Because people will buy anything
Jul. 29th, 2004 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerAudiophiles are renowned for buying things that provide no actual benefit, but being convinced that they can hear it anyway.
Some of the expensive cables do provide some small benefit for sound transmission, but when you get to the stage of buying better cables for _digitial_ transmission something is seriously wrong.
When you find yourself spending £1749.00 on a power cable, you have taken far, far too many drugs.
Some of the expensive cables do provide some small benefit for sound transmission, but when you get to the stage of buying better cables for _digitial_ transmission something is seriously wrong.
When you find yourself spending £1749.00 on a power cable, you have taken far, far too many drugs.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 01:13 pm (UTC)That's just ridiculous.
BUT... BUT...
Date: 2004-07-29 01:41 pm (UTC)I love audiophiles. They're my favorite "too much free time + too much disposable income" subgroup.
I wish I still had the link, but I read a site where some guy that sells specialized padding to place your cd player on to reduce "jitter" was extolling the benefits of burning your audio cds at no more than 1x. Hilarious.
For the last month on prosoundweb there have been near daily flamewars regarding the "benefits" of recording at a sample rate of 192k. Because when you are able to accurately reproduce frequencies that the human ear cannot possibly hear, that's where the music really comes alive, man!
Re: BUT... BUT...
Date: 2004-07-30 02:48 am (UTC)Power causes whopping problems in most kit -- so I can easily believe that upgrading power leads is worth doing. Whether it's worth spending £1800, I don't know. *I* wouldn't; a long time ago I decided to go down the path of convenient music rather than good music -- I now have the entire CD collection ripped to MP3 and will shortly start streaming it to the living room.
Re: BUT... BUT...
Date: 2004-07-30 08:59 pm (UTC)Yes 20 - 20,000 Hz is 'good enough for most people', encompassing both the useful fundamental frequencies of musical instruments, and enough upper harmonics to provide for timbre and perceived space.
The highest frequency that can be reproduced at a given sample rate is half the sample rate (actually just under half, but you get the idea). Most people who deal with music playing/production have a high end of less than 20k, just from damage. I've met people who could reliably hear 30k. 40k is stretching the bounds of my belief, but whatever. The nearly 86k that a 192k converter can reproduce is right out. Also, as you go above 20kHz, the signal approaches the noise floor rapidly. I don't know at exactly what point the signal-to-noise ratio becomes zero, but it's certainly several 10's of thousands of hertz below 86kHz.
And bear in mind: microphones are not designed to accurately report signals at that frequency. Recording studio monitors are not made to reproduce frequencies that high. Your home stereo speakers certainly aren't made to reproduce frequencies that high. There are no recordings older than 4 - 5 years that were even recorded at 96k. And the medium of the compact disk can ONLY reproduce frequencies of 22,050Hz.
Power causes whopping problems in most kit -- so I can easily believe that upgrading power leads is worth doing. Whether it's worth spending £1800'
True. My expectations for a £1800 (me being a yank, that's about $4000) power cable is that it accurately transfer power without fail - including whatever problems are inherent in the power supply. If the quality of the power is a $4000 concern, $4000 will buy a voltage regulator/power cleaner which actually does something. I guess is you want to spend an equal amount on top of that to make sure that nice, clean, regulated power is getting to your system without fail, then that's your business. But it seems to live somewhere between completely ridiculous and totally superfluous in my mind.
Re: BUT... BUT...
Date: 2004-07-30 09:06 am (UTC)And a lot of music doesn't really use very high or low frequencies, the ones that are -just- inside your hearing range. If you listen to music that -does- use those frequencies then you'd probably want a damn good sound system to make the most of it.
Although more than a tenner on a cable seems a bit silly to me, unless it makes you cups of tea.
Re: BUT... BUT...
Date: 2004-07-30 09:08 pm (UTC)Definitely. That's because lossless compression formats like mp3, aac, wma, and (God forbid) ra create various mathematical models of the human ear, and throws away everything that the model can't physically hear. That model of course does not intersect with reality in quite the same way for any 2 people. They're all worse than CD, but the better ones are still good enough.
If you listen to music that -does- use those frequencies then you'd probably want a damn good sound system to make the most of it.
Per my comments above, most music isn't even created on equipment that will make the most of it!!!
Although more than a tenner on a cable seems a bit silly to me, unless it makes you cups of tea.
No kidding. But it's not even an audio transmission cable! It's a power cord!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 11:47 pm (UTC)- Signal dropoff / shaping - The inductance and capacitance of the line loses the nice sharp digital edges making sampling harder and introducing potentially more sampling errors
- Jitter - A digital signal contains both clock and data. Consider that the clock is no longer at a stable frequency and thus the edges move. This can mean that sampling is done in the wrong place on the signal and the jitter can appear as noise on the audio
- Noise pickup - a cheap phone cable will pickup noise whereas a good coax cable will not due to cable design. This noise will enter your amplifier and radiate spreading into the output. Try holding a mobile phone near a digital cable while in a call
I wouldnt spoend £500 for a digital cable, but £50 is likely to be worthwhile if you dont make your own.
As for 192khz sampling, it all comes down to fourier theory and bass. Well, not just bass as this affects all signals but punch bass is a good example.
Consider a square wave - this is made from sine waves at harmonic frequencies added together. If you add an infinite number of sine waves of the right frequencies, your square wave will actually be square. Generally though, the edges are slanty and the corners rounded. The longer the rise and fall times on the edges, the more muddy the sound will be. Its like someone punching you hard and fast vs someone pushing you slowly. You may move the same distance, but the punch will hurt more.
So to accurately reproduce signals of lower frequencies, we need high sampling frequencies. To reproduce 10Hz, the minimum sampling rate is 20Hz due to the Nyquist effect (any less and the signals alias together and produce loads of rubbish). This will not, however give you a good signal quality as if you sample a 10Hz square wave this way, you will likely get close to a sine wave out. The sampling frequency must be increased to be able to build a better representation of the original waveform
no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 11:48 pm (UTC)