this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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Essential oils. Homeopathy. Chiropractic. Reiki. Juice cleanses. Perineum sunning. Internet accelerator software. Iridology. Faith healing. Organic food. Oil pulling. Gold plated digital audio cables.
It’s worth noting that gold plated connectors are not snake oil. Gold is a good conductor and doesn’t form a nonconductive oxide layer. That means it’s going to be more durable and won’t corrode together or apart like those old ass sheet metal tube sockets that all need to be cleaned.
I think you replied to the wrong comment.
Everything marketed audiophiles, not only gold plated cables, but also anything that uses vacuum tubes because "they sound better"
There’s a LOT of snake oil in the audio world. Especially home theater and home studio setups. I’m a professional audio technician, and some of the “audiophile” setups I have seen are just outright asinine.
Use balanced signal for runs over ~3 feet. Use the cheapest star-quad cable you can get, and the most basic $4 Neutrik connectors. Why? Because that album you’re using to test your “hi-fi” sound system was recorded using exactly that: Cheap ¢30/foot cable and basic Neutrik connectors.
It’s also what concert setups use. You think a concert with six combined miles of cabling is going to be paying $2000 per cable? Fuck no, they’re using the cheap shit (which was hand soldered in bulk at the warehouse workbench by their lowest paid shop tech), to run that million dollar audio system. Their money goes to the speakers, amps, and mixer; Not gold plated wire, robotic soldering, or triple insulated jackets. In double-blind tests, audiophiles can’t hear the difference between a $500 cable and a couple of plasti-dipped coat hangers twisted together.
The people who complain about digital audio also can’t tell the difference in double-blind tests. Because modern audio hardware is able to perfectly emulate old analog gear. Google the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem for a breakdown of how we can perfectly capture and recreate analog audio with digital equipment. Vacuum tubes were groundbreaking when they were first used. But they had a lot of issues, and have very little relevance in today’s systems. They’re prone to burning out, notoriously fragile, and can be emulated perfectly.
The Norquist-Shannon rate sampling theorem only asserts that for a given maximum frequency, you only need another other given maximum frequency of sampling to represent it.
It does not say you can “perfectly” reproduce a signal. Only that you can reproduce all fourier components of the signal that are below half your sampling rate in frequency. It perfectly does that, yes.
But the signals that only contain a finite number of frequencies all below a certain maximum frequency are abstractions used in signal theory classes for teaching that theorem, and in engineering to hit a “good enough” target, not a “perfect” target.
Any frequencies bouncing around the room at over 22 kHz are lost at least to something using the 44 kHz sampling format.
TL;DR: Norquist-Shannon lets you completely reproduce signals with finite information in them. But real life sound doesn’t have finite information in it.
It's Nyquist–Shannon. Norquist is taxes.
Also frequencies greater than half the sampling rate aren't lost they fold into lower frequencies unless filtered out.
But if you think it's easiser to capture those room acoustics with analog equipment the non linear amplification and distortion of any analog system is going to change the sound just add much if not more then a good digital system.
So yeah both lose or distort the signal but digital does it in avery predictable way that can be accounted for and it does have a frequency region that it captures precisely. Analog doesn't.
Nyquist, thank you.
If by “fold into” you mean they add noise to and hence distort the readings on the lower frequencies, that’s correct. But that just takes it further from a perfect reproduction.
Frequency folding is the term used in DSP no need for quotes. The Nyquist frequency is commonly referred to as the folding frequency.
And yes frequencies above the Nyquist folding frequency alias into lower frequencies. A simple low pass filter prevents this however.
Properly filtered digital sampling produced a more accurate reproduction of the frequency range with less distortion then an analog signal.
I don’t disagree that there’s noise in analog signals too, limiting their information capacity. But that’s coming from the limitations of our physical implementations’ quality, no?
Also I used quotes to refer to your words, not to throw shade at a term’s validity. I use quote marks to quote.
Doesn’t mean the same thing as just randomly surrounding it with quotes in normal use means.
I was buying a toslink cable recently and I shit you not, there was a gold plated optical cable...
Fucking Toslink: one round optical fiber in the middle, but it plugs in in only one position out of four, and you can't feel which way the female connector is. EU should fine the assholes responsible.
Doesn‘t that defeat the entire purpose of Toslink cables ? The light can‘t go through gold?
The connector was gold plated. Not a golden wire.
I 100% believe you.
I agree, but with one caveat.
Fully analog tube amps do definitely produce a warmer/richer sound with less complicated things to go wrong. Artists like them because they are reliable, generally user serviceable, (usually just need to replace bad/old tubes) and makes each recording sound relatively unique.
The thing is, is that it really only works during production. Unless being cut direct to a master record, the sound will get saved in a digital format to produce the user-facing media, which can include digital-source vinyls.
Those products marketed to audiophiles try to take the digitally recorded/archived products to "try" making it sound like the original.
I remember buying some bits and pieces to setup my home theatre in a new house years ago, and the guy at the store tried to sell me a $100 TOSLINK cable. When I asked why a $12 cable was going for so much, he pointed out that it was the "premium" cable, to ensure the highest quality audio.
I couldn't stop laughing. Like their special cable scrubbed the photons before sending them or something.
Yes. I have a love-hate relationship with those people, as someone that does unrelated analog electrical stuff. On the one hand, it's kinda cool that somebody made these crazy parts (and found someone dumb enough to pay for it). On the other, no that's not what my search was about.
The Guys podcast has a pretty fun episode about this.
I'm sorry WHAT
I've not heard of this but I assume it's irradiating your taint/barse/grundle with sunlight. Although for what purpose is beyond me.
Edit: Wikipedia link
Isn't showing the sun your grundle purpose enough?
Fair enough.
Oil pulling, if you're also OOTL. Swishing fancy oil around your mouth.
One of my co-workers went for that whole hog. I remember him telling me there was no need to brush any more - just swirl oil around your mouth for ten minutes. I don't know if it works, but brushing only takes two minutes...
Well, there’s nothing wrong with using coconut oil for gum health. Some people even use it as a mouthwash because it was some antibacterial properties. It doesn’t replace the need for brushing your goddamn teeth, that’s an insane thing to think. But there is actually benefits to coconut oil for sensitive teeth (along with a change in diet), antibacterial properties, as well as the normal benefits of consuming coconut oil. It’s not all complete hogwash.
Oof ouch my enamel.
How do you bundle up organic food with the rest of that ?
At best, organic food offers the same nutritional value as non organic food. At worst, it’s less nutritious and more expensive.
meh. nutritional value is about the same, yeah, but that's not the point of organic food. people who claim that eating an all organic diet makes you better are yahoos.
The point of organic farming is that it is just all-around better for the planet, the soil, the organisms therein and less polluting.
The only real issue I see with organic food is that it excludes GMOs
GMOs are an issue for nations' food sovereignty, but organic food modt importantly means no phytosanitary products (such as the infamous roundup), which persist in the plants and cause all sorts of cancers
Organic food is devinetively not snake oil. As you mentioned,Nutrition wise its exactly the same. However, the Environmental Impact is completely different. Organic farming is much better in terms of biodiversity, soil health. Since organic farming doesn't include the use of pesticides it doesn't kills everything else that would live on a field. Also, Theres always parts of the pesticides that stay in the crops and that you eat. I don't know exactly how bad they are, but considering that(at least in Germany) Parkinson is an accepted work related illness for farmers its sure that they aren't entirely safe for humans. However, we should take into consideration, that farmers get exposed to much higher doses of pesticides. If someone has some articles regarding this topic feel free to share.
This is going to be different country to country, but organic farming can still use pesticides. I posted a link below as well, but organic farming is also not conclusively better for the environment. It has lower yields, and therefore requires more land. You have to balance the effects of converting more land into organic farmland versus the benefit of, for example, less fertilizer runoff.
At the end of the day, "organic" is a marketing term, not a statement of health or ecological benefit. Most complaints about conventional agriculture (and GMOs) are actually complaints about industrialized agriculture as a whole.
I wish there was a good, regulated term for food that was produced with the best known processes (and perhaps there is for specific foods), but "organic" is not it.
That's not modern day snakeoil, most of that stuff is old fashioned snake oil that has persisted to this day.