For those who endorse high priced tweaks

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I read Audio Science Review regularly because the objective testing agrees with my Engineering mindset, and the fact that I pretty much fall on the objective side of the fence anyway. The most recent review tests Audioquest wind cables ($2300/pair). I thought many might find it interesting.

See here

and here for a cheaper set of Audioquest cables.

Your thoughts?
 
People are still falling for these trolling cable scams? Really?

Yeah, that kind of gaslighting and pure horseshit gets me going too!

Someone thinks lengths of copper aren't good enough without some weird alloy and chanting over the thing when soldering it together? Oh, and then your example is wiring some cheapo device that sounds like a little transistor radio squeaking from the next room at best?!

Go directly to jail! Do not collect $200!
 
People are still falling for these trolling cable scams? Really?

Yeah, that kind of gaslighting and pure horseshit gets me going too!

Someone thinks lengths of copper aren't good enough without some weird alloy and chanting over the thing when soldering it together? Oh, and then your example is wiring some cheapo device that sounds like a little transistor radio squeaking from the next room at best?!

Go directly to jail! Do not collect $200!
Actually, this goes beyond charging big money for something that doesn't make any audible difference, this product is actually shown to degrade the signal. Amazing.
 
People are still falling for these trolling cable scams? Really?

Yeah, that kind of gaslighting and pure horseshit gets me going too!

Someone thinks lengths of copper aren't good enough without some weird alloy and chanting over the thing when soldering it together? Oh, and then your example is wiring some cheapo device that sounds like a little transistor radio squeaking from the next room at best?!

Go directly to jail! Do not collect $200!

I don't care for too much highs coming from behind me. So in hope of rolling off the high frequency response of the surround and rear speakers, I cut down the diameter of the speaker wire to #16 gauge. Guess what? It didn't work.
 
A long time ago, at least 25 years, I did a inexpensive upgrade to a cd of which I had another copy. When I played the known upgraded disc the sound was always better and one time while I was still evaluating and thought I was listening to the upgraded disc I ejected the the disc and lo and behold it was the non-upgraded version. Hence the end of my tweaking.
 
A long time ago, at least 25 years, I did a inexpensive upgrade to a cd of which I had another copy. When I played the known upgraded disc the sound was always better and one time while I was still evaluating and thought I was listening to the upgraded disc I ejected the the disc and lo and behold it was the non-upgraded version. Hence the end of my tweaking.
Psychoacoustics are so interesting. Did you automatically change how you felt about what you heard?

Human brains in general are just so crazy. I just had some health issues come up where I was having one type of pain and I felt like I was on death door. I went to the doctor and found out it was something totally different (but still painful). The pain I was feeling instantly changed and is still kind of crazy to think about.
 
I don't care for too much highs coming from behind me. So in hope of rolling off the high frequency response of the surround and rear speakers, I cut down the diameter of the speaker wire to #16 gauge. Guess what? It didn't work.
You have to paint the cable connectors blue or it doesn't work.
And it has to be gluten free paint.
 
I read Audio Science Review regularly because the objective testing agrees with my Engineering mindset, and the fact that I pretty much fall on the objective side of the fence anyway. The most recent review tests Audioquest wind cables ($2300/pair). I thought many might find it interesting.

See here

and here for a cheaper set of Audioquest cables.

Your thoughts?
Back in the late 1980s, my best friend worked at a high end audio shop. They all swore by some high priced cable or other, maybe an early Monster cable, although I can't recall, so I am not besmirching monster cables. He always laughed at my quad setups, calling it 'better living through patch cords' since there's two matrix decoders, CD4, 8 cables for the Akai 8 track deck, and on and on. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. So one day he brought some high end cables over for the limited purpose of running a stereo turntable signal, through the Audionics tate, then on to the power amps. Nothing else. Obviously we couldn't afford to switch all the cables in use over. Guess what? Noise went up with the high priced cables. I attributed it to poorer shielding since each of those quad components has its own transformer and so there were many fields to pick up hum. But regardless of the cause, why would it be worse with the more expensive cables? Back then my cable of choice for durability and use came from Radio Shack. Many of those are still in use in my system today. SO there.
 
Psychoacoustics are so interesting. Did you automatically change how you felt about what you heard?

Human brains in general are just so crazy. I just had some health issues come up where I was having one type of pain and I felt like I was on death door. I went to the doctor and found out it was something totally different (but still painful). The pain I was feeling instantly changed and is still kind of crazy to think about.
No. I decided to do a blind test and my wife changed the disc when I wasn't in the room and then I tried to decide if I heard a blind difference. I could not distinguish between the two disc. She kept track, written, of which disc was playing and I did not even try to identify which disc was playing just did I heard any difference which I didn't!
 
It's true. Some of these grifters are so busy working their scams and making up their bs to write about that they miss delivering even a baseline properly constructed and functioning cable to begin with.

Signal cables:
22awg wire minimum. Foil + braded (no gaps) shield.
Proper assembled ends. (ie. not plastic molded) Switchcraft and Neutrik are solid choices.

Speaker wire:
16awg minimum. 14awg or 12awg is cool if you need high power handling.
(Extension cords from Menards are in fact a fine choice!)

Copper is a good conductor.

Don't fuss over anything too much with portable devices with the little 1/8" jacks and stereo unbalanced wiring. Why would you do that for transistor radio sound, right?
 
I read Audio Science Review regularly because the objective testing agrees with my Engineering mindset, and the fact that I pretty much fall on the objective side of the fence anyway. The most recent review tests Audioquest wind cables ($2300/pair). I thought many might find it interesting.

See here

and here for a cheaper set of Audioquest cables.

Your thoughts?
I have voiced my opinion on a lot of these kinds of audiophool garbage a number of times and usually the thread gets shut down. Of course there are some here who like to flaunt their equipment and justify their purchases by claims of how they can the difference/ improvements and provide any number of audiophile adjectives ala Stereophile to describe those improvements.

Yet as the saying goes "A fool and his money are easily parted "

There go my 2 cents on this topic.
 
And if you want to A/B something for subtle fidelity - ie something well within the range of perception bias - you need to match A to B within 0.1db minimum. You will be guaranteed to pick the louder as "better" otherwise! (The highs are clearer... the mids are more revealing... the bass is fuller... oh shit, it's just louder!) You also need an A/B switch that's instant and with no clicks or chirps.
A/B'ing in a DAW can cover those bases. Shiny discs and stand alone machines? No chance in hell!

Perception bias sucks!
It's luxury now to have full exact instant recall on a mix session with the computer. So you can listen the next day with a clear head and catch what your lying ears and skewed perception bias was trolling you with yesterday! :D
 
If you are still interested in this, some of the best entertainment value comes in the 8 pages or so of comments that follow the review. Guys talking about legal action and such. Even comments from the cable "donator". I like Amirm's test thoroughness a lot, He tries and usually succeeds in correlating the measurements to what he hears. He also has a nice description of expectation bias in one of those two cable reviews.

A lot of products, many of which are high end and expensive, get very poor reviews based on the objective testing. I'm very surprised there isn't more of a response from the manufacturers to defend their products.

The replies to this thread are pretty tweak-negative so far. I was wondering if I'd see any of the pro-tweak side of the coin. Not that i want an argument or anything, I dont. But if there is a reasonable argument against how the reviews are conducted, I'd like to hear it.
 
My first encounter with the concept of high-end cables was back in the late '70s. The music store where I worked had a stereo department that sold what was considered nice stuff at the time - McIntosh, Bozak, Sony, Thorens, Advent, etc. We started selling a couple of items from this new company called Monster Cable. Their main thing was the now-classic (and these days mostly rotted greenish-brown) big fat speaker cable, with the 10 AWG stranded wire in the clear vinyl zip-cord jacket. Our stereo sales guy swore by the stuff; to be honest, I never paid much attention to it.

Their RCA interconnects on the other hand got a more spirited response from us techs back in the shop, mostly in the form of jokes and derision due to the fact that several customers wound up bringing them back to us for repairs! It turns out they were made from some type of TV antenna coax cable (probably RG59) which of course has a solid center conductor, so they were very susceptible to breakage at the connector ends. :rolleyes:

Apart from the solid-wire issue, the TV coax idea wasn't completely misguided. This type of coax cable has low capacitance per foot, which is a factor not to be ignored at radio frequencies. But with any reasonably-constructed, normal-length, "line-level" audio cable, capacitance is usually not a factor.

There is a larger picture here, which is unfortunately not covered by the ASR review: the end result is not completely due to the cables, but also the interaction between the cables and the equipment connected at each end of them! There have been documented examples of cables having an effect on the sound of certain setups. usually involving equipment having too-high output impedance or too-low input impedance (or both). Unfortunately this sort of unconventional circuitry is mainly found - you guessed it - in high-end, boutique audio gear. Mix some of that stuff in with some of these weird cable geometries, and you have a recipe for muddy water indeed. But some folks do like to experiment with different seasonings, heh.
 
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