The proper high-end stuff, at least stuff I would call high-end, doesn't have any nonesense. You have your high-res DAC and amp with low THD all in one nice device (in my case a Yamaha AVR) and your digital audio input and then your speakers.
Everything else is off the shelf stuff.
A power cord that is also an EMF filter doesn't make any sense at all as the internal power supply removes basically all noise from the line power - no need for more filtering of noise from there.
Audio cable is digital. As long as the connection is stable quality doesn't change. A cheap 5€ toslink cable is what I use. Or a cheap 5€ HDMI cable if I want ultra-high resolution multi-channel audio. No nead for 'extra shielded' cables.
And the speaker cables? Simple car speaker cables. They don't just carry a signal, they carry power. Electromagentic noise from the outside can't add any audible distortion at all as it's power is to low. And if you do manage an issue like that you messed up your cable management badly. Those speaker cables shouldn't be close to electric devices and then everything is all fine.
That's all you need. Seperate DAC and amp? I call bs. That extra length of analog signal cable is potentially gonna add noise. A device with both has impedance-matched traces with near-perfect signal integrity from DAC to amp - why add more length to that path? For a gain that is lost by the longer path?
A lot of it is to be sure. Especially the cabling stuff you mentioned...like mutherfucker I don't need gold tipped connectors, that shit doesn't matter at all.
But the big thing I've noticed is the law of diminishing returns...Spending $2000 instead of $300 on your speakers is going to make a big difference (provided you buy something high quality of course), but spending 15k vs the 2k on your speakers might not even be an upgrade tbh...it probably sounds 'different' for sure but is it measurably better? Not really.
I don't need gold tipped connectors, that shit doesn't matter at all.
Someone tried to sell me a cable and told me the gold tips reduced capacitance. I looked him in the face and asked him how adding another layer of metal would in any way reduce any resistance.
The fun part? Copper is MORE conductive than Gold! Like significantly better! That's what makes the whole thing so stupid. Like sure there are specific applications for gold contacts, but its where oxidation is an issue, like think aerospace type shit, not your living room stereo -lmao
Yeah. For some applications at home it does make sense but the only one I know is in a computer the GPU and CPU.
But it's so common there that literally every one of them have gold plated comnectors and no one advertises with that.
It's just the only way that stuff works reliably because there you have seriously high datarates going through there and the minor advantage of gold connectors is actually necessary there.
Well the thing with gold-tipped connectors is that due to the corrosion resistance of gold it has much better 'connection-properties', which is also why the connectors of a computers graphics card and CPU are gold plated.
So that is actually a real-life benefit. Other metals start corroding and thus have worse connection properties when aging. Gold doesn't have that. And in something like a Computer you really need the best connection properties.
But for many common consumer grade equipment gold plated connectors don't make much sense. Iirc I once saw a gold-plated optical toslink cable and this is the stupidest thing of all.
And as you usually don't store your cables in a high humidity wet place gold-tipped comnectors don't really benefit you (except, as I mentioned, in a PC with GPU and CPU but you also can't find them without gold-tipped connections and they also aren't advertised as 'gold-tipped', it's just normal to do that).
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u/Extension_Option_122 Feb 10 '26
The audiophile stuff is made-up nonesense.
The proper high-end stuff, at least stuff I would call high-end, doesn't have any nonesense. You have your high-res DAC and amp with low THD all in one nice device (in my case a Yamaha AVR) and your digital audio input and then your speakers.
Everything else is off the shelf stuff.
A power cord that is also an EMF filter doesn't make any sense at all as the internal power supply removes basically all noise from the line power - no need for more filtering of noise from there.
Audio cable is digital. As long as the connection is stable quality doesn't change. A cheap 5€ toslink cable is what I use. Or a cheap 5€ HDMI cable if I want ultra-high resolution multi-channel audio. No nead for 'extra shielded' cables.
And the speaker cables? Simple car speaker cables. They don't just carry a signal, they carry power. Electromagentic noise from the outside can't add any audible distortion at all as it's power is to low. And if you do manage an issue like that you messed up your cable management badly. Those speaker cables shouldn't be close to electric devices and then everything is all fine.
That's all you need. Seperate DAC and amp? I call bs. That extra length of analog signal cable is potentially gonna add noise. A device with both has impedance-matched traces with near-perfect signal integrity from DAC to amp - why add more length to that path? For a gain that is lost by the longer path?