Audiophile snake oil - cables, fuses, cable risers...

[mbhangui]

For those who have not seen it yet, check out Benchmark's Audiophile Snake Oil article posted early April. It's good that as audiophiles we have respectable companies and engineers willing to call it like it is.

Also check out Archimago's musing on this subject http://archimago.blogspot.com/2024/05/musings-on-hardware-audiophilia-and.html

 

[reignofchaos]

These kind of articles keep popping up all the time. Get whatever floats your boat and ignore the rest. That is what I follow. One learns things about what they like only by experience.

 

[alpha1]

These kind of articles keep popping up all the time. Get whatever floats your boat and ignore the rest. That is what I follow. One learns things about what they like only by experience.

The trouble with such non-scientific approach is that people tend to get biased by appeal to authority.
Which means a person of authority (e.g. a forum moderator, or a veteran in the industry, or simply an elder person) can claim anything (as his personal experience), and the herd will simply nod their heads perhaps each one trying to outdo the other follower in terms airing the experiencing of the effect (even though none may actually be experiencing it).

This madness can be effectively utilized by the charlatans to make big monies.

To be frank, none of the above will matter to a person going by rationality and logic because there is no point in changing the world when we all know that a fool and his money is soon parted; but it becomes troublesome when such religious zealots try to silence the voice of reason.

 

[reignofchaos]

The trouble with such non-scientific approach is that people tend to get biased by appeal to authority.
Which means a person of authority (e.g. a forum moderator, or a veteran in the industry, or simply an elder person) can claim anything (as his personal experience), and the herd will simply nod their heads perhaps each one trying to outdo the other follower in terms airing the experiencing of the effect (even though none may actually be experiencing it).

This madness can be effectively utilized by the charlatans to make big monies.

To be frank, none of the above will matter to a person going by rationality and logic because there is no point in changing the world when we all know that a fool and his money is soon parted; but it becomes troublesome when such religious zealots try to silence the voice of reason.

As I said - whatever floats your boat. Continue using lamp wire if that works for you. You don't need to worry about me.

 

[mbhangui]

Words of wisdom indeed "whatever floats the boat". A lamp cord thick enough (lower AWG) with the cords separated to lower capacitance, easily beats my VDH revolution (which I unfortunately acquired when I was an audiofool 12 years ago), audioquest cable of higher awg.

 

[reignofchaos]

Words of wisdom indeed "whatever floats the boat". A lamp cord thick enough (lower AWG) with the cords separated to lower capacitance, easily beats my VDH revolution (which I unfortunately acquired when I was an audiofool 12 years ago), audioquest cable of higher awg.

I absolutely don't disagree with you - most audiophile cable companies are scams. I only buy studio grade cables these days. They are much cleaner and more neutral and don't act as tone controls.

 

[keith_correa]

Words of wisdom indeed "whatever floats the boat". A lamp cord thick enough (lower AWG) with the cords separated to lower capacitance, easily beats my VDH revolution (which I unfortunately acquired when I was an audiofool 12 years ago), audioquest cable of higher awg.

When the impedance of the load is low, inductance matters more than capacitance.

Speaker cable: Minimize inductance over capacitance.

Interconnects: Minimize capacitance over inductance.

For speaker cable twist the wires in a tight pitch and call it done!

 

[mbhangui]

When the impedance of the load is low, inductance matters more than capacitance.

Speaker cable: Minimize inductance over capacitance.

Interconnects: Minimize capacitance over inductance.

For speaker cable twist the wires in a tight pitch and call it done!

You are right about that. But I did the opposite. For interconnects I twisted the cables but more to cancel the noise. As it is even after twisting I got very low pF per meter, so I didn't bother. For speakers I have not done that and kept the cables apart. So that's interesting to know that I did that incorrectly. Thank you for the heads up. Let me twist the speaker wires and see If I can hear the changes. For interconnects I definitely can hear the changes by replacing my commercial interconnects with interconnects made from ethernet twisted pairs. The sparkle in the HF improved.

 

[mbhangui]

I absolutely don't disagree with you - most audiophile cable companies are scams. I only buy studio grade cables these days. They are much cleaner and more neutral and don't act as tone controls.

I actually purchased a LCR meter and was shocked to see high capacitance in many of the audiophile cables. You are correct about these cables acting as tone controls. To my surprise I found amazon basics 8 feet rca to rca having much lower total capacitance than audiophile cables of 1 meter.