Sorry to hear that all test subjects including you had poor ears, most probably due to a combination of poor genetics and hearing damage)

@@wa2368money-waster cope

glad to see recognition of the established science of how human hearing works. the knowledge that human hearing is only subjective would eliminate a lot the bad for the hobby snake oil products. of course, some people will desire to buy more stuff no matter what .

@@wa2368 that's a pretty rude statement for not knowing the people involved . are you trying to deflect the fact you bought to fulfill a desire without first knowing how human hearing works to gratify expectations of expected results.

You would fail a blind test as well. In fact there was a blind test done with people that have good ears for audio between cables and and old copper coat hanger. The result was inconclusive but showed a slight preference towards the coat hanger vs expensive cables. As some who studies electrical engineering, my opinion is to get the largest gauge stranded wire your system can take of oxygen free copper with as high a strand count as possible 300+. I'd put that up against any price exotic material cable out there. @@wa2368

Not a big fan of DB testing. I understand the rational but I think it takes about a week to evaluate a cable- put on your favorite music that you know well. Pay attention to soundstage and inner detail which I think is one of the more apparent distinctions of high end cable. At first you will probably notice the cable sounds "different" and further evaluation to determine if it is in fact better. Bottom line is: Do you trust your ears or not?

@@dwightballard3868 I suggest you watch Andrew Robinsons video "Three Hi-Fi Experiences That CHANGED Me FOREVER" where he talks about industry professionals failing the DB tests at Harman, even some for products they had designed themsevles. If they are failing said tests, what does that say about this hobby. And no, you probably shouldn't trust your ears outside of said tests. You can trust your emotional attachement to the music, but everything else is tied to lesser instincts that are easily duped and biased.

@@dwightballard3868 A test doesn't have to mean picking out which you like more, it's establishing whether you can pick out differences without the huge crutch of knowing what you're listening to. One needs the scientific method to properly establish facts. It's not without reason that there's a field of psychology studying unintentional biases and all similar things. Snake oil salesmen usually react negatively to the idea of properly adhering to scientific methods though.

You can't do double blind in audio, because of psychoacoustical reasons. But yes, you can do blind AB and I personally think it would enough to justify the better equipment.

@@dwightballard3868 forget about trusting your ears. All elements of audio reproductions can be tested objectively.

Exactly. Some cheap interconnects may be susceptible to RF/EMI interference or of a higher capacitance which may affect their sound over longer distance, but anything of reasonable quality will be sonically equal.

Thanks for sharing! That was my gut instinct. Now I feel fulfilled with my Monoprice Monolith cables....and other speakers cables from SVS.

I've had just the opposite but then again I was only using like $300 monsters z series cables. My friends wife actually came out of the room from watching their child yelling at him because she thought he had bought brand new speakers. Some people do hear the difference and some people don't and the people that don't want to believe that some people can.

@@Ace-Brigade You are saying she heard a difference from another room?? LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe you, but you're not testing for anything. The whole test is fake. You need to test for something real, and it has to be objective. If you set up a test that can produce usable results, you need to do it scientifically. I'm not trying to be mean or disrespectful, but if I asked you to give me a provable way that you can label a piece of gear cheap or expensive, you can't do it. Its impossible. I'm all for blind testing. I've set up many high quality blind tests over the years, and you can't begin until you answer 2 questions. 1. What are you testing for? 2. And why? You have to start with something real if you want to get real results.

The FTC should fine them and shut them down.

If you really into good sound and had millions then you'd certainly think differently

@Douglas Blake You are probably right but if I was a millionaire I'd certainly get those high end cables! The only way to find out whether it works or not is to try it out. Some people's hobby is collect cars, painting etc my hobby would be collecting cables.

@@ek7473 I would buy high end cables. If I had millions in disposable income. But even then, within limits. Not 21K ones. 1000 maybe.

Reality kicks in immediately on expensive purchases when the product gets home too because the realization sets in that someone in your house can break it or mess with it and now your 10k-20k product is a paperweight and reminder that you fucked up.

There is no measurable performance improvment in expensive cables. They even have been measured several times to actually DEGRADE the sound quality.

Right? Some people run scamming call centers in India, stealing money from the poor grandmas and grandpas around the world. Some other people sell snake oil cables. Can we just let them do what to do and leave value and expense up to the individual?

@Douglas Blake Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this. Too often, I think the « debate » around cables, if there’s one to begin with, is too virtual. Your story is not virtual and it shows how people are getting ripped off by some bad people. Literally scammed and this is frightening. I don’t understand why we don’t have more people being more vocal about this issue. I have a very resolving and quite expensive system, because I truly love music and I value quality. But I have some very « simple » blue jeans cables made out of Canare star quad cable and good connectors. They cost $200, because I needed quite some length. I do research around what I buy, not only because I want to optimize my investment, but also because I value hard work, and honest work. This is why I have Focal speakers with beryllium tweeters, there’s value behind that, real and true value. There is absolutely nothing behind those snake oil cables, it’s beyond crazy, no data, no measurements, nothing. I feel really bad about the state of all this, people spending stupid amount of money just because they can, thus financing some scamming companies while they could support true artisans, not necessarily in audio by the way.

I can't handle people with no brain and no knowledge of anything

@@Maxime-ho9iv And people buy $50k handbags or watches that are less accurate than a budget smartphone. People like expensive stuff and they will continue to buy it regardless of how it performs.

LMAO

One of the biggest improvements I've made to my setup was switching from audioquest black lab RCAs to chord shawline RCAs I was so impressed I actually switched all my speaker cables for also!

People who buy a 20k speaker cable have spent 100-200k on speakers...

yes, yes they did. At the time He'd probably even poo poo a phase null test between the same track pulled pre and post markering if someone had bothered. See techmoan's debunking video on the topic of refracted CD laser light data bullcrap lol

i discovered how important connections were to impedance of a signal on my own with a multimeter playing with different cables attached to the speakers. Some of my poorly made banana ends would add 3-10ohms of impedance depending on how i attached them to the terminals. I also had some far more expensive cables that were no better unless you were really careful how you attached them to the posts. and ALL of them had less measured impedance when attached to 5 way terminals that were screwed all the way in rather then left loose like i see all the time on systems. My best impedance measurments were taken with basic 14 awg ofc with a stripped end shoved through the hole and the post clamped down on it. I was comparing $160 banna ended cables with $20 skar ofc wire for sub woofers from from amazon. If the banana ended cables weren't seated carefully in my particular binding posts, i absolutely had a noticeable loss in the "upper register/air around the sound" areas. seated properly i think i liked the sound as much as the bare wire. But not anything to justify the extra expense and im glad i obtained them second hand (Were a friends own built up cables from very high end components) And all my banana ended cables had this issue to more or less degree in my particular 5 way posts from parts express. My expensive bananas are more likely to make a proper quick connect and go style connection then my amazon el cheapos. But straight OFC wire clamped down physically into the post like the good ole days. Ya know, the not lazy way, is consistently my best way of connecting to my speakers i have. And also happens to be the cheapest. Some of the measurements were nuts on the crappier banana ends though honestly. I was able to get DC resistance measurements as high as an extra 16-20 ohms with a loose post and imperfectly seated el cheapo banana jack. The highest added dc resistance i could get with the home brew bananas was an extra 0.8ohms added. But thats still compared to an added 0 with the straight stripped, and quite cheap, clamped down 14 awg ofc wire. To be fair though, i couldnt measure any added dc resistance to the good bannas when seated properly, but the fact they can be seated improperly at all annoyed me. Id rather just clamp down a stripped wire end with a good bit of force and know with absolute certainty my connection is as solid as possible. Because when it is, the mystique of high end cables vanishes, QUITE quickly. That being said all rca cables are NOT created equally, and your RCA interconnects is where i tend to recommend using the best quality you can afford. I have changed to new RCA's in the past to a very "blanket off the speakers" effect. Especially moving from shielded line level transmitting rca, to short, ground shielded rca runs if you can. Cable interferance, capacitance, and inductance on these runs will be exaggerated at the power stage. Everywhere you have rca's besides turntable to phono stage needs to be as short as is possible, with as little dc resistance ,cable capacitance, and inductance as you can possibly achieve without experiencing interference. But even then, ground shield cables sound better then true shielded thanks to the cable capacitance of a very small high impedance signal running with a dielectric between two discrete conductors. You just may have no choice depending on the levels of interference in your environment. I see people being sold and recommending really expensive shielded loudspeaker cables too. Unless you live at the base of a hill covered in AM radio stations (some people do) this is only hindering their experience of their system. Guaranteed

The 10% think is marketing! It’s like De Beers with diamonds, two months salary for something that will last forever! Ultimately it’s about how the purchase makes you feel!

@@RotatingToroids Well, that's an interesting comparison :) De Beers kind of manipulate the supply of diamonds to keep the prices as high as they are, they aren't exactly the rarest of things. Though they are kind of pretty by time the jewellers have cut and polished them.

They are scared of the virus............................STILL. That's why you didn't see him in Germany.

But that braindead nonsense isn't about bad and well constructed! It's about morons which claim a cable could to more than transmit electrical signals unaltered from output to input and that's bullshit

This must be the well known Western Electric cable which has won the hearts of many audiophiles. It's made by tinned copper in cotton wrapping. Duelund from Denmark uses the same idea and makes cables for a variety of thicknesses. You may be interested...

​@@AndMakrid Realy interesting that today this type somebody adopted. . Few years ago I adopted so called "lyca" wiring and it has shown some gain above 10 kHz . But it was a bit complicated installation. preserving for industance reasons additional 1 inch distance between wires and after years I gave it up for convinent standard wiring. 10-12 kHz in my case wins e game enough rgds

It’s all a gimmick. The only way they would cost so expensive is if they are laminated in Diamond or some other exotic material but in the end, no difference in sound whatsoever compared to much cheaper ones.

@@Bassotronics It has little to do with the cost of manufacturing. It is a case of charge what the market will bear. Very small volume with very high margin. Even then no one getting rich.

You'll be happy to know that I have done some very extensive blind testing, and was able to prove that the differences are real. However, your method wouldn't work. When you conduct a test like that, you need to be testing for something objective. Going by price is meaningless. What happens if the 20k cable goes on sale and now its a 10k cable. What has changed? Nothing. Since you're interested in this type of thing, if you wanted to test for something objective, what would it be, and why?

@@AT-wl9yq How did you test? I have A/B 'd cheap vs better interconnects and found a barely discernible difference that was probably a slight loudness difference rather than an improvement in quality, though that wasn't a blinded approach and I'm no expert.

@@technopsychobedlam You don't have to be an expert. You just have to test for something real, and you can't go by price. For example, a real test would be something like, "Is there an audible difference between copper and silver cables.". That's it. Nothing subjective. If you find there is a difference, then only you can decide if its worth the money. One of the reasons you never want to judge by price, is all other factors being equal, quite often you'll prefer the sound of copper over silver in certain applications. There's nothing wrong with liking a less expensive cable better. Its great when that happens. You also have to be able to accept the truth. Honestly, don't want to conduct a fair test because they don't want to be wrong. They just want to win an argument. I'm not accusing you, just in general.

Well said. I also like to look at the longevity of the cables too. How long will it last me? 3 months... 6 months? a year... maybe 3 years? ... 10 years? Will my tin-coated copper cable brand name cable be better than some off brand? Like he said in the video, to paraphrase: if you want to spend the money, then who's stopping you? If you're on a budget, do what you must; Just do your research.

Laughable bullshit - which resistance are you talking about? Did you visit a school in your life?

@@Harald_Reindl Doesn't any piece of metal have some amount of resistance?

@@CockatooDude don't you have some basic education? That resistance is that small that it don't matter at all - even if it would be big it's not frequency dependent and so at the end of the day compensated by just turn the volume up - you morons really should visit a school and avoid alcohol and other drugs

When listening, I prefer not to put up with the faint background signal noise (noise floor) One should try pressing pause or mute, and from the MLP, if one is unable to differentiate whether the systems are off or on, that's telling you your cables are crap. When friends or guests come around rather than showing them how loud the system goes, I prefer to press pause/mute and show them how quiet it goes. None of them gets it, of course 😂 Silence is golden.

Right. It's probably a few hundered bucks.

Like this hotel I used to work at, someone vomited in the hallway, was not cleaned properly, sometimes it smelt, other times no smell.

because you can play with capacitance/resistance and create a filter with cable. Which is just dumb.

Very fine advice, Sir. But, you forgot one thing. Humans are always suspicious (and envious?) of things contained in the price bracket above what they, themselves, can afford, and must therefore refer to it as “snake oil” and other similarly meaningless terms.

@@thomass.9167 "Some" humans...... People used to ask me with my Jeep "whats your next modification?" They would look at me dumbfounded when I would say I have it right where I want it. Same with my Lotus, got it to where I wanted and have kept it the same for the last 6 years. I now have my system where I want it and it won't change probably till I die. I don't envy my rich friends I look at them with pride on what they have accomplished. I learned long ago "live within you means"

$50-$100... Ill make them myself. Could sell them for $500-$1000 or more.

@@thomass.9167 Ok, I’m no saint. I’ve been there too investing in cables more expensive than my equipment could benefit from. It’s clear that very expensive high end equipment will benefit more from expensive cables than something like my moderately priced units will. That’s my personal experience too. There definitely is a difference in terms of sound quality when it comes to cables but high end cables won’t work miracles on more inferior equipment... A friend more experienced when it comes to hifi than me once gave me an advice; buy cables for about 1/10 of the money the two units you’ll connect cost together. That’s roughly the price segment you should be searching in. I’ve been following that advice since😊

Monster Cables are the top of the line I'll go on cables in my 12k system. Rega thought me that 25 years ago. If a 1.5k turntable doesn't have expensive cables - it's all bs. Heck I still have some $1.99 RCAs in my system.

If you dress up your system with cables your whole setup is shit - you don't see any cable here - nowhere

Dumb nonsense - either the signal transmission is unaltered and free of noise or it isn't

that stuff is expensive

You are going to need to sell a fire insurance policy with each set of cables, and the claim payouts would sink your company.

I used to say the same thing "happy with the sound" it's only when one takes the punt and purchases some proper cables that one realises what was missing, besides isn't it nice to have a low noise floor! I've changed my cables three times and each time I noticed an improvement! Cables don't necessarily make your speakers sound better, they just ensure that those speakers get the necessary signal it requires to sound their best!

@@totalplonker824 Yes that was me a few years ago . Someone gives me 1600 dollars worth of speaker cable. I hooked it up & rarely has my system improved so much . It was definitely not the placebo effect that one guy on the net likes to say. I posted our opinions ( not just me) what the cables did to my system. The man called me an idiot.

21,000 buys you a lot of concert tickets. Or you could go listen to music for free. OR you could pay people to come play at your house with actual instruments. But no-one does. They don't love music. They love spending money and thinking it got them "an experience". What they were sold was an idea.

@@ZeroG84 I think you're right but anyone who can afford to spend that amount of money on cables could probably buy the concert tickets and private concerts as well! It's a strange old world when we have homeless living on the street, earthquake victims begging for relief and audio cables that cost the equivalent of a year's salary sell. C'est la vie...Have a great weekend my friend and thanks for your interest and reply

As they sound identical to the cheapies in the box you can save even more by not buying them!

This is a common (and fine) statement but it might miss the target just a bit. It’s the equivalent to saying that we need research to find out which bag carries lipstick better, a Gucci or the plastic one from the grocery store? In terms of functionality, not much of a difference, but if you can afford the Gucci you will likely enjoy it more, feel more pride of ownership, want to show it off, and claim that it indeed carries your lipstick better than other bags. No science required.

@@thomass.9167 I agree with that. However, I object to purveyors who insist there is a functional difference, worth the money, and will not offer the proof I describe. I have no problem with the fool and his/her money that you describe. They get what they want or deserve.

@@edd2771 Well, it’s easy to claim there is a functional difference without offering any proof. Consumers (with money to spend) assume something is better because it is made of more exotic materials, looks better, and has a fancy name. Works for Audioquest just as well as it works for Gucci. From what I can tell, both companies do well. 😀

@@thomass.9167 yes, this the reason for me making the comment here and elsewhere. Someone like Paul would be the ideal person to do it, but he’s too vested in it. So he essentially gives the issue a pass while appearing avuncular and even-handed. I think he is a stand up guy and this channel is excellent, but he is a special kind of devious when it comes to topics of this nature.

Pure bullshit - it's like a plane to drive through a wood

I'm sorry but that's a completely flawed logic. I like food, I go to many michelin star restaurants. What is the price of a bottle of water in those restaurants? $100? No it's not, it's the same price than in any other restautant. $200 gives you the best cables you can buy, made out of professional Canare cables and Neutrik connectors. It's not a percentage, it's a fix amount. There is absolutely no logic behind the percentage, the only logic is to make you spend more.

Guess I can afford about $75 then .Lol. I do find all of this interesting though and wish I could afford more.

@@Maxime-ho9iv If you say so. So lets say you have a system that's 100,000. Are you going to invest 5k for cable and interconnect or 200 dollar cable? Are you the least bit curious how cable materials and construction affect sound quality? I don't follow your logic.

@@johnloupis2347 Well it does depend on your resources John, and the resolution of your system. There will be a huge segment of those with systems who won't hear the difference in their particular set up.