Cartridge's Price!

[paulsherwin]

Yes, fair comment, I'd forgotten about those two. They're outside the city centre and I rarely head up Headinton way.

[Radio Wrangler]

In addition to the jewellery and conspicuous wealth aspects there is also the religion of high end audio.

The wealthy looking to display their wealth aren't going to bother with the technobabble justifications of why cones made with fibres from unicorn hides sound better. They just want the bling.

But there is a group wanting this sort of equipment precisely because they've bought the explanations. Hifi magazine reviews might as well be carved on tablets of stone. This market segment show all the defining signs of a religion: Strongly held beliefs as an act of faith. Strong opposition to anyone who believes otherwise. Personal sacrifices.

I often joke that high-end people should set themselves up as a religion. Religions get charitable status, tax breaks and relaxations of planning requirements. Reduced tax on high end prices would be a fair amount of money. This may detract from the conspicuous consumption aspect, though. Easier planning for building a new listening room (provided it has a spire or bell-tower, though) could be attractive to the very wealthy.

We're the lucky people, we can choose amongst a lot of nice classical gear on the second-hand market, We have the skills to fix stuff. We aren't limited by extremist beliefs and as long as we can avoid a fatal dose of the pokemon syndrome (gotta gettem all) we can survive happily.

Losing a job prospect through laughing at the magic cables I can understand. I count getting asked to leave a certain shop in Edinburgh as an accolade. It must be terribly difficult serving the true believers when the guy who only bought a turntable belt is looking around and trying to contain an explosion of sniggers.

Our two main weapons are: a sense of proportion, a sense of humour and a fanatical devotion to.... oh b***er!

David

[TonyDuell]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Easier planning for building a new listening room (provided it has a spire or bell-tower, though) could be attractive to the very wealthy.

I wonder if that spire could be used to conceal a large horn loudspeaker, open end downwards into a room, as Roderick Denman tried before the war.

Related to this thread, some years ago I looked inside a high-end CD player, I will 'name' the company by PM if anyone asks. I was astounded to see it used the cheapest Philips all-plastic deck mechanism, the Philips chipset, and the layout of the PCB had things like decoupling capacitors a fair distance from the ICs (for all the Philips datasheets said they had to be SMD devices under the DIP packaged ICs). It appears you were paying for bad engineering!

[duncanlowe]

It isn't only the super rich sometimes that get taken in. In my office we have a TV used for the conference room as a monitor. Bought from PCWorld and possibly an OK price. But I found the box that the HDMI lead came in. Yes, I said box. With the price of £89 marked clearly on it. There are a couple of slightly shorter ones in the cupboard too. Slightly cheaper but they paid almost £200 for three HDMI cables to connect a laptop to a TV.

[paulsherwin]

A lot of people think that expensive digital interconnects give better results than cheap ones. They may be better made or more reliable but they won't make an audible or visible difference. I've tried explaining this to people in the past and they just go blank or mutter 'you get what you pay for' so I don't bother now.

I buy my HDMI cables from eBay or Poundland.

There seem to be 3 separate motivations for ultra expensive hifi purchases:

1. People who are taken in by the pseudoscience and genuinely think it will sound better for 'scientific' reasons;
2. People who are risk averse and have no understanding of the technology, so assume expensive means better;
3. People who just want a very expensive product, either to show off or because it makes them feel good.

[Richard_FM]

When buying new electric devices I check all the specs & such for the best value items for the money.

I've not bothered with fancy interconnects, apart from getting a decent aerial cable for a TV in a weak reception area, when my existing one seemed to loose too much signal strength.

[regentone001]

in the early 1970s I worked on sales at the CO OP. at the time Defiant tvs were made by Rank Bush Murphy. The only difference between the 3 marques being the badge on the front and the make and model number on the back and of course the price. The Bush Murphy marque sets were £50 dearer than the Defiant. £50 in those days was a lot of money but you still got the "They must be better cos they cost more" attitude.

[Radio Wrangler]

Prices of boutique 'interconnects' may be going up as we talk, with all the political shenanigans started in Africa. 96.8% of the world's directional copper is mined there.

David

[ms660]

No worries, the Chinese will have bought into that several years ago, wherever you go for natural resources China is usually there somewhere.

Had the same at the Beech auctions in Europe years ago...China all the way.

Lawrence.

[Station X]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Prices of boutique 'interconnects' may be going up as we talk, with all the political shenanigans started in Africa. 96.8% of the world's directional copper is mined there.

David

I thought around 30% of copper came from Chile, but perhaps it's not directional?

[Vintage Engr]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

In addition to the jewellery and conspicuous wealth aspects there is also the religion of high end audio.

The wealthy looking to display their wealth aren't going to bother with the technobabble justifications of why cones made with fibres from unicorn hides sound better. They just want the bling.

But there is a group wanting this sort of equipment precisely because they've bought the explanations. Hifi magazine reviews might as well be carved on tablets of stone. This market segment show all the defining signs of a religion: Strongly held beliefs as an act of faith. Strong opposition to anyone who believes otherwise. Personal sacrifices.

I often joke that high-end people should set themselves up as a religion. Religions get charitable status, tax breaks and relaxations of planning requirements. Reduced tax on high end prices would be a fair amount of money. This may detract from the conspicuous consumption aspect, though. Easier planning for building a new listening room (provided it has a spire or bell-tower, though) could be attractive to the very wealthy.

We're the lucky people, we can choose amongst a lot of nice classical gear on the second-hand market, We have the skills to fix stuff. We aren't limited by extremist beliefs and as long as we can avoid a fatal dose of the pokemon syndrome (gotta gettem all) we can survive happily.

Losing a job prospect through laughing at the magic cables I can understand. I count getting asked to leave a certain shop in Edinburgh as an accolade. It must be terribly difficult serving the true believers when the guy who only bought a turntable belt is looking around and trying to contain an explosion of sniggers.

Our two main weapons are: a sense of proportion, a sense of humour and a fanatical devotion to.... oh b***er!

David

As a follow up to my comment regarding not getting the job, and this was some ten years ago, I have now discovered that the 'Bling' phenomena has escalated. The shop still exists, but I daren't go in.

A near neighbour, ( I live totally out in the sticks) across a couple of fields away (I look down on him!) has effectively filled the position, working from home.
He proudly informed me that he makes up custom-built mains filters for the said Hi-fi shop. He uses gold-plated 13A plug-tops, & IEC leads.

Apparently the audio sounds much better using these...

[joebog1]

Gold has a conductivity of 18
Copper has a conductivity of 1 ( assuming its the right way around )
Silver has a conductivity of .92

I guess the resistance of the gold plating ( actually its flashing, being some millionths of a micron thick) has been factored into the filter network.
Resistors resist remember ??

LOVE this thread

Joe

[Radio Wrangler]

I think those numbers are resistivity relative to copper. Conductivity would be the reciprocal of those values.

There must be directional silver as well. Some of the most expensive directional hifi 'interconnects' claim to use silver conductors.

I've only got experience of the ordinary, isotropic forms of silver and copper. The aircraft and defence industry cannot afford the prices of super-duper cables and has to make do with the ordinary stuff. From my experience with the ordinary stuff, resistivity in wires leads to attenuation of the signal and some high frequency roll-off. These effects seem to be entirely linear over the >200dB range of levels that I've used RF cables over, and time-invariant. The differences described by those who can afford such wondrous wires never mention that the sound via the mundane stuff was simply quieter. No, they talk of changes of pace and rhythm. Given that the expensive cables, fitted the right way round get it right, then we can deduce that ordinary copper cables must suffer from severe time warping.

I don't see this as a problem, this looks like the key discovery which may lead to the design of the first time machine!

David

[Herald1360]

Careful! There could be a digression into the merits of Flux Capacitors lurking in the aether.

(Snake) oil in paper anyone?

[Kentode]

Originally Posted by joebog1

Gold has a conductivity of 18
Copper has a conductivity of 1 ( assuming its the right way around )
Silver has a conductivity of .92

I guess the resistance of the gold plating ( actually its flashing, being some millionths of a micron thick) has been factored into the filter network.
Resistors resist remember ??



LOVE this thread

Joe

I'm off to get some gold 1.5 twin and earth for my Hifi! It'll sound eighteen times better!

[Richard_FM]

I remember reading about carbon fibre cabling being the next innovation about 20 years ago, but never heard anything else.

[Radio Wrangler]

Carbon fibre is quite resistive. Its conductivity is well below that of metals and this is causing rather worrying problems. Aircraft get struck by lightning not infrequently. The lightning attaches to the fuselage, passes through it and then leaves from some other pointy bit. The aluminium is a good enough conductor to handle the current. Maybe an antenna gets vapourised and a radio cops it, but they have duplicates. These currents would blast carbon fibre composites apart with the power dissipated. The latest composite aircraft need special metal lightning paths in order to be as safe as olde worlde aluminium ones.

Maybe they meant carbon nanotubes?

But, anyway, loss isn't really a problem with audio cabling of domestic lengths. Frequency response, distortion, time delay, power handling, bandwidth, dynamic range and any other objective parameters aren't problems either.

The 'problems' are described in terms of: 'air', 'soundstaging', 'pace', 'rhythm', 'granularity', 'openness', 'texture' and any number of indefinable characteristics. Education might be the answer, but as they say, you can lead a horse to water...

I've seen explanations where the mechanism is said to be the collection of unwanted radio signals. These thoughts have merit but miss the target by suggesting mystic cables as the solution. Anyone with RF pick up effects needs a properly designed amplifier, not wiring made from recycled bullets previously used to shoot werewolves.

A moving-coil pick up is one case where the effective source impedance is low enough to make the lower resistivity of silver attractive.

David

[ms660]

Yeah, I mean, carbon fibre cables, that's another subject all in itself.

Warning.....The description contains nuts:

https://www.china-hifi-audio.com/en/...30a8beea7c53b9



Lawrence.

[Boater Sam]

Sorry gents, its all old hat.

The only proper stuff to use is heat and cryo treated polarised Graphene.

[Radio Wrangler]

Nuts? more than the proverbial fruitcake.

The web page is worth reading just for a fine example of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo which has been dragged kicking and screaming between two languages having rather different idioms.

Classic!

Conveniently, the carbon fibre strands just happen to have metal ones in parallel with them... silver-gilt oxygen free ones, of course.

David