this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Don't get it twisted now
There really IS a perceivable difference. When given the right hardware and audio, it is a whole nother world when it comes to clarity, definition, and everything in between.
However, it doesn't have to be nearly this expensive. I don't see any real reason for a lot of it to be the price it is just because it has "quality components"
Don't get me wrong, with analog, the quality of the components are far more important than digital, but it is a logarithmic curve. You can only improve so much before the gains become diminished.
Just to be clear- it very well might be mind blowingly good I’m not passing judgement, I’m just saying that bilking “audiophiles” out of dollars for silly stuff happens every day. Gold plated hdmi cables filled with argon? Come on.
Having not used one of these walkmen yet I can’t say, I was just mentioning that the article had all the buzzwords of a $1000 1 foot gold Ethernet cable, that’s all!
You have a point with HDMI because that's a digital cable.
Ethernet is also a digital cable.
Cable quality when it comes to digital doesn't matter, but with analog it is far more sensitive to the quality of the materials used.
The walkmans are fine, I actually have an NW-A306 ($350). To be 100% clear, the other walkmans are PRETTY MUCH the same, you are mostly paying for a better build than anything. It's a quality device but it isn't like you really need anything better.
Your money is better spent on speakers or headphones over anything else. You can have the fastest car in the world but it doesn't mean anything if you don't have tires that can handle it.
Yeah excellent points! I also dont have any problem with buying quality because you like quality- that’s a perfectly valid reason. It grinds my gears when companies make up stuff to trick people into thinking something is quality when it’s just marketing buzz and bs. Like plastic sunglasses for $300.
The Walkman looks sexy as hell, and I’d be all over it if that was my thing!
It DOES look pretty sexy, but honestly the vanity of it isn't even my concern. For the specs it has, $350 is pretty reasonable. My biggest thing about it is the ability to drive higher resistance headphones and also having a separate device to listen to music on!
Sony is definitely one of those brands that has hype from brand name, but the NW-A306 is definitely a good value for the buy. That being said however, a smartphone with an external DAC would suit most people's needs perfectly fine.
A digital cable that meets spec can't be made better by gold plating or other bling. But a sub spec cable or a cable with some aspect degraded by damage or wear or contamination will introduce errors that will force the system to use whatever error correction is built in(such as with tcpip) that will hinder data speed. So, you can have a digital cable that works slower than spec but still "works". Especially when you are running any sort of significant distance or there is noise such as fromn ac power.
My point is that even with digital connections a better cable can make a difference. Just on the low end not the high end.
Oh yes most definitely. Thank you for clarifying and I 100% agree with that. I have had to deal with that first hand as I work as a network administrator and have had cheap "Cat6" cabling come and be wired right, but used aluminum which not only hindered the speeds but actually made the cable run HOT (probably fine in air but a fire hazard in a wall, this was plenum too).
Bad cable quality is for sure going to hinder performance, but yes, a $1000 gold HDMI cable (scam to begin with because gold wiring isn't even that expensive) is silly. Funny because that cable is actually worse than standard HDMI cables now because of the current spec (think that $1000 cable was like 1.4 or something)
A very informative video on Linus tech tips where they ran a cable tester on lots of different cables. Super interesting.
I always tell people to get the full solid copper core cat6, no stranded, no copper clad.
At least for the important projects.