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Where on earth does speculation about a cable changing sound stage and tonality and technicality even come from? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by IDE_IS_LIFE@alien.top to c/headphones@hi-fi.community

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I'm thinking of leaving a FB group called Chifi audio reviews because daily there's people asking the same unfounded questions about what cables sound the most transparent, or tame treble, or increase detail etc. Sometimes it's the same thing but about DACs which I almost understand (shitty outputs can make headphones and IEMs sound thin and lean but I think that's just a matter of bad designs). Burn in is another such culprit. Do just a couple of minutes of searching online and you'll be presented with facts and reasoning telling you it's bunk.

It drives me nuts, it's like having flat earthers and scientologists everywhere in the hobby everywhere I turn. It's slowly driving me nuts, lol.

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[–] cr0ft@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Irrationality is a very human thing.

We're incredible pattern matching devices. 8 billion faces out there and all unique and we can detect the minute differences between them, even brothers who look very similar can be very distinct.

So we're fantastic at patterns. And if there are no patterns, we invent patterns.

There's also placebo, where - after we've invented the pattern - our brain is more than happy to confirm there is such a pattern. We know it's a more expensive cable, so then we know it sounds a lot better. And then our brain agrees it sounds a lot better.

Humans are just not rational and we're certainly not objective. And then someone claims cable A is better, because reasons. Person 2 hears this and is inclined to believe person 1. Boom, now two people are saying it's better.