News $500 Audiophile SATA SSD Cable With Superstar Crystals Listed

[paulbf1]

In defense of audiophiles, back in the analog days, every link in the chain could limit the end-to-end performance of the system. And mass-market audio equipment wasn't nearly as good. So, by carefully selecting and optimizing each component, you really could unlock a whole new level of fidelity. In the days of vinyl and tube-based electronics, all this stuff was way more fussy, and higher-maintenance as well.

Dick Heyser, who was head of the Audio Engineering Society, used to refer to this stuff as audiophile jewelry: Looks nice but is of little benefit. When you have Barnumesque things like $5000 (yes, $5K) power cords and $80K speaker cables, with no objective performance advantage, it's hard to take this segment seriously, And that's the problem with a lot of this expensive equipment: they can't objectively show that it's worth it. I agree that a lot of the early transistor equipment wasn't very good, but that hasn't been true for a while (assuming things were designed correctly). And the law of diminishing returns still applies.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Yeah, but don’t you want some of that super crystal action? It’s like that one action figure with kung fu grip, you just gotta have it lol. 😂

 

[worstalentscout]

I never auditioned power cables, because I buy well-designed equipment. If you learn how a good power supply works, then you'll understand why you just need to worry about the gauge. The frequencies are far too low to worry about things like inductance or capacitance. Any EMI should be rejected by the power supply, which also has to be designed to cope with noisy power.

The audio industry learned how to design cables resistant to EMI, long ago. Look at mic cables - they use shielding and differential signalling to reject unwanted noise. Some professional and high-end audio equipment has balanced interconnects which adopt these same principles, although since interconnects use much higher voltage than unpowered microphones, induced noise only tends to be an issue for extremely long cable runs (esp. if you're running them alongside power cables or near things like fluorescent light ballasts). That's why most consumer equipment uses RCA-type interconnects which don't even have a standardized characteristic impedance (though, audio is so low-frequency and interconnects tend to be so short, they don't really need to).

What's funny is that most hi-fi cables are traditionally just dressed up versions of the same cable stock you can buy from places like I posted before:

Stereo Cables at Blue Jeans Cable

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Some hi-fi cables can actually damage your equipment, because the connectors grip so tightly. A cool solution to this "problem" are twist-lock connectors, although I've not seen any quantitative data vs. a quality "springy" connector.

so far a quality power cord has made a difference to every component i tried with.................even subwoofers and 5-figure power amps.............

surprisingly, i like unshielded Nordost and Goertz cables the best - they are just faster, more transparent with a quicker sound........a guy i knew even used Nordost speaker cables to make power cords to save money !

yes, i hate those plastic RCA plugs that were in fashion some years ago............they might sound good but super difficult to remove.........

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Someone’s drinking the Kool-Aid

It’s nothing more than lipstick on a pig

show me the numbers or it’s all baloney. It sounds tighter. Yeah, right.

 

[paulbf1]

so far a quality power cord has made a difference to every component i tried with.................even subwoofers and 5-figure power amps.............

surprisingly, i like unshielded Nordost and Goertz cables the best - they are just faster, more transparent with a quicker sound........a guy i knew even used Nordost speaker cables to make power cords to save money !

yes, i hate those plastic RCA plugs that were in fashion some years ago............they might sound good but super difficult to remove.........

Unfortunately, those quality power cables are being fed by $1/ft Romex from your breaker box. The only sound changes cables can introduce are linear effects (freq response, delay) as there are no non-linearities caused by the cables. If there were non-linearities, you could measure the distortion. Your room response variations swamp any variations induced by the cables (and this applies to speaker cables as well)