In einem Blindtest konnten Audiophile den Unterschied zwischen Audiosignalen, die durch Kupferdraht, eine Banane oder nassen Schlamm gesendet wurden, nicht erkennen – „Der Schlamm sollte völlig schrecklich klingen, aber das tut er nicht“, bemerkt der Versuchsleiter
https://www.tomshardware.com/speakers/in-a-blind-test-audiophiles-couldnt-tell-the-difference-between-audio-signals-sent-through-copper-wire-a-banana-or-wet-mud-the-mud-should-sound-perfectly-awful-but-it-doesnt-notes-the-experiment-creator?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic%2Ftechnology
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Duh? That’s… that’s how signals work.
„Psychoacoustics“
Can’t wait for $500 audiophile-grade mud….
Weird how most of the people outside of these audiophile circles could have and have been saying that for years. Even before the “chocolate” Monster AV cables that Best Buy sold and everyone meme’d about back in the day.
I know a self-proclaimed audiophile who spent nearly 200€ on an „audio-optimized“ Ethernet cable, of all things.
I’m convinced that for many of these people don’t actually care about audio, it’s basically just a dumb spending contest.
Audiophile industry: Shhhhhhh
Golden Ear Fraternity. Companies like Monster Cable made a fortune off gullible morons.
Audiophiles have an inherent incapability of enjoying music, because there always will remain those knawing imperfections.
For years, I’ve been playing my music through a warm bowl of spaghetti with meatballs. It’s the only way to experience Fleetwood Mac.
I noticed a distinct veiling of the upper midrange when I used wet mud…..just sayin‘
Audiophile is relegated almost entirely to the speakers themselves with the qualifier that the wire is well connected, shielded if needed, and of a sufficient gauge for the application. Obviously some materials ensure a more consistent user experience. I have a feeling wet mud may be a bit heavy on maintenance.
I bet if you squeeze the oil out of a snake, you could make an interconnected out of what is left of the snake.
They spend a lot of money on the perfect cables, and then they spend a lot of money making sure the cables are the exact same length so there won’t be any distortion from the sound arriving at different times, and then they make sure they’re sitting in the exact right place in the room to experience those sounds from the correct directions and angles.
And they can’t tell if the signal is going through mud. Amazing.
Honestly lookup the MoFi crisis from a few year ago. The „audiophile community“ is quite something.
(TLDR: MoFi was a vinyl company that claimed to do purely analog copies from analog mastered vinyls and they were highly praised for that, and every audiophile could „clearly hear the difference“. At least that was until it came out that, in fact, MoFi did digital copies all the time like everyone else)
That’s why just spent $1000 on Monster brand Wet Mud Cables, the best pro audio mud cables available on the market.
I never will understand people who do all of this and buy all of this expensive gear when audio engineers and producers don’t touch this stuff. Like their job depends on having a clear and accurate monitoring environment with a flat frequency response and they don’t use the audiophile junk at all. Tells me what I need to know lmao
But my audiophile cousin told me that I have to spend $1200 on Uranium coated cables
Sadly the original article seems to be gone but a lot of discussion is still out there, but I remember an article over 20 years now where they tested Monster Cable vs. literal coat hangers with connectors soldered on and they couldn’t tell the difference.
[https://boingboing.net/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-soun.html](https://boingboing.net/2008/03/03/do-coat-hangers-soun.html)
I do notice a difference with nice open-back headphones and a decent enough DAC to power them, compared to older cheap headphones or noise canceling models… but that’s mostly just having nicer speakers. Mostly the reason I use a USB DAC these days is that it’s hooked up to a KVM, so I can easily switch my headphones (and other stuff) between multiple computers with one button press.
That said, I’ve got tinnitus and most of the stuff people talk about is lost on my ears. If my current headphones died, I doubt I’d go for replacements that are anywhere near what I paid for my current set (though they’ve lasted almost a decade now).
This test/a test like this was done like a decade ago. I remember reading about it when I was first getting into the audiophile scene (which, I’m still barely a lurker, regardless of how many Bose products I own).
180cm of cable vs 20cm of mud, not a fair test.
As with anything, you hit a point of diminishing returns, and that’s about two drops of water pass the point of saturation. However, that’s only if you use 6 times charcoal filtered reverse osmosis deionized distilled water that’s been show a glimpse of the purest Himalayan salt.
I really doubt this, would have loved to try this test.
Not believing in magical cables, but if conductivity is so bad, i expect that it sounds like a 64kbps mp3 or something
We dig up old Cold War-era tubes to run our music through them, no doubt adding distortion and noise, just to make our music sound more „warm.“ A banana or mud water might as well be the next new trend in the audiophile industry because they sound more „earthy“
Transfer mediums don’t seem to matter much. Speakers and headphones do to an extent. One can often find a $400 pair of headphones that sound just as good as a $2000 pair (not Beats, those suck).
I wonder if the mud could be improved with a [teleportation tweak](https://www.machinadynamica.com/machina60.htm)?
Shows audiophiles don’t actually know what sounds better. It’s all just pretentiousness
All this proves are two things: that you should never rely on a study with N=6 participants, and the “audiophiles” that participated don’t actually know what a banana or wet mud sound like in a circuit
A great many audiophiles don’t understand physics
… And I cannot taste which travel route my bananas were imported through, I cannot smell on the banana if it came by boat or plane. so what?
Doesn’t this apply to a lot of niche interests though? I’ve heard the same thing about high end wines. In my mind, if somebody thinks that the more expensive item is better and they’re happier because of it, that’s money well spent.
As a musician, I can’t stand talking to anyone that’s even remotely into that shit. They claim they can hear the difference between one capacitor and another but can’t tell a C from an F#.
*using a crappy $100 ten-year old audio interface as the source. Consider the methodology, and also consider that “banana and mud sound the same as a good cable” gets far more clicks than “good cables actually make a difference!”.
I listen to my black metal with my head inside a bucket with ice cold water as it should be
I’ll take 2 reels of banana core please.
I wouldn’t call myself an audiophile… I’m convinced that the ultimate solution is to just be able to produce ~115db with virtually zero distortion, and that is it.
My listening setup is a pair of behringer PA speakers powered by a Yamaha receiver. At 99db 1w sensitivity they hit 120db easily. You’d run into distortion from the AVR at some point, but you’d need hearing protection to get there anyway.
I built my subs to hit 15hz at 115db with like 2% distortion iirc. So all of the audible frequencies will never have distortion, and are capable of over 115db.
My subs are a bunch of cheap jbl car subs lmao. They’re powered by a cheap 2000 watt rms pro amp.
An audiophile would shit themself if I told them this. Im telling you right now, this setup can’t be beat and I spent ~1k plus a lot of my labor that im leaving out. I have heard some expensive setups and this just blows you away.
Banana and especially wet mud actually might have some measurable differences, and I actually would expect very sensitive people might actually hear a difference but I’m surprised they can’t.
Ah, they put the unamplified side through that wire. That’s why. If they put that on the amplified side of the chain it would be audible for sure.
As someone with a Master’s in EE, with a focus on acoustics and signals and who designed a loudspeaker analysis system for a name brand company, it can be true that some physical elements can measure better than others, but that depends on what you define „better“ as.
FWIW, when testing the systems, no special wires or other components were used. All the effort went into ensuring good connections, wire was sufficient gauge, and amps had enough continuous and peak power. Most of the money was spent on the microphones used (a phased array) for testing.
All that said, audio „quality“ is a subjective measure, just like food flavor, IMHO. Our perception is modified by so much.
My favorite „personal“ experiment was blind testing CD vs 320kbps mp3s where I had my son randomly choose one version and then the other version of songs while I listened. I went 9 for 10 in identifying them.
Next, I did the same but didn’t A/B the same songs and instead did it fully random. I guessed right on 11 of 20.
None of that is scientifically valid, but it highlights advice I give when people ask me, which is that if it sounds good to you, it is good!
Did they connect the banana with banana plugs???
Many years ago I needed a pair of speaker wire, the ones that go from the amplifier to the speakers. But I was poor, so I didn’t want to spend money on speaker wire. It just happens I had half a spool of 14g romex laying around, so I cut two sections of the romex and used them as speaker wire. Didn’t notice any issue with the sound.
A few years later I bought some nice thick pure oxygen free copper speaker wires and gold plated banana plugs, and swapped out the romex. Didn’t notice any difference in sound.
However, there are definitely differences when it comes to line level interconnections. Once I bought a cheap pair of RCA cables to connect a subwoofer. They must be unshielded, because as soon as I plugged them in, the subwoofer started humming. The cable was picking up the 60hz em radiation from electricity lines behind the wall.
My favorite is that they think cables need „breaking in“ to sound right.
Maybe we’ve been doing wires wrong this entire time, and should have just been using mud instead.
Mud vs $1,000,000 big John machines.
>The mud should sound perfectly awful
No, it should not.
Source: science.
r/vinyljerk they probably mean deaf, not sure why they would ask blind people for that?
The mud was in an aluminum pan. What corrections were made to keep the signal from traveling through the aluminum.
I guess that explains Puddle of Mudd.
Reminds me of the mp3 vs. Flac debate
Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring BANANA PHONE!!!!
When I was young I went into Richer Sounds (uk hifi store) and I wanted a jack to phono lead and some speaker wire to extend my speakers around my room.
The man in the store told me something that always stuck with me.
‚Audio signal is the smallest and simplest data to transmit through a cable.‘
You don’t need a fancy cable.