Audiophile insanity - April 2022 edition

[stoken6]

Saw this and had to post: https://www.richersounds.com/catalog/product/view/id/1008272/s/audioquest-cinnamon-lightning-usb-0-75m/. 

 

USB cable £69. That's basically $69+tax. 

 

BTW Richer Sounds are a decent outfit founded by a muso (see here for an example https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2019/05/15/why-julian-richer-gave-his-multimillion-dollar-firm-to-employees/).

 

Cheers, Mike.

[o0Ampy0o]

Have you considered the priceless genius of marrying quality cabling with cinnamon? 

[B4i]

Check out this

https://www.russandrews.com/kimber-select-usb-ag/

 

I think Russ Andrews is the king of snake oil salesmen. Just have a browse around his website

[stillearning]

2 hours ago, B4i said:

Check out this

https://www.russandrews.com/kimber-select-usb-ag/

 

I think Russ Andrews is the king of snake oil salesmen. Just have a browse around his website

Oh my.
Just checked out his:

EVOLUTION-500 POWERKORD UK AQ RHODIUM PLUG TO W350 RHODIUM IEC. 
$816.50 for a mains cable? 
And for only $228.85 additional, you can get:

 

Process Q Propriety cable process

“Process Q™ is the name we give to our proprietary cable process. Process Q uses a revolutionary processing technique on Kimber and Russ Andrews cables - it builds on the previous Super Burn-In we offered but brings significantly greater levels of improvement. 

Unlike the previous process which had two levels (Super Burn-In™ and Super Burn-In Plus™ which were applied to power cables), Process Q only has one main level that can be applied to most power cables, interconnects and speaker cables, either at the time of manufacture or as a 'retro-process'. 

In terms of performance, our listening tests show to us that Process Q far exceeds even the level of Super Burn-In Plus.”

 

 

[BenWaB3]

The cable debates on a lot of audiophile sites get pretty ferocious at times and often escalate into flame wars.

[KuruPrionz]

It's been a while but I read an interview in Tape Op with the engineer that is on board David Gilmour's houseboat studio on the Thames river.

He mentioned that he and David had installed a set of speaker cables that cost around $10,000 for the pair. They tried them in one direction, then switched end to end. They came to the conclusion that the cables did sound slightly better in one direction than the other. 

 

He didn't mention using electronic measuring devices to assure specifications. 

 

I'm guessing they have the "reallly good weed" and are not afraid to use it. 

 

I'd be amazed if it tested better than 14 guage lamp cable to be honest. 

[ProfD]

IMO, cable conversation or debate or flame war has to be listed among the minutiae that comes with a 1st world mentality.😁

 

Whenever I need a cable and look at the ridiculous price being charged for certain brands, I get a good chuckle. 

 

I've known folks who have outfitted their bedroom studio with overpriced cables.  Nevermind that it does absolutely nothing for the quality of their music.

 

At least in a commercial studio, all gear costs can be charged back to the victims, er, clients who patronize it. 

 

I'm waiting for an infomercial from My Cable Guy. 🤣😎

[stoken6]

8 hours ago, B4i said:

Check out this

https://www.russandrews.com/kimber-select-usb-ag/

 

I think Russ Andrews is the king of snake oil salesmen. Just have a browse around his website

This got me: 

 

Featured in The Absolute Sound Editors' Choice Awards 2021:

The Absolute Sound"established the widest, most detailed soundstage [the reviewer] has heard from a USB cable"

 

I suspect it was probably simultaneously the widest, narrowest, most and least detailed soundstage...

 

Cheers, Mike.

[KuruPrionz]

1 hour ago, stoken6 said:

This got me: 

 

Featured in The Absolute Sound Editors' Choice Awards 2021:

The Absolute Sound"established the widest, most detailed soundstage [the reviewer] has heard from a USB cable"

 

I suspect it was probably simultaneously the widest, narrowest, most and least detailed soundstage...

 

Cheers, Mike.

It would be fun to subject such stellar ears to a blindfold test of USB cables, wherein one has 3 or 4 choices, including a cable purchased at Goodwill for $1.79.

Dollars to donuts, I bet there are as many wrong answers as right ones and possibly more. 

[timwat]

I almost got sucked into this world back in the early '00s. Once you start buying high-end audio gear (which I did, all used), a new world of superlatives, adjectives, and adverbs begin promising amazing returns for those with ears sensitive / astute enough to hear them.

 

In the big picture, some things do make an enormous difference to the listening - stuff like big speaker technology, room treatments, enormous tube mono block amps. 

 

And in the pursuit of even greater improvements, the victim is ripe for the picking for cables, isolation pucks, and the like. Thank goodness I didn't have any real money at the time, or I might have parted ways with a lot of it.

 

 

[KuruPrionz]

17 minutes ago, timwat said:

I almost got sucked into this world back in the early '00s. Once you start buying high-end audio gear (which I did, all used), a new world of superlatives, adjectives, and adverbs begin promising amazing returns for those with ears sensitive / astute enough to hear them.

 

In the big picture, some things do make an enormous difference to the listening - stuff like big speaker technology, room treatments, enormous tube mono block amps. 

 

And in the pursuit of even greater improvements, the victim is ripe for the picking for cables, isolation pucks, and the like. Thank goodness I didn't have any real money at the time, or I might have parted ways with a lot of it.

 

 

 

I have a friend in the condo complex where I live and he has a pair of custom built hi-fi speakers that cost him $12,000. 

They do sound nice but I would like to hear them in a much larger room. His living room isn't big enough for those speakers to be at their best. 

Despite how nice they are, they are not his best choice in my opinion. He could get smaller, less expensive speakers that sound better in the smaller room. 

 

Isolation for speakers does not need to be expensive to be effective. You could literally put your speakers on bags of sand, mission accomplished. Not very pretty, I will admit. Doubtful that the most expensive isolation pucks accomplish anything that sand bags cannot. 

 

One component that does get overlooked sometimes is the output transformer. If you are running tube amplifiers the transformers are where the rubber meets the road and they can make a big difference in fidelity. I put a Mercury Magnetics output transformer in a hand wired custom Fender Champ clone and it made a big difference in how it sounded, much "larger" and smoother sounding.

 

USB cables? Meh...

It's data transfer, the data either is transmitted or it is not. 

[kaptainkeys]

2 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

USB cables? Meh...

It's data transfer, the data either is transmitted or it is not. 

Exactly.  With any cable transmitting a digital signal (HDMI, USB, DisplayPort, Ethernet, etc.) as long as the cable is rated for the length and specs you need, it either works or it doesn't.  With analog cables, (such as basically any audio cable) or fiber optic cables, length and quality do come into play in terms of how well the signal is transmitted, but as long as you are using something with decent build quality and it is in decently good shape, you shouldn't have a problem.