"Audiophile" power cable for your Connect

  • 15 December 2016
  • 6 replies
  • 906 views

Not making this up. I'll never understand why they make this sort of nonsense, and why fools buy into the joke, but they do, including "journalists".

http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/04/spruce-up-your-sonos-connect-with-nordosts-purple-flare/

"Cutting to the chase: the Nordost cable sounds better. It shines a light into music’s murkier corners exposing greater subtleties, most notably lengthening the tail of each piano note’s natural decay on Nils Frahm’s “Says”. Elsewhere, Fela Kuti’s funked-up protest jazz (Afrodisiac) sounded both more rhythmically fruitful, Brian Eno’s Small Craft on a Milk Sea less anaemic.

And yet, paradoxically, the additional intensity brought by the Nordost wire also sounded more relaxed. Joining the dots between amped up fervour and greater repose is our third qualitative descriptor: effortlessness."

Sigh.

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6 replies

Lol. And some more entertaining BS:
"New D/A converter in tow, what to do about the Connect’s tendency toward nervous transient tension when siphoning the digital audio stream from its coaxial and (to a lesser extent) optical outputs?"
Nervous transient tension??!! Even with an external DAC added?!.....just because it is now digital, does not mean it is not snake oil. And journalists of dubious integrity but able to make up meaningless phrases will always be around.
"...our third qualitative descriptor: effortlessness."
Pretty much sums up the process of relieving gullible audiophools of humongous amounts of cash.
Shouldn't "Small Craft on a Milk Sea" sound anemic? Milk is what they feed to veal calves to keep them anemic, so I figure that's the artist's intent. Don't be messin' with Eno's vision!!!!

And for a more serious reaction to this wonderful product - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
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I swear, I feel like making up products just to sell to audiophile wannabes. Picture a black box, sealed on both ends, with just gold RCA pairs on either end, nothing inside but 10 gauge wire connecting the two pairs of jacks, and then nitrogen filled. I'd name it De-Digitizier. I'm sure I could find some English major to describe it as "adding an undefined but scrumptious breathiness and airiness to Janet Monheim's vocals without any of digital audio's notorious brittle edges and artifacts."
That is actually mild compared to some. There is (or maybe was by now) a company making big bucks air purifiers to improve digital wireless streaming. I once joked that this is the type of absurdities the snake-oil manufacturers would come up with next, never thinking they would actually stoop so low.
As recently as a couple of years ago, the Munich HiFi show had a German company hawking air treatment solutions for just old fashioned sound waves, as part of room acoustics improvement kit.
The linked article is a good summary of the subject for anyone interested - where for the first time I read about a USD 500 replacement volume control knob sold as a HiFi system performance accessory, so in terms of how low someone can stoop, it is a good example from the race to the bottom:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-01-06/