Oh the wankery!

[alm]

I've never head of the piezoelectric effect in PVC cables before.

Keithley's low level measurement handbook lists PVC as 'moderately good in regard to piezoelectric effects', so the effect is probably quite weak, but definitely non-zero.

Triboelectric, yes but that wouldn't that only happen if one cable conductor rubbed against a different material? If the whole cable were rubbed then the charge would ore or less evenly around the whole cable making both conductors at the same potential.

How about the center conductor rubbing against the insulation as the cable is flexed? We're not talking about Van de Graaff generators here, but something in the order of the nA.

[david77]

It's obviously all bollocks. ...

Succinct description.

Do you mean the "pylons" they string their wank wire along? They keep vibrations from the floor off the wires, you know how sensitive electrical impulses in copper wire are to vibration, they get all shaken up and drop out the other end of the wire in a random fashion .

This was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

[ivan747]

And when the audiophools have bought all the junk cables and amps, whet next...
A clock of course.... only $2000

http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/us/Products/pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=Accessories&ProductId=MCLK12

I like analog panel meters. I would buy that if it was like $150, as a kit.

[ivan747]

Looking through that website, how could something called "Horning Eufrodite Ultimate Zigma Plus" not be the most wonderfull thing in the world?

Well I have to admit it looks awesome, but I doubt anyone can notice the difference between a well equalized system with decent speakers and those $20,000 sets.

[Ernie Milko]

I like the list, Tekfan. You missed one.

A veil has been lifted.

I often flummox people when they ask me how something sounds, and I say something like 'OK' or 'crap'

I can't see how you can describe sound.
To me, something either sounds OK, or it doesn't.

All of this audiophool nonsense puzzles me, the (allegedly) better option is always the more expensive one!

[TheWelly888]

Anyone who uses minature telegraph poles, sellotape, drinking straws and bits of brass turnings ( Naturally all the brass's proto-neutrolectrons will have been properly set up before turning in a ley line aligned lathe? ) on his hi-fi set-up will be so subjective that any objectivity will be fatal to the audiophool if it came within 100 yards of him!

[Ernie Milko]

What do the telegraph poles do.........exactly?
And I noticed bits of twisted pair running all around the gaff?

http://audiograb.wordpress.com

I've just had a look at this blog, and all I can say is.................Gordon Bennett................

[Zero999]

How about the center conductor rubbing against the insulation as the cable is flexed? We're not talking about Van de Graaff generators here, but something in the order of the nA.

THat's probably true but will probably be dwarfed by thermal noise.

I like the list, Tekfan. You missed one.

A veil has been lifted.

I often flummox people when they ask me how something sounds, and I say something like 'OK' or 'crap'

I can't see how you can describe sound.
To me, something either sounds OK, or it doesn't.

All of this audiophool nonsense puzzles me, the (allegedly) better option is always the more expensive one!

Fortunately that can now be measured scientifically, despite what any audiophool may say.

In general, good  audio equipment will have as lower noise, total harmonic distortion and phase shift as possible and as flat as frequency response over 20Hz to 20kHz as possible, unless it's an effects or distortion unit. Fortunately these characteristics can be pretty accurately measured and no magic is involved.

It's pretty easy to build a good solid state amplifier with inexpensive components, it's everything else which isn't perfect. If anything it's the speakers which are probably the weakest link in the chain, not the cable.

[alm]

The room acoustics are probably even more important, unless special attention was paid to it. For any speaker that's not complete crap, the designer paid at least some attention to the sound quality. Not so much for a random living room where people put their speakers so they look right.

[jahonen]

I don't think that perceived sound quality of most of these "audiophool" products have actually nothing to do with the signal or power quality by itself. It is purely the feeling you get from the product, it affects hugely on the perceived sound quality, and is integral part of their hobby. Quite similar thing when we here examine a guts of measurement equipment for checking the build quality, for comparison, think about the Gossen-Metrawatt rotary switch feeling/sound I think many audiophools actually know this but they don't care, as long as it subjectively sounds better. Technically, many of respected audiophool products are quite crap from purely technical viewpoint.

Yes, room-speaker interaction is the most difficult thing to cope with. It has become clear that a speaker with perfect on-axis frequency response can sound horrible in normal room, if the response is not proper in off-axis angles. You could take any crap speaker, measure the on-axis impulse response and then build an inverse correcting FIR to make it flat in both magnitude and phase, and use DSP to perform the calculation in realtime. But this will fail miserably in a normal room, due to very bad off-axis response. In fact, off-axis response will become even worse.

There was an experiment here in Finland in 80's or late 70's, where they put a loudspeaker (with straight on-axis frequency response) in an anechoic chamber and recorded the sound with a microphone. It is unbelievably difficult to say from the resulting recording which one is the original and which one is the reproduction through the loudspeaker and microphone. Thus the importance of decent off-axis response was demonstrated to be one of the most important things in loudspeaker design (not so easy as one might think).

Regards,
Janne

[Zero999]

The annoying thing is lots of the silly audiophool products just look shit: pylons for cables wtf? I could understand to some extent, if they looked good but they don't.