And I thought photography was expensive!

[sashbar]

I'm with Sashbar. High-end audio puts photography to shame.

The shame rests with those who sell $10,000 audio connecting cables to zealots who think they hear minute "improvements" in the sound the $10,000 cables provide, as opposed to the sound they were getting from their $1,500 audio connecting cables.

The hi-fi audio market is really quite disgusting. Blind tests have shown that the average person (without trained ears) can't hear a damn thing between a coat hanger and and a $1000 cable. I guess that is one benefit of the pro side of it...a lot less of that. A good pro cable is good because it's more durable or has better shielding, not because it was blessed by the rabbi of sound quality before it left the building (for the most part, at least...).

Hell, even trained engineers who are paid to listen to minute differences in sound can barely hear a difference, if at all between many types of cables.

How many times I have heard it... please, with due respect, leave it for the guys who know what they are talking about. This is not a hi-fi forum.

 

[Smokeyr67]

Owning a boat.....

Seeing your avatar you know how this it.

Cycling (mountain bikes) are my other poison, It's not hard to spend $5k on a bike, a grand or so on kit (helmets, gloves etc) and then upgrade every year! At least with photography I don't upgrade as often

That's similar to racing dirt bikes:

$7,000 for the dirt bike (a lot of the guys have more than one)
$2-3,000 in gear (depending on the level of quality/protection you want)
$300 per weekend in entry/race fees, food, travel
$200-1,000 a month in maintenance/parts
$5,000 - $300,000 RV/Motorhome, depends on how loaded you are
The biggest cost though can be medical bills (or your life), especially when you don't have good health insurance. Personally my insurance company has paid into the 6 figures on me from over the years. Which is why my insurance premium is more than my mortgage payment. lol


Have a buddy that drives his 6 figure motorhome from Canada to the US, pretty much every weekend, so that his kids can race. He told me that last year he spent ~$18,000 in fuel costs alone.

I went from Enduro's to MTB's because I foolishly thought it would be cheaper....

 

[Joeywhat]

The shame rests with those who sell $10,000 audio connecting cables to zealots who think they hear minute "improvements" in the sound the $10,000 cables provide, as opposed to the sound they were getting from their $1,500 audio connecting cables.

The hi-fi audio market is really quite disgusting. Blind tests have shown that the average person (without trained ears) can't hear a damn thing between a coat hanger and and a $1000 cable. I guess that is one benefit of the pro side of it...a lot less of that. A good pro cable is good because it's more durable or has better shielding, not because it was blessed by the rabbi of sound quality before it left the building (for the most part, at least...).

Hell, even trained engineers who are paid to listen to minute differences in sound can barely hear a difference, if at all between many types of cables.

How many times I have heard it... please, with due respect, leave it for the guys who know what they are talking about. This is not a hi-fi forum.

I went to school for audio engineering...so I guess I'll just let myself into that "know what they are talking about" club.

 

[astroNikon]

Cycling (mountain bikes) are my other poison, It's not hard to spend $5k on a bike, a grand or so on kit (helmets, gloves etc) and then upgrade every year! At least with photography I don't upgrade as often

I used to race ... but haven't in decades. My MTB is still my 1996 Trek Y carbon main body, with Spinergy revX and the VBrake XTR .... 17 years old and still trekking. My clothes kit is old too ... but has been upgraded from time to time Once I stopped racing and wasn't sponsored anymore .. the $$$ became an obvious stumbling block.

Luckily my newer road bikes are from 1998
I gag every time I see the price of a new Super Record Carbon crankset. $900 discounted price .. yikes
Campagnolo SuperRecord 11 EVO CranksetTi

 

[sashbar]

NORDOST VALHALLA SPEAKER CABLES (PR) at Music Direct

LMFAO at the poor saps that buy into this...

Derrel, have you ever heard a PROPERLY BUILT top quality hi-end system in a properly acoustically treated room? What do you know about music? How often do you listen to it? How often to you listen to live music in a good concert hall? Can you tell Previn from Rattle? Guarneri from Stradivari ? It is easy.. They sound so different.. as easy as to tell a bad hi-fi equipment from a good one.
And btw Nordost Valhalla is a nice cable. Expensive, but nice. It is an old design, more than 10 y.o. Pure tonally, very transparent and timing is top notch.
Re price it is robbery, no arguments here, but it is a good stuff. If you buy it used you know that in 5 years time you can sell it for similar price, it keeps its used price better than any lense.

 

[Smokeyr67]

A mate of mines a triathlete, his bike is ludicrous! the hubs cost more than a small car, it has electric shifters, internal wiring for his computer and the whole thing weighs just over 7 kg!

I just picked up a set of pedals for $240, reduced from $635! I see lights for near $400!

 

[DiskoJoe]

Yes, high end audio is most certainly expensive. It gets more expensive if the recording/producing side of it all is your hobby, instead of just listening.

Those examples were pretty ludicrous as well. Homebrewing makes the top 10, all because it's possible for a homebrewer to buy commercial brewing products if they really want to? Might as well put playing saxophone on that list as well...because I can go buy John Coltrane's sax for $100,000.

Homebrewing with pro gear takes all the fun out of it.

Now as for insturments, I used to play double bass and they get pricey really quick. A crappy one is like a grand and nice go between $15,000 and $100,000+

 

[Smokeyr67]

Yes, high end audio is most certainly expensive. It gets more expensive if the recording/producing side of it all is your hobby, instead of just listening.

Those examples were pretty ludicrous as well. Homebrewing makes the top 10, all because it's possible for a homebrewer to buy commercial brewing products if they really want to? Might as well put playing saxophone on that list as well...because I can go buy John Coltrane's sax for $100,000.

Homebrewing with pro gear takes all the fun out of it.

Now as for insturments, I used to play double bass and they get pricey really quick. A crappy one is like a grand and nice go between $15,000 and $100,000+

You should play the single bass, they're half the price

 

[JacaRanda]

Hmmm, so you buy the nice 60" hi def plasma. Do you also need the expensive hdmi cables from Monster or the Walmart one? :waiting:

 

[runnah]

Hmmm, so you buy the nice 60" hi def plasma. Do you also need the expensive hdmi cables from Monster or the Walmart one? :waiting:

Monster cables are the worlds biggest scam.

 

[runnah]

Derrel, have you ever heard a PROPERLY BUILT top quality hi-end system in a properly acoustically treated room? What do you know about music? How often do you listen to it? How often to you listen to live music in a good concert hall? Can you tell Previn from Rattle? Guarneri from Stradivari ? It is easy.. They sound so different.. as easy as to tell a bad hi-fi equipment from a good one.
And btw Nordost Valhalla is a nice cable. Expensive, but nice. It is an old design, more than 10 y.o. Pure tonally, very transparent and timing is top notch.
Re price it is robbery, no arguments here, but it is a good stuff. If you buy it used you know that in 5 years time you can sell it for similar price, it keeps its used price better than any lense.

Audiophiles have to be the biggest group of suckers on the planet.

 

[JacaRanda]

Hmmm, so you buy the nice 60" hi def plasma. Do you also need the expensive hdmi cables from Monster or the Walmart one? :waiting:

Monster cables are the worlds biggest scam.

No kidding. I love sales reps trying to push cables on people that cost as much as the t.v.

What's worse is seeing folks walking out of stores with them. Oh Well!

 

[runnah]

No kidding. I love sales reps trying to push cables on people that as much as the t.v.

What's worse is seeing folks walking out of stores with them. Oh Well!

Same people buy undercoating.

 

[sashbar]

Hmmm, so you buy the nice 60" hi def plasma. Do you also need the expensive hdmi cables from Monster or the Walmart one? :waiting:

I have bought my HDMI cable for a fiver on ebay. Nothing here justifies a more expensive cable. I would say in 90% of hi-fi setups expensive cables are not justified either. The problem with aexpensive cables is that a lot of people put together a half baked hi-fi system in an acoustically awful room with no idea of placement etc. and connect it all with $1000 worth of cables. This is of course stupid.
But there is one thing - you can fool some people for a long time and you can fool a lot of people for some time. But not so many people for so long. There are hundreds of thousand of very knowledgeable audio enthusiasts and music lovers with a lot of experiense who would gladly spend 5 bucks on a wire rather that 500. Still they find it nesessary to splash the cash. The scepticism is not new to me, there were dozens of naysayers including studio engineers ( and I worked for the BBC for many many years) who were laughing up until the moment they heard a truly great hi-end system.

 

[runnah]

I have bought my HDMI cable for a fiver on ebay. Nothing here justifies a more expensive cable. I would say in 90% of hi-fi setups expensive cables are not justified either. The problem with aexpensive cables is that a lot of people put together a half baked hi-fi system in an acoustically awful room with no idea of placement etc. and connect it all with $1000 worth of cables. This is of course stupid.
But there is one thing - you can fool some people for a long time and you can fool a lot of people for some time. But not so many people for so long. There are hundreds of thousand of very knowledgeable audio enthusiasts and music lovers with a lot of experiense who would gladly spend 5 bucks on a wire rather that 500. Still they find it nesessary to splash the cash. The scepticism is not new to me, there were dozens of naysayers including studio engineers ( and I worked for the BBC for many many years) who were laughing up until the moment they heard a truly great hi-end system.

My question would be did they try the same system using cheap cables? And if so was there a noticeable difference? If there was, did the person who noticed it know which cables were used?

The problem with most audiophiles is that they use subjective reasoning to say why something is better. Something "sounding better" is not something that can be quantified, just like saying something tastes better.