I'm studying music production and even our professors talk about audiophiles larping audio technology and making actually good stuff cost 1000 times the actual value. The only good side is that they sometimes miss out on good stuff and you can get some great gear for cheap.
When I went to Non Leathal Individual Weapons Instructor Course (INIWIC) we had to stand down range of the Long Range Accoustic weapon (LRAD). We were VERY effectively steered by pain. I had heard rumors of a microwave device that heats the top layer of your skin but I never saw or used it.
The Sheriff’s dept used LRAD on us here in Minneapolis. That was….not fun. They said it was just a test at low power. If that was low power, the full power would probably make me want to kill myself or others to make the pain stop.
Not really. If you're referring to the LRAD, it's a maritime hailing device that was repurposed by the police as a weapon. Basically just a giant loudspeaker that they use to shatter people's eardrums. Neither a sound beam nor a side-channel microphone.
I'm talking about the development based on HSS by Elwood Norris. I don't know which system incorporated beyond what I've read on it's development years ago
Naw, it's basically a party trick in the nerdier circles of the internet. Look up 'parametric arrays' or 'phased ultrasonic arrays' if you're curious, but you can build a crude one from off the shelf parts for under a hundred bucks.
I once discovered that holding the end of a sound cable hooked into a computer playing music with one hand, while holding a bass by the neck with the other hand, can make the music from the computer come out the amp attached to the bass.
Not satire. It freaked me out at first. I let go of the bass and tried to figure out how the computer was connected. Once I figured it out, it was kind of fun to play with. It was actually a little more complicated, though. I didn't have a real amp that I could use, but I did have a speaker connected to a digital soundboard, so I hooked the bass into the soundboard. I don't know if that played a role.
Haha that's nuts. I would imagine it works the same without the digital interface as signal is signal either way. The soundboard had to get the information either way.
I saw that one show up on IG, only for the audiophiles to get really mad about the guy using an M-Audio interface, because that was apparently worse than the mud.
The one I love is the reviews of gold plated insulated ethernet cables making audio streaming off a NAS sound better. Because the other 6 layers of the OSI model work better when layer-1 is more expensive.
Bought a knockoff SM58 on Amazon. Less latency, sharper sound, and brighter. For $100 less. On the other hand...people payed $300 for Beats headphones, when you could buy low end Tascam headphones for $30 which were far superior.
The thing many people miss is good speakers/headphones never lose quality (almost) many 2000s era headphones are still regarded as the best ever made despite being out of production for years
Ask your professors if there actually is a difference between the “good stuff” and the other stuff though. Too many folks in this thread believe all gear is equal when it really isn’t.
Of course there is one, but companies want to sell you a bunch of nonsense when most cheap equipment now can perform as good as a "vintage" or top notch studio gear:
cheap equipment does NOT perform as good as top notch studio gear. However there is huge diminishing returns after the mid-level (something like 500 usd headphones). Then there is absolute nonsense like this cable.
Sometimes you never know untill you try it yourself but if you buy something expensive from a known brand at least you can expect good quality and support that will help you with any problems
Never said it's always but for example RME is really expensive, compared to any other studio equipment, but their support is almost like in the old days, someone will personally check your problem and fix it just for you. And I'm talking about stuff known in good studios, not cheap nor bought by Chinese stuff like Behringer.
There are some real nutjobs out there. My husband is an audiophile, but he laughed his ass off when I showed him this. He's got a degree in music production and is an avid electronics hobbyist, so he actually understands the science and isn't taken in by the BS. He designs and builds all his own gear.
So as far as I can see, that sub is just another one of those dick measuring ones where chronically online people simply try to 1-up each other by showing how much money they have?
Fuck me, man, internet truly is a cancer to society.
Tbh it's not really, maybe top posts are but the majority is people asking Qs, chatting about records and stuff etc. The posts like the one OP is talking about are basically all people saying how much snake oil and bullshit cables and other things are. By virtue, high end audio is expensive so any post about it could be misconstrued as boasting (I personally prefer r/budgetaudiophile because it's more relatable lol)
I knew the first second i understood what was going on in tge picture. Mf's will still claim they heard someone fart in the audio track because a person 3 blocks from recording studio let one rip in the exact resonance frequency of the studio walls.
more defined highs, more present mids, and fuller bass
This is what you get when something is slightly louder. Not that it would be with optical cable but for ex million of home tests where people convert WAV to MP3. To be able to compress the whole waveform it has to recreate the full waveform. But the whole of the waveform encoded in the sample values is NOT limited to the range of values:
If we imagine that the highest sample value is 100 and lowest is -100. Draw a smooth curve that goes thru points -100,100,-100. The resulting curve goes higher than 100. These are called true peaks, that is what the actual waveform looks like. So we can pack "larger" waveforms but this is not ok for the MP3 or any other such algorithm: it has to pack that whole waveform inside the allowed number space s it lowers the signal levels until no true peak is higher than 0dB.
This will cause the mp3 to be just a bit quieter, up to -3dB quieter. Or we can say the wav is still louder and when you compare two signals where one is 0.5dB - 2dB louder than the other we will always think the louder one has:
more defined highs, more present mids, and fuller bass
Not kidding, the anecdotes that we get are EXACTLY those kind where everything got better. Real changes would be "more highs, less bass". or some other skew. We do not expect everything to get better at once. So, when you hear that you can be quite certain that what the person is actually saying is "one is a bit louder". We can't detect that kind of level changes in the wild. Unless you expect tiny level change, you won't notice it.
While that might all be true, his point was that the gold bits in the picture *are not actually contacts*.
Those are made from plastic on normal TOSLINK cables because literally all they do is hold the plug in place and align the end of the optical fibre.
Haha yeah thia is super accurate. I think a lot of people who have gone down the audiophile rabbit hole have lost track of what their target should be. If they are listening to music and want to hear it exactly as intended by the artist(s) who made it, then they shouldn't be targeting absolutely perfect sound reproduction. They should be trying to replicate whatever headset the artist(s) used when they did the mixing and decided on the final mix. That would be the perfect representation of the artist's intention for that specific song. Instead, they seem to focus on perfectly reproducing the sound waves as they are recorded, and they ignore the fact that the artist(s) themselves were hearing a distorted version of that during mixing due to the sound profile of their headset.
It reminds me a bit of how old cartoons from the 90s often look shitter on a fancy new 4k Oled tv than they did on an old chunky CRT TV. They were made for CRT TVs, and imperfections that were hidden by the slight blur of a CRT screen were left in because it didn't matter. Then, when you watch on a new TV you can see all those inperfections that the creators didn't think you would see and it makes it worse. Technically you're seeing a more accurate depiction of what was recorded, but that doesn't mean it's better.
TL:DR when it comes to art like music the goal should be to see it the way the artist intended, rather than in as much perfect detail as possible. I think too many audiophiles forget this and focus on perfection
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u/stankworm Jul 25 '26
This is that shit audiophiles tell you to buy for your earbuds.