I enjoy a $50 Bluetooth speaker
becomes
cheers to @audphile1 sitting on his deck with a cigar and a $60 speaker
between just two posts. That's inflation for you 
Do I need an expensive digital cable?
I have been using a fairly inexpensive optical cable to connect my CD transport to my Moon 280D streamer. I was told that an SPDIFcoax cable would sound better. For an experiment I purchased an inexpensive Pangea coax cable. It didn't sound at all because its terminator ends did not fit snugly in my equipment. I consulted chatgbt who often gives me audio advice. It advised that for the short run of 1 meter, an RCA interconnect would work. It did. And sounded much better than the optical. Chatgbt said that RCA interconnect was good enough.
Now, there is a twist to this story that might make those doubters think twice. A digital cable carries packets of information that are rechecked to assure that the streamer is recieving correct information. There is the timing concern, though. But my Moon 280D has an asynchronous DAC with a clock as part of the DAC. Any information sent by my transport, whether it is clocked by the transport or not, will go through the Moon's asynchronous DAC's clock. So ;there shouldn't be a timing problem. Should there?
Can anyone make a case that I should buy a "better" coax cable?
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@richardbrand the $10 went into a power cord upgrade on a BT speaker. |
The only reason I'm writing this, Richard, is to use your remark about my $10 mistake as an example. Almost all the columns I have been on have jokers who put people down. It's intimidating to new people who want to join a thread, people who haven't been around the block as many times as I have, and it's a mindless way of adding nothing to the conversation. Again, I reiterate that our hobby is, or should be, about a love of music. And people who do love music and other arts should want to include others. Little snide comments have no place in these forums. |
@audio-b-dog this cannot be overemphasized.
As someone who is perhaps no stranger to snide comments, I feel compelled to explain. The elephant in the room is that some "audiophiles" are making strident, definitive, and often unchallenged statements about unlikely sound quality improvements that they clamor to have experienced. Sometimes it will be an overpriced CAT6 cable or Ethernet switch that, if they had bothered to educate themselves about how TCP works, they would know cannot possibly have any bearing on the sound quality of a properly designed system. It follows that if sonic improvements are heard from a CAT6 cable, then the system was not properly designed; and that if it had been, its owner could enjoy sonic bliss from a $5 Monoprice cable. You rightly mention people new to the hobby. Tweak aficionados love to prey on them. Nothing nefarious, mind you, just misery loves company: folks who spent $2,000 on cable elevators want everyone to spend $2,000 on cable elevators, or at least $1,000. They sneer at peasants who do not own cable elevators. They especially conspue "cheaters" who use $1 rebar chairs in lieu of expensive cable elevators. They cast aspersions on the other person’s supposed lack of means and ridicule their "non-resolving" systems. Etc. This is all very, very far from enjoying music. Gear fetishism becomes an end unto itself. Serious audiophiles (unlike me) know this is nonsense but look the other way for the sake of getting along. I certainly appreciate politeness and I am quite capable of agreeing to disagree. But this pre-supposes a modicum of mutual respect. To spout dogma in definitive, this-is-not-for-discussion tones is disrespectful, and folks who open that door shouldn’t be surprised when something they don’t like walks in. By the way, Bluetooth speakers bring music, and with it solace, to ugly, crappy, unpleasant spaces where we have to spend time though we don’t want to. Think being alone for 8 hours surveying a freezing job site with rainwater dripping from the ceilings. No 2-channel system can help you there, but a humble Bluetooth speaker will. So I say, don’t knock Bluetooth speakers. As always, just my 2 cents 🙂
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