Korean Job Discussion Forums

[xpat]

George Ou has an interesting article on his blog titled

Warned woman against spending $260 on monster cable.

[OneWayTraffic]

Absolutely true. If the signal gets through perfectly, as it almost always does on a regular digital cable then spending more money won't help at all. In an analogue system it might. So you should spend more money on speaker cables for example.

Think about your regular USB cable. When was the last time you had corrupted data on a file transfer? Or in any of the cheap cables in your PC. Not to mention that digital data can be encoded to automatically correct errors in transmission anyway. This explains how satelite pictures usually come in perfectly until the weather gets really really bad.

And anyone who buys what the salesman tells her to is just begging for it.

[Beeyee]

Analogue yes.
Digital no.

[red_devil]

The difference is the quality of the materials shielding the signal from interference...other than that, there's really little difference he's right.

[SeoulFinn]

Little bit off topic as it has nothing to do with hdmi, but still quite funny!


"I'm so sorry, but I do not buy into 90% of the hype brought to us audiophiles by the commercial sector of our hobby and the home entertainment industry at large. My brother, an audio engineering whiz kid has proven to me what is real and what is not. Let me rehearse with you an example of how he does this.

We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my "old" Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables [ed. Monster Ultra Series THX 1000 Audio Interconnects] (decent cables according to the audio press). We also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 Db at 1000K Hz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of us had heard this group or CD before, therefore eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnected them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occurred, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use. Needless to say, after the blind folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned he was right...most of what manufactures have to say about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they charge, the more hyped it is." (LINK)

[eamo]