Blind Listening Test Finds Audiophiles Unable To Distinguish Copper Cable From a Banana or Wet Mud (tomshardware.com) 101
An anonymous reader shares a report: A moderator on diyAudio set up an experiment to determine whether listeners could differentiate between audio run through pro audio copper wire, a banana, and wet mud. Spoiler alert: the results indicated that users were unable to accurately distinguish between these different 'interfaces.'
Pano, the moderator who built the experiment, invited other members on the forum to listen to various sound clips with four different versions: one taken from the original CD file, with the three others recorded through 180cm of pro audio copper wire, via 20cm of wet mud, through 120cm of old microphone cable soldered to US pennies, and via a 13cm banana, and 120cm of the same setup as earlier.
Initial test results showed that it's extremely difficult for listeners to correctly pick out which audio track used which wiring setup. "The amazing thing is how much alike these files sound. The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn't," Pano said. "All of the re-recordings should be obvious, but they aren't."
Pano, the moderator who built the experiment, invited other members on the forum to listen to various sound clips with four different versions: one taken from the original CD file, with the three others recorded through 180cm of pro audio copper wire, via 20cm of wet mud, through 120cm of old microphone cable soldered to US pennies, and via a 13cm banana, and 120cm of the same setup as earlier.
Initial test results showed that it's extremely difficult for listeners to correctly pick out which audio track used which wiring setup. "The amazing thing is how much alike these files sound. The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn't," Pano said. "All of the re-recordings should be obvious, but they aren't."
The solution... (Score:5, Funny)
The solution of course is to just raise the prices of mud, pennies and bananas so the rubes that bought magic copper wires don't feel so stupid.
Just picking nits.... but is there any other type of mud than 'wet'? Otherwise it's just dirt, no?
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Re:The solution... (Score:5, Funny)
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oh man, I didn't consider why bananas were chosen for this test until your comment. Brilliant.
But the radiation from the banana ? (Score:1)
Re: The solution... (Score:1)
Rigged test? No gold plated cables? (Score:1)
Re:The solution... (Score:5, Funny)
Specially bred, genetically modified bananas create for the purpose. With directional arrows.
The only people more gullible than audiophiles are wine snobs.
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Specially bred, genetically modified bananas create for the purpose. With directional arrows.
The only people more gullible than audiophiles are wine snobs.
Oh, I didn't notice you over there,
Signed,
Coffee Snob.
And I say that as a coffee aficionado myself.
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At least there are differences between different blends of toxic bean waste.
One study, using an fMRI scan to detect activity in the part of the brain that experiences pleasure from taste, involved giving test subjects a test of two wines, one they were told cost $10/bottle, the other, $90/bottle. The fMRI scan showed they physically enjoyed the more expensive wine more than the cheap one. The trick, of course, was the both glasses were poured from the same bottle.
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I feel like dirt is finer, separated particles, and dried mud is a bit more solid. The latter opens up the soundstage and gives you smoother treble, at the cost of slightly recessed Otamatone vocals.
Re: The solution... (Score:2)
I agree. I live in desert climate, I can easily differentiate "dry mud" from "dirt". Dirt moves more freely, in the wind and underfoot.
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Chuckling at Otamotone vocals. I've got two and occasionally take a crack at them.
Have attempted the pearl fisher's duet with limited success. Not alone obviously.
Have you seen the chap who does pop classics on the Otamotone and remakes the music videos to star Otamotones?
Re: The solution... (Score:3)
Re:The solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a feeling that this "test" was intentionally cherry picked to show what they wanted to show.
Most "audiophile" people have perfect equipment setups, or at least close-enough ones. When you design a test like this you're really only testing the ability of the medium to conduct electricity. You're not actually measuring anything if it conducts electricity at all. Four of the Nine correctly guessed which one was actually the wire, and none of them guessed correctly any of the other materials.
Which begs the question, what was the resistance of each material? Because the only thing that should have happened if it was on the analog end of the circuit, was the audio volume being reduced. There shouldn't have been any noise introduced because in order for noise to be introduced there has to be a RF source being directed at the wire. Wire is a conductor, hence it acts as a radio antenna. But a Banana is not. Same with wet mud.
The "audiophile" monster cables, everyone knew was a BS product claim. Any "audio" analog cable was as good as the next one as long as the resistance was was under a certain amount. Raw speaker wire and a RCA stereo cable is exactly the same wire, just with a connector on the end. This "test" is basically the other way around, where the electrical signal was just forced through another medium.
At any rate, I don't feel this test proved anything except that the signal loss wasn't high enough to notice.
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The "audiophile" monster cables, everyone knew was a BS product claim. Any "audio" analog cable was as good as the next one as long as the resistance was was under a certain amount.
Not *everyone* knew it was a BS claim. You would do well to remember that the power of self-delusion is virtually limitless. There is a certain group that claims that the insulation makes a critical difference.
Another claim that they will defensively resort to is that their ears are better and they can hear a difference.
Just like COVID deniers and Trump voters, they are completely irrational and there is no point arguing with them.
It gets better. Much better... (Score:2)
I present to you auduophile dots...
https://www.synergisticresearc... [synergisticresearch.com]
Or perhaps an audiophile network switch. It gives "enhanced clarity, expanded soundstage, quieter backgrounds, and more organic, natural digital audio"...all on an ethernet medium!
https://www.moon-audio.com/blo... [moon-audio.com]
And power cords worth thousands of dollars...
etc.
It is mind-boggling.
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New Pro Audio Setup ~ (Score:2)
We're now charging PREMIUM for our new ProAudiophile(tm) MUD interface. Guaranteed or your money back!
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Re: New Pro Audio Setup ~ (Score:3)
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We're now charging PREMIUM for our new ProAudiophile(tm) MUD interface. Guaranteed or your money back!
I'm in, but only if you have a tube version.
It would have been funnier if... (Score:3)
...they used a wet turd
Re:It would have been funnier if... (Score:4, Funny)
Some brands of (very expensive) audio cables can reasonably described as wet turds.
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I wonder if they thought about it, but then realized they'd have to handle wet turds to do so. Yuck.
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Wet at a minimum. Dry turd leads to an airy midrange and a less coherent and well structured spectrum overall.
Cables were never about quality (Score:3)
It's about shooting farther in the pissing contest when two audiophiles talk about their system, and then it turns into a price contest because if you can't actually get better quality, at least you can say you paid for it.
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Yeah, I want everyone (especially chicks) to know that I used a gold-plated banana, not just a prole's regular $10 banana.
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Any conductor is fine... (Score:5, Interesting)
So long as the conductor conducts and only adds minimal inductance / capacitance - anything is fine. You will just be power limited with poor conductors. That being said, conductors with higher resistance can pick up more external noise. This is because the low impedance signal is no longer low impedance. But in a clean environment this will not be an issue.
The article explains it poorly, but from the image it appears that the signal being referred to is the signal between audio source and amplifier. So a low impedance source connected to a high impedance sink. Resistance will not play much of a role as there is no power being transferred. It would be interesting if the same results were observed when using an older amplifier where the inputs do actually draw some power.
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As soon as you send significant power through a banana, you'll start to split the water with electrolysis and generate gasses.
At that point, you're wasting all of the money you shelled out for those specially grown low-oxygen bananas.
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At that point, you're wasting all of the money you shelled out for those specially grown low-oxygen bananas.
That's "Linear Sugar Oxygen Free Bananas", I'll have you know!
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It would be interesting if the same results were observed when using an older amplifier where the inputs do actually draw some power.
I'm not thinking as much of power as I am of voltage thresholds. I wouldn't be surprised if the interface between metal and fruit caused a little bit of rectification as the metal started to corrode - perhaps modeled as a rectifier in parallel with a resistor.
If that happened, there might be some distortion visible on a spec an, though maybe not enough to be audible.
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High end cables are a waste of money. (Score:5, Informative)
Before my time in computers I was in auiio recording engineer and similar work. So many times rookie engineers and musicians come in wanting to use our vintage microphone on cranked guitar amp and drums and we'd say no. They'd whine so we would say okay we'll do a blindfold test you can tell the different you can use the vintage mic's. They never won. Same with musicians on overpriced speaker and guitar cords, they could never tell the difference. We did tests on cables the super high priced and the good cables the difference was not audible by ear and barely different with scopes. Thsoe high end cables are a waste of money.
Re:High end cables are a waste of money. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, there are exceptions. I can definitely hear the difference between various power amps I've acquired over the years, something that generally is overlooked as too esoteric too discern... and my piano tuner can hear all kinds of differences between different types of sampling formats... He was asked to do controlled listening experiments by the National Research Council in Canada... he was very accurate to identify the formats by the artifacts and quirks... I played him some clips and he pointed out the quirks... I couldn't hear them.
Good enough is good enough.
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One other aspect of this is modern production regarding mixing and mastering. Music is pushed so far to the edge that drums are basically cut off at the high end and the whole thing sounds mushy.
My wife, who knows nothing about any of this beyond enjoying music, asked me one evening while we were listening to "Fat Bottomed Girls" why the drums sound so good compared to other music that we listen to. It's noticeable.
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it's got that big bottom we all love
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Amps are vastly more different than cables, though.
I'm curious what types of sampling formats you played for your tuner that he could differentiate. I can tell the difference between an MP3 and lossless. It's really not that hard when you know how the algorithms work. For example, MP3 overemphasizes bass, and thins highs. If you give me just one track, I can't tell you if it's an MP3 or lossless. But if you give me both, it's not hard for me to tell which is which. As one gets older, it's more difficult to
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I have JBL 4408 monitors and a Yamaha amp in my family living room. Pretty much anyone can tell it sounds better than the typical compact speakers that tend to be used in home entertainment systems these days.
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Bose recommends standard lamp cord.
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Bose recommends standard lamp cord.
You do realize that Bose is considered absolute shit?
Except by the people that own Bose equipment, of course.
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In many circles, so are companies that sell thousand dollar speaker cables with directional arrows, and wood tuner knobs, and all the other things audiophiles literally can't tell the difference they make if they don't know it's there.
You have a point? No? Didn't think so.
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Probably true, but peer reviewed audio research does show that they sound consistently different. See https://sites.google.com/view/... [google.com]
As explained in the research, quickly switching between sources doesn't allow people to properly hear the subtle differences in these high end systems. When extending blind listening sessions to at least 15 minutes, untrained participants could start hearing differences between cables with strong statistical confidence.
Wh
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Friend of mine, a quite serious, intelligent guy, non-technical used to be a convinced audiophile. In a discussion I asked him how his "audiophile" equipment could make recorded music sound more "realisitic" when there was no "audiophile" equipment used to record it because no studio in the world follows audiophile "standards" through the whole production chain, assuming that this sort of tech even axisted at the time of recording (which it didn't, most of the time). So, to make a difference his audiophile
And now I know. (Score:2)
So, next time I need an extra guitar patch cable, if I have a spare banana laying around, I don't need to run to Guitar Center.
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Or, just pee in some dirt.
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Or, just pee in some dirt.
There actually used to be an old electrician's practice to pee in the dirt before or after driving an earth ground rod. The idea was it increased the conductivity.
So maybe you're onto something . . . ;-)
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So, next time I need an extra guitar patch cable, if I have a spare banana laying around, I don't need to run to Guitar Center.
Only if the banana displays the well-known "extra-long dual-stem quarter inch male mono" mutation. Otherwise, it might as well be an apple.
yes, but... (Score:2)
but what if the wet mud has flakes of gold in it? (Score:3)
Nobody will be able to deny the quality difference then. Especially if they see how much more expensive the flaked gold version is.
Odd methodology, tiny sample size (Score:2, Informative)
Typically in sound quality tests, you tell subjects which file is the original, then have them rate how close to the original the other samples are. In this he just gave them four samples, and had them guess which was which, turning it into a more subjective test of guessing what they think the track should like. In addition, based on the table he got a total of 1-4 responses per track, which is far too low to have any statistical significance.
This was a funny joke, but not the gotcha the article played it
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It isn't necessary to have a wide scale double blind study to show that a paranormal claim is bunk. Either they can tell the difference between how it sounds even when electronic test equipment can't, or they're full of it.
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You are putting WAY to much thought into this. Yes, it was not a fancy double blind study, but there are 4 separate files and 4 things they could be assigned to. Anyone with 2 brain cells would listen and assign what they though was the best quality to the original. Then to the one run through the audio cable. Then the banana followed by mud. They fact that at minimum the mud and banana didn't stand out says what you need to know about the quality.
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There doesn't need to be a gotchya in this case. The gotchya is in the meta analysis. The examinations of all tests which show that audiophiles can't tell a difference, providing they are testing sight unseen they fall back to statistical guessing, no matter how tests get setup, what sample sizes there are, and I think I'm forgetting something but it probably wasn't important.
Add to that that poor tests usually confirm something with preset biases (i.e. in this case make it more likely that there was a winn
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The only important thing about cabling is RF shielding, and even that's not really important if your setup is more or less standalone. If you have a bunch of different unshielded/poorly shielded RF sources right by your sound setup that's a different matter.
It's easy, fooling audiophiles (Score:2)
It's easy, fooling audiophiles. I am one, but the guerilla kind that builds his own stuff from time to time, not one of the "believers" in shaatki stones, magic bricks and such.
I do have a friend who is such a believer. He's also quite deaf in the upper ranges, he's 20 years older than me and has a lifetime of abusing his hearing.
If you'd take 14ga lamp zipcord, put a fancy jacket on it, fancy connectors, ship it in a velvet-lined wooden box, price it at $2000 / meter, and you'll sell tons.
I should do tha
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One of the early internet scams (I mean ads) I saw was for audifile dynamic/brilliant pebbles that would [wave hands in mystic circles] improve sound. Somehow.
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I had a friend like this and sadly he won. I mocked him for his $1000 Audeze LCD-2 headphones and after enough of it he said bring your best headphones over and lets see.
I had spent $100+ on some studio monitor headphones from guitar center years prior and figured they were the bomb. I took them over and was expecting to be all smug and holy cow were his headphones like way waaaaaay better.
My jaw hit the floor. I went back and forth on the same song between mine and his, each time it was like going under wa
Lack of information.... (Score:2)
It's been fairly well established over the years that anything electromechanical (phono cartridge, speaker, headphone) is by far the biggest variable in a high end setup.
Moderate and high-end preamps and amplifiers are all pretty similar at similar power levels. You're trying for a flat amplitude and low phase shift over a 3 decade low-frequency range - that's not rocket science. Moderate cost pre-amps/amps will tend to have a higher noise floor (more background hiss), but otherwise they'll be remarkably
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Nice, but not what was being discussed. The discussion is wires. Cables.
Will planar cans beat dynamic? I'm sure they do.
Do horn speakers beat cones? Yes, yes they do (two sets of Klipsch at this house.)
Will a Sumiko hand-made cart beat a mass-produced Audio-Technica? Probably. But by what margin?
Does $10,000 dollar speaker cables beat 14ga. zipcord? Doubt it.
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There is a *lot* of room for a shitty air interface. Wires? Amps (not including DSP in this)? Even pretty low quality are easily demonstrably not discernible in a Pepsi Challenge.
Speakers, though- a shitty set of speakers will make your fucking ears bleed.
Monster Cable (Score:2)
Monster sure had a great run convincing everyone otherwise. It became something of a joke in the early 2000s. They definitely took from P.T. Barnum's playbook. A sucker born every minute.
Agree with another commenter, overall system noise becomes more critical at the amplification stage. Most cheap stereos in the 90s had a modicum of white noise in the silence when you turned it way up. But one day a roomate got an -amazing- setup and it was so clean, and had so much dynamic range, it blew my mind.
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You don't buy cables in big box electronics stores they have ~1000% markup. You need to buy online or in the early 2000s in small electronics store, or hobby electronics stores. If he was paying close to the cheapest option in Best Buy he was still paying 10x more than he should.
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Re: Monster Cable (Score:2)
Monster Cable would have been a good deal and reasonably proposition if the damn connectors didn't break or fall off them. The quality was so low that it was barely worth a tenth of what they charged. It really would have benefited from spendibg less on marketing and sales kickbacks, and more on a good product with word of mouth.
Been done (Score:2)
This sort of thing has been going on for years.
I recall one where they replaced the multi-conductor mega-cables with coat hangers while the audio experts weren't looking. The experts then went on and on explaining how much better it all sounded.
Only in hi-fi do they question whether or not science really works.
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Only in hi-fi do they question whether or not science really works.
Really? Have you checked out the US administration lately? Or even your local fundamentalist church?
Re:Been done (Score:5, Funny)
Only in hi-fi do they question whether or not science really works.
The Trump administration has entered the chat...
Obviously... (Score:2)
Unless something is very, very wrong, your cable is not a filter, so it's not going to have any impract on sound. The same can be said for guitarists. They go on and on about shit that makes absolutely no difference to the tone of an electric guitar.
There have also been more than one guitarist with their own legendary distinct sound preferring to play the cheaper version of their signature guitars versus the higher end versions, typically because the cheaper ones are lighter and sound the same.
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But it's one louder!
Re: Obviously... (Score:2)
The medium impedance of a guitar's passive pickups matter when you plug a 50 ft instrument cable to run a rock star's stadium rig.
Solution, shorter cable into a pedal board before the amp, with one of the pedals in the chain a decent quality buffer, or just a DI pedal to front of house like a normal gig. Or active pickups, I like EMG but Fishman is more versatile. But I will never play to a crowd of 20,000 where I might need a massively long instrument cable so this is entirely a hypothetical problem for me
Duh (Score:2)
Physics is a lot more powerful than the irrational hallucinations of "audiophiles".
How many audiophiles do you reckon (Score:4)
Tara Quantum (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing I've noticed about cables is that RCA ended cables tend to fail eventually. The cheap ones are glued on and, after time, the glue dries out and they'll loose connection. I'll shell out a couple extra dollars for a balanced Neutrik ended cable. Not because they sound better, but because the ends are soldered and clamped onto the wire. I've never had one fail, while I've had a half dozen RCA cables fail.
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One time I did notice a cable made a difference to sound, but it made it sound worse. Like there was a capacitor in it or something, presumably some failing insulator causing capacitative coupling. As long as you get a good connection to the banana, you should be fine.
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I'll shell out a couple extra dollars for a balanced Neutrik ended cable. Not because they sound better, but because the ends are soldered and clamped onto the wire.
If you're systems supports balanced interconnects there's a technical reason to use them over RCA, far more so than sound quality or connector quality. Balanced connections definitely have benefits, not the least of which is proper electrical management of return currents.
Let those cables rest. (Score:2)
I once saw a guy say his system sounded better after the new cables he bought “rested a few days.” I.e: stretched out on the floor, routed from his amp to his speakers. I’m no EE, but that sounds a bit daft.
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shielding (Score:1)
Don't Go Banannas (Score:2)
They're passing an electric current through those mediums, not sound waves. So of course they all sound the same once they're converted back to sound. I'll bet volume would be the only difference.
Needs measurements (Score:2)
lamp wire (Score:2)
My go to for speaker cable for the last 30 years is lamp wire. Obviously use wire that is rated well beyond what you need, but it's cheap and appropriate for a casual setup that might only have 200W of speakers. Nice heavy wire gives you less of a voltage drop. Relatively low frequency (audio) means I don't care too much about such a tiny parallel wire capacitance for such a large space and big diameter wire.
Disadvantage of lamp wire is if you need high current for a large multi element speaker, then it sto
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Heavy lamp wire is great. You should probably twist it, though, to reduce the chance of EMI pickup. Personally, I used shielded twisted pair, because I can get it easily.
But, as a recent project in my lab demonstrated, even a short length of what seems to be heavy enough wire can have non-trivial effects when you're talking about amps of current and single-digit ohm impedances. Consider this: if a speaker has a nominal impedance of 8 ohms, and the wire going from the amp to the speaker (including all the
And old 741 op amps are great. (Score:2)
I recall reading of a test where they ran the signal through a chain of 10 or so 741 op amp chips. The cheapest, crappiest OP amps one can buy in modern times. No body could tell.
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The old bipolar op amps aren't bad for audio when used with balanced 12V supplies (so nicely in about the middle of the common mode input range), and - this being very important - having a resistive load on the output to +ve rail so that the output stage operates in Class A single-ended mode, with the top output transistor always off.
Noise is poor though.
Re: And old 741 op amps are great. (Score:2)
There are some alternative that perform a bit better where noise floor and slew rate matter and are twice the price of the 40 cent part. Might matter for a microphone or instrument input. For some amplifier stage inside a larger device it would be really hard to tell that there is a lowly 741 in there.
How was listening test conducted? (Score:2)
If it was done over the internet, then the various codecs, compression and decompression, etc. that all digitized sound, and especially network streaming are subject to, could easily mask the audible differences.
The article doesn't specify, but it would be interesting to know.
Re: How was listening test conducted? (Score:2)
It was done over the Internet. Listeners were given lossless PCM files (FLAC or WAV). They had to compare each set on their own equipment. So not only does this test for individual ability to detect a difference, it also tests multiple listening setups where the DAC and headphones could possibly have aided in distinguishing a difference.
Maybe the original ADC and sampling rate are insufficient and that's potentially another variable to test and worth trying if we're being scientific.
Digital or Analog? (Score:1)
Unless I'm missing something the report does not say which audio path went through the mud and banana.
Was it the analog signal from the amp to the speakers?
Or the digital signal, for example audio shops like to upsell expensive HDMI cables?
But not in 2026 (Score:2)
Good luck finding a banana with a headphone jack in 2026 tho.
Not a valid test (Score:2)
Oh my god... um physics? (Score:2)
As a someone who has mixed sound in auditoriums (Score:2)
I consider myself an audiophile. I hear every single instrument in a band, every individual drum in a kit. I listen to the tone, know how to adjust EQ, and eliminate unwanted hiss and other distortions. I've known for a long time that expensive cables were worthless. In big systems, we use them because they do matter, because we run cable for hundreds of feet. At those lengths, you will know if your cables are bad. In your living room, you will not. So I use ordinary, cheap speaker wire that you get in big