know what it is.. case in point, a high quality recording of said turntable output played back on good digital grear will sound exactly the same as the turntable output…
Pierre Tessier And all vintage records were recorded on reel to reel tape, yet the Audiophiles also argue records are superior to tape
The high wow and flutter on expensive Rega’s with the silly round belt drive and wobbly motor mount is really annoying. The fact they are sold as High end decks is ridiculous.
the same ones who think that with a $20,000 turntable it will sound better than high quality digital format. I love these rare pokemons
The thing that really bothers me about “Audiophile” grade turntables is that they all seem to be using absolutely ancient technology. Back in the 1980′s, Nakamichi made a self-centering turntable (The TX-1000) to automatically compensate for records with off center holes.
Back in 1981, Sony sold a “Biotracer” turntable (The PS-B80) that had a special anti-resonance tonearm with an LED readout that could dial in the stylus pressure. It was also fully automatic and could play any size record without user intervention. It was even smart enough to know if a record wasn’t even on the turntable!
These days, I’m astounded that there are $10k-$20k turntables out there that not only do none of these things and don’t even have a speed selector. (The belt has to be manually moved from one pulley to another) They really don’t have any other features outside of a heavy table and maybe a linear tracking tone arm.
Why can’t anyone build a turntable for “audiophile” prices that uses modern technology? Like PID control for the table speed, self-centering, automatic stylus pressure adjustment, a linear tracking tonearm and fully automatic operation?
Bud Bennett because all of that costs real money, something the sharks are not willing to spend as it would eat into their huge margins… Plus, some of that could still be under copyright protection…
Bud Bennett I’ve heard audiophiles argue that the mechanism for automatic turntables impacts the sound. I doubt they would notice the difference but that’s what they claim
They “don’t need a subwoofer,” but don’t play tracks you’d want one for, either…
Or, they “can hear down/up to 20(k)hz easily,” but can’t hear the rumble/hiss coming off their $3K turntable, $4K tonearm and $5K stylus.
Or, worst, they think that stuff belongs there… “you can hear the freight trains in the yards down the road in this track!”
You’re allowed to like it… shhhhh it’s not better, it’s different.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
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Turntable Audiophiles
They can hear differences in turntable mats,feet,they can hear the cogging on a DD motor but…..
They can’t hear the bad wow/flutter (0.15 – 0.2wrms) on modern belt drive turntables
Amazing creatures aren’t they?
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/05/audiophile-icon-calls-mafia-tactics-luxury-audio/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHdSa5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHaeWSD-BcKma8E-5PLfkU2KO1rlFoc_C7kn-6bY39hOKyffgWbgznLDs9A_aem_M5tC1HjbgL4y3oEwMCHowQ
He argues that this relationship with music has been overshadowed by a market that takes advantage of consumer passion.
“Today, what I feel is that the high-end audio world has become a racket, a mafia that tries to take as much money as possible from music lovers. It has nothing to do with the original spirit of the whole thing, which was to use engineering and craftsmanship in the service of music and reproducing recordings,’’ Levinson asserts.
One of Levinson’s main criticisms is about the industry’s focus on profit over product integrity. He points out that industry magazines tend to feature products from advertisers, not necessarily those with the best value or performance.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I think this goes here….
[quote]
“The choice to design a dual CPU system was largely fueled by finding a way around the impact Roon’s luxury interface has on sound quality. It does enable Roon processing to become virtually inaudible, a world’s first in our experience.”
That would be a rock-hard No thank you from here…
Fanless audiophile PC sells for close to $30,000 — music server features dual Xeon 10-core CPUs, 48GB RAM, 280GB Optane SSD, and 2TB secondary storage expandable to 24TB
https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/pc-building/fanless-audiophile-pc-sells-for-close-to-usd30-000-music-server-features-dual-xeon-10-core-cpus-48gb-ram-280gb-optane-ssd-and-2tb-secondary-storage-expandable-to-24tb?fbclid=IwY2xjawHdSolleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdkTqvCMKSuIjOCZcCSbce9-MiPLsbxzYzL7NwVUmzBHLdWKPofHZ9luHw_aem_t0Usay3Udrjr-YZtc5ibfw
Tomi Engdahl says:
They are “acou-sticks”
true ana-log
That’s called AV wood
Tomi Engdahl says:
China International Headphone EXPO interview record: What are HiFi manufacturers doing recently?
https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/1hit0vf/china_international_headphone_expo_interview/
Tomi Engdahl says:
TLDW: In essence, this guy buys audio cables and pretends to do scientific tests, in reality, he just listens to them marking them against subjective and often made-up criteria such as “Bass Speed” and “Transient Attack”. He does not do these tests blind, he just listens to the cables. Then he explains the differences he has heard by saying that human ears are magic and you can’t impose science on listening. It’s some nutty stuff.
My question: If physics can’t explain hearing or acoustics then how are these cables designed capturing parameters that humans do not understand?
Audiophile Vs Pro cables evaluated – Surprising results!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Opv0Zx6Mc
Tomi Engdahl says:
They don’t, by law all copper wire is manufactured in western world from 99.99% Copper. Without a manufacturing standards how can accurate international standards be maintained, ie by implication how can copper conduction wire be anything but OFC. It it is contaminated by oxygen it becomes a crude rectifier! I have some Van Damme 2.5 sq mm twin as speaker cables which arrived by accident because Canford,(Sup pliers to the BBC had some for sale when I wanted some twin 2.5 sq mm loudspeaker cables which arrived. It’s is very good for lay flat round loudspeaker cables which arrived and fits standard and ever improving, “Speakon Connectors“ Manufactured by the Swiss manufacturer “Neutrik” which I first discovered on JBL speakers from the USA! Small world when you are educated!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Leslie Acres slight correction, Neutrik are based in Liechtenstein.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This is simple to answer – for example, cables can sound noticeably different if you sneak inductors/capacitors into the connectors to make filters. Now this may be reversed – ‘some dealers’ conceal filters in a cable or the connector to make it sound bad – then they let you compare ‘expensive cables’ against that one. Another trick is to use an AB switch – which itself has concealed LC components to make a reference cable sound bad. It’s all ‘smoke and mirrors’.
Tomi Engdahl says:
From
Perhaps you would like to read my book “how to exploit ignorance for fun and profit!”
Igor S. Popovich no, science isnt “overrated” Understanding psychoacoustics and applying double blind studies *is* science. How is it not the epitome of confirmation bias to not only have an opinion that dismisses sound scientific principas like measured result based conclusions but to use it to pitch a book you wrote saying the same things?
Do you know what group youre on?
Owen Gleeson Well, buy it and read it, and then tell me exactly what parts/statements/propositions you disagree with and why … isn’t that the basic premise of the scientific discourse?!? Rather than dismissing everything subjective – unexplained (yet) – unmeasurable – controversial outright ?
Igor S. Popovich Then you don’t understand science. Science isn’t subservient to a small select sample of the population who allow their subjective experience to colour their reason. The plural of “anecdote” isn’t “Evidence”.
Christopher Tyler no, you don’t understand science , the essence of science is doubt! The opposite of science is blind faith, one example of which is religion.
BTW, I would really like to know how many “absolutists” ( most of the members of this group, I’d imagine, those who believe in science and its measurements) are religious?!? Wouldn’t that that be incongruous?!? Where is your evidence or measurement of THAT ( God, etc)?!?
Igor S. Popovich no YOU don’t understand science. Lol. The essence of science isn’t doubt it’s replication. Modus Tollens. If I can replicate your findings then you are onto something, if I can’t then there is doubt. But fine whatever you believe what you want. That after all is what your idea of science allows you to do.
Michel Plante
It’s interesting that although my dad was an electronic engineering professor, he had very little concepts of the scientific testing process when it comes to humans… I remember when my sister, a very accomplished PhD in physical chemistry, who has been in the frontier of macromolecules (genetic engineering), had to explain to him the concept of double blind testing, and the power of confirmation bias. My dad understood the physics part, but not the psychoacoustic and physiological aspects of hearing. And shockingly, he was a novice at the concept of subjective confirmation bias.
So even when an electromagnetic engineer is praising certain audio voodoos phenomenons, I always remind myself of that conversation my sister had with my dad.
In short, trust science. Science is what brought us the technology of sound reproduction. And science has proven that one should never trust subjective, anecdotal accounts without rigours random and double blind testing. You can’t select and pick which scientific facts to ignore.
Tomi Engdahl says:
As the RCA connector was designed to be the cheapest possible interconnect. Surely any “high end” version is just a super sized Big Mac?
Tomi Engdahl says:
I mean ‘transient attack’ and ‘bass speed’ are real things that you can hear and not subjective. Coming from the recording and live audio world these are things that we listen for in our mixes. I’ve never come across a cable that can help with these things though.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Roy Buis guitars are quite high impedance (and sometimes very inductive) signal sources, which means that cable capacitance differences affects much more than with a low impedance signal source (dynamic mic, line output from mixer etc )
Tomi Engdahl says:
All stereo systems work on magic. You can’t impose science on stuff like speakers or pre-amps. In fact, nobody knows how they really work.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ronnie Rafferty If loudspeaker cable is high enough resistance, it can affect the bass performance. But the extra resistance and reactance of output transformers for valves, (Vacuum Tubes) did not seem to at all! You pays your money and make your choice really. The bullshit claimed by Crown about damping factor, is pure bollocks and mythology! The Company behind them, (MaCinnies Industries (I hope I have spelled that correctly) already had a stalwart reputation for industrial vibration tables second to none, so why the bullshit from Crown?
Leslie Acres you cannot hear cable. So there is no argument. It’s all bullshit. The cable sends the information to the speakers it’s the speakers that make the sound not the cable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://magnahifi.com/wireworld-supernova-7-toslink-optical-audio-cables/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.datapro.net/techinfo/gold_silver_nickel_plated_connectors.html