Factory Tour: AudioQuest | Stereophile
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- čas přidán 23. 07. 2024
- A video tour of AudioQuest's facility in Irvine, California. Filmed June 2017.
Read the written blog post: po.st/jwhFKu
Watch more factory tours: • Factory Tours
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Website: www.stereophile.com
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5:36 If you sell cables that are very expensive,you don't just recycle them as normal copper wire.It means,they don't really have that value you claim.
If the cable is faulty why should they not recycle it as regular copper?
There is no such thing as magical copper.
Audioquest is making the copper as perfect as they can to reduce noise and have a higher quality sound but it is still normal copper.
Their wires are very overpriced and not really worth the money but they are made to be durable and to provide the customer the best sound quality.
There is this thing called cable geometry and it happens to be extremely important to the functioning of the cable. If you don't "believe" in cable geometry, I urge you to read the white papers on HDMI Spec.
It doesn't look like a factory, its basically just a warehouse where they store their made in China products.
Maximize the profits
Audioquest designs expensive exotic cables as their core business but NOT a single Magnetic/LCR Analyzer, Spectrum Analyzer, Logic Analyzer or Impedance Analyzer can be seen in this video. Very telling about the "engineering" that goes into Audioquest cables.
Audioholics Indeed.. Snake oil central..
They must have edited out the section in which they placed tones on the cables and made a variety of measurements... lol...
But the cherry coke wire has to be worth 200 dollars 😁🤣
Please watch Audioquest striking back with a hilarious presentation at Munich High End Show 2019: czcams.com/video/1zW3Q7RXgVg/video.html
@Audioholics, and I didn’t see any High end frequency analyzer, spectrum analyzer, thermal imaging equipment, etc.
What I got from this is AudioQuest is just a big warehouse.
Looks like Costco or amazon haha
that's beautifully organised work spaces and warehouse - wow
I still use the Audioquest Quartz x3 interconnects from my first hifi which I bought 20 years ago. My first system cost around £1000. My current hifi is around £20000 but never felt the need to upgrade interconnects. I'm also still using the speaker cable from my first system but they aren't Audioquest.
Loved that! Thanks for the tour!👌👍
I'll take that recycling bin and will pay for your barbecue
And now we know why their cables cost so much money. That's a huge nut to crack every month. Geesh!
Serious company and products despite the fact that my first intro with AQ was speaker cables with thick Midnight solid core speaker cable which crashed my amp terminals
Nice Tour,Top Brand !!
NICE TOUR
Simply amazing
And here ladies and gentleman is a company who has capitalized on the enormous ignorance of wealthy people.
It's not that hard to do comparative testing before you spend money on these products.
Show me a tour of Furutech and I’ll be impressed
I have one of that subwoofer cable! It is the better! No more hissing after I switched from cheap to expensive.
If your subwoofer was making a hissing/humming/buzzing noise you didn't have a cable issue - you had a ground loop issue. That's usually due to the difference in voltage between two different ground connections on two different outlets in two different parts of a room. You resolve that by making sure that your sub is plugged into the same electrical outlet as the rest of your stereo system. You can also get ground-loop filters to use as well if you need to have the sub plugged in at a different part of the room.
What speakers are those at the 9:34 mark?
Where do they keep the Thunderbird Zero speaker cable batteries? Next to the snake oil vats perhaps?
I've owned many AudioQuest cables, but when I saw SF flogging them I new it was time to change.
What it means SF?
What a comfy working place in my opinion
Please use a good image stabilization or gimbal next time.
Someone has taken notes on Lean management :p
This is fun, i love warehouse videos of products i enjoy!
Yes the cathode of the battery is not connected "directly" to the cable lol. Batteries on cables - fuck you! The guys give a black eye to HiFi.
Can you ask Mr. Bill Low why every time I purchase any of his cables within six months at most a year they end up being defective.
And yes I understand the question that that leads to which is if nobody else is having problems then why are you,it must be something you're doing. But no it isn't me because no matter what other brands I've tried, everything from Cardas to blue Jean cable to Kimber to transparent audio they all do not suffer the same problem. It's a shame really because I really like the apparent quality of audioquest products and I also like their sonic signature. So yeah if he's hanging around please ask him for me.
Cold welding maybe. They're the only company in the business doing this.
A snake oil factory tour?
😂😂😂
I love all the cheap copper they use in all of their cables. It must cost them whole 2 cents to make a 3-foot interconnect. Everyone loves the cable mafia.
Raffie Quler Nice to meet you again, really the audioquest cables are cheapo? Should I any mean investing in those cables? It is same with all their products or some are worth it?
Onother cable hater. Predictable as hell.
Don't you have anything better to do ?
That’s all you need to know about high dollar cables right there. Might as well buy quality wire and build your own.
Nice
600 sq/ft of production area.... 50,000 sq/ft of warehouse????
So basically no manufacturing except for that niagra 7000 he kept talking about. Looks like everything just comes in from overseas (China?) and this is just the warehouse they ship the crap from.
Why different pricing on so many Vodka 48 (1.
5m as example?) I see vodka 48 for $400.00 and for $20. With same specs.!!??
11:45 nice audioquest product!!
You hade me at the dog ❤️ Pumpkin.
So they dont build cables, they just connect them...
I used to be the great fans of Audioques
So, where do they keep the snakes? 😉
Bah.... Ill continue to build my own cables. I can assemble my own from imported supplies too.
*Snake-Oil Headquarter.* 😂🤣
*Thank you for showing us the Scam Tour.*
Awesome! Keen insight into the company for those of us that cannot see it in person. Too bad some of the rock stars (Bill, Skylar) were not on site during the tour
czcams.com/video/NJgGP-yqJm0/video.html Garbage, crimped and cheap junk.
This guy is Santa Claus his 6 elves make enough wire for millions of people. Amazing
I think those are just the very highest-end cables that they produce that are being hand-made there at those stations. When you have cables that you are selling for $600 to $900 each, you aren't selling them in very high volume at all - and a room with six people in it is easily more than enough of a production crew to keep up with global demand.
Looks like such a fun place to work, everyone looks so happy to be there. Yawn.
I barbecued my audioquest cable too, sounds better now.
"Facility" It's not a factory. Almost all of Audioquests items are manufactured in China.
Audio Quest has gone to the dogs....
I’m sure they have elaborate test equipment that we didn’t see.
Where do they keep the 55 gal drums of snake oil that they inject into the cables at?
I love my Carbon XLRs
🤔Too many Fake AudioQuest Cable out in market. Customer are too Fear to buy AudioQuest model. alot of Cancel orders. How to know which is Real or Fake! 😥 Pls resolve this problem as soon as possible.
Warehouse 101. Not much here. Would love to see some actual tests on interconnect wiring... rca to rca. Frequency response, standing waves, impedance frequency match. Noise of a cable on 5h3 floor vs cable suspended in air.
Naic
Monster Cable 2.0
Enjoyed it! I love my audioquest cables! Great American company!
full of mexican workers
czcams.com/video/NJgGP-yqJm0/video.html Crimped garbage and cheap connectors, what's not to like...
@Ray Davies, racist much?
Lets install a battery via one pole to the screen - listen to the difference guys! :(
When the snake oil manufacturers are doing more trade than the hifi manufacturers you know there is something wrong with this industry :(
In want that recycling bin😅😇
" hello and welcome to Audioquest. We sell the biggest lie in audio cable industry with our amazing "science". We soon will be connecting out cables to car batteries to make it sound so much better. even your low quality mp3's will sound like flac files"
Irrespective of theoretical arguments, consistency of results on repeated blind testing and with different people, keeping everything else unchanged, can easily support or reject any cable manufacturer's claims. I'm sure someone has done that by now. So, if someone can provide such evidence please do in order to make a valid point.
@WorldView, The claims made by audiophiles of expensive cables making a difference are purely anecdotal.
P.T. Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute".
And also, "I never bought it or tried it, but I have an expert opinion on it."
Regards, great factory - Made in USA.
Assembled and Designed in USA.
All parts, materials, components, etc.. are from abroad.
@@kalijasin - To bad.
9:39 THEY DON'T HAVE THEIR CABLES ON RISERS WHAT ABOUT THE ELECTRONS BOUNCING OFF THE CARPET!!!
Looks more like Costco
says alot about how expensive the cables are when they can just throw them into a skip for the scrap guy to pick up.if you added up the meters in the skip and had to sell them to us as speaker cables there would be hundreds of thousands of pounds. what a ripoff really
5, 6 people in "production" and there are hundreds of products and sold in thousands. Next video show us your 100s of Chinese people assembling cables.
@Philipp Wie, total fraud.
How come there is no manufacturing process in AQ factory ? And they still selling their so called hi end and expensive cables? (I have been using AQ cables over 20 years) Very disappointed after watching this.
@Stephen Chan They are made by hand, it's in a different video. There are more tours. czcams.com/video/NJgGP-yqJm0/video.html
Wow wow it’s amazing look at the size of the building ect and this all comes from being masters of bull ---- the cables/ equipment it’s all over priced and does not make any difference their sales team and personnel who do the demos are brain washed and very highly trained because they have to sell the product 💷💷I’ve recently watched a demo video about audioquest power cables and when it comes to the real pricey ones the demonstrator tells the listener the price but doesn’t look at him whilst saying it because deep down he knows it’s a rip off but he is just doing his job
They play ping-pong three times a day!
I'll make you the same cables for half the price ...!!!? 🤣😂😂😅😉🤭🤭
cool
made in C H I N A!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Toto, didnt get that memo!!!
I lasted until "MidFI". Snake oil factory.
Snake Oil, I think not
I have always enjoyed their products
using the lovely pumpkin to sell their over priced tat, that's low
give more attention to the dog and packaging than the tech. where's the tech!
It's in a previous video called Part II
They shouldn't raise the dog in factory or office area.
As long as they don't violate the dog labor laws...
I don't know why anyone here who are obviously naturally dull eared lol would realistically expect to "see" absolutely everything and the equipment/technology and/or all testing equipment they use. I mean why the fuck would they be so stupid to do so... Perhaps you were expecting blueprints of everything there too ! 🤣To be honest I was surprised at how much we actually did see. Generous enough. I enjoyed the video.
This guy is cocky
And you aren't?
Ok, I watched this and all the other Audioquest tour videos. Something is missing. Other than the headphone lab, where is the R&D lab where all these exclusive Audioquest technologies are designed and tested? Where is all the expensive test gear to look at signal transmission through a cable. I didn't even see a simple oscilloscope in any scene. And please don't give us the Elizabeth Holmes "proprietary trade secret " rag. You can video an R&D lab without showing any products that are under development.
Elizabeth Holmes! If you don't know that story look it up. If our government held all product manufacturers to the same truth in advertising standard they do for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, how do you think Audioquest would fair?
Unbelievable how large a business can get by just selling snake oil. This proves that anything goes. Make the right PR, and you're on track.
it's very suspicious that their website does not mention the specifications of any of their products. all they show you is a fancy name and some general info, but no specs whatsoever. that's a snake oil salesman if I've ever seen one.
Best cables I've ever use , and I use to be against hi-end cables and interconnects and power cable until I bought audioquest awesome product about to review their product on my channel
The simple fact of the matter is that every form of audio cable has three important characteristics, which are resistance, inductance, and capacitance. Thus, every cable is an LCR filter and it WILL affect the total frequency response of the system it's connected to. Different cable topologies and materials choices (which have different dielectric, insulative, and conductive properties) will result in cables that most definitely alter system frequency response. If the cable's parameters are well known and the transfer characteristics of the source (output) and sink (load) are also clearly defined, then how a cable can alter the sound of the system can be very precisely predicted if you know how to perform that analysis.
And, cable manufacturing equipment is expensive. It does cost cable companies more to make their own cable than if they were to just order pallets of stock cable types from Belden, Alpha, Canare, etc.
I'm not defending the predatorial, usurial prices charged for some audiophile cables. But the fact is that yes, cables can and do have distinctive sounds, and yes, they can be expensive to make and if they are then their retail price is going to reflect that.
I know cables can function as LCR filters but that will happen only at long distances isnt it ?
A short cable within a room has negligible inductance !
OldSlowGamer I'm afraid it's all wrong. On average, an amplifier delivers a maximum of 1 watt of power to the speakers at room volume. For loudspeakers with lower efficiency, this value can double. The lowest impedance of most loudspeakers is about 3 ohms. At an operating voltage of just under 2 volts, this results in a current flow of 0.6 amperes. For this current flow - and only that counts! - a cable with a cross-section of approx. 0.1mm² (assumed to be 10 meters long) is theoretically sufficient.
The cross-section of a human hair would be sufficient for a NF cinch cable! In fact, the acoustic signal in the source device or amplifier does not pass through much larger cross-sections over countless components. Only in the output stage of an amplifier are the cross-sections adapted to the possible current flow. But here, too, the "show" is often exaggerated. In the output stage transistors (I have already sawn up several), i.e. where the entire current flows towards the loudspeaker, wires with a maximum diameter of 0.2mm are used. What good are finger-thick cables afterwards?
For a better idea which cable cross-sections are actually necessary, three examples from household technology:
→ An electric fan heater with a constant (!) consumption of 2,000 watts is operated on a mains cable with a cross-section of 1.5 mm² (usually more than 10 metres from the fuse box). At 230 Volt mains voltage and approx. 20- 25 Ohm resistance of the heating spirals about 8.7 Ampere current flow.
→ A hair dryer with a constant consumption of about 1,500 watts obtains its energy via a mains cable with a cross-section of 0.75 mm². More is also not necessary. Here about 6.5 amperes of current flow.
Once again: in order to generate room volume, a loudspeaker needs an average of maximum 1 watt of power and 0.6 amperes of current flow. Nevertheless, many LS cable manufacturers offer types whose cross-section would be sufficient to supply an entire block of houses with household power. Some loudspeaker cables actually have the diameter of a garden hose!
During tests in HiFi magazines, connecting cables are repeatedly measured and compared with regard to their electrical properties. Depending on how the cables are constructed, different values for resistance, capacitance and inductance are obtained. But all these values have orders of magnitude that are absolutely irrelevant for low-frequency applications. Even if the measured values were multiplied by 100, sometimes even by 1000, there would still be no audible effects. This is because the very low impedance output impedances of modern HiFi devices (10-100 Ohm for high level source devices and preamplifiers) and the usual impedance values of loudspeakers (actually 3-25 Ohm) mean that there can be no interference in the audible frequency range. It is actually ridiculous to discuss this, because in purely mathematical terms the earliest possible effects are in the range of a few hundred kilohertz. Even at tube sets with higher output impedances common cables are sufficient.
Of course HiFi is all about best playback quality. In this context, the connecting cables should not cause any losses. But where do they come from? From a factual point of view, a cable is nothing more than a slightly elongated piece of metal. It is also a fact that the "marching order" for the flow of electrons propagates at almost the speed of light in metal. This corresponds to a time of slightly more than one second for the distance from the Earth to the Moon. What do a few meters mean? Are expensive cables really necessary for this? Is it really sensible (how often recommended) to invest about one third of the system price in cables? No reasonable person will agree.
The connecting cables of a HiFi system are given such importance as if they had to be used to transmit distances of several kilometres in the high-frequency range. For high-frequency technicians, the ridiculous 20kHz we are dealing with here are not even worth mentioning, they jokingly call them "direct current"!
Charging $100s of dollars 💵 for a cable, No matter how well it’s constructed and designed, is a rip off.
AQ - Great company!
I very happy using cables from AudioQuest!
Amazing cables - this is AudioQuest
Best Regards, Alexsander.
I think they deserve a respect for what they are doing and how they do. If someone thinks they sell snake oil, it must be very good, otherwise that company would has close long time ago. I'm impressed by their job, it's clear they don't have anything to hide. Well done. Congratulations from Spain.
Yeah respect for pulling the wool over everyones eyes.
Çerastes I try to be positive when I give my thoughts in public. It's the job of many people, the most part of them, humble workers that earn a salary doing their best in what they do. If I weren't a hi-fi aficionado, I certainly wouldn't be watching Stereophile videos and would search another subjet to see. If that means that I'm soft... or whatever it means, well, you are free to give your opinion as long as you don't offense anyone. I'm not bothered by you. Have a nice day.
David van Spankeren it's no really necessary science to apreciate that the audible diferences between high and low price components and cables don't justifie the disparity in cost in my opinion, but if someone else wants to purchase one thing that is above the reach of the average joe and feels good doing it? What's the matter? If they (hi-end components and accesories makers))make them and others buy their products, who are me or you to judge?. Let live and ...
David van Spankeren
@@dave210474 Have you ever told someone you loved them, David?
Plenty of impressive offices.... with nobody in them.
I'm so happy to have cables that make so many people so angry. :)
@@TheCaptonZ ya the guy simply said he has some cables that make hime happy and you reply he is simple minded. you sir are a complete and absolute moron
@thegrimyeaper Yes, super. I also.
Snake oil
He didn't show use the seance room where the magic happens!!! It must be next to where the snakes are crushed to extract the oil🤣🤣🤣
I love the comments when Hi-Fi cables are talked about, people love them or hate them with almost no one in the middle. What it all comes down to is how good is your system, starting with the speakers, your sound can never be outstanding in high's, low's and midrange unless your speakers are capable of the high quality output. When I hear anyone say they can't hear a difference between different cables, it is a sure tip off that they have speakers that are low quality or at least not high quality. A quick and simple test is how much do they cost. If the speakers cost lest then 2-3 thousand each, then the wires going to that speaker are not going to change much. But, it you have around 20 -50 thousand tied up in stereo or home theater equipment then better cables and wires make a huge difference. You need to match the wires to the system. Don't install fantastic cables and expect fantastic improvements unless you already have fantastic equipment to hook them to. Why is that hard to understand? It takes years to build up enough money to have an outstanding system, it can't happen on the cheap and that includes wires. I have only a few Audiquest HDMI cables and they are good, I prefer Wire World cables for everything though, I was in a hurry and Audioquest was available when I needed them and they are fine. Trust me, when you spend a crap load of money on a system, you can easily hear the improvement that
Wire World cables will make, go with their mid priced stuff all over and you will keep every wire you try. Keep the package and return them if you don't love them, you'll keep them.
Bill MacKinnon During tests in HiFi magazines, connecting cables are repeatedly measured and compared with regard to their electrical properties. Depending on how the cables are constructed, different values for resistance, capacitance and inductance are obtained. But all these values have orders of magnitude that are absolutely irrelevant for low-frequency applications. Even if the measured values were multiplied by 100, sometimes even by 1000, there would still be no audible effects. This is because the very low impedance output impedances of modern HiFi devices (10-100 Ohm for high level source devices and preamplifiers) and the usual impedance values of loudspeakers (actually 3-25 Ohm) mean that there can be no interference in the audible frequency range. It is actually ridiculous to discuss this, because in purely mathematical terms the earliest possible effects are in the range of a few hundred kilohertz. Even at tube sets with higher output impedances common cables are sufficient.
Of course HiFi is all about best playback quality. In this context, the connecting cables should not cause any losses. But where do they come from? From a factual point of view, a cable is nothing more than a slightly elongated piece of metal. It is also a fact that the "marching order" for the flow of electrons propagates at almost the speed of light in metal. This corresponds to a time of slightly more than one second for the distance from the Earth to the Moon. What do a few meters mean? Are expensive cables really necessary for this? Is it really sensible (how often recommended) to invest about one third of the system price in cables? No reasonable person will agree.
The connecting cables of a HiFi system are given such importance as if they had to be used to transmit distances of several kilometres in the high-frequency range. For high-frequency technicians, the ridiculous 20kHz we are dealing with here are not even worth mentioning, they jokingly call them "direct current"!
Wow these guys are not screwing around. Impressive.
Two words : SNAKE OIL
Only if you have crap equipment.
@@LarsonChristopher snake oil fanboy here LOL
Of note - Skylar Gray is no longer at Audioquest.
their cables make a huge difference! glad to actually see the factory.
Çerastes you've obviously never used one
Çerastes it's not. I'm not sure the difference in the HDMI interconnects they make the the analog ones make a huge difference. If you try a standard or even gold tipped 3.5mm cable vs any AudioQuest 3.5 you will hear a huge difference.
Giovanni, by in large, the crowd of naysayers simply cannot afford the hobby, on a level where quality cables are an intricate part of a realistic sounding system. Or their wife will divorce them if they spend $$ without permission. Or in some way, this hobby is out of their reach.
Also, it is, and always will be, a practice that those that have no clue to accuse those that do know as being the ones not knowing what they are talking about (idiots are quick to label others as idiots).
The naysayers also have never had the good fortune of hearing a well balanced, neutral, professionally set up high end stereo. I am not talking about at a show, where there are any number of environmental problems that cannot be quickly remedied. They likely have never been in a real high end audio store, and been given hours of personal listening time seated in the sweet spot.
So the ones that accuse us of having no clue are themselves the ones that have no clue, or perhaps are just lashing out due to their inability to keep their jealousy in check.
All of their name calling will neither change your experience nor my experience. We have heard the difference. It is real. But the naysayers will forever spew nonsense.
The engineers at Audioquest have earned their reputation of designing and manufacturing some of the best interconnects and power cables on the market.
He's right. You've obviously never tried their cables.
I've had friends who listen to music on crappy headphones like beats tell me AudioQuest Golden Gate made a huge difference in sound quality with my Audiotechnica ATH-1100IS headphones.
absotlutely fail bananas series suregrip!!!!!!!!!!! USE ONLY STAINLESS STEEL!!!!!!!!
The only great thing is that they let dogs in :)
This company makes nothing but over-priced, out sourced garbage. I have several sets of the older 'jade' series connectors, and the are MYRIADS above everything you make now. I was recently shopping for a few newer cables, and after looking at their current lame, cheap manufacturing process, and mentally insane prices, you have lost me as a customer.
You laught at me? Poor.
That's a lot of snake oil being bottled right there in California. Just shows how many fools there are in the world. But then again, if people enjoy their products, who am I to judge?
Charging $100s of dollars 💵 for a cable, No matter how well it’s constructed and designed, is a rip off.
What an unfriendly intro to the factory. Makes me want to throw away my Audioquest cables. Based on the production - looks like a bunch of junk assembly.
czcams.com/video/NJgGP-yqJm0/video.html Correctamundo sir, same here
Sucks now a days too much Competition on line for a decent price or I would say cheaper price because of China’s creations Soecially the economy now a days in America.This Place Is huge their Warehouse.I bet they charge lots of money for those equipment and sometimes they kind a double the price but if ur not smart u will just throw ur money.As A Consumers you have to be really smart with your money because their the one who’s becoming richer.Thank God I love traveling in different country’s not sit down in a man cave for hours and hours like a geek Toddler just staring Vinyls and Playing systems.This is what they do for living so I totally understand but not me spend thousands of thousands of money and by the time I turn 65 70 I don’t think I’m gonna need those in my life but traveling.Im Good with my Range Rover And My Mercedes C63 And My mp3s.And My Cash in the bank...Be Frugal As A Consumers!!!
So this is what a snake oil factory looks like. It's obvious big business.
I was hoping to see the dragonfly but oh well.
Buy your stereo, cables and all, at Walmart. I'll stick with Vandersteen and Audioquest.
I don't buy my stereo from anywhere, I'm an electrical engineer and I design and build audio equipment.
The cable industry in the audiophile arena is ridiculous and any half decent engineer will tell you so. It's simply marketing rubbish designed to appeal to the uninformed and gullible.
Do cables make a difference? Yeah but only if they are defective. Cables are typically purposed and designed for the job that they need to accomplish. If you look at Belden's catalogue, for example, you will see that they produce a vast array of differently specified products.
The cables all have their own unique specifications that describe signal losses and shielding capabilities. These are important when you're building large, high speed data transmission networks. But here's the thing.
For a standard, high impedance, single ended, interconnect of 30cm length, pretty much ALL of Belden's cables will provide perfect data transmission at audio frequencies.
Grab yourself a meter of Belden 1694A, for a pair of 50cm long interconnects. £3. And add in 4 of Neutrik's excellent connectors and you'll have the best cable that you'll ever need for less than £20.
There is no improvement to be had beyond this, there are no gains because you've already got a cable that allows perfect data transmission for the task that it is required to carry out.
These cables and connectors are used in professional/industrial/military/aerospace applications where data transmission and signal integrity is crucial. It's what they've been designed to do. No nonsense, no pretty packaging, no crazy marketing schemes in magazines, just excellent engineering to the task at hand.
If you want to spend large amounts of money on snake oil cables because it makes you feel better then so be it.
I have personally swapped cables, from five or six manufacturers, and I can hear differences. Not because I expect to hear differences, but because I do hear differences. None of the cables were defective.
They have different designs and different materials. Some are copper. Some are silver. Some are 99.9% pure. Some are oxygen free; some are not. Some are super annealed; some are not. Some are produced in a vacuum, creating a theoretically ideal dielectric environment. And the shielding varies across them all.
If you swap cables on a $500 stereo, you will not hear any difference. Even on a $5,000 system, you are not likely to hear any difference. Note that on a well designed stereo, at almost any price, quality power cords will result in better sound quality.
If you are fortunate enough to hear a pair of Vandersteen Seven, or Wilson Alexandria, or Magico S7, etc, speakers, properly set up, with quality/matched components, and feed the stereo quality source material (somewhat hard to find), then different cables (defective free) will be audible.
The military and aerospace industries do not need their cables to accurately reproduce the nuances of the ivories on a piano.
So either you do not have critical listening skills, or you have not had the good fortune to hear a truly well designed high end audio system, including professional speaker setup and room sound treatments.
I have.
NoEgg4u Sensor applications in the military and aerospace industry (we're talking satellites here) absolutely require that no data is lost and that signal attenuation is at a minimum. This is the absolute definition of 'capturing all the nuances'. Being able to detect a nuance, before your enemy, could be the difference between life and death. Still Belden is good enough for them.
Audio signals are very basic and extremely easy to send over cables. High frequency signals used in high speed data acquisition and transmission (satellites and sensors) are not.
My ears are excellent and my HiFi superlative. By defective I mean the cable hasn't been properly designed. You can design cables to sound different, you can engineer them to affect the sound but these are defective. Any good cable won't affect the sound in any way, period. If it does, throw it in the bin.
The best cable would technically be no cable, just an extension of the PCB that the HiFi circuit is constructed on. But you know what? The copper foil used in PCBs is really basic. Oxygen free copper? Pfft you'll be lucky it's normally about 99.9% pure. Nothing special there at all. So inside the case really basic wires are fine, but go outside the case and you then need some magic cryogenically treated Jesus wire. Right.
If you can hear a difference then the cable is defective or you are imagining it. And listening to a track, getting up, changing cables and sitting back down to listen to another track is not a good enough test. Human expectation bias makes you think you are hearing things when you're not.
Oh and they don't use any special cables during the recording process, in the recording studios, either. Yet they somehow manage to capture all the nuances that you apparently need an expensive cable to be able to hear...go ahead living in your snake oil bubble.
Just becuase you are not willing to spend the money vs. taking a risk on compromise and spending less, does not automatically mean everything they make is 'snake oil'. I'm sure some of it is, but much of it isn't. I've been very happy with the Jitterbug and the Nighthawk headphones for the price, for example. They are pretty cheap and perform above their price-print. Just calling everything 'snake oil' by default because you don't understand or agree with the benefit isn't exactly going to win you any credibility awards and makes it kinda difficult to take you seriously.