The $695 USB Cable

Audiophiles are the most gullible group of people you'll ever find, falling for any flowery language that alludes to "resolving the finest detail," or "refining the transparency." I've posted about the $500 wooden volume knob and the $8500 speaker cable before, but this one takes the cake.

The Absolute Sound recently posted a buyers guide on USB cables. Okay, that's fair enough, except that these expensive digital interconnects are touted to improve your sound, which is a total crock of you know what. It's digital and it's USB! The one that comes with your hard drive will work just as well as long as it's not defective.

For a good laugh, read the entire article. In the meantime, here's a sample of the snake oil below.

AudioQuest Diamond
0.75m, $549; 1.5m, $695
audioquest.com
This über-expensive USB cable is simply revelatory in its combination of ease and refinement on one hand, and resolution and transparency on the other. Although capable of resolving the finest detail, Diamond USB has a relaxed quality that fosters deep musical involvement.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

The $485 Volume Knob

I recently wrote a blog about the passion of audiophiles and how important that is in today's MP3/earbud world. Passion shouldn't be confused with foolishness, however, and sometimes an audiophile can be easily pushed over the edge of gullibility by fantastic claims from a manufacturer. I'm not sure if some manufacturers are blatantly trying to rip off some poor guy with too much money (audiophiles are almost always guys), or if they actually believe their own hype.

As far as rip-offs, this one takes the cake. It's a wooden volume knob for $485 from Silver Rock that supposedly dampens the "micro vibrations created by volume pots and knobs that find their way into the signal path and cause degradation." Take a look at the advertising copy.

"Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved. Here is a test for all you Silver Rock owners. Try removing the bakelite knobs and listen. You will be shocked by this! The signature knobs will have an even greater effect…really amazing! The point here is the micro vibrations created by the volume pots and knobs find their way into the delicate signal path and cause degradation (Bad vibrations equal bad sound). With the signature knobs micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear…way better sound!!"

Now to be fair, I couldn't find the actual website for the above as the link now provides an error message, but there's a lot of references to it around the Web so it appears not to be a fake or an April Fool's joke. With all the bad press, Silver Rock probably decided it was best to keep this one as a personal request product only. If anyone really wants one though, I can get you a wooden knob that performs way better for only $250.

With all of the mumbo jumbo that some manufacturers pour out about the analog world, I can only image what they say about the digital one, where it seems a lot easier to do nothing except psychologically imply that some big improvement is happening. Anyone have any examples?

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

The Making Of An Audiophile

Here's a great movie about the lives of audiophiles. Once upon a time we'd make fun of their obsession, but now I wish that more of them were around.

There was a time during the 70's when having a good audio playback system was just as important as having a smart phone is today. It was not only a status symbol, but something cherished and valued as well. We spent a lot of time listening back in those days (usually to a full album at a time), so you wanted the experience to be sonically as great as possible. The average college student had a better sound system in his or her dorm room than you'll find today even in so-called "home theaters" as a result.

We spend at least as much time listening today, but thanks to the world of MP3s and digital streaming, and especially thanks to listening to music through earbuds, the sonics of music isn't as important. That said, there are those that care deeply about the sound they listen to, and are willing to go to great lengths and sacrifices to achieve greatness. I'm not sure that their methods are always the best, but at least they try.

This movie shows what it's like to be an obsessed European audiophile. Here's also a list of some past posts on audiophiles that you might enjoy (although you may not if you consider yourself one).

The Sound Of Monster Cable Vs. Coathangers
The $8,450 Speaker Cable
The 10 Most Expensive Speaker Systems
The Million Dollar Speaker System

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

The IKEA Salad Bowl Speaker System

Let's say you know some audiophile who'd just love to own a custom, one-of-a-kind speaker system to impress his friends. Undoubtedly that audiophile has plenty of money to burn. Why should a company like B&O, VonSchwiekert, Magnapan, or Revel get all the dough when you can whip something up for him with some old fiberglass, a few left over speaker drivers, and some parts from Ikea that will look every bit the part (and you can put most of the money in your pocket as well).

Using 3 of Ikea's Blanda Matt salad bowls and a few Baren Hangs pegs for feet, here's a three-way system that certainly looks the part. Of course, it probably won't sound that great, but when has that ever stopped an audiophile from buying before? Thanks to Gizmodo for the heads up on this.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.


You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.


Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

The Sound Of Monster Cable Versus Coathangers

Okay, this is from the "You can't make this stuff up" file. Engadget posted a story where a group of 12 "audiophiles" showed just why they get so much abuse from pros over their so-called "golden ears."

The group was A/Bing different cables, and unbeknownst to them, the engineer running the test swapped out a set of cables for coat hangers with soldered-on speaker connections. Not a single listener was able to tell the difference between the Monster Cable 1000 (at $500 each) and the coat hangers (free), and all agreed that the coat hangers sounded excellent.

It's easy to get down on the Monster cable here, but the fact is that a coat hanger very well may have been a better conductor since it may have been thicker and maybe shorter, although it's certainly not as safe or easy to use. Monster Cable takes some reasonable good cable and markets it in such a way that its perceived value is a lot greater than it deserves to be. The problem is that for speaker cable, 12 or 10 gauge zip chord (lamp cable) will work just as well as expensive Monster cable.

For low signal level work like guitar and mic cables, Monster makes a decent though overpriced product that will certainly sound better than most cheap cables, but you'll bet a bigger bang for the buck from some plain old Mogami or Canare, the studio standard for more than 30 years now.

Still, you have to laugh at the so-called "audiophiles," who many times have a lot more money than sense. After all, how many pros would buy a $500 volume knob?

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.

The $8,450 Speaker Cable

It curious how susceptible some people are to outside suggestion. The way we feel, see and hear can be easily manipulated, sometimes even by ones own self (which is the basis of the power of positive thinking or making your own reality). Here's an example.

I worked in a studio once that had a 3-way toggle switched on a panel at the edge of the console. The switch wasn't wired to anything (the console's previous owner installed it), but a bunch of us decided to label it anyway in the middle of blowing off some steam during an especially long session. The Aphex process (read here for more on Aphex the process, not the company) was especially hot during those days, so that's what we labeled the top position. Someone had the bright idea to label the bottom position as "B-phex" (there was no such thing), and the middle position was off.

You wouldn't believe the number of clients that swore that B-phex sounded much better than either Aphex or Off. Sometimes they would even fight over which sounded better, with some swearing that Aphex was brighter and more natural than B-phex, or vice versa. Even after I told them in a laugh, they still claimed they heard the difference between the positions of the unconnected switch.

Audiophiles are a lot like that only they take the powers of suggestion to an extreme, much to the tremendous detriment of the wallets. We've all heard the stories about some poor schmuck paying $800 for a wooden volume knob because it makes the sound "cleaner," but here's another one.

This time it's pair of 8 foot $8500 speaker cables by AudioQuest, which are terminated at each end with common banana plugs. The specs say that they're solid PSS silver using "dual star-quad technology" and are "optimized for full range." OK, silver is actually a great conductor but even if they're made of the 4 pounds of the stuff as they claim, that's only about $1500 worth of silver at todays market price of about $23 per ounce.

The best part is some of the comments on the advert on Amazon, which is worth looking at for a good laugh. Some examples:

"We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this... accurate."

"No other cable has the tensile strength to properly and efficiently garrote a lycanthrope, asphyxiate an Esquilax or even gag a mermaid."

"Not only did these cables sound ok when I jammed them into my ears directly (Painful, but worth it) they also cured my cancer, my wifes kidney disease, and the ED issues that my neighbor had."

"My cats chewed on this cable and now they can both speak. One of them is gay and the other wants to kill me. I would have rather not known."

The sad part is that some people out there actually bought these things and managed to convince themselves that they were worth it. Granted, cables can really improve your sound, but in this case you're spending about $8 grand extra for nothing but the hype and the ability to laud it over your neighbor (and that's being generous).

----------------------------------

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating the music business.

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.