External DAC with Connect

IMO, it is the other way around in this instance for sure. One can only laugh at the credulity levels of people who buy high end, expensive speaker cables as misled snake oil customers.
But there isn't much point reasoning with them, all one can do is offer rational solutions to people that are new to the home audio subject and perhaps save them some money.

Well, I did say "One shouldn't be so condesceding towards others when one cannot back up their words with proof." Condescension in response to extraordinary claims with absolutely no theoretical or experimental scientific basis is quite deserved, IMHO. 😉

If one does the calculation, there is a slight, barely measurable, difference in the conductivity of lamp cord and other simple speaker wires at 60Hz and 20KHz. This gives the fanatics some fuel for their unreasonable claims. I'd love to see some good data about what fraction of the population can detect a very, very small fraction of a dB difference between two 20kHz tones. It would also be very interesting if the age and noise exposure history of the tested individuals is logged. Even more interesting would be to follow these individuals over the decades.

In my opinion, most of the "magic" associated with changing to a super premium speaker cable is due to the accidental cleaning of the contacts while the cables are swapped. Of course the new cable sounds better and the user never swaps back. If the user does swap back, they will discover that the original cable sounds better too.

Dirty contacts cause significant sonic damage and the fix is free.

^^^

Deoxit D5 & Gold are my friends 😉

I dont think we should be so smug as to think audio reproduction cannot be improved, far from it, for me the listening experience has a long way to to reach that of the concert hall. Indeed that may be a false target, as its difficult to create something of that scale.

However, the non scientific claims of a bunch of well fed hifi mag so called gurus dont help when they are all so lazy, if they "think" that something is better then conduct scientific tests and publish the results for peer review. That is the way scientific advances have been made in the last several hundred years.

In the UK i think the industry is slowly dying. The number of "hifi" dealers is dropping dramatically, and maybe thats no surprise when you have to make a margin of 40% or more to survive in the high street now., and support stock levels for demo. So its not in their interest to push cheaper products where any difference is marginal.

Many manufacturers have outsourced assembly to china and low cost countries, with R&D maybe still done in the UK or other high wage economies, and the model that Sonos adopt of direct sales with returns is probably more where it will go. What exactly do you need a hifi dealer for now? To tell you where to put BluTak under your speakers? I think not!

Maybe this link will be of interest for those who havent seen it.

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

I dont think we should be so smug as to think audio reproduction cannot be improved, far from it, for me the listening experience has a long way to to reach that of the concert hall.
I agree. But where improvement is required is in what is the weakest link today - the speaker/room response part of the chain. And building more and more strange looking cabinets with a plethora of drivers doesn't seem to be the way forward.
Perhaps a chip implant that takes the ears and the room out of the equation - with the risk of ending up hearing the microwave as well:).

Between a source and amplifier you have an output impedance, and input impedance and a component (the cable) which has capacitance, inductance and resistance which is a filter. That combination creates a tuned circuit which will change the audio performance.

The problem most people have with cabling is they expect to hear "more bass" or "more treble" but they don't understand the changes are much more subtle than that, and just putting an expensive cable in the system doesn't necessarily make it a "balanced" system. A cable is as an important component in the system as anything else as the system will not function without it.

Measuring 20hz-20khz sine wave sweeps just creates confirmation bias.

If one does the calculation, there is a slight, barely measurable, difference in the conductivity of lamp cord and other simple speaker wires at 60Hz and 20KHz. This gives the fanatics some fuel for their unreasonable claims. I'd love to see some good data about what fraction of the population can detect a very, very small fraction of a dB difference between two 20kHz tones. It would also be very interesting if the age and noise exposure history of the tested individuals is logged. Even more interesting would be to follow these individuals over the decades.

In my opinion, most of the "magic" associated with changing to a super premium speaker cable is due to the accidental cleaning of the contacts while the cables are swapped. Of course the new cable sounds better and the user never swaps back. If the user does swap back, they will discover that the original cable sounds better too.

Dirty contacts cause significant sonic damage and the fix is free.

Onlyclave

Absolutely right! The cable has all those characteristics, which are dwarfed by the similar characteristics in the crossover. Big L and Big C.....

So reduce them and use actives with v short leads, and digital filters at the input to the amplifiers.

How could this not be better?

Between a source and amplifier you have an output impedance, and input impedance and a component (the cable) which has capacitance, inductance and resistance which is a filter. That combination creates a tuned circuit which will change the audio performance.

The problem most people have with cabling is they expect to hear "more bass" or "more treble" but they don't understand the changes are much more subtle than that, and just putting an expensive cable in the system doesn't necessarily make it a "balanced" system. A cable is as an important component in the system as anything else as the system will not function without it.

Measuring 20hz-20khz sine wave sweeps just creates confirmation bias.

If this is the case, then why can't trained listeners in ABX testing hear a difference between cables when everything else in the system remains constant? Meaning that your "tuned circuit which will change the audio performance" remains exactly the same, except for the cables. Surely, even with "subtle" differences, these so-called "golden eared" audiophiles should be able to discern the differences without knowing which cable they are listening to, right?

I agree. But where improvement is required is in what is the weakest link today - the speaker/room response part of the chain..

Exactly so.

The trouble is this part of the equation isn't "sexy" as it involves significant, disruptive physical work. It requires room layouts to be changed in ways which are not conducive to uses other than critical listening. It requires bulky and difficult to accommodate room treatments.

In fact it is the opposite of "sexy": it is inconvenient and often physically unattractive.

For the truth is most people who claim to be "audiophiles" don't care that much about audio. They do care about kit. They love shiny things and specifications (even if they don't really understand them). They love playing in the pseudo-scientific sandpit that is constructed from the myths they like to believe unconditionally. They revel in the superstitions and stories which have been passed on through word of mouth over the decades. Their heros are disgruntled ex recording-studio technicians and dinosaur musicians of the past. They search for the next obscure piece of data they can use as a yardstick to claim sonic superiority (at least for a while, until proper Scientists and Engineers test it and find it invalid).

They ignore the real low-hanging fruit because it's not sexy, instead preferring to chase potential silver-bullets.

And their mantra when it comes to specifications is "more must be better" even when it's shown that, in some cases, less is better. Someone who really cared about audio would welcome this, for "less" is easier to achieve, more accessible. A true audiophile would rejoice that "less" was better than "more".

But Less isn't sexy! Any pleb can do "less". Less is for the masses. How is an audiophile supposed to laud it over the "ordinary people". How is one to appear superior with "less"? The typical "audiophile" wants more, more, more, even if that could be detrimental to the sound, because it's not about the sound, it's about how you get there.

To use a car analogy, your restored 1968 Chevy Cheville might chew through fuel at 14 MPG and take 12 seconds to get to 60 mph but boy, ain't she a beauty! They don't make them like they used to!

Cheers,

Keith