Stupid audiophile products. A conspiracy to cheat idiots out of money

Those of us in the buss love it. We can sell hdmi's for half of what best buy does and make more than any minor components. I need to expand my line and get some samples of the above! Like mentioned above, if you're selling rubber dog s%&#, there is someone who will buy it.

Originally posted by predator0187

Originally posted by Pharyax
Yeah, I laugh my ass off when I see HDMI cable.. 12 feet for $80... Monster usually is the manufacture..

Well, on Newegg.com, I bought a 14ft HDMI cable for $18.

Same shielding, same signal strength etc... Its just doesn't come in a pretty bubble package with fancy graphics. lol...

Anyone that doesn't understand that an HDMI cable is a digital signal and all HDMI cables are the same, minus the connectors, isn't an audiophile, they just assume expensive=good. The actual cable is no different from the dollar stores ones from the monster's, the connections though can be quite different and of much different quality.

Analog on the other hand does vary greatly and you have to spend money on good cables.

Pred...

HDMI really depends on the AWG. you need to look for fatter cable the longer you intend to run it.

i know this thread is about stupid audiophile product.

but hey, why not some wooden cable insulators?

don't know how much they are or if they are natural, shellac or nitro finished! lol!!

there was a vid about a greek club i can't find anymore, about these audiophiles have some outrageous stuff!




eta;
what is stupid is the prices!

i like great sound but 200k for speakers is a bit much.

if i was bill gates, i might have 1 system like that though. not in every room.

then again, it's the recording, too. crap in, crap out.

Originally posted by abecedarian
reply to post by predator0187

 

While it's true that generally wire is wire, when dealing with high-speed digital signals the wire can make a significant difference in image and sound quality; wire guage, chemical composition and physical characteristics such as twists and shielding can affect signal levels.Consider comparing Cat-3 with 5, 5e and 6 cables where the maximum length of a run and reliable speeds increase with each higher rating in spite of having the same guage wire (usually 24GA).

"Monster" cable is a joke though.

At 10.2 gb/s speed is not a problem with HDMI connections. Also there is no difference between the cable, it is transmitting a digital signal. When ran over 50 feet you could have problems but who runs it over 50 feet?

As I said, the dollar store HDMI cable will have exact, if not insignificant performance to monster or another high end brand. The only difference is the connections.

The main difference between cat3 and cat5 cable is the twists in the wire allowing bigger bandwidth. And we are talking 10 mb/s to 100 mb/s, and HDMI 1.0 was 4.something Gb/s with 1.3 being 10.2 Gb/s. Those are such a drastic difference there is really no comparison between them.

Pred...

Originally posted by gougitousakusha
theres a huge difference between my cheapo 20$ sennhieser headphones and my friends 500$ sennheiser HD650s, especially with FLAC source. if i had the money i would upgarde too. really bose is for the biggest audio idiots.

100% agree. Bose is for people that want to think they have an awesome stereo, when in reality the price and build quality of their products is piss poor. I got a wave radio/alarm clock for free a few years back and the little thing is quite cool with decent sound quality, but for the price? Hell I could by descent bookshelf speakers for it.

I have Polk Lsi25's for my front and rears and when listening to lossless, there is nothing better. It sounds like a concert. I'm a Polk guy, not my subs, but I find their speakers to have a very warm and full sound. Some people hate poly though.

Pred...

i think i found it.






must be nice!!!

hifi is an expensive game to play.

the problem is you have to spend exponentially more to get moderate gains and it adds up fast.

and while i can definitely tell the difference between my $3,000 paradigm speakers and my buddies $50 bookshelf sony speakers from best buy, i dont think spending $20,000 will make mine sound $17,000 better.



i loathe best buy and stores like that for pushing monster cable, bose and beats by dre and all sorts of other extremely overpriced garbage. its sad that people simply dont research things and just listen to the 16yo kid that tells them how much better the $150 monster cable is, and that they need it. but i guess people are free to spend their money on whatever they like. i know i make sure people i know looking for those types of products dont get hosed like that though. at least i try!


regarding the OP though, i didnt look that closely at the blue dots. but in theory they could actually be well worth it. the way sounds resonate around a room can change how they sound quite a bit. if the blue dots are absorbing/deflecting sound in a certain way it could make a difference. again, i didnt look too closely at the product though. just saying some stuff may seem silly, but actually can be useful.

reply to post by pngxp


me too, but at these guys ages, the ears ain't what they used to be.


limited by the recordings, too, WHICH IS MOST IMPORTANT.

not to say it's invalid, but unless you have the bucks, no need, imo.

it's like chasing tone for guitar players. fanatical. stupid.

look at these peoples listening rooms. rugs, people, furniture, the acoustics are not ideal.

my phillips shp895 headphones have a 5k-30k response.


i have yamaha monitors smaller than a shoe box.

easy to fool people for the extras, the blue and green dots? waste of money, monster cables? lol!


let alone playing an over compressed CD, you will not get more than what is on the recording.

just louder.

I love my audio and have sunk many $$$ into it...for things like speakers that actually make a difference, not cables and the like! Monster arent even the biggest rip-off merchants, they just happen to be the most mainstream.

I used to be pretty heavily into the 'audiophile' community and some of the stuff these guys believed was ridiculous. You'd have a company come out with woven platinum-copper cables for a gazillion dollars, and someone would start using them and swear that they could now hear things in a recording that previously couldnt be hear. You'd have people buying ridiculously expensive power cables to their wall socket, completely ignoring the crappy wiring that was in the wall and rest of the house. Never mind that an oscilloscope couldnt pick up any differences...

Like anything, these guys get so deep into it that they can no longer question their beliefs.

I made the mistake of going into Best buy for some HDMI cables.
I left with a 5 dollar CD out of the bargain bin.

But those dots...The green and blue dots.
Does this mean I can take down the Egg cartons I've nailed to the wall?

Ahhh. There is nowt a zany as an Audiophile.

Don't get me wrong, I love my audio and do own what I consider to be a pretty decent system which matches my ears quite happily. The best part of it is, it was all free. You would be surprised what you can find down your local tip/landfill...

Speaker cables. Any reasonable gauge and quality twin core cable will work just as well as any other speaker cable you can think of. Over here in the UK you can go to a DIY store called B&Q can get some lovely quality twincore for about 75 pence a yard which is perfect for all but the longest runs of wire.

Power conditioners? Hahaha... Yep. If you find that makes an actual, rather than a "I've just spunked £200 on this, therefore I'm determined to hear a difference" type of difference, you need to look at your serious mains power problems, or the power stage in your equipment is nowhere near as well designed as you might believe...

And so on. There's a company near me who'll cryogenically freeze your equipment for a certain amount of time, claiming that it will improve sound quality.. I've yet to hear a believeable argument to explain exactly how and why it does.

As somone has posted already, all this audiophile snakeoil proves just one thing that cannot be denied. There is one born every minute.

Crazy expensive cables is a load of BS. Good build quality, decent connectors and good shielding is all you need. In a double blind experiment, no one could reliably tell the difference between expensive cable and standard copper power cable stripped down and fitted with jacks. All these audiophiles who spend mega bucks on a setup yet spend nothing on the room makes me laugh is also very silly.

No proper audiophile setup is complete without Porcelain Audio Cable Stands for ultimate sound quality!

There is no practical excuse for not isolating & elevating your cables off the floor.

reply to post by Maslo

It's stuff like this that is completely fuelled by expectation bias. Thing is, they will hear a difference, problem is that it would be entirely in their head. Auditory illusions are immensely powerful indeed.

Originally posted by pngxp
regarding the OP though, i didnt look that closely at the blue dots. but in theory they could actually be well worth it. the way sounds resonate around a room can change how they sound quite a bit. if the blue dots are absorbing/deflecting sound in a certain way it could make a difference.

Under what theory does 4 blue dots change the way a room resonates in any meaningful way?

And, instead of paying $100 for four dots, why not get almost 4000 dots for $9.99, or almost 40,000 dots for the same $100?

www.officedepot.com...

Now if you had 4000, or 40,000 dots instead of 4 dots, that's 1000-10,000 times as much, so maybe, just maybe, you might start to get into a realm where you could measure some slight difference, though I imagine my wife would throw me out for plastering the walls with that many dots, or as she would put it, either the dots go, or I go!

I suspect there are far more effective changes you could make to the acoustics of the room, besides the dots, including some that won't get you in trouble.

Originally posted by pngxp

regarding the OP though, i didnt look that closely at the blue dots. but in theory they could actually be well worth it. the way sounds resonate around a room can change how they sound quite a bit. if the blue dots are absorbing/deflecting sound in a certain way it could make a difference. again, i didnt look too closely at the product though. just saying some stuff may seem silly, but actually can be useful.

They will have absolutely zero measurable effect with regards to the acoustics of the room.

Ive seen a power cable for several thousand pounds, the normal kettle type one, it claimed to produce a better sound quality.

The morons who buy them deserved to be fleeced of their money. Theres no protection against stupidity.

Even if I won the lottery, Id pay £3 for an HDMI cable as I know theres no difference between that an a £100 one.

reply to post by davespanners


The Blue and Green Meanies are a *Must Have* I tell ya.

However, you won't have a perfect setup until you get a couple of the Intelligent High Tech Chips. ( Which the name already reveals were invented by no-one less than my humble self )

The original Intelligent Chip is a small orange plastic wafer the size of a camera's photo chip. When the Intelligent Chip is placed on top of a CD Player it automatically upgrades a CD (or any optical disc) when the CD is allowed to play for 1-2 seconds. The upgraded CD will lack the typical digital shrillness, hardness and thinness, be more correct-sounding and have considerably better inner detail and dynamics. In short, the CD will sound like a remastered version. The upgrade to the CD is permanent.

You can buy a clock for $200 for super dooper fidelity. No, not a word clock, an actual clock:

If this looks like a $10 Timex clock with a red sticker on it, that’s because it is. Oh all right then, it’s not, it’s Machina Dynamica’s Clever Little Clock. How clever? Clever enough to sell for $199 a piece. How can they justify this 2000% price increase? Why, because it’s been “extensively modified”, of course. According to his website, Geoff Kait is able to do this using “concepts and techniques originally developed by PWB Electronics“. Most likely, this means the technique of buying something that costs very little money (e.g. a crocodile clip) and selling it for very much money (e.g. £500).

But what does it do? Everything!

Remove the Clock from its clear bubble pack and place it anywhere in the listening room. The sound will be considerably more musical and live sounding. There will be less distortion, more information and a deep, coherent soundstage. Low frequencies will be articulate, extended and dynamic, high frequencies exceptionally smooth with phenomenal inner detail. In other words, More of Everything!!

what about that so-called oxygen free cables? and those amps with 0.00000001% distortion, or very expensive cables with gold-plated connectors on them???? (and on the audio equipment itself the RCA connectors are tin)....