5d ago

"i can hear the difference"

150 comments

Is that an optical cable with gold plating to improve the electrical connection?
- It's called SCIENCE sweaty
  
  I love sweaty science.
  
  I would ask how you know that guy sweats a lot, but then I saw his username.
  Fair enough.
- Yes.
  It's also for digital signals, so interference doesn't matter (up to the point it stops everything).
  But hey, it also has a silver ABS grip.
  
  I do kinda see some point in gold plating electrical cables. Gold doesn't tarnish so much and is also often used on computer edge connectors.
  The issue has always been "audiophiles" telling you they can tell the difference with a gold or gold plated digital connector. Of course you cannot, you either are getting bit errors or not with digital audio. But they do generally provide a more reliable connection overall.
  Now don't ask me about my opinion, you're talking to the guy that makes radio antennas with speaker wire. I am truly uncultured in terms of electrical connectivity.
  
  That's so lame. They should have gone with gold HDPE.
- Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I would think it’s to resist corrosion, but there are plenty of cheaper metals to plate with that don’t corrode, so even that’s a stretch.
  Or, you know, plastic.
  
  Regular toslink is just plastic
  
  If you wanted to make a high quality plug, you'd use a stainless steel guide. It has to be steel because it's elastically deformed during insertion, and any plating will be scratched with enough use.
  Most plugs don't work that way, but this one model does.
  
  Umm, they are already using plastic, don’t you see the silver ABS part???? (Jk)
- That sounds like something one of those humans would say.
  
  Fucking humans
- The data link is 100% digital.
  
  There's micro plastics in our data streams now.
- See depends how you look at it. Will it make the cable perform better? No. But then neither do the diamonds around the edge of an expensive watch.
  The gold is just there so you know it's a quality cable. It's like a rolex fibre cable.
  
  Does the Rolex do the chief function of a watch (keep time) better than a $30 Time ?
  So you're saying what it really does is communicate that you're a superficial asshole and/or sucker.
  
  Lol you're the reason marketing is a profession.

I once had a Best Buy sales person tell me "the improved shielding helps with magnetism". I stared at him for a sec and said "if there is enough magnetism in my house to bend light, how my stereo sound really won't be one of my main concerns"
- But how many people do you think he used that line on and it sealed the deal?
  
  Given the results of the 2016 and 2024 elections in the United States? Way way WAY too many!
- It's for those occasions when there's a black hole passing through your house. Gotta be prepared.
  
  Could just be a regular magnetar neutron star
- I used to sell TVs for Best Buy back in the day. The Video Department manager, my boss, set up a display side by side to show the difference between $40 Monster cables and the normal cables that came with a DVD player.
  When there was no noticable difference, he went into the TV settings and adjusted the settings for the normal cables to make the picture look like shit. Not all customers are that gullible though, so usually one of the more savvy ones would fix the settings. So my boss would have to go in and fuck the settings up again once or twice a shift.
  
  This is for-profit deception AKA fraud.
  Does this legally qualify as fraud?
- Hey man, you realize everytime you turn on your stereo your couch starts sliding towards it?

My favorite story along these lines...
Someone compared Monster cables to un-bent coat hangers.
https://gizmodo.com/audiophile-deathmatch-monster-cables-vs-a-coat-hanger-363154
"Seven songs were played while the group was blindfolded and the cables swapped back and forth. Not only “after 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire,” but no one knew a coat hanger was used in the first place."
- To be fair, it was 4 coat hangers. The Monster cable was therefore outnumbered.
- That's a classic and I am glad it see it passed around again. The best part is the people that start delving into the snake oil absurdity that is "audiophile cables" before, you know, getting better actual speakers/headphones. Like for fucks sake, your $200 fancy cable isn't going to make your bullshit bargain bookshelf speaker into the voice of god. Just get some half way decent equipment and listen to your actual music.
  
  Yup, there is a lot of snake oil in the audiophile world. The worst instance I saw was someone posting about an intermittent buzz in their system. Multiple people were recommending a full rebuild, (which would cost thousands of dollars). From what they described, it was pretty obvious that OP just needed a ~10¢ ferrite bead on a power cable, to make it stop acting as an antenna.
  I was like “okay, you could try rebuilding your entire system like everyone else is suggesting… But maybe start with a ferrite bead. Here is a link for a multipack on Amazon. Worst case scenario, you’re only out like $5. And even if it doesn’t fix this specific case, the multipack is handy to have around anyways, because manufacturers often cheap out and skip adding them when their devices really do need them.” Like three days later, I got a “holy shit this actually worked. You just saved me thousands of dollars (and a ton of time) on a complete rebuild.”
  
  I have friends that are hardcore record collectors of obscure 70s punk, power pop, glam, etc. They have Marantz receivers and top of the line turntables, setups that approach like 10 grand. Then they listen to some of the most poorly recorded, cheaply pressed vinyl you can imagine.
  
  I worked at a big box electronics store back in the day. Problem was we only sold two kinds of cables.
  1 - shitty cables with the ends crimped on that will fall off after three uses.
  2 - way overpriced gold plated cables that cost 10x or more.
  I'd love it if we sold something in-between, but you absolutely could tell the difference between those options. Mostly cause the RCA ends didn't make an actual decent connection to the equipment, so it wiggled around and induced static into the signal.
- This is a classic.
  A few years back in a HiFi - fair there was a seller who pushed these fist sized wooden blocks that were meant to raise the cables off the ground and therefore "prevent the Earth itself from tampering with the signal".
  So he was basically trying to sell very expensive magic wood.
  
  Earth: look at my mighty magnetic field that pushes back the very radiation of the sun!
  Wooden block: hold my beer
- Installing cable TV at a man's house, ripped his Monster coax connector off. He was appalled! (I was appalled!) Showed him what I was replacing it with. Parts guide.
  "The shield is quad-woven steel. Yours was 1x of angel hair copper. The dielectric is solid, not a noodle. See? (bendy, bendy) Foil shield? Uh, did yours have one? Oh, I see the shredded bit right there!"
  Bent the center conductor on his Monster cable with my pinky. "Try that with mine." Stopped him before he hypodermic-needled himself.
  tl;dr: Whatever the cable guy cuts for you is miles above Monster grade.
  It's like Yeti gear. "So you paid $35 for a cup that's simply a vacuum sealed canister? I got a 6-pack off Amazon for $25. Cute colors too!"
  
  $35 is generous
- Been 15-years ago, but I bet an audiophile coworker, who had a physics degree, he couldn't tell the difference in a coat hanger and proper wires.
  "Well, yeah, but, bla, bla, bla..."
  Now I wish I could shove that article up his butt! 😈
- But do coat hangers hold up to repeated use ?
- Yeah babe, my wardrobe is worth 100k.

Ah yeah, you know the gold plated connections make all the difference for the fiber optic connection
- I like to head on over the auto zone, get me some of that dialectic grease and dip all my dac cable ends. Just feels good going on ya know?
  /s
  Edit: onlyfans? Like just me greasing up different terminations and inserting them.
- Just as important is what they connect to. You know the plastic part it connects to inside whatever device you are connecting to. Same concept when monster cables were a thing, the gold plated connectors that connect to the back of your tv using plastic and undefined metal.
  
  Gold plating is used to prevent corrosion, not optimize conductivity. It matters only for the longevity of the cable.

Those 128kbps are going to be well delivered, that's for sure.
- FWIW toslink supports up to 125mbps theoretically
  Much lower in practice of course, but it's a bit better than 128k
  
  Yeah but my mp3's from Kazaa are all 128. I want to hear them perfectly as the original ripper intended without distortion from the cables. The gold connector adds warmth to the sound.
  
  I wondered why the PS5 didn't have optical out when the PS3 did, then thinking back on it, I probably never owned content/speakers that were good enough to really tell the difference. I had routed the PS3 audio to a receiver with 5.1 surround, and video to a projector via HDMI. Then just played media from an external/had a dual boot to yellowdog Linux at the time. Was fun for young me, hell the projector was probably only 720p at the time
  
  Wait its actually worth something? I thought it was 2mbps limit.
- They're going to look damn good getting where they're going.

ABS Silver Shell
silver-colored plastic
- It's actually anti-lock breaking system, super high end; not many cables have it
- Same bullshit with guns.
  "Hi-tech polymer slide, boolshit, boolshit, boolshit..."
  It's fair-quality plastic, painted silver. My Smith & Wesson EZ is wearing off. :(

You can sell aluminum free baking soda and convince someone baking soda contains aluminum. Fads and marketing are becoming an epidemic
- https://xkcd.com/641/
  
  I'm so glad this is illegal where I'm from
- Baking soda or baking powder? Because some (most?) baking powders do contain aluminium salts and some people are put off by that. Maybe that carried over to baking soda too.
- Boneless Pizza ass moment

So regardless of the fact that it's about an optical connector here, and hence completely nonsensical, gold is actually a worse conductor of electricity than copper or silver. The point of gold plated connectors is not so much to improve the immediate audio quality, but to prevent oxidation of the connector over time, which can degrade quality and lead to bad contact. Gold is a noble metal, so doesn't oxidize. I would think most audiophiles know this?
I used to have to replace the cable of my electric guitar every few years because the sound would get crackly or drop out intermittently, I eventually got one with gold plated 6.35mm plug and I'm still using that same cable 15 years later.
- You are correct; the point of gold plated contacts is anti-corrosion and long service life not for absolute highest conductivity.
  I'm a ham radio operator; I have some silver-plated antenna connectors, because antenna feedlines are dealing with extremely weak signals on receive, so any loss you can eliminate in the connector the better. Problem is they corrode to hell everywhere they aren't tightly screwed together. For consumer AV equipment the signals are basically never weak enough to bother with that.
  I would think most audiophiles know this?
  They're not marketing to audiophiles. They're marketing to dudes and dads. They aren't trying to get the guy hooking a manual turntable up to a tube amplifier, they're trying to get the guy attaching a PS5 to an LG TV to a Sonos soundbar. They're going for the guy who is spending middle class money on AV equipment without bothering to understand it.
  Wish I'd thought of it.
- I wonder if, in the 15 years of not buying the cheap cables, you managed to come close to saving what you paid for that ten cents of gold plating.
  
  I have no idea, and I don't particularly care either, it's not like it was some wildly expensive cable (though I don't remember the price) ... I just know that I saved myself a whole lot of inconvenience.
  
  Did you consider the soft factor of convenience? That has value too

Making no difference to sound is a very expensive addiction.

Audiophiles are the stupidest conceited fools who have ever been parted from their money.
Don't forget your Audiophile grade cat5e cables for your NAS! Plug them in the right way though so the arrows point away from the NAS!
- Unidirectional cables are very silly. I fixed a 300 foot unidirectional HDMI installed backwards during construction. I had to army crawl over ductwork.
  
  I can imagine directional active cables, but not passive ones.
  
  For HDMI this is common with active optical cables.
- Directional cables kind of make sense in an analogue, single-ended connection if it’s about the shielding being connected to ground only on one side… although I haven’t tried it in practice. Still, it has nothing to do with signal directionality, just noise rejection. The ground lift switch on some devices does the same.

This is even funnier considering the fiber element in toslink is actually plastic which was chosen to make it really cheap since the distance was not of concern like a proper multimode fiber cable made with glass.

But it's Monster and costs 17x as much as Monoprice, it has to be better!
- Septendecupleprice

The biggest impact I ever saw was an electrical filter for advanced audio systems. It’s basically an alternator. And it was the most impressive piece of any audio system I sold.

I once had a guy try to sell me one of these to my face. I asked him to explain why it was better than the one I got in the box with my DVD player, and he carried on about better conductivity and improved sound.
Called him out on his bullshit and never returned.

I miss when being an audiophile was just using vintage equipment and/or opting for lossless formats over compressed mp3s.
- There's always been a group of audiophiles with more money than sense. To the point that "audiophile" almost feels like an insult to me, and I'm a man who...well...loves his audio. They should have a word for that.
  
  Audio enthusiast
- Gold plated connections have a point, it prevents corrosion extending the life of the cable. Whether you think it worth that price is another thing entirely.

Toslink is optical, right?
- Yes
  
  And I think the gold and silver parts are usually just plastic.

You’re no true audiophile until you have audio graded solid state drive in your PC!

This community has been on fire today.
- Sounds like sweaty, shirtless firemen are in order.

I got two different versions… it’s kinda had to find it without all the silly dressing… the first one also had fake kevlar sleeves… you can clearly hear angry photons getting stuck in the corners until you soak it in a sink full of warm water overnight 🤣

This is a funny bit of kit in that the addition of gold actually makes me trust it's actual quality for the job less.

I have no idea what the fuck this meme is about. I gather from the comments it's something to do with audio stuff? Why is this cable bad? What the fuck is it even supposed to be? I'm so confused
- The cable is fiber optic, which is to say light. Light don't care about gold and silver. The highly polished lens bit is probably also bullshit, but at least light cares about lenses.
  
  The gold isn't there to conduct anything, it's there to prevent corrosion, gold doesn't rust or tarnish.
- More generally, it’s not that cables are bad, it’s that audiophiles have way more money than sense. I’m not exaggerating when i say that I’ve seen short speaker cables sell for £6,000. Anything more than £5 will be of exactly the same quality as the £5 cable. You could maybe argue me up to £15-20.

Here's a tip. Try the Dollar Store first. Only if you REALLY decide you need an upgrade, go with it
- Bruh, I'm digging in my wire drawer or going to the thrift. I cannot imagine how people pay money for new cables of almost any sort.

There is exceptions to this. So for USBC Alt DP mode you want a fast responding cable which costs slightly more. Otherwise the cable is slow to announce itself and will only activate on the OS. You want it to be fast and respond to the BIOS. But it isn't the most big deal. And no I am not fully aware of why how or what solutions there are.

I only scrolled enough to see the tip before feeling like I would throw up
- ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
- If I had a nickel...

The one good use of Monster cables I saw was a buddy who played guitar and was pretty energetic in his sets and not disciplined enough to take proper care of his cables.
Monster cables really were pretty tough compared to the cheap stuff, but the bigger deal was the lifetime free replacements. He bought 2 Monster cables for 1/4 cable to his amp, and when one broke he'd swap to the backup while waiting on the replacement in the mail.

"It's in your nature"

Abs is a type of plastic, ergo an insulator.

I'm holding out for a sendust SFP module for a faster Internet connection.

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