why a 75 dollar blue ray smokes all 2k CD players and any turntable???

@robjerman,

’ +1 djones51 and cd318! Watch out for the mob carrying flaming torches!’


Yes, no doubt! I’d better rush to the tower and lock myself away fully armed alongside those other persistent troublemakers such as that notorious @kenjit.

However since most of this mob have a vested business interest in promoting high - end (ie high-priced boutique gear as opposed to high performance audio equipment) their opinions can hardly be unbiased.

Nothing said in the reply that the OP received has yet been refuted, just spurious counter claims.

The myriad defences to any perceived threat to their business interests may include any of these following deflection tactics:


Everyone’s ears are different. All rooms are different. Buy what you like.

You haven’t heard that particular piece of equipment, I have and I know it’s better so everyone else should buy it too.

It costs a lot more so it must be a lot better. You’d better buy it to be sure.

It’s a subjective and fun hobby - so keep spending.

Blind listening tests are flawed. All of them. They cannot be trusted.
Listen to me instead and buy product X (of which I just happen to luckily have in stock).

We don’t understand the mechanics or psychology of listening so we should not make defining judgements. So once again keep buying, you may get lucky.
Who knows? Who cares? (I don’t).

Look here, Stereopile / Hi-Fi What?? have posted a great review of this product I just happen to sell.
So what are you waiting for, go buy it?

Etc etc

-------

Without wishing to cast grave doubts upon the integrity of those who post here, it’s the experienced enthusiast/ consumer / user reviews and opinions that I’m mostly interested in.

Some professional reviewers do seem to operate as part of the advertising wing of the industry and unfortunately some posters here feel that forums are are a viable (and economic) means of free advertising.

Instead the rest of us can learn, share and learn some more whilst hopefully benefitting ourselves in the savings of time and money. Not to mention avoiding the all too many scams that plague this industry.

For sure these scams/business interests should never be dismissed too lightly. Let’s not forget that Noel Lee (Monster Inc) has managed to establish a near billion dollar company from selling cables.

Thankfully he doesn’t feel the need to post on here just how superior his cables really are.

If he did, we might just ask him to demonstrate it.

Why is spending/buying frowned upon around here? Spending feeds others' families. Without buying, frequently useless, items like hi-fi stores close, factory workers get laid off, etc. Buy it, if you can. It is a hobby after all. An excuse for wasting money. So what if you get reamed from time to time? Why be proud of the hobby and then be against spending money on it?

Back to cables.

@aschuh
I Believe this misrepresents the situation. The 60bit capacity was determined by assessing the concious ability to determine if a string of letters was a word or not. And the author of this experiment and study, Moscoso del Prado, has clarified that this is NOT an upper limit.

The brain recieves and processes >10 Billion bits worth of information every second, the vast majority of which is processed subconciously, or autonomically.

Our brains are not smearing out detail in an effort to find variation.

If you read into the literature far enough you can frequently identify the truly great equipment. Examples are the Airtight PC 1 Supreme and the Parasound JC 1. 
Trusting someone else's hearing is a sure recipe for disaster. Human sound processing was not designed for qualifying music but for locating danger. Music is like color. When shown a shade of blue, those of us that are not blue green color blind will identify the color as blue. When shown a variety of shades of blue one may prefer one shade over another. Others will prefer a different shade. Why do we have these preferences?
Music and sound are no different. We all prefer and listen to music differently from genres to parts of the audible spectrum. Even the descriptions we use to quantify music are vague at best, sometimes even meaningless. It usually comes down to, "mine is best." Of course it is. You designed your system based on what you want to hear which might not be what everyone else wants to hear. 
Assuming something performs it's job better because it looks better or costs a lot more is another common trap. Saying something sounds better because I say so is just a way to avoid asking or answering the question as to why this should be or admitting the existence of a glaring defect. It was designed by Alfred E. Newman but it's the best sounding because I say so. The Linn LP 12 is such an example. 
Yet there are systems that go beyond the usual and there are solid reasons for this. It is here that we can look for these reasons and try to implement them. The key is to look for the ones that have an explanation unlike cable elevators which do not. You want to puke? Take those $10K speaker cables apart and look what is inside. Just wire. Just wire in a pretty casing which does nothing other than look sharp. On the other hand, there are circumstances like high powered passive subwoofers, where 24 gauge wire is not going to cut it. Can't handle the current. 
The reasoned response has a better chance of being right than the emotional one.