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"i can hear the difference" (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
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[–] 30 points 10 months ago (16 children)

I do kinda see some point in gold plating electrical cables. Gold doesn't tarnish so much and is also often used on computer edge connectors.

The issue has always been "audiophiles" telling you they can tell the difference with a gold or gold plated digital connector. Of course you cannot, you either are getting bit errors or not with digital audio. But they do generally provide a more reliable connection overall.

Now don't ask me about my opinion, you're talking to the guy that makes radio antennas with speaker wire. I am truly uncultured in terms of electrical connectivity.

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  • [–] 25 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    TOSLINK is an optical cable though.

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  • [–] 35 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    The photons gain a richer sound when traveling past the gold.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Gold doesn't make an external oxide layer when exposed to air. So, any bit of the plug that touches your contact will conduct well, instead of being a toss up on how much insulating oxide is between them.

    But again, that's only important in electrical cables...

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    I mean technically you can hear the difference if it’s a mobile setup that has been plugged and unplugged 9000 times. The gold contacts will fare better because of the lack of oxidation. So for analog signals, I guess you technically could hear a difference.

    Thing is, at that point the wear and tear could also be hard on the cable core itself and not the connectors, so you will have functional connectors on a cable with a literal break in the signal wires. But I’ll always feel like a cable is ever so slightly less shit if they’ve decided not to spare the great expense that is 0.00004$ of gold plating.

    OP is hilarious though. Gold plate my wifi next please.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    Gold plate my wifi next please.

    There's a non-zero chance the wifi antenna traces are gold plated, although IIRC it's mostly connectors using it so maybe your m2 slot wifi module still has gold somewhere

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    With a digital cable (the electrical kind) you don't hear the difference. Either the connection is good enough to get the data stream error free, or it will be dropping in and out and you'd need to clean the contacts or get a new cable.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Depends on cable type and speed. Sometimes it will limit maximum bandwidth available, but yeah if there's enough noise it will simply kill the connection

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    Well. If it negotiates a lower bit rate I'm pretty sure the audiophile level kit will tell you it's no longer 24 bit 96khz or whatever the cool kids use now.

    But I'm pretty sure most High bitrate systems will have some level forward error correction, when the cable cannot deliver the snr needed to repair errors the signal will usually completely drop out. It will be perfect then gone.

    Without error correction, random bit errors in digital audio are seriously jarring.

    Having high quality (in terms of screening and contacts) won't have the kind of subtle change it can have with analogue signals. With analogue you're fighting things that can be minor like induced noise.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Technically you're still hearing the difference. If it makes contact, you're hearing the music, if it doesn't make contact, you're not hearing the music.

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