Technology

Additional trivia: The term "banana republic" originates from countries best known for exporting high-end audio equipment back in the day.

TIL! It’s fucking bananas that I never knew this.

Bravo

If I read it correctly, it was analog and they found that only the signal amplitude was meaningfully changed, not the quality

I've got these cables. Yes, they are expensive but they are absolutely fantasti... wait, did you say voodoo witch doctor? Mine were blessed by just a witch doctor. Have I been ripped off?

"You can't trust blind tests for audio, that's the wrong sense bro. You need double deaf studies, obvs."

But what's the point of having your newly-purchased $3000 wooden volume knob and polyatomic copper ring bus lift yet another veil from the soundstage if you're blindfolded?

I'm a musician. I swear by Beyerdynamic DT700. Fucking great headphones for like an insanely reasonable price

It's a rich playground for the price-equals-value fallacy, and there are plenty of well-heeled rubes that'll fall for the technobabble.

I buy headphone cables based on how nice the cable feels, if it transmits noise when it rubs against stuff, and how well the connectors fit into the devices I am using.

My favorite is when people get picky about cabling for digital transfer. The ones and zeroes either get there or they don't, nothing in-between. They work or they don't.

I think the best thing to do is to assess your ability to hear difference. I can absolutely hear the difference between my Bluetooth earbuds and a decent wired IEM, so I use wired headphones for listening to music. I CANNOT hear a significant qualitative difference between the $25 Chinese IEMs that I use and more expensive options that I have tried, so I use the cheap ones.

To be sure, there ARE perceptible differences between wired headphones, but those are more a matter of EQ and personal preference. I can achieve my maximum perceivable level of quality with pretty inexpensive hardware. It doesn't mean that other people cannot, that isn't my problem.

I've been in the audio enthusiast community for like 17 years now. When I was fresh, the internet commentators had me thinking there was some audio heaven in the high end compared to the mid range priced gear. Now I know better and the gear community is not so high end price evangelicals like it used to be. I feel like there was a before and after the $30 Monoprice DJ headphones and the wave of headphones since. Then especially IEMs. Once ChiFi really got rolling with IEMs and amplifiers and DACs, $1000+ snake oil salespeople got to deal in a way more competitive market

Same with speakers. Internet changed everything. No more at the whim of specialty audio stores stock and Best Buys. Now you got the whole worlds amount of speaker brands at a click of a finger plus craigslist/offerup. Also again ChiFi amplifiers and DACs. Also improvements in audio codecs whether for wireless or not. Bluetooth audio was awful until it stopped being awful as standards improved

These days I mostly see the placebo audio arguments in streaming service and FLAC/lossless encode fanboys. Headphone and speaker communities these days seem a lot more self aware and steeped in self-deprecating humor over the cost, diminishing returns, placebo, snake oil they live in today compared to 17 years ago. I want my digital audio cables endpoints plated with the highest quality diamonds to preserve the zeros and ones. No lab diamonds. Must be natural providing the warmth only blood diamonds that excel in removing negative ions. I treat my room with the finest pink himalayan salt sound absorbent wall panels to deal with the most problematic materials used by homebuilders. Authentic himalayan salt has been shown to be some of the highest quality material in filtering unwanted noise and echos while leaving clean pure audio bliss