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Comparison of $4,000 boutique audio cable to $7 Amazon Basics cable shows audiophiles waste a lot of money — scientific audio equipment analysis with analyzer shows no difference in quality (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/hardware@lemmy.world
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'Black Pearl solid silver conductors drawn in diamond coated dies and insulated with virgin FEP dielectric' doesn't help.

Audio Science Review - $4000 Audio Cable vs $7!!! on YT

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[+] -22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (15 children)

I tested this myself as a skeptic, just changed the cabels, but was able to hear a very clear difference with my ears. Although I couldn't explain that difference as I lacked the vocabulary, still do.

Maybe the testing criteria can't capture that difference either. Either way, you should do you own testing and figure out what you like since this is subjective.

Edit: the scientific method is to test for yourself.

Edit 2: I don't care if you downvote me, but if you refuse to test things like this out for yourself I am disappointed.

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  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    You need someone to change the cable for you without you knowing which one it is, otherwise the test is worthless.

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  • [–] -2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    Yeah, that happened. Only the cables were changed on the same audio equipment. Although it was was a night and day difference. Not that it sounded bad before. I'm sure it was objectively fine, the sound was just much more preferable. More like the band was physically in there room.

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  • [–] 21 points 7 months ago (3 children)

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  • [+] -9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I don't care if you believe me, it sounded different in a indescribable way.

    If music is important to you I think doing tests like this is something you should do to see if there is a difference for you.

    Basically I see a test like this and it seems like this food has the same nutrients as this more expensive food so its the same, while not being able to test for how food actually tastes.

    Expensive things are not automatically better, don't get me wrong.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    When i was about 9, i was absolutely convinced i could find water with the help of two metal rods. Whenever I held it over water, they would just magically cross without me doing anything. Until my dad filled some opaque cups with water and kept some empty, and put paper over all of them. I failed hard at sensing the the ones with water, even though i had earlier confirmed it worked on a cup with water in it.

    Ever since that day I learned never to trust my own brain with things like these. Even though it might not be on purpose, our brain subconsciously deceives us into confirming our own bias.

    You can try it out yourself. Have someone else switch the cables while you are not in the room. The try and identify which cable they used purely by sound. It's not as good as a double blind test, but it should be enough to test your own claim.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    Agreed, people should do that.

    As I stated in a different comment, this is what I did with a friend. We had 5 different cabels ranging from cheap to about $4000 and we kept listening to the same song. I could not hear the difference after the cheapest performance cable however (Purple flare) but I definitely could hear the difference between those and the cheaper cables.

    Again, I don't know how to describe it. I'm not an audio guy, but I did prefer it.

    Again, I'm not an expert. But I'm willing to bet that there is some aspect of sound that is simply not being accounted for in tests like these. And for anything that has to deal with your senses, you should test it for yourself, not just take someone else's word or experiment for it.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    You tested those exact SKUs (Amazon Basics and the other one) or something comparable?

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  • [–] -2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    No, not those skus. But it was a similar test with compareable cables.

    Edit: I tested with more cabels in between. I couldn't hear the difference between the $1000 speaker wires and the $4000 ones however.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    You should have a friend switch them randomly and do 100 or so test listens, then report how often you guess it right. That would be more scientific, and if you had a good success rate would probably be a good basis for future experimentation by more professional teams. I truly encourage you to try this

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