Topic: Stereophile article - $60K system using Luminous Audio Cables throughout

[noahbickart]

Ok folks- I've changed my mind. Cables really do make a difference. I experienced this today!

I have a usb keyboard. I used to connect it to my computer with a stock usb cable. On a whim I decided to use this cable instead:
http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AQMUSBDIA%20.75
 
It costs a mere $548 dollars, which, given that I have about $2000 in my computer, seemed like a good deal. Now I know that they'll measure the same. But clearly we aren't measuring the right things because:
 
Wow! The difference in my typing is amazing with this cable!
My nouns and adjectives agree with more precision!
My verbs stand out with greater action, and my nouns are free from hash and jitter.
The words I write have better flow and pace.
 
Anyone who can't tell the difference must not have golden ears. A better usb cable makes *anyone* a better writer.

I experience this as a direct result of the USB cable. No one can ever tell me otherwise. My feelings teach me all I need to know about everything!

[Church-Audio]

Ok folks- I've changed my mind. Cables really do make a difference. I experienced this today!

I have a usb keyboard. I used to connect it to my computer with a stock usb cable. On a whim I decided to use this cable instead:
http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AQMUSBDIA%20.75
 
It costs a mere $548 dollars, which, given that I have about $2000 in my computer, seemed like a good deal. Now I know that they'll measure the same. But clearly we aren't measuring the right things because:
 
Wow! The difference in my typing is amazing with this cable!
My nouns and adjectives agree with more precision!
My verbs stand out with greater action, and my nouns are free from hash and jitter.
The words I write have better flow and pace.
 
Anyone who can't tell the difference must not have golden ears. A better usb cable makes *anyone* a better writer.

I experience this as a direct result of the USB cable. No one can ever tell me otherwise. My feelings teach me all I need to know about everything!

Dude you missed the part where they said they will give you a blow job with this cable as well. Thats where the other $547 comes in to play. Grant it thats a very expensive blow job but its worth it just to say you have the best right!

[ScoobieKW]

Seems like a lot of repetition of statements already made. Most people agree on what has been presented and would agree that there is a lot of "snake oil" salesmen in all aspects of audio beyond cables. How about a $150,000 amp that uses $700.00 worth of parts and engineering that was designed 75 years ago. How about those inexpensive mic clips and accessories that cost $1.25 to make and they charge $75.00 to $200.00 to their customers. How about using 50 year old mic technology and $50.00 worth of parts and charge $5,000 to customers for the end product.

Price increase for professional gear (which includes Rycote, Neumann, Schoeps, Sound Devices) is only partially due to parts.

1. Support. Expensive companies tend to have higher level staff dealing with customer issues.
2. Scale. The customer pool for pro gear is smaller, so all business overhead has to be shared by less customers.
3. Quality control. Again testing, measuring and qa of each product is more expensive than randomly testing 1 in 1000 coming off the production line.

My favorite professional vendor AJA makes and sells broadcast video converters and recorders. They are more expensive than similar products from BlackMagic Design and Gefen. What we get for the money is the best warranty in the business. (3 year)

1. If under warranty they FedEx a new unit to you when you file an RMA. Overnight. You then return the bad unit. Done.
2. If not under warranty, they have you ship the unit to them. They fix it for free, then ship it back on your dime. Done.

This level of service is worth the price bump.

However with the audiophile gear and cables, science and their product claims do not match up, so any increase in price to meet those claims is a bad investment.

[dnsacks]

page -- your old usb cable was clearly lossy -- amazing what a good lossless computer cable can do -- You gotta try out the $12k upsampling usb cable I just bought, turns my inane babbling into Shakespearean prose . . .

[DigiGal]

page -- your old usb cable was clearly lossy -- amazing what a good lossless computer cable can do -- You gotta try out the $12k upsampling usb cable I just bought, turns my inane babbling into Shakespearean prose . . .

. . . or magic pebbles taped to the cable at both ends.

[Church-Audio]

I've had converters with a noise floor of -115dBFS and frequency response to 40kHz (my current converters are only -99dBFS, although I'll be getting better ones again soon); I have a brand-new oscilloscope with bandwidth of 60MHz and dynamic range of 40dB.  So I can measure sounds that on playback you cannot hear, and frequencies that you are also incapable of perceiving at any volume (I've never seen anyone argue for MHz hearing).  I am very experienced in measuring many different audio parameters, including harmonic distortion, noise, IMD, transient behavior (rise/fall time, ringing, overshoot), jitter, crosstalk, phase, frequency response, quantization distortion, and aliasing.

Exactly what it is you think can't be measured?  Keep in mind that every recording, by definition, is a measurement of voltage over time.  If you can't measure it, you can't record it; and if it can't be recorded, then it can't be observed on playback.

You mentioned digital jitter in the context of ancient geology and astronomy.  Of course, it was commonly known among educated persons since Pythagoras than the Earth is round; the belief that the Earth was thought to be flat until recent times is erroneous.  See the wikipedia entry here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

As for digital jitter, in any modern reasonable quality system the artifacts of jitter are typically -100dBFS.  That's not perfect, and high-quality systems can push jitter below the converter noise floor (perhaps 40dB lower).  However, even a modest system will have jitter a couple of orders of magnitude below the wow & flutter of any analog magnetic tape recorder, and the effect on an audio signal is of the same nature (though not degree): sideband modulations that are a product of the signal and jitter frequency, and are thus inharmonic.  Cassette tapes are often especially poor.

All of that is simply measured.

Your wasting your time trying to convert people that insist on spending money on expensive cables. We are in the wrong business we should get into selling fancy cables. I can get some fancy heatshrink and some welding wire and make me some $8k cables! For $50 Now that's a much better margin that I have now I dont know about you.

[raymonda]

I think everyone here is in agreement. So, I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say don't waste your time trying to convince the true believers.

[raymonda]

I am not in agreement with this statement:

The measurement crowd should be careful of saying show me the measurement that proves there is a difference. Observation often comes before measured proof. Not until we know what we need to measure and have the tools to do so can we then have scientific proof, which supports, or doesn't support, the observation.

Really? So, everything that is possible to know, or be measured has been done and the tools to measure already exist?

Here is a more recent example of how science is not static. There once was a time that science thought there were 4 dimensions, however, today scientists have identified 12-16 different types of dimensions. Or, how about the development of string theory.

I've always been taught that science is not dogma but rather the search for truth. Any how, I'm still in 99% agreement with you. I just reserve the 1% for the fact that we don't know everything and there may be more going on than we currently understand. That's not to say that the overly priced cable manufacturers understand either, or that there aren't "snake oil" salesmen that exploit the 1%.

[Church-Audio]

I am not in agreement with this statement:

The measurement crowd should be careful of saying show me the measurement that proves there is a difference. Observation often comes before measured proof. Not until we know what we need to measure and have the tools to do so can we then have scientific proof, which supports, or doesn't support, the observation.

Really? So, everything that is possible to know, or be measured has been done and the tools to measure already exist?

Here is a more recent example of how science is not static. There once was a time that science thought there were 4 dimensions, however, today scientists have identified 12-16 different types of dimensions. Or, how about the development of string theory.

I've always been taught that science is not dogma but rather the search for truth. Any how, I'm still in 99% agreement with you. I just reserve the 1% for the fact that we don't know everything and there may be more going on than we currently understand. That's not to say that the overly priced cable manufacturers understand either, or that there aren't "snake oil" salesmen that exploit the 1%.

I think we should call it Star Trek cables "in a galaxy far away exists a tool willing to pay 6k for a cable that has mojo magic that can't be demonstrated   by science a place where you just have to take our word for it" dam that's call planet stupid right?

[raymonda]

Chris,

To whom are you talking to and about? Are your comments aimed at me? If so, I guess I'll just check out on any further dialog. Or maybe it is humor that gets lost through this form of communication.

Ray

[Church-Audio]

Chris,

To whom are you talking to and about? Are your comments aimed at me? If so, I guess I'll just check out on any further dialog. Or maybe it is humor that gets lost through this form of communication.

Ray

its directed at anyone that spends money on magic wall plates and 6k speaker cables actually

[Gutbucket]

Sidestepping the question of cost/performance value..

In this day and age there can be no rational doubt about our capability of taking measurements which far exceed all thresholds of human sense perception.  That may have once been true, but no longer.  Audiophile arguments which hinge around "no instrument is as precise as human hearing" are archaic and more akin to political rhetoric, reinforcing an erroneous idea held sacred by believers.  It's simply telling people things they want to believe, drawing social/tribal lines for profit or identity or whatever.  I tend to immediately dismiss companies who make those claims as having suspect engineering practices.  They are making the wrong argument. 

Here's what they should be arguing, in which case I'd be more open to entertaining their claims-
Although scientific method narrows this down increasingly over time, the still somewhat open question in some cases (and the more interesting one to my mind) is correlating perception to specific measurable phenomena-  What to measure and how to go about measuring it, so that the measurement correlates with the perception.  Those things are not unanswerable by nature, but there is still wiggle room there.

The social and testing methodologies involved with perception are more complicated and error prone than taking physical bench measurements of equipment, and that's where complications arise..  which can be leveraged as marketing/profit opportunities. 

[Chuck]

I liken this stuff to religion.

Some folks say they see angels and have witnessed miracles.

So far I have not seen any angels or miracles nor have I seen or heard any valid tests that show an expensive cable made with exotic materials and connectors can sound better than a properly made and designed cable using off the shelf wire and materials.

I am open to the possibility of both existing. I just have not seen or heard the evidence yet.

[Gutbucket]

Entirely separate forms of truth are all too often mistakenly intermixed causing all manor of strife in human life.

Empiricism for engineers, subjectivity for poets. 

At best we wear both hats and switch between those modes of thinking as appropriate.
At worst we ignore the dualistic nature of them, and dual over inevitable, ultimately irreconcilable clashes.

[Chuck]

Gutbucket, you are on a roll today!