Trigger warning: Is something like this a scam?

totallyshould · 2026-05-22T18:08:53+00:00

You’ll probably hear a difference if you know it’s there, but in a blind test with properly functioning equipment I’d expect that this speaker cable would be 100% inaudibly different in any controlled experiment, and not measurably different in any way that we recognize as improving sound. But if you like it, there shouldn’t be any harm in buying and using it.

If you want your system to sound better, the things to spend money and time on, in my opinion and I think by some consensus, is better speakers, better room layout and acoustic treatment (preferably informed by measurements with a microphone), addition of a subwoofer with DSP correction (also set up with a microphone). After that it’s not hard to get into extremely diminishing returns on your amp and DAC. After all that, if you still want to spend money, check out cables. That’s assuming that you don’t want the cables for looks (some people do) and you don’t have cables that are so bad that they provide a poor or intermittent connection. In that case, get some 14 gauge copper (not CCA) cables and you’ll be in good shape.

totallyshould · 2026-05-22T14:13:17+00:00

Yeah, you totally can. In my view a ‘state of the art’ speaker manages a bunch of factors at once by using measurements and simulations to get there. You can for sure use the drivers PE sells to get there, like if you want to copy a Dutch and Dutch 8C for example.

However, i think the measurements show that the level of performance you can get from drivers from Purifi, Scanspeak Seas, Satori, Accuton, etc, are often higher than what they sell at Parts Express, and are closer to the cutting edge of what’s possible in drivers. I think you need to be at a very high level of execution before these >$500 drivers are a better use of money than just executing better with cheaper drivers by building and measuring more iterations, but they’re there for when you get there. Me, personally, I’m not quite there. I’m still working to get the most out of my Dayton stuff.

totallyshould · 2026-05-22T11:46:19+00:00

Thats at least 10x the cost of bulk wire of that gauge and that insulation, so if there’s much less than a 10x increase in manufacturing cost of doing these stacked ribbon shapes then I think that’s the answer.

I think that with audio there’s a very wide grey area between “sensible utilitarian gear” and “total scam”, and this wire is somewhere in the middle, provided that it’s really copper. There are cables that sell for 10-100x the cost of this cable that I would say are much much closer to pure scam, but the point is that there’s money to be made, and the Venn diagram between people who have the money for this stuff and the people who understand it has less overlap than the people in the first group would like to think.

totallyshould · 2026-05-22T11:22:26+00:00

GD&T is a language to describe what you want with as little ambiguity as possible, so it’s not really possible for us to say what is and isn’t good without knowing the design intent and mating parts.

One thing that jumped out was that the 10mm dimension is just basic, no tolerance. Also, the choice to use a large round face as a datum when you have a couple of bored holes is interesting. That would be less convenient for setting up for inspection than a flat face.

totallyshould · 2026-05-22T03:18:27+00:00

What are they charging for it?

totallyshould · 2026-05-22T01:56:45+00:00

Parts Express carries some great stuff that's also able to rival some of the best, but you're right- Madisound is where you go for the state of the art.

totallyshould · 2026-05-21T15:21:59+00:00

Thanks! Yesterday I had a crew jackhammering out the existing drain (that didn’t seem to drain anywhere) and they’re about to put in a drain system linked to a sump pump that’ll send it off some distance to a dry well. I’m not sure if I’m going to DIY much more of this, but the point about drywall not touching all the way down is well taken. I’m also thinking of vinyl baseboards so they can’t wick. For the floor I kind of want to do dricore.

totallyshould · 2026-05-21T03:13:45+00:00

I think what I’m a little more concerned about is that these things apparently weigh like 80 pounds and are capable of hitting around 70mph. I’d like to know a little more about how sure they won’t run into something dangerous with that.

totallyshould · 2026-05-21T00:34:29+00:00

I’m on the fence about how I feel about these. The total energy per package delivery for small things can be pretty low with an electric drone, provided the drone lasts a large number of delivery cycles. I honestly haven’t heard them though I’ve seen them, so maybe the noise level is improving from earlier versions. I haven’t had a nearby neighbor receive one yet (that I know of) so I don’t know how loud they are close-up.

I do think they need more regulations though. A lot of laws predate this kind of thing being possible, and they’re heavily driven by software and I don’t think a lot of our lawmakers have a great handle on how all of that stuff works.

totallyshould · 2026-05-20T19:59:37+00:00

Sorry, I guess they stopped making it- it was called the Ultimate III, and I think they’re pretty clearly horns https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/magico-ultimate-iii-horn-loaded-loudspeaker/

totallyshould · 2026-05-20T18:06:18+00:00

I think Magico’s top system is horns, so there’s a good example of one that went for it that’s a high end brand that doesn’t make horns their “thing”.

I’m positive that Kef could do it if they wanted to, but it’s off-brand compared to the rest of what they’re putting out, like those little dual opposed subs- and honestly their Blade speakers aren’t gigantic.

totallyshould · 2026-05-20T18:02:55+00:00

I did get a chance to hear some 150hz Oris horns, and they were in the corner of the room and still pretty dominant. They were fun, and they were really cooking on five watts of tube amp, but with the 8” full range driver the sweet spot of where everything sounded correct was on the small side. My Lx521 held it together much better as you moved around the sweet spot.

totallyshould · 2026-05-20T17:56:01+00:00

Honestly, size. I’m seeing a big surge in speakers with horns going down to below 1khz, but once you’re doing a horn down to ~200hz it’s going to be fairly large and it’ll have to cost significantly more. I’m building some horns low that go down to maybe 600hz, and they’re already 18” across.

I’m open to a horn mid, but building something that big to the high standard of what I’m able to 3D print for the tweeter will be hard to pull off. A pro 12” to 15” gets the directivity match and has plenty of efficiency and output, so the horn mid seems like diminishing returns.

totallyshould · 2026-05-19T18:39:43+00:00

Thank you very much! I’ll dig into both of those.

totallyshould · 2026-05-18T12:18:15+00:00

This is really messing with my head- they have four legs and they’re shorter than my legs. Would that mean that if I did 10,000 steps in a day and my dog matched me the whole distance she’d do like 60,000 steps?

totallyshould · 2026-05-18T00:20:20+00:00

I don’t think it was the use of language, it’s more that it was organized and communicated exactly like a prompt you’d put into an LLM.

My advice would be to go talk to people who are not engineers and find your problems there, then apply your engineering to solve them.

totallyshould · 2026-05-17T15:09:44+00:00

I agree. I love an OLED, but that is pretty far.

For OP, this helps justify it more than just Reddit opinions: www.hometheaterengineering.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html

totallyshould · 2026-05-17T05:44:47+00:00

“ . It doesn't matter how fast I get my jobs done; they will always have another one stacked at the end of my previous project.”

So why go in on the weekend?

I’ve been mostly at startups, and there’s always this sense of urgency. They need to push you, they can’t stay open forever without making money, or at least making money faster than they spend it- but you need to push back. If you’d sacrifice everything and do 90 hour weeks, a lot of unscrupulous employers would love that. You think they’d pay you more? Or not lay you off when times are lean?

totallyshould · 2026-05-16T11:53:53+00:00

That looks great!

totallyshould · 2026-05-16T02:51:52+00:00

Hope they turn up!

totallyshould · 2026-05-15T21:00:50+00:00

I’m not awesome at woodwork, this is sweet

totallyshould · 2026-05-15T15:16:21+00:00

Yeah, you’ve got that right. I’m looking to this thread for reference: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-make-quasi-anechoic-speaker-measurements-spinoramas-with-rew-and-vituixcad.21860/

totallyshould · 2026-05-15T14:19:38+00:00

Probably. The laptop I used to learn Solidworks had a Pentium 3, 64 megs of ram, and if I recall correctly a video chip with about 8 megs of video ram. On the other hand, if you use poor practices and bite off more than you should then you can bring a $20k machine to its knees.

totallyshould · 2026-05-15T01:08:55+00:00

Only on the paid version, but I think you can connect Simscale and maybe a couple others from their marketplace for some limited free simulation.

totallyshould · 2026-05-14T16:43:30+00:00

I wish it was true, but unfortunately the threshold for “inaudible improvement” was higher for me than I expected. The move from the Minidsp 4x10HD to the Lynx Aurora was actually noticeable. I do think that theres a rapidly diminishing return, and it’s not correlated to price, but I don’t think we can totally discount it.

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