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#2
12-01-2007, 03:10 AM
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Re: The Ultra-Fi thread
one thing I was surprised with in my research for my first midlevel system was that while there were plenty of people calling out the myriad snake oil sellers and addicts, I didn't ever find source publication based on double blind testing. is there no such thing? and really not enough of a market for it? (Dunlavy's testing against live performance seemed to me like the most awesome thing of anything I read). 
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#3
12-01-2007, 04:53 AM
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Re: The Ultra-Fi thread
Pretty much everything even loosely related to the "audiophile" market is a scam, whenever anyone does a double blind test the audiophiles freak out(because they've just spent $400 on a volume knob and admitting they got took is too great a blow to the ego) and claim the test was invalid.
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#5
12-01-2007, 08:03 AM
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Re: The Ultra-Fi thread
I was excited when buying my system, and the salesman convinced me to buy a £100 interconnector. DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON CABLING. Seriously, since then I've read a lot, asked a lot of auido technicians, done some tests of my own and there is no noticable difference. Cabling market IS a scam. I wasted £100 on a cable and am happy to admit it.
One reputable audio technician I spoke to said that cables CAN colour the sound, but all they do is EQ it. If you want to EQ your sound, get a decent EQ deck. Watch out for hi fi dealers who turn the volume up on more expensive equipment as well. Humans perceive louder volumes as better quality sound, so hi fi dealers tend to increase the volume slightly when demonstrating expensive cabling.
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#6
12-01-2007, 10:04 AM
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Re: The Ultra-Fi thread
[ QUOTE ]
I was excited when buying my system, and the salesman convinced me to buy a £100 interconnector. DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON CABLING. Seriously, since then I've read a lot, asked a lot of auido technicians, done some tests of my own and there is no noticable difference. Cabling market IS a scam. I wasted £100 on a cable and am happy to admit it. One reputable audio technician I spoke to said that cables CAN colour the sound, but all they do is EQ it. If you want to EQ your sound, get a decent EQ deck. Watch out for hi fi dealers who turn the volume up on more expensive equipment as well. Humans perceive louder volumes as better quality sound, so hi fi dealers tend to increase the volume slightly when demonstrating expensive cabling. [/ QUOTE ] Just ask them *why* those cables are supposedly better. Hilarity will ensue.
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#7
12-01-2007, 11:44 AM
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Re: The Ultra-Fi thread
[ QUOTE ]
Pretty much everything even loosely related to the "audiophile" market is a scam, whenever anyone does a double blind test the audiophiles freak out(because they've just spent $400 on a volume knob and admitting they got took is too great a blow to the ego) and claim the test was invalid. [/ QUOTE ] I don't know anything about this stuff but my intuition is that theres a significant grain of truth to what you're saying but that there's also a real difference between the speakers you can get for a few hundred bucks and the speakers you can get for a few thousand. Please to be linking the studies you're talking about?
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#8
12-01-2007, 12:37 PM
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Re: The Ultra-Fi thread
fwiw I am 100% sure cabling makes a difference. I have a/b'd my headphones blind with a couple different cables and there were noticeable differences, mostly wrt warmth and detail. However, I would certainly agree that tons of expensive cables are worthless. This again, is another reason you dont just buy based on brand. My dad still thinks monster cabling makes his systems way better, whereas if i took some microphone cabling with decent connectors and did some soldering it would normally sound better than monster cables. Dont fall for marketing, you have to do research and actually listen to different things to see for yourself.
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#9
12-01-2007, 01:38 PM
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Re: The Ultra-Fi thread
Would an average person be able to hear the difference between the ultra high fi and say a midrange system? Do you need some special physical gift for hearing. Would a middle aged person be be able to hear this stuff? Additionally, would you have to be a musician yourself to really appreciate this?
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#10
12-01-2007, 02:06 PM
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Re: The Ultra-Fi thread
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Pretty much everything even loosely related to the "audiophile" market is a scam, whenever anyone does a double blind test the audiophiles freak out(because they've just spent $400 on a volume knob and admitting they got took is too great a blow to the ego) and claim the test was invalid. [/ QUOTE ] I don't know anything about this stuff but my intuition is that theres a significant grain of truth to what you're saying but that there's also a real difference between the speakers you can get for a few hundred bucks and the speakers you can get for a few thousand. Please to be linking the studies you're talking about? [/ QUOTE ] I'm not sure why Nielso got so defensive, clearly components are the least scammy part of the niche market. He and I would differ on where the diminishing marginal return on investment becomes unbearable for components(and probably by a lot), but I think he'd likely admit that diminishing marginal return exists. The pure scam is the cabling and power cords and etc. stuff. $17k speakers are not worth $15k more than $2k speakers to a reasonable person, but they do have some real physical differences (that are then translated to significant perception differences through the power of self-delusion). The cabling stuff is all absolutely hilarious to read, though, let me try to find a link I read that was a roundup of various power cords. It was on some audiophile forum where even mentioning double blind testing was a bannable offense. Also, I'm not trolling, Nielso, people need to know that the audiophile market is specifically targeted to exploit Emperor's New Clothes syndrome.
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