Scientific audio equipment analysis with analyzer shows no difference in quality
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
Most audiophiles can't do measurably better than 50% on an ABX test. That test is more about audio compression than cable quality, but there is a lot of superstition in audio.
I can't speak for the OP, but I can certainly tell the difference between photos taken with my different camera gear. I have an iPhone, a Fuji T3, and a Nikon D810 to compare against.
The Nikon is 10 years old and still a lot sharper than the other ones, despite them all being years newer than the Nikon. In challenging conditions (wet, low light, etc.) the difference is even more noticeable.
https://photos.smugmug.com/Snowy-Davidson-Mesa-Ride/i-wGFDt5...
For example, a picture like that one would be difficult to take on a phone because of the snow. First of all wet fingers would make using the phone nearly impossible. Even if it didn't, there's a good chance the focus would be off due to the snow in the foreground. And the sharpness of the Nikon blows the other cameras away. In the linked photo, do a 1:1 zoom of the fire department logo above/leftleft of the front wheel and you can read the text, including the small "EMS", "Colorado", etc. around the border. Phones just won't get that detail. And that's an old camera.
Besides the image quality, the DSLR is just easier and more comfortable to use once I learned the controls. There are no dumb menus and touch screens and I can adjust settings and take pictures with big mittens on even when it's wet/snowy/raining. Meanwhile, my iPhone is completely unusable with wet fingers.
I use my phone to take pictures most of the time, but if I'm going out intentionally to take pictures, I always take a real camera.
That would be similar to upgrading to that one tiny bit sharper lens which otherwise has the same aperture etc.
Audio is a weird world where everyone lives in their own experience and the externally measurable things often don't really translate to the visceral experience. So everyone kinda comes up with their own tribal knowledge that's often more superstition than science, and a lot of people just tend to assume they need "the best" in lossless files and analog whatever and gold-plated this and that.
For audio it is more difficult. I used to work at a signal processor manufacturer (high end audio gear, clever chaps, I was merely a software man) where the guy was convinced he could hear the difference between 24bit WAVs and 320kbps MP3s. He was deluding himself. He was partly deaf and sitting 5 metres away from him in an office I could hear his earbuds blasting music all day long.
I can hear when clipping and resonances are introduced, and also hear terrible guitar cabinets and bad tubes in guitar amps, but that's because I have been playing bass and guitar for 30+ years and have very sensitive hearing. I detest heavy compression. You can feel your ears shutting down.
But with the software, what a lot of even pro DJs and sound guys don't seem to realize is that modern compression codecs are damn good. They represent the cumulative efforts of so many of the smartest audio nerds obsessing over it for decades.
Tested: Where Does The Tone Come From In An Electric Guitar? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE
Tested: Where Does The Tone Come From In A Guitar Amplifier? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcBEOcPtlYk
I do have 2 identical Warwick FNA Jazzman 5s, and bizarrely they do not sound the same at all, so there's some effect from the material? But the most affect is from the strings themselves (steels vs nickels). The most important thing is how they feel to play (in addition to not sounding like mud).
These articles are a bit like saying scientists find expensive watches do not tell time in any appreciably better way, yet even technical founders who should "know better," are still wearing them with a t-shirt and flip flops after their exit. The economics of high end audio make more sense as an analogy to jewelry or art.
After volatility, haircuts, cap gains and other risk, there are so few productive assets to invest relatively small amounts in, where a store of value that depreciates less than inflation and purchasing power is a desirable thing.
If you love music, it's a way to build a shrine to it. Arguably, the real problem is consumer gear that simulates the experience of something valuable that won't end up in a landfill, but its just crap you throw away when you move house.
Life changed and eventually gave up on the hobby while still being drawn to music and the technology behind audio. Then a "golden" kick out the door of one employer meant I could build the speaker set I had in mind based on Siegfried Linkwitz's knowledge. The total cost for the speakers was about 2000,- but it did take between 2000 and 3000 for a fully active setup with two subwoofer towers and two 3.5 way main towers, all open baffle.
I have never heard a more perfect three-dimensional soundstage before and after, and it still sounds like the artists are actually playing in the livingroom even from other parts of the house. This was kind of Siegfried's message about good sound, the speakers are what make it (electronics are more than good enough at low prices) as long as they're made on scientific grounds, and not another heavy set of hyped monkey coffins. I have reached my audiophile end goal without forking over a fortune. Also fun, I came across one of the only two or three Yamaha CD-1 players made for Europe back then as a trade-in, one rarity I kept as souvenir of those early years. ;-)
I'd eagerly read a write-up of what you did.
Though IIRC his original design used active XO with op amps (after all he's the L in LR filter) instead of going the DSP route with IIR/FIR (which IIUC wasn't a good option back when he was alive). Did his successors modernize that aspect of the design?
Electronics too! While there are measurable differences there are no audible differences between fancy DACs and the $10 dongle Apple sells, for prerecorded music at least. You had to pay thousands to get this kind of performance in the late 90's. https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-qu...
If you want good sound you can still spend money on big speakers and room treatments though. Physics.
Someone who spends $10k on a watch doesn't believe it tells better time than their iPhone
Someone who spends $10k on their digital CD player believes the digits it's sending to their digital amp are some how magically different than the digits from a $20 digital CD player. They're the same digits, delivered at exactly the same speed. Bit for bit identical.
Same logic scales up to social level if you notice what large groups burn cash on. The only way to reduce the cash burn is to give them something else to do that makes them feel safe and in control. Which is not for the faint of heart.
Also, speakers can be different between people since we can all hear a little different.
Same goes for microphones, not all microphones are tuned for the same way, so what sounds great and clear could be a little different in a person's case and still be valid.
I like Tom's hardware, but the thought did creep to my mind if I'd be directed to a commissioned product link.
Toslink is an optical audio format, and a pair of fishing line would've even worked identical quality.
3-way stereo in closed box (not a phase inverter)
a few valves
power and output transformers
non-class D sound source (bobbin or vinyl)
All of this is not expencive at all. What is expencive - a library of the music you really wish to re-listen.
It's comparing cables, which everyone with some experience knows they make no difference.
I expected something more substantial, like a comparison of different IEM price tiers, or a comparison of different DAC chips, or something else that actually matters.
Is it a waste?
This whole thread is based on the tested idea that they cannot.
First, a favorite hobby to bring down the experts that make you feel inferior by saying there is no difference. 'My kid could paint abstract art.' You see I am not inferior in my understanding and maybe capacity; no, it's all a lie. It's kind of like sour grapes - very convenient to one's ego. (It also a way to shut oneself off from learning and seeing the most beautiful, valuable things in the world.)
Second, when people find one study that confirms what they want (red wine is good for you!), it becomes among the highest impact research in history.
Third, in domains where I have expertise, I can tell the difference when people without expertise insist there is none. In domains where I lacked expertise then gained it, I saw my perception change. I was blind but now I see.
Fourth, in art particularly, including in music, it is the emotional and unconcious that matter most. Those are the mediums where art mostly operates and the differences between mundane, good, and extraordinary usually are not in great strokes but in the smallest nuances. Lots of people can paint sunflowers; the details of Van Gogh's brush strokes are transformative. Like in business: the first 90% takes 10% of the time; the next 9.9999% takes 90% of the time, and the last 0.0001% takes 1,000% of the time.
Perhaps in the best case it is less bad than what other things they would have spent it on.
It's wrong to encourage and profit from fraud or magical thinking.
Society would probably be better off if this money was otherwise spent on infrastructure projects, public research, etc.
Someone buying cables like those in the article falsely believes the cables do a better job. They don't. Other things related to audiophiles are subjective. You can like the sound of a tube amp and decide to spend on it. That's fine. No deception. But there's a long list of things many audiophiles are decieved on.
It always seems to be used disparagingly or as a slur and perhaps some of it is deserved: I used to work with a guy who had a Naim CD player and would talk about how it had some balancing system for no jitter during data transfer from the laser read process, but was obviously clueless on the error-correction inherent in CDs anyway, making this mechanism redundant for the most part. He seemed to think it made the CDs sound better when in reality the original recording engineer, the mixing engineer, the mastering engineer and the pressing plant played more of a part that any of the CD player nonsense; I think he also used gold-plated cables, as if electrons somehow degraded when passed along copper wires...
Utter nonsense. As for me, I just learned to listen critically and identify mixing artefacts and compression oddities etc. which are more apparent on non-lowend audio equipment. Bluetooth speakers are the worst because they use acoustic coupling for harmonic reproduction and just generally sound unbalanced and bad.