Yup, your $700 cables are BS

[Michael L]

I present to the jury, from the geniuses at Purist Audio Design, their complete, unedited and highly Data-like answer to The $25,000 Question:

Do cables make a difference?

In any high fidelity audio system the cables need to be considered like components in the system. Cables play a crucial role in an audio system. They have the task of helping to get the music from your audio files, CDs, and records to your ears as unaltered as possible.

Just as you would not put the lowest quality fuel in your high performance car, you should not trust your music collection to low quality cables. Sure, your high performance car will operate with the lowest quality octane. However, you’re not going to get the most out of your car! In fact is could have undesired effects. The same is true with your high fidelity audio system, you’ll hear the music with any low quality cables. However, you’re not going to hear and feel everything that is there!

What’s the difference between a high performance car and an economy subcompact? It’s true that both get you from point A to point B. The difference comes in how the car drives, how it handles, how it accelerates, and how car appears (the fit and finish). The high performance car is carefully crafted with parts that will allow it to drive with precision, hug curves, accelerate with authority, and have the feel of a premium product.

The same is true of high fidelity audio systems and quality cables. Imagine your high fidelity audio system as a high performance car. In order for it to perform at its optimum level all the parts in your finely crafted system must be of the highest quality. With quality cables nothing is left to chance:

The metals used in the conductors
The dielectric of the conductor jacket
The shield around the conductors
The dielectric of the wire jacket

http://www.puristaudiodesign.com/Data/faq.html

[Functional]

no one can sue because any judge looking at the case would say "if you're stupid enough to fall for a 25k cable, the law cannot help you"

I'd rather see a just world where the perpetrators get punished instead of victims getting blamed, but that's just me. As ridiculous as it sounds, people under right circumstances can be manipulated into god knows what.

[aMUSEd]

I present to the jury, from the geniuses at Purist Audio Design, their complete, unedited and highly Data-like answer to The $25,000 Question:

Do cables make a difference?

In any high fidelity audio system the cables need to be considered like components in the system. Cables play a crucial role in an audio system. They have the task of helping to get the music from your audio files, CDs, and records to your ears as unaltered as possible.

Just as you would not put the lowest quality fuel in your high performance car, you should not trust your music collection to low quality cables. Sure, your high performance car will operate with the lowest quality octane. However, you’re not going to get the most out of your car! In fact is could have undesired effects. The same is true with your high fidelity audio system, you’ll hear the music with any low quality cables. However, you’re not going to hear and feel everything that is there!

What’s the difference between a high performance car and an economy subcompact? It’s true that both get you from point A to point B. The difference comes in how the car drives, how it handles, how it accelerates, and how car appears (the fit and finish). The high performance car is carefully crafted with parts that will allow it to drive with precision, hug curves, accelerate with authority, and have the feel of a premium product.

The same is true of high fidelity audio systems and quality cables. Imagine your high fidelity audio system as a high performance car. In order for it to perform at its optimum level all the parts in your finely crafted system must be of the highest quality. With quality cables nothing is left to chance:

The metals used in the conductors
The dielectric of the conductor jacket
The shield around the conductors
The dielectric of the wire jacket

http://www.puristaudiodesign.com/Data/faq.html

Sure I get that but if I claimed a car would go faster/run more efficiently etc on a certain fuel people would expect me to back up my claims, and in fact if I advertised the product on those grounds and it didn't do those things then I think they could sue me for wrongful advertising. I see how this is different in that 'sounds good' is much more subjective and virtually impossible to quantify, whereas 'goes faster/runs longer' is at least measurable, and I guess that is how they get away with it, there are always people who allow themselves to be taken in by the Emperor's new clothes, even believing they can hear those differences (and probably this also helps them feel somehow special or superior). However there are clearly some aspects of their claims that are measurable - as people have carried out such tests - so that's why I am surprised this has not gone so far as claims of false advertising in court.

[Functional]

They actually worded that perfectly well. See, they said "Imagine your high fidelity audio system as a high performance car.". They're not saying it actually is, just that you can imagine it as such.

The whole point of it is to not say anything too concrete to get into legal trouble. They're not making any actual promises there, just asking you to use the power of your imagination to justify the price.

[fluffy_little_something]

Aren't optical cables better and at the same time much cheaper?

[aMUSEd]

I'm still waiting for interconnects that use quantum entanglement.

[Functional]

I'm still waiting for interconnects that use quantum entanglement.

Schrödinger's cable: at the same time it does something and at the same time it does absolutely nothing

[farlukar]

I present to the jury, from the geniuses at Purist Audio Design, their complete, unedited and highly Data-like answer to The $25,000 Question:

Do cables make a difference?

In the digital domain, no.

[Tj Shredder]

Aren't optical cables better and at the same time much cheaper?

Yes, unless you,take the gold shielded ones. You can buy monster optical cables as well... I had an argument with someone who wanted make me believe the gold connectors for connecting spdif would sound better...

[vurt]

Aren't optical cables better and at the same time much cheaper?

Yes, unless you,take the gold shielded ones. You can buy monster optical cables as well... I had an argument with someone who wanted make me believe the gold connectors for connecting spdif would sound better...

sound better, no.
add "bling points" to your set up, hell to the yes!

[Tj Shredder]

How do they get away with this scam? Someone should take them to court.

They scam thiefs, they probably think along the lines of Robin Hood.
Whoever is able to pay without switching on the brain this amount of money deserves to be fooled... They cannot, by any means, have earned that money with their own hands work...

[Rockatansky]

Do cables make a difference?

In the digital domain, no.

Oh, you wouldn't believe the vast amount of cheap HDMI cables I had to swap out for customers because they started flickering or "running stripes". Same quality replacement, same problems eventually. Higher quality replacement, bad for business because no problems anymore. So I beg to differ. At least a bit.
(I do understand what you're getting at though, and I agree with that, yes.)

[rifftrax]

I present to the jury, from the geniuses at Purist Audio Design, their complete, unedited and highly Data-like answer to The $25,000 Question:

Do cables make a difference?

In the digital domain, no.

Um. That's exactly when they do make a difference actually. RF frequencies require a very different approach. Have you ever seen a probe for a >10Ghz scope?

Do cables make a difference?

In the digital domain, no.

Oh, you wouldn't believe the vast amount of cheap HDMI cables I had to swap out for customers because they started flickering or "running stripes". Same quality replacement, same problems eventually. Higher quality replacement, bad for business because no problems anymore. So I beg to differ. At least a bit.
(I do understand what you're getting at though, and I agree with that, yes.)

Bingo. A TMDS eye test will quickly prove that HDMI cables are in fact extremely finicky depending on length and signal encoding. I think the popular "digital is digital" mantra is really one of the most persistently misunderstood things about signal transmission.

Rule of thumb: the lower the frequency the easier it is to transmit without loss

[farlukar]

Fair enough, but anything with sturdy connectors and semi-decent shielding should suffice.

[rifftrax]

Fair enough, but anything with sturdy connectors and semi-decent shielding should suffice.

No. That's literally not the case at all for high-frequency signals. Again I think you vastly underestimate what goes into building cables that handle >ghz frequency data/clock/sync signals.

For example, you now have to aggressively account for things like skin effect, signal reflection, line impedance, cable LCR properties, insertion loss, cross-talk, propagation delay, and interference. Everything from quality of the soldered joints to the physical bend radius of every part of the signal path to the materials at every juncture becomes relatively important.

Maybe want to do some light reading:
https://www.edn.com/design/automotive-d ... Cs-Part-1-

Again...many many people have the deep and abiding misconception that "digital is digital". This simply could not be farther from the truth.

HDMI provides perfect signal reproduction or no signal at all, with nothing in between. Any $10 cable is exactly as good is this one.

Here is a great example of this. It's a bit mystifying to try to trace down where this particular ridiculous idea originated from but a ton of people share it even though it's completely false. It belies a fundamental lack of understanding around how the decoding chips handling the incoming video signal deal with a real-time transmission "failure" at the bit level.