Those who own Audioquest cable...what do you think?

[esldude]

Oh, I don't know. Cell phone conversations today are clearer and easier to understand that most wired telephone connections in the 20th century. Even better than some of fibre based connections for landlines.

 

Wireless communications are getting to be very reliable, and very fast...

 

-Paul

 

If only cell phone communication was full duplex. The lower fidelity of the old analog network was still in some ways better by the quality of duplex vs simplex conversation.

[gmgraves]

I always knew that Marconi dude was a shyster.

 

 

Nah! Marconi was OK, it was De Forest who was (mostly) the charlatan.

[Snowmonkey]

Am I the only one who thinks the sound from the Audioquest cables in the ad is terrible? It sounds to me like some sort of high pitched ringing has been added to "sharpen" the sound.

 

It's a compliment to Blue Coast Records that they chose Looking for a Home for their demo, but I don't think they did Blue Coast any favours with that effort.

[esldude]

Am I the only one who thinks the sound from the Audioquest cables in the ad is terrible? It sounds to me like some sort of high pitched ringing has been added to "sharpen" the sound.

 

It's a compliment to Blue Coast Records that they chose Looking for a Home for their demo, but I don't think they did Blue Coast any favours with that effort.

 

Oh I definitely agree. In fact none of the samples sounds very good at all even for the compressed format in use via youtube. Maybe Blue Coast has a stake in this dishonest demo using their music.

[Snowmonkey]

Oh I definitely agree. In fact none of the samples sounds very good at all even for the compressed format in use via youtube. Maybe Blue Coast has a stake in this dishonest demo using their music.

So why would a company that markets to people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a cable be so stupid as to assume those people wouldn't notice that they were being fed crap sound? I can maybe forgive dishonesty, but stupidity - never.

 

Likewise, I find it hard to believe that a company like Blue Coast, which trades (rightly) on the high quality of its recordings would allow one of its most iconic tracks to be used for that garbage. I can only assume they haven't realised what's going on. Is Cookie Marenco seeing this thread?

[kennyb123]

So why would a company that markets to people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a cable be so stupid as to assume those people wouldn't notice that they were being fed crap sound? I can maybe forgive dishonesty, but stupidity - never.

 

Because a company that markets to people willing to spend hundreds to thousands on cables know that those folks are NOT going to decide to buy based on what they hear in an video on YouTube. Those people are going try to hear the cable for themselves in a proper system, preferably their own.

 

I wouldn't have even thought to listen to differences as that video was playing. It would be absolutely meaningless to do so..

 

If someone is foolish enough to buy based on what they heard in that video then they have bigger problems.

[gmgraves]

Am I the only one who thinks the sound from the Audioquest cables in the ad is terrible? It sounds to me like some sort of high pitched ringing has been added to "sharpen" the sound.

 

It's a compliment to Blue Coast Records that they chose Looking for a Home for their demo, but I don't think they did Blue Coast any favours with that effort.

 

 

Believe me, it's not just you!

[sandyk]

Oh I definitely agree. In fact none of the samples sounds very good at all even for the compressed format in use via youtube. Maybe Blue Coast has a stake in this dishonest demo using their music.

 

The maximum Youtube and VEVO bit rate of 187kilobits/sec .aac audio (1280 Video selected) is virtually useless for comparing tiny differences between cables or anything else.

[esldude]

The maximum Youtube and VEVO bit rate of 187kilobits/sec .aac audio (1280 Video selected) is virtually useless for comparing tiny differences between cables or anything else.

 

Which only points out just how ridiculous this dishonestly manipulated video was.

[kennyb123]

Which only points out just how ridiculous this dishonestly manipulated video was.

 

And how ridiculous the reaction to it was. It's unlikely hearing that video convinced anyone to purchase an AQ cable.

 

It's more of a lesson learned on how much stock to put into a video produced by a shlocky retailer.

[livelistenlearn]

Yes, and your point is...? Are you reinforcing my comment or do you have a problem with it?

 

irony.

 

as a non-subscriber, that’s what you see sometimes (because the ad banners rotate). and, what you see is (indirect) ad revenue for CA, paid for by Audioquest and Wireworld. placement may be beyond admin control, but…

 

…the cable marketing/branding machine rolls on in the www.

 

1) the banners ads are not cheap. somewhere, somehow, enough people must be buying enough Audioquest and Wireworld cables to ‘finance’ the ads. why?

 

2) these banner ads appear in CA, which shall we say, is (mostly) kind of ‘cable-skeptical’. so, to whom are they trying to sell stuff?

[esldude]

6000 Plus Views! AudioQuest Post Goes Viral | Real HD-Audio

 

You might notice the link in my OP is no longer functional. That video has been pulled. Seems all such videos related have been pulled. My, oh my, I do believe AQ got caught with its pants down.

[sandyk]

6000 Plus Views! AudioQuest Post Goes Viral | Real HD-Audio

 

You might notice the link in my OP is no longer functional. That video has been pulled. Seems all such videos related have been pulled. My, oh my, I do believe AQ got caught with its pants down.

 

Perhaps, but we don't know for sure what the video sounded like BEFORE suffering the horrible Youtube compression !

[kennyb123]

You might notice the link in my OP is no longer functional. That video has been pulled. Seems all such videos related have been pulled. My, oh my, I do believe AQ got caught with its pants down.

 

Maybe AQ should be credited for acting quickly once they learned that this retailer had posted a deceptive video?

[kennyb123]

as a non-subscriber, that’s what you see sometimes (because the ad banners rotate). and, what you see is (indirect) ad revenue for CA, paid for by Audioquest and Wireworld. placement may be beyond admin control, but…

 

These ads are often served up based on sites you've visited. These sites are targeting you in hopes you return and make a purchase.

 

1) the banners ads are not cheap. somewhere, somehow, enough people must be buying enough Audioquest and Wireworld cables to ‘finance’ the ads. why?

 

2) these banner ads appear in CA, which shall we say, is (mostly) kind of ‘cable-skeptical’. so, to whom are they trying to sell stuff?

 

I'm guessing it just appears that this site is mostly 'cable-skeptical' because a few who are skeptical are very vocal. And the vocal few tend to keep the non-skeptics away.

 

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Winston Churchill

[realhifi]

 

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Winston Churchill

 

That's a great quote. Hadn't heard that one before.

[Paul R]

That's kind of apples and oranges, don't you think? I mean telephones sounded horrible for decades due to a myriad of characteristics having little or nothing to do with "wires". First of all, was the carbon button microphone. This 19th century device produced as much distortion as signal, the mechanical phone switching apparatus was incredibly lossy and the need for amplification of the signal along the route made the phones noisy. I remember as a kid in the 1950's when on long-distance calls, the background noise was almost as loud as the signal! The biggest changes in wired phone technology came in the '60's and '70's when digital switching replaced mechanical switching and electret microphones replaced the carbon button mikes in the subscriber units. Today, cheap cell phones still sound lousy because they use three-bit voice quantization which is so bad that people using such a phone don't even sound like themselves!

 

The bottom line is that the more active electronics that an audio signal has to pass through, the worse it sounds. This has been known for decades. IOW, the simpler the audio path the better the sound. I don't see how wireless technology, irrespective of how good it might get could possibly be better than a length of cable.

 

 

Analog electronics, yes. Digital electronics? Maybe not. Seriously, as long as the connection meets very liberal speed and latency concerns, distance and routing mean little to digital connections like cell phone calls. As you point out, the quality of the phone makes a lot of difference.

 

To tie that back to audio cables, to me speaker cables make the most difference. They roughly equate to old telephone lines to me, nasty noisy things that they were.

 

Beyond that, USB cables make a significant difference to me - even though they should not. I personally consider that to be a function of the quality of the equipment, and perhaps a little bit of the quality of the USB cable.

 

And it loosely equates a little bit, to cheap cell phones that screw up a pristine digital connection.

 

The analogy is loose as ashes, but is illustrative without forcing one tomdraw conclusions.

[kennyb123]

6000 Plus Views! AudioQuest Post Goes Viral | Real HD-Audio

 

Waldrop goes full out blaming AQ for a video posted to a retailer's YouTube account that appears to have been produced by that retailer.

 

(AQ does have their own YouTube account. It's easy to tell which videos were produced by them as they open with the word Audioquest displayed in big red letters. The video Waldrep is complaining about does not open this way.)

 

Quote: "But AudioQuest went a step further. By carefully examining the audio associated with their YouTube promotional video, it is uncontestable that they “juiced” the fidelity of their HDMI cables…and they did so progressively. "

 

No, it's not "uncontestable" that AQ did this.

 

And this: "We should also recognize that they are not alone in making unfounded claims about their products."

 

But it's just fine for him to make unfounded claims about them? Do what I say but not what I do, eh?

 

This is probably just a massive case of projection. A person who tosses out unfounded claims without hesitation must believe everyone else does the same.

[gmgraves]

The maximum Youtube and VEVO bit rate of 187kilobits/sec .aac audio (1280 Video selected) is virtually useless for comparing tiny differences between cables or anything else.

 

My point, exactly!

[gmgraves]

irony.

 

as a non-subscriber, that’s what you see sometimes (because the ad banners rotate). and, what you see is (indirect) ad revenue for CA, paid for by Audioquest and Wireworld. placement may be beyond admin control, but…

 

…the cable marketing/branding machine rolls on in the www.

 

1) the banners ads are not cheap. somewhere, somehow, enough people must be buying enough Audioquest and Wireworld cables to ‘finance’ the ads. why?

 

2) these banner ads appear in CA, which shall we say, is (mostly) kind of ‘cable-skeptical’. so, to whom are they trying to sell stuff?

 

1) Of course, enough people are buying their products. AudioQuest is one of the major brands selling cables to the audiophile market. Also, very important is the fact that boutique cables have a tremendous built-n profit margin at all sales levels: manufacturing, distribution, and retail. Selling cables is very lucrative. What is more amazing, at least to me, is the fact that there are enough buyers in this niche market called audio, to support as many cable manufacturers and sellers as there are! This alone is moot testimony to the large amount of profit built into this market segment.

 

2) I don't see that the majority of CA subscribers are all that "cable skeptical". Looks to me like a clear majority of CA denizens believe absolutely that cable sound not only exists, but is actually important enough to justify them spending some big bucks on. Just as important, at least as far as AudiQuest is concerned, is that the company sells other, more generic products as well as cables. They sell the DragonFly DAC, the Beetle DAC, the Jitterbug Digital Filter, the NightHawk stereo headphones and the Niagara Mains Filters, etc.

[gmgraves]

Analog electronics, yes. Digital electronics? Maybe not. Seriously, as long as the connection meets very liberal speed and latency concerns, distance and routing mean little to digital connections like cell phone calls. As you point out, the quality of the phone makes a lot of difference.

 

To tie that back to audio cables, to me speaker cables make the most difference. They roughly equate to old telephone lines to me, nasty noisy things that they were.

 

I agree that of all the cable "claims", the claims for speaker cables actually have "some" science behind them. Even so, not all speakers react to different cables, although some clearly do.

 

Beyond that, USB cables make a significant difference to me - even though they should not. I personally consider that to be a function of the quality of the equipment, and perhaps a little bit of the quality of the USB cable.

 

OK. I for one have never experienced USB cable sound (or Ethernet cable 'sound' for that matter) and remain skeptical, but some listeners obviously do. Beyond that, I'll make no further comment.

 

And it loosely equates a little bit, to cheap cell phones that screw up a pristine digital connection.

 

The analogy is loose as ashes, but is illustrative without forcing one tomdraw conclusions.

 

Ok. I'll stick with the proven adage that in audio at least, the best, cleanest, and most accurate route between two points is a piece of wire.

[michaelD]

Recently swapped my Audioquest Vodka 10M and .75M to the new Nordost Heimdall 2. Using a network connection between a NAS to Router and Router to Aurender. All I can say is Tidal sounds much better now. I particularly hear it in the bass more but in general the sound is more complete. I have tried A/B with local content and although streaming is not as good it just got much closer with this upgrade. At the time Nordost did not have a network cable so took a shot with Audioquest. Fortunately my son is just getting started so he will get the AQ cables.

[mordante]

I have AudioQuest Rocket 88 speaker cables.

 

I'm happy with them.

 

Kots of audio items have no scientific basis (AudioQuest debugger or the USB Regen etc). Also some of the SotM products.

[Paul R]

OK. I for one have never experienced USB cable sound (or Ethernet cable 'sound' for that matter) and remain skeptical, but some listeners obviously do. Beyond that, I'll make no further comment.

 

I dearly wish I didn't hear any differences in USB cables either - it is slightly embarrassing to me and utterly impossible to explain with an rigor.

 

Ok. I'll stick with the proven adage that in audio at least, the best, cleanest, and most accurate route between two points is a piece of wire.

 

That's fair, though I think no wires at all between components would be better.

[gmgraves]

I dearly wish I didn't hear any differences in USB cables either - it is slightly embarrassing to me and utterly impossible to explain with an rigor.

 

One could always just decide to not care that USB cables sound slightly different from one another(if you are the type who finds that they do).

 

That's fair, though I think no wires at all between components would be better.

 

That might have some validity if it were true that RF electronics were 100% transparent. but no active circuits have ever been as transparent as a passive circuit.