Hifi snake oil

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

I have spend some time and more than tiny a bit of money on hi-fi through the years. The absolute cheapest cables should be avoided but no need to spend more than a few quids. The biggest impact on the sound are the speakers so put your money there and get a system that fits those. But what really matters most in the end is the room itself, its acoustic properties and the placement of the speakers. You can get a modest system to sound terrific if you spend a little effort on that bit. Avoid standing waves, make some simple bass traps and those sort of things.
That said the age of good sound is mostly history now. 99% of today's sound production is totally compressed shit geared towards the simple mobile equipment most people use now. No dynamics, just loudness. But if you still listen to old stuff it might be worth it.

Agree. I reckon I can hear the difference between the patch cables that come in the box and £5-10 cables - the Tandy ones at maplin were always decent. diminishing returns above that, and I'm not sure ears over 40 yrs old can hear the difference between a £20 and £1000 cable. Buying hifi is like buying wine - any **** can throw a fortune at it and end up with something decent, the skill is finding something for reasonable money that is special.

 

[unicorn]

I fell for the whole Linn power supply, Naim Hi-Caps, £500 cartridges etc when I went Hi-Fi mad nearly 30 years ago. Spent more on Hi-Fi in a year than I've spent on cars in a lifetime.

But Mrs Unicorn isn't daft, studied acoustics and drew the line at expensive leads. I still use the same kit 30 years on so not altogether a bad decision to upgrade the Technics stack system.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Anybody remember the "Power leads" fad.
Apparently, spending hundreds on a 1m lead from the socket to your amplifier improved the sound. These leads could cure all ills. Same with high end speakers cable.
I know proper shielding and gauge could offer improvements for hi-fi analogue interconnects. But that was actual science.

I was massively into AV at the time. Travelling the country on meet ups and AV demonstrations.
All this snake oil selling was really getting to me. I just couldn't figure out how people could be so gullible.
Come the digital age and these snake oil peddlers just carried on as normal.

So a few of us decided to find out once and for all.

So we arranged a massive show. We invited all the top manufacturers and got those high end suppliers to bring their best stuff.
What we didn't tell them, that we had set up a stage to do some blind testing.

The biggest flop was the power leads. Nobody could tell any difference at all. The power lead sellers were furious!

Next up was speaker cable. Some really high end stuff got really low scores. What we found that speaker cables did in fact has some slight impact on sound. But not for the reasons we thought they might. Turned out some cables were affecting the impedance to the amplifier, changing the sound very slightly.
The winner of that section was actual coat hanger wire!

It went on and on with all sorts from DVI to HDMI leads. etc

Of course they were right there with the excuses. Not the right environment. Leads not "run in" properly. Takes time in your own environment before you could see/hear the improvements etc.

The event ended with John Dawson from Arcam giving a speech.
He in one swoop dispelled the myths. Explaining that investing all that extra cash on snake oil products would be better spent on actually buying higher end gear in the first place. Even he admitted there are diminishing returns in doing that as well.

We demonstrated his point. We blind tested low end/med and high end gear.
The differences were immediate and clear.
The only worrying bit was some supposed "real" high end gear (£100,000 plus stuff) scored really lowly in some tests.
We felt they had spent all the money making that stuff look great and unique using exhotic materials and good marketing and forgot to actually make good gear!

Absolutely spot on.

I might add though that DACs - unless you are stupid enough to buy an "exotic" one for silly money - are now all good enough that their distortion and noise are below human detection and they all sound identical. Or at least close enough to identical that it makes bugger all difference. The exception is the super exotic expensive ones which sometimes are much, much worse. Ironically.

Same thing but to a lesser extent with power amplifiers. Tiny nuances exist, but not to the extent that one is markedly better than another.

The two things that dramatically affect the quality of the sound - and your enjoyment of it - are the speakers, and the room you are listening in. There's not much you can do about the room - other than add rugs, cushions, move the speakers (and the couch!) away from the wall etc. (Of course you can go buying diffusers and bass traps and what have you but 99.99% of people are not going to be doing that.)

So the biggest influenceable factor by FAR is the speakers. A system with a £500 integrated amp and a £2,000 pair of speakers is going to sound dramatically better than one with a £2,000 amp and a £500 pair of speakers.

 

[Chippy_boy]

I have spend some time and more than tiny a bit of money on hi-fi through the years. The absolute cheapest cables should be avoided but no need to spend more than a few quids. The biggest impact on the sound are the speakers so put your money there and get a system that fits those. But what really matters most in the end is the room itself, its acoustic properties and the placement of the speakers. You can get a modest system to sound terrific if you spend a little effort on that bit. Avoid standing waves, make some simple bass traps and those sort of things.
That said the age of good sound is mostly history now. 99% of today's sound production is totally compressed shit geared towards the simple mobile equipment most people use now. No dynamics, just loudness. But if you still listen to old stuff it might be worth it.

Just saw this. I posted pretty much the same!

 

[Chippy_boy]

I'm not sure ears over 40 yrs old can hear the difference between a £20 and £1000 cable.

I am sure you cannot. No-one can. Time after time after time, in double-blind tests, people cannot determine one cable from another. Of course they come up with all sorts of excuses but that's the reality.

Another andecdote for you: Without doubt one of the best - if not THE best - power amp in the world in terms of technical excellence is the £3,000 Benchmark AHB2. It is a marvel, producing copious amounts of power with ludicrously low distortion and noise. It is sonically as perfect as we can make an amplifier.

Yet in double-blind testing, people could not reliably tell the difference between than and a £250 cheapy.

Kansas City Area Home Theater Meets and Movie Night Events!

Here is a list of active home theater hobbyist in Kansas City, at least in relation to the ongoing KC g2gs that I'm aware of. @Archaea Archaea's multi-purpose Home Theater room @carp Carp's Basement @chirpie Cinema Midwest 2.0 @ChldsPlay The Hodor Theater build -- Theater...

www.avsforum.com

"
Interestingly enough - the one both Sheldon and Ryan initially both thought in their own switchboard use was different was amp B (though they were unable to prove they could identify it in subsequent testing when I was doing the switching). They both guessed Amp B was the $3k Benchmark amp before the reveal. It's more expensive by a large margin (a factor of 10 in one case), it should sound different! Maybe? Sure - that's reasonable logic except that Switch B was actually the Crown XLS 1502.

In the end, since none of the four auditioners could at any point identify which amp was which with any reliable consistency and that result again speaks to the same conclusion we came to in our 2013 testing.
Ryan's son at one point joined in and he said he thought Amp D had more bass. Ryan's wife joined in after saying one sounded muffled when she was listening in the other room, but when she was in the hot seat on the couch she said they all sounded the same.

This same conclusion has been reached three times now in three different test with different amplifiers, different speakers, and different auditioners in blind testing. This is across about 15 local enthusiasts and three pairs of speakers and about a dozen+ amps run in full range testing. (JTR 212HT, Klipsch Reference Towers, and now Martin Logan Renaissance towers.) Humans, at least the enthusiasts we've tested, can't seem to hear these engineering pedigree differences in typical home use cases, or at least seem unable to reliably identify nuances in blind testing with at will blind A/B switching and competent amplifiers. In all three formal testing cases we used flagship pre-pros as the source, and quite adequate and unique speakers representing a pretty wide range of use cases.
Yes, it's still a small sample, but it yields interesting results."

 

[Saddleworth2]

That said the age of good sound is mostly history now. 99% of today's sound production is totally compressed shit geared towards the simple mobile equipment most people use now.

While that is true, anyone that has taken the trouble to spend ££££ on hi fi will by accessing the remaining 1%, be that streaming or physical media. There is still plenty choice for those that still appreciate 'good sound'.

 

[Chippy_boy]

While that is true, anyone that has taken the trouble to spend ££££ on hi fi will by accessing the remaining 1%, be that streaming or physical media. There is still plenty choice for those that still appreciate 'good sound'.

Yes, and it's nice to see a variety of sources now of lossless streaming sources such as Qobuz, Tidal and even Amazon Music.

The whole Hi-Res thing is another con. There is no audible difference between CD red book 16/44 and a 24/192 - humans cannot detect such differences - although of course you have a whole industry desperate to convince them that they can. But at least the mastering quality is sometimes better with the higher bit-rate recordings and you can hear that.

For old farts like me, who like old fart music, there's a huge catalogue of very high quality content on these streaming platforms. Not compressed rubbish at all.

 

[Saddleworth2]

My recommendations to improve your hi-fi sound? Only £5!



You have to laugh, the hi-fi market is mostly men over 50.
Most men over 50 don't have very good hearing!

Its no joke. At 63 my hearing in my right ear is completely fucked. (too much loud music over the years). Headphones are not much use but I can still appreciate my pretty decent hifi setup as one ear can compensate and trick your brain that you still have a 'sound stage' with all the instruments in the right place.
Unfortunately ear drops wont do the biz. :-)

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

Would have thought putting snake oil into your hifi would create some sort of hiss ....

 

[I'm With Stupid]

The whole Hi-Res thing is another con. There is no audible difference between CD red book 16/44 and a 24/192 - humans cannot detect such differences - although of course you have a whole industry desperate to convince them that they can. But at least the mastering quality is sometimes better with the higher bit-rate recordings and you can hear that.

Yeah, it's the same in photography or video production. Nobody really needs 8K or even in most cases 4K in their home, but it's still useful to have in the production process, because it means it can be edited and manipulated while still maintaining the quality.