the coffee community and the audio community

Cuprajake There are definitely commonalities. I think the same bit of advice applies:

“If you can’t hear (taste) the difference, it doesn’t matter”

Gagaryn

But, but, the original Butler Tube Driver I have definitely makes me sound more like Eric Johnson…

Seriously though I agree. I feel like manufacturers know how to capitalise and on their market’s inclination to go down a rabbit hole. Wasn’t there a big exposé some years ago about Monster cables being basically the same as any old cheap cable?

Cuprajake The audiophile guys swear blind that mains fuses make a difference. Not to mention the need for even more expensive mains cables with cryogenically treated oxygen free copper.

How they square this with knowing there is metres of plain old twin and earth on the other side of the mains socket, and the the national grid beyond that is above my pay grade, but folk buy them and swear they hear the difference.

They are less keen to try to evidence these improvements by controlled blind testing though. That would spoil the magic.

I found 4 unused Neutrik RCA plugs in a drawer the other day though so just bought a few metres of Belden 8402 to make up some interconnects. That’s about my level - good quality but no fairy dust.

Cuprajake You say “cables”, do you mean mains cables, or instrument/ interconnect cables?

I used to keep a couple of cables and a small amp by the bed, so when I woke up, I would play a bit, then start the day. Some days I suspected the amp, or a tube/valve was playing up, I’d start trying to fix it, only to find nothing wrong. Then I found, to my considerable surprise, the clearly audible difference depended on which cables I picked up.

Cables used in hi impedance (hi-z) situations have a massive effect on signal, usually capacitance is the thing to look out for, but some low capacitance cables can be dull too, all high capacitance cables will be dull, so it’s a bit complicated. Decades back this was a big driver in performance microphones going away from hi-z to lo-z, manufacturers even used to specify max cable lengths for hi-z mic cables with their mics.

Anyone who can hear can tell the difference between 2 very different hi-z instrument cables by their sound, price may not be informative at all however. Preference is in the ear of the beholder. It’s like the difference between brewing coffee with RO water or Vittel, or Buxton.

The difference between 17.8g and 18g (all else being equal) - this is a straw man fallacy, no one ever said they could, it’s a difference of 1% in just 1 parameter.

A cleverer man than me once said the differnce a thing can make is dependent in how much difference and how many states that difference can be seen in. A cable has more states than just coffee dose and capacitance varies by way more than 1% for cables of the same length.

Hi-fi has long been the refuge of cheats and charlatans. I spent 23 years at the BBC working in sound and another 23 writing equipment reviews for a Pro Audio magazine.
Leaving aside the mains cable nonsense, let alone the fuses, these so-called experts ignore the way in which material is produced. I also spent some time wiring high end recording studios. Speaker cable was usually 2.5amp mains cable and all the interconnects were copper multiway going through Krone frames and jackfields, all telephony technology. There is a terrific amount of BS about everything to do with hi-fi. E.g. using a magic marker around the periphery of CDs. I could cite many, many more examples… Interconnects costing hundreds per meter, turntables costing thousands to play vinyl records which are inherently imperfect.
Ignoring all that, hi-fi obsessives don’t really listen to the music or movies, they just listen to the equipment.
I have studio monitor speakers and some high end converters etc. I listen mostly on computer speakers or a modest surround sound system. I’m much more interested in the content than the ultimate sound quality.
I live in hope there is a bit less BS about coffee machines and grinders but I’m not holding my breath.

I love my hi-fi and like many, in reality when I get passed a certain price point I can no more hear the difference than I could taste the difference between a coffee bean that is one hour older than another. So much snake oil and so many gullible people.

Of course what they all fail to take into consideration when listening to hi-fi is the amount of build up of ear wax one may or may not have.😁

DavecUK and I’d say they gone in all levels of quality and different levels of must haves and many noticeable differences etc etc..!! There must be some that specialise for the audiophile too😂

a good post to read, when reading reviews of stuff they might as well be speaking a foreign language sometimes as I cannot understand what they talk about or I think it’s a load of Bollocks some differences they hear must be minuscule or only show up on a piece of measuring equipment, how about just listening using yous ears however iffy they may be because you are stuck with whatever hearing you have mine is not very good but hey ho it is what it is

I was looking at hifi Zen DAC’s but I wanted one with 2 Digital Coaxial inputs and settled on a Topping DX3Pro Plus, sounds ok to me but have not heard anything to compare it to so I will stick with it

Hi Fi is full of invented techno babble, like star trek.