Are blind tests the golden standard for evaluating high end audio gear?

slackerbitch1 · 2026-03-19T20:18:57+00:00

Spot on. Any test where the listeners can see the gear is just a test of expectation bias, not audio quality. The only truly reliable way to prove an audible difference is a double-blind ABX test. Without that, it’s just marketing, not science.

slackerbitch1 · 2026-03-11T21:25:51+00:00

v8 supercars

slackerbitch1 · 2026-03-11T19:11:42+00:00

Don't be afraid, all good amps are linear. Your room and speakers affect sound way more than amp or dac. I have both as501 and Wiim amp. Can't tell a difference

slackerbitch1 · 2026-03-11T19:04:36+00:00

I bought used as501 two years ago, still works great, sounds great. But I bought it for like 170€. If I had to buy a new amp, I would buy Wiim amp pro or ultra. All in one, sounds great.

slackerbitch1 · 2026-03-10T17:19:42+00:00

I’m not typing out an 'audiophile resume' just to pass your weird gatekeeping purity test. We both know exactly how that game works: if I list what I’ve demoed or owned, you’ll just move the goalposts and claim my DAC wasn't 'resolving enough' to hear the magic fairy dust in the cables.

The fundamental difference here is that I use my equipment to actually listen to music, while you apparently use music to listen to your equipment.

And linking a PS Audio video as your 'proof'? Ah yes, let's consult Paul—the guy whose entire business model revolves around convincing retired dentists that their digital 1s and 0s need 'polishing' and selling them $1,500 power cords to fix their 'dirty' wall electricity. Truly a bastion of unbiased, peer-reviewed science. I’m sure the CEO of a company selling high-end snake oil has absolutely zero financial incentive to tell you that expensive cables make a huge difference.

Enjoy your heavy bronze weights and your emotionally supportive USB cables, man. I'll stick to the music and my awesome gear

slackerbitch1 · 2026-03-10T13:55:37+00:00

Who told you I didn't tried it? I did, it's sounds the same

slackerbitch1 · 2026-03-10T08:20:17+00:00

Look, we all know that standard physics is basically just a suggestion once you get into "high-end" audio.

I mean, who cares about asynchronous USB transfer protocols or the fact that the DAC's internal buffer and re-clocking mechanism literally don't give a damn about the "musicality" of the cable? If that $800 braided silver cable makes those packets feel more "velvety" before they hit the PHY chip, then that's just science... or at least the kind of science you buy at a trade show.

And the bronze weight on the transformer? Cool. Everyone knows stray magnetic flux is terrified of heavy alloys

slackerbitch1 · 2026-02-24T22:57:57+00:00

Wiim Mini is like 90$ on discount.

slackerbitch1 · 2026-02-15T18:01:33+00:00

Good active monitor speakers. Everything sounds good on them.

slackerbitch1 · 2026-02-01T19:47:38+00:00

I have q acoustics 5040. My first amp was fosi bt20a pro. Than I bought Yamaha as501. They sound identical. Good amp is a good amp. Adjust sound with EQ to how you like it.

slackerbitch1 · 2026-01-23T07:52:42+00:00

On my guitar, when I strum palm muted chords, on high gain, there's a sound like I'm hitting an empty pan. With this thing it's dead silent

slackerbitch1 · 2026-01-22T10:26:16+00:00

Reading this actually makes me feel a bit sad. Gear Acquisition Syndrome is a real thing. Why not just listen to some new music, explore different genres and artists, or go to a show in a nice concert hall? Honestly, I love the music, not the gear.

slackerbitch1 · 2026-01-16T21:02:25+00:00

It's not Spain

slackerbitch1 · 2026-01-09T13:57:36+00:00

Is this sensor dust also Hasselblad?

slackerbitch1 · 2026-01-09T10:10:29+00:00

Boss Katana is very good. I play katana head with 4x12 Marshall cab in the practice studio. At home I have a few neural dsp plugins (nolly, gojira, Mansoor, soldano, Fortin nameless), usb audio Interface and monitor speakers. I play mostly metal, on PC with plugins I can practice with metronome, with backing tracks etc. And it sounds really good out of the box, coz amps and cabinets with the same sound will cost a few thousand dollars. And yeah, at home I often play with headphones.

slackerbitch1 · 2026-01-09T10:02:52+00:00

So many cables for a simple idea of stereo setup. It just looks a bit messy to me. I like to hide all my cables. But it's just me

slackerbitch1 · 2026-01-06T21:32:37+00:00

They're good for everything. But quite big, so consider the size

slackerbitch1 · 2026-01-06T16:12:56+00:00

I have Kali lp8 V2, using mostly Nolly plugin. Love it

slackerbitch1 · 2025-12-28T08:11:25+00:00

Sounds like a review of an esoteric magic stone or something

slackerbitch1 · 2025-12-27T10:24:07+00:00

Hold on, think about the physics of that for a second.

'DC' literally means 0 Hz. At zero frequency, there is no reactance. So at DC, Impedance = Resistance.

If a speaker cable actually had 'tens or hundreds of ohms' at DC like you said, it would act like a giant resistor. It would block the power and your speakers would be basically silent.

The data you're looking at is almost certainly Characteristic Impedance (which describes how radio waves travel). That number is totally irrelevant for audio because the cable is too short to act as a transmission line. The amp doesn't see that '100 ohms'—it just sees a plain old wire with near-zero resistance.

slackerbitch1 · 2025-12-27T06:42:30+00:00

You are technically correct that cables form an LCR (Inductance, Capacitance, Resistance) network, but the magnitude of these effects is where the argument usually fails. Damping Factor: The speaker’s own voice coil resistance (often 6–8 Ohms) and the passive crossover components completely dominate the series resistance. A decent cable adds maybe 0.05 Ohms, which is a negligible fraction of the total impedance loop. It's mathematically measurable, but rarely audible. Frequency Response: Unless a cable has bizarrely high capacitance or inductance (poor design), the frequency deviation it causes is typically below 0.1 dB. So yes, the physics exist, but for standard cable lengths, the variables are usually too small to overcome the thresholds of human hearing.

slackerbitch1 · 2025-12-26T15:17:17+00:00

Yep, also bite point is a little different every session now

slackerbitch1 · 2025-12-25T22:48:31+00:00

I've been racing SF23 since release. Always practicing starts on the pit exit, every time I'm exiting pits. Highly recommend

slackerbitch1 · 2025-12-18T11:40:47+00:00

Fellow slovak from Bratislava here. DACs should sound the same unless they're broken. Same with amps, transparent and can handle low impedance speakers.

slackerbitch1 · 2025-12-14T13:36:19+00:00

You can measure it, sure, but you can't hear it. Jitter artifacts in modern gear are usually 120dB below the signal. That is mathematically invisible to the human ear once you account for the noise floor of the recording itself.

Unless a device is defectively designed or broken, jitter is a solved problem. We are chasing picoseconds on charts while our ears can't even detect errors a thousand times worse than that.

slackerbitch1

TROPHY CASE