What annoys me today in marketing and media that too often today then talking on hi-fi, science is replaced by bizarre belief structures and marketing fluff, leading to a decades-long stagnation of the audiophile domain. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Hi-fi world is filled by pseudoscience, dogma and fruitloopery to the extent that it resembles a fundamentalist religion. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
Business for Engineers: Marketers Lie article points tout that marketing tells lies — falsehoods — things that serve to convey a false impression. Marketing’s purpose is to determining how the product will be branded, positioned, and sold. It seems that there too many snake oil rubbish products marketed in the name of hifi. It is irritating to watch the stupid people in the world be fooled.
In EEVblog #29 – Audiophile Audiophoolery video David L. Jones (from EEVBlog) cuts loose on the Golden Ear Audiophiles and all their Audiophoolery snake oil rubbish. The information presented in Dave’s unique non-scripted overly enthusiastic style! He’s an enthusiastic chap, but couldn’t agree more with many of the opinions he expressed: Directional cables, thousand dollar IEC power cables, and all that rubbish. Monster Cable gets mostered. Note what he says right at the end: “If you pay ridiculous money for these cable you will hear a difference, but don’t expect your friends to”. If you want to believe, you will.
My points on hifi-nonsense:
One of the tenets of audiophile systems is that they are assembled from components, allegedly so that the user can “choose” the best combination. This is pretty largely a myth. The main advantage of component systems is that the dealer can sell ridiculously expensive cables, hand-knitted by Peruvian virgins and soaked in snake oil, to connect it all up. Say goodbye to the noughties: Yesterday’s hi-fi biz is BUSTED, bro article asks are the days of floorstanders and separates numbered? If traditional two-channel audio does have a future, then it could be as the preserve of high resolution audio. Sony has taken the industry lead in High-Res Audio.
HIFI Cable Humbug and Snake oil etc. blog posting rightly points out that there is too much emphasis placed on spending huge sums of money on HIFI cables. Most of what is written about this subject is complete tripe. HIFI magazines promote myths about the benefits of all sorts of equipment. I am as amazed as the writer that that so called audiophiles and HIFI journalists can be fooled into thinking that very expensive speaker cables etc. improve performance. I generally agree – most of this expensive interconnect cable stuff is just plain overpriced.
I can agree that in analogue interconnect cables there are few cases where better cables can really result in cleaner sound, but usually getting any noticeable difference needs that the one you compare with was very bad yo start with (clearly too thin speaker wires with resistance, interconnect that picks interference etc..) or the equipment in the systems are so that they are overly-sensitive to cable characteristics (generally bad equipment designs can make for example cable capacitance affect 100 times or more than it should). Definitely too much snake oil. Good solid engineering is all that is required (like keep LCR low, Teflon or other good insulation, shielding if required, proper gauge for application and the distance traveled). Geometry is a factor but not in the same sense these yahoos preach and deceive.
In digital interconnect cables story is different than on those analogue interconnect cables. Generally in digital interconnect cables the communication either works, does not work or sometimes work unreliably. The digital cable either gets the bits to the other end or not, it does not magically alter the sound that goes through the cable. You need to have active electronics like digital signal processor to change the tone of the audio signal traveling on the digital cable, cable will just not do that.
But this digital interconnect cables characteristics has not stopped hifi marketers to make very expensive cable products that are marketed with unbelievable claims. Ethernet has come to audio world, so there are hifi Ethernet cables. How about 500 dollar Ethernet cable? That’s ridiculous. And it’s only 1.5 meters. Then how about $10,000 audiophile ethernet cable? Bias your dielectrics with the Dielectric-Bias ethernet cable from AudioQuest: “When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio.” I see this as complete marketing crap speak. It seems that they’re made for gullible idiots. No professional would EVER waste money on those cables. Audioquest even produces iPhone sync cables in similar price ranges.
HIFI Cable insulators/supports (expensive blocks that keep cables few centimeters off the floor) are a product category I don’t get. They typically claim to offer incredible performance as well as appealing appearance. Conventional cable isolation theory holds that optimal cable performance can be achieved by elevating cables from the floor in an attempt to control vibrations and manage static fields. Typical cable elevators are made from electrically insulating materials such as wood, glass, plastic or ceramics. Most of these products claim superior performance based upon the materials or methods of elevation. I don’t get those claims.
Along with green magic markers on CDs and audio bricks is another item called the wire conditioner. The claim is that unused wires do not sound the same as wires that have been used for a period of time. I don’t get this product category. And I don’t believe claims in the line like “Natural Quartz crystals along with proprietary materials cause a molecular restructuring of the media, which reduces stress, and significantly improves its mechanical, acoustic, electric, and optical characteristics.” All sounds like just pure marketing with no real benefits.
CD no evil, hear no evil. But the key thing about the CD was that it represented an obvious leap from earlier recording media that simply weren’t good enough for delivery of post-produced material to the consumer to one that was. Once you have made that leap, there is no requirement to go further. The 16 bits of CD were effectively extended to 18 bits by the development of noise shaping, which allows over 100dB signal to noise ratio. That falls a bit short of the 140dB maximum range of human hearing, but that has never been a real goal. If you improve the digital media, the sound quality limiting problem became the transducers; the headphones and the speakers.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article says that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. I can agree with this. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article makes good points on design, DSPs and the debunking of traditional hi-fi. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Legacy loudspeakers are omni-directional at low frequencies, but as frequency rises, the radiation becomes more directional until at the highest frequencies the sound only emerges directly forwards. Thus to enjoy the full frequency range, the listener has to sit in the so-called sweet spot. As a result legacy loudspeakers with sweet spots need extensive room treatment to soak up the deficient off-axis sound. New tools that can change speaker system designs in the future are omni-directional speakers and DSP-based room correction. It’s a scenario ripe for “disruption”.
Computers have become an integrated part of many audio setups. Back in the day integrated audio solutions in PCs had trouble earning respect. Ode To Sound Blaster: Are Discrete Audio Cards Still Worth the Investment? posting tells that it’s been 25 years since the first Sound Blaster card was introduced (a pretty remarkable feat considering the diminished reliance on discrete audio in PCs) and many enthusiasts still consider a sound card an essential piece to the PC building puzzle. It seems that in general onboard sound is finally “Good Enough”, and has been “Good Enough” for a long time now. For most users it is hard to justify the high price of special sound card on PC anymore. There are still some PCs with bad sound hardware on motherboard and buttload of cheap USB adapters with very poor performance. However, what if you want the best sound possible, the lowest noise possible, and don’t really game or use the various audio enhancements? You just want a plain-vanilla sound card, but with the highest quality audio (products typically made for music makers). You can find some really good USB solutions that will blow on-board audio out of the water for about $100 or so.
Although solid-state technology overwhelmingly dominates today’s world of electronics, vacuum tubes are holding out in two small but vibrant areas. Some people like the sound of tubes. The Cool Sound of Tubes article says that a commercially viable number of people find that they prefer the sound produced by tubed equipment in three areas: musical-instrument (MI) amplifiers (mainly guitar amps), some processing devices used in recording studios, and a small but growing percentage of high-fidelity equipment at the high end of the audiophile market. Keep those filaments lit, Design your own Vacuum Tube Audio Equipment article claims that vacuum tubes do sound better than transistors (before you hate in the comments check out this scholarly article on the topic). The difficulty is cost; tube gear is very expensive because it uses lots of copper, iron, often point-to-point wired by hand, and requires a heavy metal chassis to support all of these parts. With this high cost and relative simplicity of circuitry (compared to modern electronics) comes good justification for building your own gear. Maybe this is one of the last frontiers of do-it-yourself that is actually worth doing.
3,318 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
dumbest era to be alive: Data center opposing people spit put cartoons and fake photos using exactly those AI services they say they are fighting agains.
This is turning from parody to an accurate prediction:
https://babylonbee.com/news/new-data-center-built-to-handle-influx-of-online-rants-against-data-centers
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CT9FtDSMc/
7 Chinese Hi-Fi Amplifiers Quietly Destroying $3,000 Audiophile Brands
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GPM3VF8hG/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Leading industry bullshit
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1FauDHtkY3/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1KdVjBfGHm/
Premium speaker cables
You probably don’t need monster snake cables.
Unless you just like spending money.
They aren’t helping the Rolling Stones sound better.
#grandrapids #speakerwires #vintageaudio #analogaudio
Video
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1K1urVn8Gf/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A solution to a problem that never existed.
Re-inventing the wheel seems to be a popular product-development trend amongst manufacturers these days.
This product claims to ‘improve the sound’ by addressing ‘micro movements between the power plug and the electrical outlet’.
Please.
Funny how the company owner seemed to go all coy when I asked him for any comparative, peer-reviewed measurements in order to validate the ‘improvement’ claims for ‘perceived clarity, focus, soundstage dimensionality and overall musical coherence’.
For a start, you cannot ‘improve’ a resultant audio signal. You can change it perhaps but ‘improvement’ is a rather far-fetched, incomparable, wholly subjective and unattainable characteristic of any cable.
With an asking price of $1200 for something where you are obliged to take somebody’s word that it functions (pointlessly and unverifiably) as claimed, this entire concept is quite ludicrous.
File under ‘More hifi fraud’.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18YhbBSZd2/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/10/halloween-costume-memes-music-lover-audiophile/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.ricable.com/en/la-direzionalita-nei-cavi-hi-fi-ricable/?srsltid=AU7gw4WaQNg-X6UaTdXEuzRQtj0DmF0Zwc8SZze6SySU8je0j1PObUSu
Tomi Engdahl says:
Audiophile Power Cords Only Sound Different for One Reason That Has Nothing to Do With the Cable, Says Hi-Fi Designer
https://www.headphonesty.com/2026/10/power-cords-sound-different-chord-dac-designer/?utm_source=fb&utm_campaign=thumbnail&fbclid=Iwb21leAVG_1ZjbGNrBUb_U2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHBkb2YFc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEego0HaDeRUmepo5SLKLz1nwCJUnVDCWpMGF01kL7TquGaukqB8o4LjxNAchc_aem_lYtRNtu0wczrEn5sEPkG2A
Tomi Engdahl says:
Do you believe expensive audiophile power cords actually improve sound quality?
Of course no.
Science is a question of evidence.
Believing is a question of faith, or superstions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Audiophile Power Cords Only Sound Different for One Reason That Has Nothing to Do With the Cable, Says Hi-Fi Designer
https://www.headphonesty.com/2026/10/power-cords-sound-different-chord-dac-designer/?utm_source=fb&utm_campaign=thumbnail
The difference was convincing enough to challenge his own assumptions, but the explanation pointed somewhere unexpected.
Rob Watts, Chord Electronics’ Digital Design Consultant and creator of its Watts Transient Aligned (WTA) and Pulse Array technologies, once dismissed the idea that power cords could change a stereo’s sound.
Yet in the 1980s, he plugged a solid-core mains cable (the British term for a power cord) into his rig and heard it differ from a stranded one anyway.
That unexpected result led Watts to investigate what else might be affecting his stereo’s sound. He eventually built a filter to reduce radio-frequency (RF) interference from the mains supply, and when he compared the cables again, he could no longer hear a difference.
The cable comparison wasn’t the only thing Watts couldn’t explain. His stereo also sounded worse whenever the kitchen fluorescent light was switched on, while it often sounded sweetest and smoothest around two o’clock in the morning.
Suspecting RF interference, Watts built a mains filter starting with one inductor and capacitor, then added stages until there were twelve.
As he added more stages, he heard the system become warmer and more natural. The filter had already affected the sound before he tried the two cords again.
But when he compared the solid-core and stranded cables again, the result was different.
“There was no audible difference. None,” he said.
Watts says that once he had filtered his preamps, power amps, turntable, and everything else, the kitchen light switch and the time of day stopped changing the sound, too.
How Wall Noise Gets Past a Well-Regulated Preamp
Power-supply rejection often weakens at higher frequencies. Texas Instruments notes that analog components can have only 10 to 20 decibels of rejection around 30 megahertz. But those are general figures from modern electronics, not measurements of Watts’s 1980s equipment.
RF can enter an amplifier through its inputs, outputs, or power-supply pins. In some circuits, internal junctions rectify interference far above the amplifier’s normal audio bandwidth, producing a lower-frequency disturbance even though the circuit cannot reproduce the original RF signal as sound.
Under certain conditions, the resulting interference can follow changes in the RF signal. Watts believes this may help explain what he heard in his stereo, an effect he calls noise-floor modulation.
“The noise floor itself effectively moves with the music.”
A cord’s ability to pass or reject RF interference depends partly on the electrical characteristics of the wall socket and the equipment’s power supply.
That dependence on the connected equipment helps explain why the same cable may behave differently from one system to another, as physicist Jim Lesurf’s transmission-line analysis shows. Choosing a cord specifically to reduce RF interference is therefore unpredictable.
Before You Buy Another Cord
Fluorescent lights, some dimmers, and switching power supplies can put high-frequency interference onto household wiring. Watts’s kitchen-light clue gave him a reason to investigate that possibility in his own system.
For that reason, Lesurf recommends filtering the incoming interference directly:
“If you wish to filter the mains input, then my suggestion would be to buy a mains filter unit, not a new mains cable!”
If RF interference is the problem, buying a more expensive cord is a costly way to investigate it. A Nordost Valhalla cord cost $2,500 in a 2004 review, while a nine-piece set of snap-on ferrite clips was recently listed at $11.99.
Of course, those clips aren’t an equivalent substitute for the expensive cord or a purpose-built mains filter. The comparison simply shows the wide range of prices involved in trying to control RF interference.
Furman’s M-8×2 conditioner lists at $139.95 and specifies more than 26 decibels of RF/EMI filtration from 200 kilohertz to 10 megahertz.
But that specification only covers the stated frequency range. It doesn’t establish how the conditioner performs above 10 megahertz or whether it would improve the sound of a particular stereo.
Before buying anything, it is worth checking whether the audible problem changes when likely household noise sources are switched off. If it persists, the next step is to investigate where the noise is entering the system.
The power supply itself is another place to investigate. For compatible USB-powered equipment, Watts has suggested comparing the supplied adapter with a suitable battery bank before buying a replacement linear supply. His advice comes from a secondhand forum account rather than an independently available original post.
What the Evidence Says About Power Cords
Watts wasn’t the only listener to report that cable differences disappeared after improving RF rejection. In 2001, a reviewer initially heard aftermarket power cords improve his Herron monoblocks, but the difference vanished after the amplifiers were updated to reject RF interference better.
Both accounts involved listeners who initially heard cable differences. But a 2004 blind comparison produced a different result.
Grounding presents another possible explanation for noise in audio systems. Engineer Bill Whitlock identifies ground paths and leakage currents as common causes, which would require different remedies from RF filtering.
“It taught me that if I hear something which contradicts my existing model, I shouldn’t simply dismiss the listening result. I need to find the actual mechanism.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Groninger Miles of plain utility wire, a pole transformer, and whatever Romex the builder had on hand. It is hard to see how the last six feet undo all of that. A better question is whether a cord can filter noise that the gear’s own power supply missed. Has a conditioner or a dedicated circuit ever made a change you could hear?
Most cord differences can be measured. They’re just tiny. Voltage drop on a thin cord under a heavy amp load is real, for example. The harder question is where measurable stops and audible starts. Where would you put that line?
“Not everything that can be measured is important, and not everything that is important can be measured.” – Albert Einstein
Expensive power cords don’t improve sound quality in any way you could reliably hear.
Maria Rødahl unless they filter out the interference you’re hearing.
Eric Principato Fair point. Filtering is the one case where it can make a measurable difference, but then it’s the filter doing the work, not the cable.
Maria Rødahl …the cable…would be…the filter, because of its construction. I’m not specifically talking about inline networked cables.
If you are filtering HF noise (lets say 10 MHz and above) which transfers by capacitive coupling or by field, you need cable shielding with grounded shielding at ouput of filter. Without it any HF filtering is uselless, because it couples from unfiltered input before filter to unshielded output. So yes, while filtering HF noise, cable shielding comes as nessesity, unlike in LF filtering. So in this case the work is doing both filter and shielded cable. These are just EMC basics, not any voodoo.
James Baker You are confusing audible frequencies of useful signal with unwanted electromagnetic noise. Just because you can’t hear 10 MHz (i.e. anything above 20 kHz) doesn’t mean it can’t affect sensitive electronic circuitry and produce audible artifacts or distortion in audible range.
Michal Sedláček exactly. But many people dont understand this
Tomi Engdahl says:
If power cords matter so much, why not build LiIon batteries directly into the amplifier and eliminate the power cord completely.
Josef Frisch I can recall a good few years ago, a small number of amplifier brands used rechargeable batteries in some of their products: one firm was the UK based Crimson Elektrik who made the 510 and 610 preamps that had built in batteries. And I remember a Technics press release about a pre-amp they were going to make that also used batteries.
And then there were some moving coil pre pre-amps that used standard batteries, like a PP3, instead of an external PSU.
However, power amps need huge amounts of power (compared to pre-amps) so using batteries is not really viable.
Li Ion batteries are very energy dense. a few hundred $ for a KWH, so a $1K is plenty and very energy dense.
Its all silly, but for a fraction of the cost of a high end power cord you can eliminate the problem completely, along with all AC components. The vendors could even make custom battery pack at the full volage they need for the ampllifier.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If regular cords are good enough for the recording studio that produced the music, then they’re good enough for a home system. Besides, what are you going to do, rewire your entire house?
Simon Lilley Most studios do run stock IEC cords. Where they spend money is before the outlet, on dedicated circuits, isolation transformers, and sometimes balanced power. A dedicated line for the hi-fi is the home version, and it is less work than rewiring the whole house. Would that be a better spend than a pricey cord?
Many things of my audio chain i upgraded to a more audiophile approach, but i did not swap power cords for fancy ones, nor i instal power cleaners like such a boxes that filter noise out of the power network in homes.
Simply the audiophile power connectors are too huge to lead through cable holes at my furniture. The OEM power cords are thin enough to easy lead it into holes to reach without all to much hustle the power sockets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
All hifi expenditure improves sound. Dave’s law.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why do you guys say different instead of better or worse?
Joe Engeln because even if there IS some sort of change, better or worse is often subjective, different is not.
If a new cable could make the sound more forward in front of the speakers. Is that better or worse? That depends if you like it that way. So we say different.
Tomi Engdahl says:
As always with those debates, we need to understand the system.
The proposition “mains cables cannot make a measurable or audible difference” is preposterous from a strict electronic viewpoint.
The very existence of hum loops via main cable earth connections demonstrates this very audibly.
So the whole debate is entirely bogus.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s clear the majority of commenters didn’t actually read the article which is a darned shame.
tl;dr Different power cables only showed an observable difference until an RF filter was introduced. Things like fluorescent lights were introducing interference that the different cable types handled differently. So you know… actual scientific testing addressing the issue instead of relying on snake oil.