23rd Jun 2020, 11:21 am | #1621 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Someone needs to take whoever wrote that ad linked to in GJ's post #1615 aside and point out that excitable gibberish such as "indescribably incredible" and "awesome" is a big turn-off to adult readers. It makes me think of those internet scams where deliberate spelling mistakes are present to weed out the non simple-minded.
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23rd Jun 2020, 12:12 pm | #1622 | |
Octode
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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23rd Jun 2020, 12:22 pm | #1623 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
On another page he says
"Our cables have been specially designed to provide a clear, deep sound by utilizing solid core technology. Stranded wire has many points where the wires touch each other. This creates a smearing effect as the signal jumps from one wire to the other. The larger the wire, the more this effect becomes evident. Research also shows that stranded cables creates time distortions due to the uneven manner in which the signal travels" Jumping signals. Who would have thunk? |
23rd Jun 2020, 1:10 pm | #1624 | |
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Re: 'Cable Break In' - I never knew that!
Quote:
It's possible to make equipment with all soers of looks and styling, it's also possible to make things working in unusual ways. This can be very satisfying, you can do thiinfgs just for the hell of it. Why not? it's a hobby. Some people get their jollies at a weekend by driving a 1920s Bentley to a meet-up, and everyone around looks at them and smiles and takes photographs. If you look at the materials and workmanship, it's far far nicer than a Focus ST. But don't try saying the Bentley gets more MPG, MPH or G than the focus. Then it gets numerical and superiority/inferiority can be proven objectively. In the same way, the audiophilia companies produce some nice looking stuff, some of which would be fun to have, just for the looks. The problem comes in that looks aren't performance. Mankind's eyes and sense of what looks right is tuned for moving parts and mechanisms. Things which work electrically can often be highly counter-intuitive. The audiophile stuff looks like some of it could be great fun, if only they didn't blow it all with attempts at justification and explanation. It is now sufficiently easy to make a great amplifier, with nothing audible which can be blamed on it, that we can play about a bit, just for the fun of it. The guy doing those expensive cables David EBT linked to says he spent 4 years at Ear Training School. Was that where I went wrong? I did a 4-year BSc, and that involved many hours staring at equations by the blackboardful. My ears only got a workout in one lab session measuring speaker responses and even then I deferred to the opinion of a half-inch B&K capacitor mike. It's a bit like a Turing test, If you think more effort and money was spent on a product's name and advertising than was spent on developing the product itself, then run away run away very quickly. David
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12th Jul 2020, 8:16 am | #1625 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Here we go. The Nordost Odin 2 speaker cable https://www.nordost.com/odin-supreme...aker-cable.php which sells for £29k for a 1 meter pair. If you want a more realistic 2.5 meter pair that will set you back £41k.
Complement your Nordost set up with the tonearm cable https://www.nordost.com/odin-supreme...earm-cable.php at £11k, and mains cables https://www.nordost.com/odin-supreme...power-cord.php as £16.5k each. Craig |
12th Jul 2020, 8:56 am | #1626 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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Richard Index: recursive loop: see recursive loop |
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12th Jul 2020, 9:55 am | #1627 | ||
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Quote:
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A digital radio is the latest thing, but a vintage wireless is forever.. |
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12th Jul 2020, 10:16 am | #1628 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
The most 'real world' meaning would be if the dielectric around the conductors had an effective relative permittivity of 1.235, say because it was a mix of mostly air and some plastic. The speed of electromagnetic signals down the cable would then be 90% of its speed in vacuum (the speed of light). I can't see why anyone would care though. When I worked on nanosecond pulsers propagation speeds mattered a great deal. But they don't with audio.
Cheers, GJ
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12th Jul 2020, 11:56 am | #1629 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Quote:
Is that really what we want from a speaker cable? |
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12th Jul 2020, 12:19 pm | #1630 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
It probably means they're confused with Velocity factor, a perfectly normal parameter of matched transmission lines.
IF so, then it means that the surroundings of their conductors is mostly air. (solid polythene would be about 60% PTFE 68%). With the hyper expensive 2.5 metre option, it means you get to hear your music about 5 nanoseconds sooner than if you had mere plastic insulation. For an audiophile with the sort of busy lifestyle needed to fund these things, the waiting must add up and hang heavy. David
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12th Jul 2020, 1:47 pm | #1631 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
Note that they say their copper wire is 99.999999% pure. That is known as 8-nines purity.
That is either nonsense, or has been assayed very carefully indeed. The only sure fire way of measuring it is to cool the copper to 4K and measure its Residual Resistance Ratio (RRR) which is sensitive to copper purity, crystal boundaries etc (ie anything that scatters phonons). In fact ultra-pure copper, which has been carefully annealed can give an RRR of 2000. Problem is that it is as soft as lead in that state, and once exposed to the atmosphere it scavenges oxygen and its purity degrades. Regular ETP copper has an RRR of ~50 and OHNO audio grade copper is ~200. |
12th Jul 2020, 1:58 pm | #1632 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
In any event, it is being fed by an amplifier with hundreds, or thousands, of solder joints, and a smorgasbord of dissimilar materials in every transistor, resistor and capacitor. And feeds a loudspeaker with a crossover, and a voice coil whose resistance changes quite dramatically with power level (a process called thermal compression). And gives typically 0.3% to >1% harmonic distortion.
So the bit of wire connecting the real world amp to a real world speaker is to first (and n'th order) irrelevant. It needs to be good enough, but no more. Craig |
12th Jul 2020, 4:34 pm | #1633 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
It seems that having any sense of proportion is an absolute impediment to anyone becoming an audiophile.
Heisenberg gets involved, too. They can clearly hear things that theoretically might be there even when they are not. They must span multiple universes. David
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12th Jul 2020, 4:43 pm | #1634 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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12th Jul 2020, 4:49 pm | #1635 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
You may say so Minister, I couldn't possibly comment
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12th Jul 2020, 5:47 pm | #1636 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
I said Heisenberg, I meant Schrödinger, of course.
Doh! I'm getting confused, now. David
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12th Jul 2020, 5:52 pm | #1637 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
It's a fair swap, they both were looking at quantum mechanics and trying to work out why some things seemed to be there when they probably weren't....
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Richard Index: recursive loop: see recursive loop Last edited by mole42uk; 12th Jul 2020 at 5:59 pm. |
12th Jul 2020, 5:58 pm | #1638 | |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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12th Jul 2020, 6:51 pm | #1639 | ||
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
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Craig |
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12th Jul 2020, 6:51 pm | #1640 |
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Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.
I've always said - and this cuts a great swathe through the world of hifi and its preoccupation with ultra low distortion levels - that speakers have around 2% distortion. Apparently listening tests show that odd harmonic distortion is audible form 0.1%, whilst even harmonic distortion is audible form 1%. So, no matter how good your amplifiers are - and I'm not saying that you won't be able to distinguish a good amp from a bad one 'beneath' a speaker - you're still going to be listening to that amount of distortion at the end of the chain ie around 2%. Game over. For some.
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