Many so-called audiophiles buy the Emperor Crown power cables but don’t think about the pointlessness of doing so when there is ordinary house and distribution wiring between their wall plug and their nearest power station.
As a true audiophile I’m raising funds to have the whole 27km of powerlines between my house and my nearest power station replaced with Emperor Crown cable.
So far my kickstarter has raised $10 (thanks Mum!) but I should reach the required $526M shortly.
If an audiophile was really worried about “clean power” (which, I’ll admit, does sound plausible… I’m imagining power that’d show up as a simple waveform without messy variations), couldn’t they install their own power plant? Maybe solar, maybe an Emperor Crown generator?
Or run their own DC off a bank of car (maybe Prius) batteries?
Again, I don’t believe anyone could tell the difference A/B-ing it, but it’d make a great talking point as you were chatting with your guests… and slitting the cellophane on your Master Pressing of Dark Side of The Blue.
Not that I would defend any of these ridiculous power cables (or any other outrageously priced A/V cables) but anyone buying such a power cable wouldn’t plug it into the wall – they’d spend even more money on some outrageously priced power conditioner.
In fairness, A/V and digital signal cable quality and characteristics do matter, but only up to a point. There’s never any reason to pay outrageous amounts for them. But just like there are different categories of UTP Ethernet cables, there are different qualities and capabilities of HDMI cables, for instance. A poor quality HDMI cable can generate digital signal errors and consequent protocol errors. A shielded RCA cable intended for connecting a subwoofer is going to be optimized for very low frequency audio signals and is not going to work well – or at all – for composite or component video which has very high frequency requirements.
So yeah, some audiophiles are insane, but not all are entirely misguided. I pay attention to cable quality and matching the right cable to the right application, but I also know that quality is not always synonymous with price, and the really expensive ones are almost always a huge ripoff.
Let me ask this, because I think I found a big rift between me and my Audiophile Friend:
Are you listening to music analytically, to pick out each scratch of the pick on the guitar string? Or experientially, for the way the music and lyrics make you feel?
I’ve been trading music with this friend (digitally, handing off hard drives when we got together for poker), and I’d always send an email or text the next week, thanking him and telling him which songs/bands of his I really liked. And why.
But he would never do the same. I shrugged it off, not wanting to be a needy friend. But after ‘trading tunes’ once every month or so for years, I ran into his wife, who said “Thank you for keeping in touch with Ed and talking about his music. I know he doesn’t reciprocate, but you have to keep in mind he’s a perfectionist.” “Okay, how does that…?” “He skims through your drive and sometimes he’ll only listen to ‘adequate’ files. Like if it’s not 320k or 24-bit or FLAC or Wave or whatever, he won’t even listen to it.”
Made me sad. He was missing out on some great music that I know would’ve moved him.
I see the OP has been hanging out too much lately on the Steve Hoffman forums.
Speaking for myself, my answer to your bolded question is that I listen to music experientially, absolutely. I might occasionally marvel at some particular clarity of sound, but that’s hardly the point of the experience.
The thing is, though, that the two are rather inextricably intertwined. The experience in question, for many of us, isn’t really achieved unless the quality is there. Yes, people who are so obsessed with perfection that they won’t listen to any music that doesn’t meet some absurdly high standards of fidelity are missing out, and that’s sad. But people who will settle for any kind of garbage audio quality when much better is available are also missing out on a huge part of the experience. And possibly even worse are those who don’t understand what audio quality is, and think that very high volume and super-thumping bass means “great sound”.
Well, when you turn music listening into hobby rather than an aesthetic experience, content naturally must take a back seat. I don’t necessarily fault that. You can certainly find purpose in being a gearhead and building up an arcane knowledge base that you can flaunt among members of the tribe.
I suppose that’s why hobbyists tend to get stuck on certain records that are familiar ground, searching to wring new subtleties out of “Who’s Next” or whatever. I started this thread after spending time on the abovementioned Steve Hoffman forum, and being amused at certain tribal signifiers that seem to emerge over and over. Not always, and not everyone there is part of it, but you don’t have to look hard to find threads of the sort where someone mentions “DSOTM” or “KOB” and no one has to explain what that stands for. (Not unlike here on SDMB, in CS, with TOS and TNG.)
But what quality guarantees you’ll receive the experience? Spare a thought for the recently departed guy - I read his obit yesterday and I can’t even name him - who played that messy guitar solo in “Louie Louie”. That may or may not be your cup of tea, but hearing it on an AM car radio is not going to make it any worse; the music is in the listener and his/her reaction to the song.
Yeah, thanks in part to this thread, I listened to a few of my “good” songs (Beatles, lossless files, from the 2009 remasters), and then a few old mp3 files (to be honest, fairly crappy).
Loved them all, but the mp3s were an old Van Morrison live bootleg and gave me “the feels”, even through the compression and the artifacting. Oh, then I put on an old LP. Clicks and surface noise and endorphins…
Oh, I don’t care for endorphins and their clicks and surface noise. Free Willy!
“Audiophile” is such a strange word. It is the only word in the English language where the fourth syllable “i” is pronounced “oo”.
Or they could have electrical equipment with filtering on the power input - like every single basic piece of audio gear already has…
Yeah I know what you mean - Uri Geller is a total fake, right? But there’s this spoon bender I know who is completely legit.
It’s so close to all fake it doesn’t matter. And the tiny, tiny nugget of truth that one could detect quality differences at the absolute extremes is the molehill that is used to sell entire mountain ranges of purest shit. I doubt there is a single HDMI cable on the market that is so bad you could detect, double blind, any difference.
There must be a way for actual musicians to cash in on all this stuff. They never have any money. Not sure how they can afford to live in New York City in the first place.
You’re misunderstanding me. HDMI being digital, it’s absurd to suggest that one cable will produce a better picture or better sound than another. I certainly never suggested that. But, digital technology being what it is, the difference is that some HDMI cables, in some applications, will either work intermittently or not work properly at all.
If you don’t believe me I have two I can give you. One worked fine with the media player attached to my TV except that about once every week or so, I would get an HDMI error message on the TV screen and the entire TV would freeze up. Turning it off didn’t help – I’d have to unplug the TV and plug it back in to reset it. I ordered a set of Monoprice HDMI cables in various lengths because I knew they were good quality and cheap. I replaced the cable and, many years later, the problem has never recurred even once.
The other one never worked right in the first place. It produced an image and sound, but the colours were totally off.
So yeah, a cable needs to meet or exceed proper specs. Beyond that, it doesn’t much matter, and I agree that the rest is fantasy.
I’m a few levels above you, and spent $60,000 on an audiophile room air conditioning system that keeps the room air at precisely 69.43 degrees fahrenheit and 45.776% relative humidity, which is the same as the air in the studio where ‘Kind of Blue’ was recorded. The downside is that ‘Brothers in Arms’ was recorded at exactly 73 degrees (a well known recording engineer trick) so I have to wait 24 hours for the air conditioner to get the listening room just right. Even so, I am considering spending considerably more money to purchase oxygen free air for my next upgrade. Can’t wait!
While I agree there is a lot to roll one’s eyes over when it comes to the audiophile’s world view, I have to say that the 5.1 SACD mix of Brothers In Arms sounds absolutely fantastic even on my rather modest system. At around $14 on Amazon it’s a bargain.
So, going the cheap cabling route? You need quantum limited noise on your power distribution. You do have access to liquid helium, don’t you?
Hell yeah my whole rig is in a liquid helium bath.
Though I have to admit I’m not sure I have enough for the full 27km
So all you’re saying is you once bought a defective cable?
I must say re-reading your post under response that doesn’t seem to be all you were saying but okay.