WTF, I know the dollar is falling but is it just me or is 499$ fecking to much for 1.5m of Cat5?
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[QUOTE]
AK-DL1
$499.00
Denon's 1.5 meter (59 in.) ultra premium Denon Link cable was designed for the audio enthusiast. Made from high purity copper wire and high performance connection parts, the AK-DL1 will bring out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction from any of our Denon DVD players with the Denon Link feature. Attention to detail when building this cable was used by empoying high quality insulation, tin-bearing alloy shielding and woven jacketing to reduce vibration and to add durability. Additionally, signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer. Rounded plug levers help prevent breakage.[/QUOTE]
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Don't you just love those audio
nutsidiotsenthusiasts.This one's my favorite - a mains cable costing over $3000:
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@SenTree said:
Don't you just love those audio
nutsidiotsenthusiasts.This one's my favorite - a mains cable costing over $3000:
Maybe this last meter of power transmission has by far much more influence on the sound than, say, the 300 km of electricity network between the power plant and the audiophile's home?
I'd love to see someone applying double-blind trials to find out.
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There have been double-blind trials of this sort of thing, but many audiophiles / audiofools label themselves as 'subjectivists', which basically seems to mean that if they believe that something improves the sound from their system, then it really does, even if they can't actually tell the difference in a DBT. Try searching http://forums.randi.org/forumindex.php or www.badscience.net for more.
My favourites for sheer silliness are the special wooden volume knob and the 'Clever Little Clock'. These nutters are a living masterclass in why it's so important to test things objectively, but they don't see it like that....
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@ammoQ said:
I'd love to see someone applying double-blind trials to find out.
Ben Goldacre (UK Journalist) said he was going to try back in Jan '06, but I don't think anything ever came of it: http://www.badscience.net/?p=202 (or at least I can't easily find a follow-up)Then there is the most important issue. Forget the theory, however damning: can anyone hear a difference? I don’t mean, can you “hear” it when you know how much it costs, and you know you’re using it, and you know what you ought to hear.
No. What I want to know is: can you tell the difference between a £400 cable, a £30 cable, and a £1.50 cable, if you don’t know which one is being used at the time? That is a double blind trial. That is what I plan to do, and I need hi-fi reviewers and pedlars: so far I have two promises, but I need more. It will take an afternoon, but it will be worth it, and I’ll make sure it gets published somewhere. And if nobody volunteers I shall start choosing subjects myself.
More links on the vague subject of overpriced wire:
ASA (UK Advertising Standards Authority - they slap people down for misleading adverts) uphold a complaint about a very expensive power lead http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_44177.htm
Some of the normally sane inhabitants of Bad Science flip when their HiFi myths are put down: http://www.badscience.net/?p=209
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@Crispy Duck said:
My favourites for sheer silliness are the special wooden volume knob and the 'Clever Little Clock'.
From what I can tell these deserve a thread each.
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@PJH said:
More links on the vague subject of overpriced wire:
That was indeed the $3000 mains cable to which I referred, or one of its stablemates. You'll notice they're 'out of stock' at present - in fact ever since the adjudication, I think.ASA (UK Advertising Standards Authority - they slap people down for misleading adverts) uphold a complaint about a very expensive power lead http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_44177.htm
What's really annoying is that some of these guys (I don't think any are gals) claim to be real engineers. You could sort of forgive them if they'd had no scientific training, like the proponents and victims of that 'Quantum Computer' a while back:
Pls send teh codez (again?)
TRWTF is the guy at the bottom of Page 3 who said Quantum ComputersBy Bill CrozierSat Apr 12 15:57:34 BST 2008My daughter just purchased a "Quantum Computer" for $20,000 that was manufactured in Europe, with a software program that deals with Medical Bio-...
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@DOA said:
@Crispy Duck said:
My favourites for sheer silliness are the special wooden volume knob and the 'Clever Little Clock'.
From what I can tell these deserve a thread each.
Actually that last one deserves it's own religion. Looking around their site I found crystals that make stuff sound better when selotaped to the cables and a telephone call that permanently improves your video playback (but for best results you should make the phone call from each phone in your house, obviously - presumably an additional $60 per call...) via "a series of mechanical pulses"
Oh wait... Magic stones... so they probably to work, but might also transmit your music collection to the leaf flyers
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@Triscopic said:
@DOA said:
You're being unfair - it's obviously homeopathic. One satisfied user stated that the improvement remained in his listening room after he moved the clock to his home cinema room... OTOH, they recommend testing the effect by removing the clock - errrmmm.@Crispy Duck said:
Actually that last one deserves it's own religion.My favourites for sheer silliness are the special wooden volume knob and the 'Clever Little Clock'.
From what I can tell these deserve a thread each.@Triscopic said:
Oh wait... Magic stones... so they probably to work, but might also transmit your music collection to the leaf flyers
You forgot to mention they're called "Brillant Pebbles" !
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@Crispy Duck said:
My favourites for sheer silliness are the special wooden volume knob and the 'Clever Little Clock'.
I first found the wooden knob through Dan's Data some years ago. It seems that the actual page where they were selling it doesn't exist anymore, but back when it did, if you read carefully, you'd find out that you need 2 of those knobs for the amplifier they were intended for.
And yes, many audiophilles are nuts. You can buy porcelain cable lifters (so that static electricity from rugs and floors doesn't affect the audio quality), special speaker cables with ultra-insulating material to prevent cross-talk that have to be plugged in a certain direction (so that the electrons flow the most optimum way). There have been measurements with test equipment that show exactly no difference between €0,5/m and €500/m cables, but the "audiphilles" still "hear" the difference (just not in double-blind trials).
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Please enjoy the gold-shielded optical cable with gold-plated connectors. Time to finally be able to filter out all those unstoppable, pesky 300-1400 nm EM disturbances. Superior connectivity is only a bonus!
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It's always fun making fun of audiophiles. As an audio engineering type it's just hilarious, because I know the electronics behind how any sort of audio transmission works all too well, along with mixing and mastering of music. The best part is knowing sonic interference and placement. There's nothing like going to an audiophile's home, having them claim that they have perfect sound in every part of the room, then looking at their speaker placement, walking around a bit in areas you think might have interference, and then getting them to stand in one or better yet ten total dead zones where their $80k audio system sounds like crap.
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This parody of audiophiles by Flanders and Swan is fairly appropriate to the topic:
Both: I had a little gramophone, I'd wind it round and round. And with a sharpish needle, It made a cheerful sound. And then they amplified it, It was much louder then. And used sharpened fibre needles, To make it soft again. Today for reproduction, I'm as eager as can be. Count me among the faithful fans, Of high fidelity. High fidelity, Hi-Fi's the thing for me. With an LP disk and an FM set, And a corner reflex cabinet. High frequency range, Complete with auto-change. Flanders: All the highest notes neither sharp nor flat, Swann: The ear can't hear as high as that. Flanders: Still, I ought to please any passing bat, Swann: With my high fidelity. Flanders: Who made this circuit up for you, anyway? Bought it in a shop? Oooh, what a horrible shoddy job they fobbed you off with with. Surprised they let you have it in this room anyway, the acoustics are all wrong. If you raise the ceiling four feet... put the fireplace from that wall to that wall... you'll still only get the stereophonic effect if you sit in the bottom of that cupboard. I see... I see you've got your negative feedback coupled in with your push-pull-input-output. Take that across through your redded pickup to your tweeter, if you're modding more than eight, you're going to get wow on your top. Try to bring that down through your pre-amp rumble filter to your woofer, what'll you get? Flutter on your bottom! Both: High fidelity, Flanders: FFRR for me. Both: I've an opera here that you shan't escape, On miles and miles of recording tape. High decimal gain, Is easy to obtain. Flanders: With the tone control at a single touch, Swann: Bel canto sounds like double Dutch. Both: But I never did care for music much, It's the high fidelity!
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Reminds me of the sticker shock I got recently when shopping for an HDMI cable. You can buy a very good, reliable 6 ft. cable for US$10 (see monoprice.com or newegg.com, for example), but you can also pay $100 for essentially the exact same cable. The big box stores like Best Buy don't even carry HDMI cables for less than $40.
Part of the problem is that most people don't have any understanding of how a digital signal works. The larger problem, though, is that some people will voluntarily elect to pay a higher price if you give them that choice. The Undercover Economist has a chapter that explains this behavior pretty well.
What this means if you are the manufacturer or retailer is that if you can make a decent profit on the cable at, say, $49, then offer one version at $49 and another version at $499. A few of your customers will actually make the irrational decision to give you the extra $450.
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I've found a review of the cable on Amazon:
[QUOTE]
Customer Review<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2" valign="top"><br></td> <td valign="top">23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the "directional markings" on the cables, your music will play backwards. Please check that before mentioning it in your reviews.
Disappointing quality, <nobr>June 11, 2008</nobr>
I was disappointed. I consider myself an audiophile - I regularly spend over $1000 on cables to get the ultimate sound. I keep my music-listening room in a Faraday cage to prevent any interference that could alter my music-listening experience. Sending any signal down ordinary copper can degrade the signal considerably. While ordinary listeners might not notice, to somebody with even a rudimentary knowledge of sound, the artifacts are glaring. Denon should have used silver wiring (hermetically sealed inside the rubber sheath to prevent any tarnishing, of course), which has a significantly higher conductivity than copper. Furthermore, Denon needs to treat the wires they use in the cable with a polarity inductor to ensure minimal phase variance.
Needless to say, I returned the cable and wrote an angry letter to the so-called engineers at Denon.[/QUOTE]
And Amazon are selling them for 500.9$
http://www.amazon.com/review/RF074827BNTI6/
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Unfortunately I can't find the link, but there was an amazing double-blind trial a few years back in which audiophiles first listened to music through a $1000 cable, then through a coat hanger twisted into shape.
They found no difference in sound quality.
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@dgvid said:
What this means if you are the manufacturer or retailer is that if you can make a decent profit on the cable at, say, $49, then offer one version at $49 and another version at $499. A few of your customers will actually make the irrational decision to give you the extra $450.
Why $499 when you can charge £4999,95-£7999,95 ($9809-$15695 according to google)?
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@Crispy Duck said:
There have been double-blind trials of this sort of thing, but many audiophiles / audiofools label themselves as 'subjectivists', which basically seems to mean that if they believe that something improves the sound from their system, then it really does, even if they can't actually tell the difference in a DBT.
Is this the same reason FLAC audio format has taken off? 1200 kb/s sound that's indistinguishable from a 300 kb/s MP3. Way to go.
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A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the "directional markings" on the cables, your music will play backwards.
Actually I just rewired my whole studio with directional cables and while this is funny following "the directions" does make a difference. It has to do with shielding though ... sorry to report that I had once cable connected incorrectly and the audio unfortunately did not play backward through that channel. It would have been amazing if it had, however, as with real time performance it would be most curious to hear what I have not yet played backward before I actually played it. Had I experienced this phenomenon no doubt I would have ceased playing music and set right to work designing a flux capacitor.
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@medialint said:
Actually I just rewired my whole studio with directional cables and while this is funny following "the directions" does make a difference. It has to do with shielding though ...
Shielding does make a difference, especially if the pieces of equipment you're connecting together are on different electrical circuits - but this is usually solved by only connecting the shielding on one side (some equipment even lets you disconnect the shield from ground for this reason).
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@curtmack said:
Is this the same reason FLAC audio format has taken off? 1200 kb/s sound that's indistinguishable from a 300 kb/s MP3. Way to go.
I'm no audiophile, but if you can't tell the difference between FLAC and mp3 (no matter what the bit-rate) you are deaf.
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@ender said:
Why $499 when you can charge £4999,95-£7999,95 ($9809-$15695 according to google)?
O..M..F..G
Not only £1500/metre, but £2000 for 4 banana plugs plus assembly. At least they generously don't charge for delivery.
I love this line: "...the conductors are effectively suspended in inert air, preventing oxidation."
Reminds me of a non-computing WTF here. We make industrial gas sensors, so we use calibration gases which are generally mostly air or mostly nitrogen, with a small fraction of the calibration gas admixed. One of our engineers had need of 100ppm nitrogen dioxide in nitrogen, rather than in air as usual. Our purchasing manager came back and said the supplier had told him it wasn't possible, because it was 'mixing like with like' or some such. I assume I needn't explain the basic chemistry here ?
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@SenTree said:
I assume I needn't explain the basic chemistry here ?
Listen, we're programmers, not chemical-ologists. And maybe it's just because I am full of beer, but I think you need to explain yourself or I will... uh.. throw spiders made of.. acid in your eyes!
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@morbiuswilters said:
Listen, we're programmers, not chemical-ologists.
Ah, you've been reading Allen's post.@morbiuswilters said:
And maybe it's just because I am full of beer, but I think you need to explain yourself or I will... uh.. throw spiders made of.. acid in your eyes!
Heh ! Once when I was full of acid I thought I threw eyes made out of spiders in someone's beer. BTW, I actually [i]like[/i] spiders.
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@Thalagyrt said:
It's always fun making fun of audiophiles.
[quote user="[url]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701056/quotes[/url]"]
Marge Simpson: You know, Homer, it's very easy to criticize.
Homer Simpson:
Fun too.[/quote]
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@DaveK said:
Marge Simpson: You know, Homer, it's very easy to criticize.
Homer Simpson:
Fun too.Wow... a Simpsons quote... that's like posting xkcd times one million.
Fail. Epic, epic fail.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Wow... a Simpsons quote... that's like posting xkcd times one million.
If you cant write your own jokes just steal someone else's!
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@Crispy Duck said:
There have been double-blind trials of this sort of thing, but many audiophiles / audiofools label themselves as 'subjectivists', which basically seems to mean that if they believe that something improves the sound from their system, then it really does, even if they can't actually tell the difference in a DBT. Try searching http://forums.randi.org/forumindex.php or www.badscience.net for more.
My favourites for sheer silliness are the special wooden volume knob and the 'Clever Little Clock'. These nutters are a living masterclass in why it's so important to test things objectively, but they don't see it like that....
Oh my god. Are you sure that clock thing's not a joke? I once saw a little plastic chip you put on your CD player to improve the sound, but this HAS to take the cake. I just can't believe it's real. There isn't a font big enough for that WTF.
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From the Clever Little Clock page:
<quote>NEW!! "I just received my second Clever Little Clock. The second clock produced more than double the effects of the first one." - August 2007 </quote>Hmm. Double of nothing is.... oh, wait, more than double. shoot. =P
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@niteice said:
Unfortunately I can't find the link, but there was an amazing double-blind trial a few years back in which audiophiles first listened to music through a $1000 cable, then through a coat hanger twisted into shape.
They found no difference in sound quality.
That's because the coat hanger was made of hand-aligned silver barions, hermetically sealed in rubber coating made from rubber plants hand grown in greenhouses in Alaska.
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@BOFH said:
23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
Hmm - didn't take long for a few more people to vote:http://www.amazon.com/review/RF074827BNTI6/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
141 of 143 people found the following review helpful:
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@niteice said:
Unfortunately I can't find the link, but there was an amazing double-blind trial a few years back in which audiophiles first listened to music through a $1000 cable, then through a coat hanger twisted into shape.
They found no difference in sound quality.
I don't know if this is a link. I don't care. Forum software, editor, pebkac, TRWTF, etc., etc.
http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?s=97d4a3c39d247bf955a57b3953326a34&p=15412&postcount=28
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@morbiuswilters said:
I'm no audiophile, but if you can't tell the difference between FLAC and mp3 (no matter what the bit-rate) you are deaf.
Factual difference between FLAC and a HQ mp3 depends on the encoder(-settings).
I have a few mp3s at 320/44KHz that clip at about 20KHz, and show the distinct bubbly brokenness of the high regions when looked at in a spectrograph -- but I have to seriously amplify them with the equalizer before it becomes visible.
I also have a few mp3s at 320/44KHz that do not have any sort of visible distortion at all, and go all the way up to 24KHz, although apparently that's not the norm. These mp3s would be entirely indistinguishable from their FLAC counterparts.
You're not going to hear any of it, though.
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@dhromed said:
I also have a few mp3s at 320/44KHz that do not have any sort of visible distortion at all, and go all the way up to 24KHz
A sound sampled at 44100 will only go as high as 22500. Did you mean 48kHz?
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After running across the actual site for the "phone call that makes your sound better" (mentioned way earlier in this thread) I'm convinced this whole Machina Dynamica thing is a joke. It's got to be - I mean, who puts up a page about something called "Teleportation Tweak: Long-Distance Audio System Upgrade" NOT as a joke? The magic pebbles and "clever little clock" were bad enough, but I thought that was just extreme audiophile-ness. There's just no way they can expect people to believe this. Or maybe my brain just can't accept some people's stupidity...
Too bad those wooden knobs and the $10,000 cables are actually real and meant to be taken seriously.
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I think it's actually an excellent demonstration of a sort of 'runaway placebo effect'. Let's say someone buys new speaker cables, tries them out and thinks "wow, these sound so much better than my old ones"; I know there's plenty of controversy over speaker cables but at least it's fairly plausible, even to a sane person, that different speaker cables might change the sound. Now, WHAT IF the change in sound is entirely in the person's head (as it may well be, see here)... a suitably gullible person will perceive the same sort of difference and/or improvement after any mod to their system, even ones that are plainly barking mad like the magic teleportation telephone call. It would be too intellectually difficult to see this as proof that their earlier perceptions weren't real, so they start rationalising all sorts of nonsense.
It would be bad enough if Machina Dynamica was a complete fraud; it's even more worrying to think that those testimonials are real. These people are allowed to vote!
The really worrying thing is that, even though I *think* I'm completely sane and rational, I might have similarly bogus beliefs deeply-ingrained in my bonce... and I would never know. Hmmm.
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My favorite one has to be a special optical drive that enhances the video quality of your optical media. It magically reshuffles the bits of data so that your picture looks crisper and more detailed.
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@alegr said:
A sound sampled at 44100 will only go as high as 22500. Did you mean 48kHz?
True.
One or more things on the list below threw me off because they are wrong:
- Foobar reports the Hz as 44100 - perhaps the file metadata is bogus.
- Foobar's tone generator may be bogus. (17500 sounds like a dull bzzz through both my speakers and headphones so I'm fairly confident it's not a hardware resonance issue; 18000 is a crisp barely audible tone (correct); and anything above that can't be called a tone by any self-respecting listener)
- The process of spectrum analysis can (though apparently rarely does) cause a higher frequency display than is actually present in the file. So visualisation may be bogus.
- Foobar reports the Hz as 44100 - perhaps the file metadata is bogus.
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@burntfuse said:
After running across the actual site for the "phone call that makes your sound better" (mentioned way earlier in this thread) I'm convinced this whole Machina Dynamica thing is a joke. It's got to be - I mean, who puts up a page about something called "Teleportation Tweak: Long-Distance Audio System Upgrade" NOT as a joke? The magic pebbles and "clever little clock" were bad enough, but I thought that was just extreme audiophile-ness. There's just no way they can expect people to believe this. Or maybe my brain just can't accept some people's stupidity...
Too bad those wooden knobs and the $10,000 cables are actually real and meant to be taken seriously.
It's not a joke. There are big threads on AV forums about it - granted, about 75% of people are saying it's BS, but there's a significant number of
suckmorimbecposters who defend it to the death and have bought the stuff.What's REALLY bad is that it's not just forum posters - a reviewer in 'Soundstage AV', which is an actual professional business, waxed eloquent about the clock thing a couple of years ago.
It's true, and it's worse than you think.
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What's from stopping someone else from making a few $5 knobs and selling them for 100 times the price? I guess the major caveat to that idea would be that they won't be the same "reputable" brand of knobs that audiophiles know and love. A getting rich quick scheme would involve leverageing from something else that has made you popular.
I'm surprised if any of these companies haven't been sued by the naysayers, for the dubious claims they make for their products.
At least there's some justice dealt with Monster. They may be far from audiophile brand, but their stuff is still badly overpriced. Gizmodo made a comparison with a monster cable and a coat hanger wire, and the quality of sound transmission can't be distiguished in blind tests. (of course coat hangers are not very impractical being solid core wire but that's beyond the point of the experiment) Employees in electronics/audio retailers get more comission for selling Monster products, which is why they push them aggressively towards the customers.
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@MasterPlanSoftware said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Wow... a Simpsons quote... that's like posting xkcd times one million.
If you cant write your own jokes just steal someone else's!
You need to learn English. Quoting with full attribution is not the same thing as stealing.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@DaveK said:
Marge Simpson: You know, Homer, it's very easy to criticize.
Homer Simpson:
Fun too.Wow... a Simpsons quote... that's like posting xkcd times one million.
Fail. Epic, epic fail.
Wow. A "Fail" post.... complaining about unoriginality. You win the double-standard award, hypocrite.
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@DaveK said:
Wow. A "Fail" post.... complaining about unoriginality. You win the double-standard award, hypocrite.
Wow.. resurrecting a week old thread to derail it and flame me and morbius again! How original.
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Seriously, grow up and get a life.
Denon™ Home Theater | Enhance the Entertainment Experience
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