I generally find audiophiles to be a pretentious bunch, so this sounds about right.
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This is a clickbait article to make the reader feel a sense of superiority. The forum thread is linked on the article. It’s not a real blind test. Secondly the title is just a straight up lie, it’s not that they couldn’t tell that the sounds were different, they could not determine the original sound.
The test includes 4 unmarked 30 second clips of various songs. 1 clip is the original file, 1 clip is the file looped through a copper cable, 1 clip is the file looped through a banana, 1 clip is the file looped through mud. If this were a serious test, the original sample would be labeled so that people would know what the reference point is. Secondly, how would anyone be able to tell the difference between mud and banana? Do you know what a banana sounds like?
The forum post was just meant to be a silly game and the article treats it as a serious test.
I have 4 printing of the Mona Lisa. One printing is the original, one printing I dipped in water, one printing I dipped in apple juice, and one printing I dipped in piss. Can you spot which Mona Lisa was dipped in apple juice and which one was dipped in piss? The Mona Lisa is already pretty yellow, which yellow is the correct yellow?
I have 4 printing of the Mona Lisa. One printing is the original, one printing I dipped in water, one printing I dipped in apple juice, and one printing I dipped in piss. Can you spot which Mona Lisa was dipped in apple juice and which one was dipped in piss? The Mona Lisa is already pretty yellow, which yellow is the correct yellow?
The original is the dry one
raises hand
So I’m color blind, and I’ve never really given it much thought before. Apple Juice is yellow?
In the same way that healthy piss is yellow. That is, no, it’s more of a light amber sort of color.
Amber.
I would smell
This sounds damning, until you realize who the merchant who sold them the copper is.
god fucking damn it
Slag coated in copper: tired
Copper coated in plastic: WIRED
Season 1 Jesse when he starts doing business with Ea Nasir:
This is why I pack my left ear with mud and put a banana in my right ear. The copper wire is used to scoop out my brains for the embalming.
Put a banana in your earrrrrrr.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Fuck yeah man give me that banana sound
that’s why they used to make telephones out of them
Flashbacks of Garry’s Mod banana phone remix slop just hit me.
Cellular, modular, interactiveodular.
The wire isn’t generally something that’s focused on though, is it? Like everyone knows those gold plated cables are scams. I thought the quality of the audio or the speaker/headphones were the big focus.
Also, sample size of nine people and two of them failed to fill out the survey correctly lol
AFAIK they’re still running the cable scam and middle-aged dentists with more money than sense are still falling for it.
The audiophiles: “It all sounds like shit compared to my extruded ruby core cables with quantum disentangled untwisted pairs”
once your cable is shielded (and preferably coaxial, but for audio those get into fantasy territory very quickly) and it fits power of source, there isn’t anything you can do further, your power sources will fuck up much more than cable being 1% better.
But very cheapish non shielded 3,5mm cables do funny stuff on speakers, you can hear them hum louder when you loop cables or press your fingers on them, so they do be catching 50/60hz from all of the wiring
In Taiwan all the hifi dealers scam the crap out of rich people with expensive cables
I got a DAC/headphone amp, and replaced all the 192KBs files in my library with 320KBs. Nothing sounds tinny, and I’ve been happy. I’ve never looked into it further, and feel no need to.
Music has been one of the most important aspects of my life as long as if can remember. Every memory and thought I have has a song attached to it. I wired built in speakers throughout my house so I can always play whatever I feel like.
I can’t imagine giving a shit about wire composition or watching a waveform for unperceived errors. That sounds more like a mental illness than a hobby.
I Also mostly listen to music in my ten year old car, which has a dogshit soundsystem, so I guess I’m not an audiophile.
watching a waveform for unperceived errors
I read about a test where supposedly audiophiles were played samples of CDs ripped with different players and then proven to be identical bit by bit, played back on the same system, where supposedly they still insisted they could tell which CDs were ripped with the better player, and tbqh I believe it.
I could hypothesize that the difference they’re hearing, if not psychosomatic, would at that point be more likely caused by the speakers/headphones/tubes/amps warming up.
I’m ripping on audiophiles pretty hard but being real, the placebo effect is pretty powerful for everyone.
Sounds like we have very similar sensibilities, including the limits of what we care about. I also mostly listen in an old car, and I took the plunge and upgraded the speakers with some better coaxial speakers than the stock ones. It was an absolutely great return on investment if you don’t mind a beginner-friendly car project. Easy job to complete in a couple of hours and the customer service techs at Crutchfield are very forthcoming with knowledge and assistance.
Can i get aftermarket speakers that don’t look like a ripstick made by sketchers?
Is being an audiophile anything close to the same as having ear or musical training though? Any random schmuck can say they like flac files but I wouldn’t expect anyone other than a well trained musician, sound engineer, or musicologist to actually be able to discern the difference between them and a 256 kbps mp3, and even then how significant would that actually be to them?
Ear training is more about hearing pitch, and here I think it’s probably a difference in timbre, and I think a major difference with the more standard flac vs mp3 version of this test is dynamic range. Music training would probably help a bit more with dynamics than this specific type of timbre distinction.
But the reason it’s salient is that “audiophiles” pretend that they can tell a difference and use fucking spectrographic analysis or whatever to point out “imperfections” in a sound file, but it’s all made up and the vast majority of them can’t really tell by listening. So it’s about contesting their claim, I guess.
Basically nobody can hear the difference between 320kbps mp3 and flac. Or 256kbps and 320kbps mp3.
I prefer flac because it works as an archive you can easily render from or use as a wav if needed. In theory repeated re-encodings could introduce artifacts down the line, I don’t have to think about that with flac. Plus the people releasing flacs tend to be nerds, they do good rips. It’s more likely that an audio quality issue will be something like ripping from a CD with scratches or a hole or ripping from dusty vinyl, only doing one pass, etc.
They call me Dr music because i can hear the difference between a wav and a crunchy 144p music video on youtube from 20 years ago
I’m an audiophile because nothing sounds better than the old marshall stacks
Playing insect warfare through a bowl of wet mud is the proper way to listen tbh
I just want cables that flex nicely and have good connectors that last a long time.
FLACbros lose everything!
3gp for the winAt a certain point, your sound quality is going to more affected by the placement of your furniture over any real and perceived improvement in audio equipment. It’s like g*mers who splurge on some graphics card and gaming monitor but completely cheap out on the cable.
