5 DUMB THINGS Audiophiles Believe!

#audiophile #dumb #hifi

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[flyingv]

I noticed a HUGE improvement when I switched from snake oil to unicorn farts. Taste the rainbow.

[djvycious]

For a long time I was struggling to find the perfect sound and could never realize why I was never satisfied. I tried amps, speakers, different audio sources, speaker placement, but nothing was working. Then I realized that as a child I used to hit plastic caps with a hammer. As a teen I went to loud concerts and would headband near the big speakers. In my twenties I attended Formula One races without hearing protection. I realized my hearing just sucks and no piece of equipment is going to make my biological limitations any better!

[barkingpumpkin]

My favorite audio tweak is wine, three or four glasses of it. I suggest you spend minimum $20 per bottle though.

[obscurazone]

Speaker placement over here in Europe is the biggest pain in the rear. Most of us live in cities, in apartments, so not only are we immediately hamstrung by having to play at respectable volumes and less bass, we are all living like sardines in tins, in annoyingly irregular shaped rooms, which simply don't enable us to pull speakers out into our spaces - every single inch of room is precious. I've got a really great pair of audio physic spark 3's in my dutch apartment, but because of the room I'm forced to back them against a wall (about 25cm from it) and I know full well that they sound infinitely better 1 meter away, but I can't do that, not even temporarily. I love the speakers though so I'm not gonna trade in for a set of bookshelf boxes. So yeah, practicalities often get well in the way of HiFi. It's not always binary.

[palomarjack]

It's worse than you thought. There used to be a website/forum called AudioAsylum. I was a member. At first, it was a bunch of us that discussed home brew equipment, speaker placement, tube rolling, blah-bla-blah, etc. Members went out looking for actual scientifically substantiated information. And even sources of higher quality coupling capacitors that actually did something useful for amplifier performance.

Then, well, someone decided that if copper wire for interconnects was good, silver plated was better. I said, "Woah, stop, you are wasting your money, that silver plated wire is for RF circuits where skin effect makes it actually useful. Audio frequencies and direct current penetrate far deeper into the conductor". "Pshaw, you don't know what you are talking about. Why my amplifier never sounded better." Then not to be outdone, someone else decided having their transformers rewound with silver plated wire was all that an a bag of chips. Let's not forget about the clowns that replaced the power cord on their equipment with 10 or even 8 gauge cables. I asked, "What about the 14 gauge wire in the wall?" No reply. Someone else decided removing the shrink wraps on his filter capacitors in the power supply was just the thing. The reason, older amplifiers sounded better because the old filter capacitors were just bare aluminum. Really? That's why? Of course it did wonders for his system. I'm not joking. I gave up and left right there.

After a few years I decided to see what was going on so I signed back on. At this point people were taping some kind of super-duper crystals to their 8 gauge power cables, 4 gauge speaker cables and wall plugs, completely neglecting the 14 gauge wire in the wall. Others had these same crystals mounted up in the corners of their listening room, again, I am not kidding. And yes, not suspending your speaker cables above the floor was tantamount to blasphemy. The original group had been replaced by morons and soothsayers. Last time I looked a couple years later it was gone. I guess they spent so much money on Super Power Crystals, rewinding their transformers and buying the next weird gadget to make their lash-up sound better they could not afford Internet any more. Too bad.

[whitbyretreat]

I was kicked out of an audiophile Facebook group for saying someone’s $350 8 feet speaker cables were snake oil. And I have an electrical engineering degree.

[VintageVic]

I don’t care what anyone says. I’m enjoying my Sith Audio Audiophile Coaster. It helps to isolate the glass so that the bass energy doesn’t get lost in my drink. My system sounds very musical now.

[pedrocols]

There's a guy on his 60s claiming he can still hear up to 19.5khz...lol

[cryptogaming]

Being a audio engineer i always chuckle when "audiophiles" buy gold cables, knowing that the signal runs through hundreds of meters of plain audio cables during recording and mixing

[TaylorProductions]

The dumbest thing I've heard is audiophils saying they can HEAR the difference between good speaker cables and "high end" speaker cables. Cmon now... There's no way! 🤣

[fridgemagnet]

Audiophiles use music to listen to their systems, music lovers use their systems to listen to music.

[JG-DivMan]

I knew a guy once with (arguably) more money than brains. He had *at least* 50K in his system at the time, but rarely played it because he could always find "one more thing" that he wanted to improve -- and once he identified what it was that needed an upgrade, it bugged him so much that his system became "unlistenable" until he bought the new thing. Rinse, lather, and repeat and it's quite easy to see how he had so much invested in his gear.
I knew that there was no test I could perform that would convince him otherwise (his system, by this point, was quite good and incredibly enjoyable to listen to). It was sad, actually, because what should've been an enjoyable experience had turned into a perpetual exercise in frustration for him. From then onward, I've gone with the mantra that the best system is one that's being listened to. They all sound the same when they're powered off.

[magnustorque]

LOL @ 375 hrs of "burn in" time eclipsing the return policy.

[davidperry]

Expensive cables that costs hundreds if not thousands are literally just jewelry for your sound system and serve no sonic improvements.

[jenbill]

Not only Speaker placement can have substantial impact on sound quality but objects near the speakers can play a role, buddy of mine was going crazy when he couldn’t figure out a slightly distracting noise he was picking up from his stereo, said he tried everything he could think of before asking me to come over and give a listen, poor guy was in tears ready to buy a new system so I go over and he cranks it up after going around the room to each speaker I bust out laughing and tell him the problem it was a little glass figurine sitting near one speakers picking up vibration causing it to rattle Ahahahaahah!

[robertdaly]

I purchased a speaker system for $1500.00 years ago at a high end stereo store. The sales person was talking about the "transparency, the coloration" of the sound. I didn't understand how you can hear all these things that have nothing to do with sound. I brought the speakers home and set them up and played a cd of classical piano and noticed what sounded like a cone rubbing at one note that was playing. I brought it back to the store amd setup the exact cd with the cd at the point where i can hear the cone rub. He couldn't hear it. He can hear the transparency and the coloration but, not a simple cone rub. He did have the speaker replaced just to make me happy.

[SylvainDuford]

I think purified air makes everything sound better, less interference with the sound waves. Arctic air is the best, makes the sound crisper and airier.

[DJ_PROMO_PR]

Audio BLIND TEST comparisons. The nightmare of audiophiles. 🤷‍♂

[betaomega]

Hi! A classically-trained trumpet player here. As someone who has perfect pitch, I can tell you that it is absolutely real and that it's a fun party trick...especially if you're singing with a group and no one has a pitch pipe or cell phone!

But yeah, "Golden Ear" is a bullshit concept.

[jcfab]

I always thought "Perfect Pitch" was when you threw an accordion into a dumpster and it landed on a banjo!!😂