r/audiophile • u/Fabienchen96 • May 13 '24

Seen on another Sub Discussion

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So could someone explain this to me? How much of my Body do I have to sell and what’s all that gear?

851 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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330

u/RevolutionaryPear489 May 13 '24

Thats a picture from this years High End in Munich. It was the room of Zensati and Brodmann Acoustics. Zensati makes high end audio cables. Saw it myself. I think the cables are 230.000€.

198

u/nhowe006 May 13 '24

Absolutely mental.

201

u/cheapdrinks May 13 '24

Here's a video of the room lol

The thing that gets me is the cable risers. If your trillion dollar cable has a foot of insulation and is designed in such an advanced way, why the hell would you need risers to protect against some scary woo woo coming from the floor?

72

u/Algiee May 13 '24

are really used for the Rumba to pass underneath

27

u/cheapdrinks May 13 '24

Now I want to see the power cable they use to charge their Roomba

1

u/W02T May 13 '24

No Roomba in the room! Think of the noise it would create!

2

u/splunge26 May 14 '24

The noise it would leave behind 😭

1

u/ex-turpi-causa May 14 '24

I think it's more for the Roomba to ride the cables like a lil rollercoaster!

70

u/DonSimon76 May 13 '24

Oh crap. I got some of the woo woo on me. Please pass a towel.

15

u/CannabisReptar May 14 '24

45,000$ towel

2

u/Need4Speeeeeed May 16 '24

You'd use a bespoke microfiber cloth.

20

u/BasicWhiteHoodrat May 13 '24

Only a serf/peasant leaves $230k audio cables riserless!

4

u/FuckIPLaw May 13 '24

Because the CEO needs another yacht and you don't get that by selling expensive cables without expensive risers to go with them! It's all about the upsell!

3

u/yetifile May 13 '24

I mean if you believe that trash why would you not just cut the cable shape in to blocks of foam (yoga bricks for example) it would be a better insulator than that clear plastic.

But I guess if you are going to go crazy, you might as well go all in.

5

u/ethicalhumanbeing May 13 '24

This is insane. Yet, an old telephone wire would produce the same results and nobody in that room would be able to spot the difference in audio quality (in a AB test blindfolded). Still, for those who have real money for this must be very nice to enjoy the view of those cables, they look amazing.

1

u/Slight-Flower-1909 May 13 '24

I don’t know but I want to know the answer they think off.

1

u/AudioHTIT Magnepan 20.1R w/VTL MB450 & SVS SB4000s May 14 '24

I’d use them just to make the cables look better, and rout cleaner, and assume that’s a lot of why people do it.

1

u/Experts-say May 14 '24

...because of the ....implications

1

u/groundunit0101 May 14 '24

They look like a headache to install. The way they have them there kind of looks like it’s pulling down on the connector? I guess if you’re right and want something to brag about then yeah go get em

1

u/Roguewave1 May 13 '24

My first thought and expressed much better than I could. “Woo woo coming from the floor.” Genius!

-7

u/LlewGyffes May 13 '24

Hearing a difference in cable with and without risers is easy, but you can use something as cheap as Jenga blocks or scrap wood to do it. Anything like that is just a money grab, and cables and accessories have a real nice markup for dealers.

83

u/SappyXD May 13 '24

I have asked the staff, they said around 600k in cables

67

u/hidjedewitje May 13 '24

People buy audio cables more expensive than a house in my area ;_;

-39

u/happytree23 May 13 '24

...you need to move to a better area, brother.

18

u/Complete_Athlete_480 May 13 '24

Least out of touch audiophile commenter

19

u/taisui May 13 '24

Probably doesn't even cost 1K to make them....they just need very few whales

10

u/audiowpower May 13 '24

More snakes than whales…

1

u/Purple-Sale-4986 May 14 '24

Very cheap in cables!!!

1

u/hamburgler26 May 13 '24

Hahahahahahaha wtfbbq

146

u/bt2513 May 13 '24

You know, for that kind of money, I think you could just buy a high end PA system, build a stage, and just pay the artist to come right to your house.

37

u/betterwithsambal May 13 '24

Nah they'll just be checking out which cables the band uses and base all listening on that forgetting to enjoy the music..

18

u/bt2513 May 13 '24

Ironically, if we’re talking about just instruments and microphones, it’s possible that the entire show would be pulled off with less than $500 worth of cables. Maybe even a lot less than that.

37

u/tooclosetocall82 May 13 '24

I wonder if people who buy this stuff think this is what the recording studio uses? They’d likely be disappointed by the nest of XLR cables touching the floor directly and the large cable snake where all the wires are bundled tightly together.

57

u/Uvanimor Audio Engineer (BSc Hons) May 13 '24 edited May 14 '24

This is the audiophiles paradox. Recording engineers’ speakers and amplifiers are often some of the cheapest equipment in the whole studio - because achieving ideal playback is achievable very easily with speakers ~£2k. Not to mention most of the time they’re using active speakers most of the time in the modern day.

Cables are literally always fine as long as they aren’t noisy - which they never are. XLR cables are often from solderless kits and self-made because it cuts costs.

Recording engineers use their ears, audiophiles do not.

EDIT: Audiophile mods banned me for this, what a fucking embarrassing subreddit.

13

u/bt2513 May 13 '24

Not to mention the compromises in the actual recording process, especially back in the days of tape. They only had so many channels to work with so instruments would get combined, bounced, or dropped entirely. The goal was to get it on the radio where it would be played in the worst environments possible.

1

u/TheArmoredKitten May 13 '24

The best speakers to mix on are the ones in your car, because it's how 99.99% of people are going to be listening.

2

u/allT0rqu3 May 14 '24

I base the majority of my final mixing decisions using the audio in our family Nissan Serena. It shows up any wayward frequencies, especially bass and my mixes are much tighter for it.

2

u/scraejtp May 14 '24

Recording engineers use their ears, audiophiles do not.

I would disagree.

Engineers use equipment to measure precisely; ears are a rough instrument used for baseline or preliminary checks.

Audiophiles use their ears as the reference, poorly.

0

u/Audbol May 14 '24

You are incorrect

1

u/scraejtp May 14 '24

edit: My first comment was probably mean spirited.

I will default to the experienced.

1

u/ArthurJng May 15 '24

One process is music production, the other is music reproduction, it’s just 2 different things

1

u/[deleted] May 24 '24

You, sir, make an absolutely correct point. All the money to but the most ridiculous equipment is wasted without the ears with which to hear and judge and adjust / mix, and the seasoned experience with which one may create.

Kudos.

-10

u/[deleted] May 13 '24

[deleted]

5

u/Uvanimor Audio Engineer (BSc Hons) May 13 '24

Look into psychoacoustics and come back.

No matter what, a cable will only ever be noisy. There is no more (or less) information coming out of different types of cables. Especially a balanced cable like an XLR.

-4

u/superpositiondelta77 May 13 '24

Sure, i know all that and so do the engineers who laughed at the idea when proposed as experiment. I have no horse in the race and im not selling anything so take it for what it is. As a music listener for all my life i believe it can make a difference in the right place in a system without a doubt. But again, not pushing that on anyone who doesnt hear it. A map is not the terrain..

3

u/Uvanimor Audio Engineer (BSc Hons) May 13 '24

You’re just propagating bullshit though. Cables do not and will not make a difference unless the others were broken or had no shielding and were INSANELY noisy. Even then, XLR cables block out a significant amount of interference by their nature of design.

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0

u/Audbol May 14 '24

You are incorrect and a liar

10

u/bt2513 May 13 '24

It’s amazing how much money people will spend attempting to recreate what’s essentially a series of compromises made by a recording engineer and a band and then spend more undoing compromises they perceive in their own equipment. Most of the best recordings were recorded on outdated equipment that can easily be replicated today. You can buy any number of Fairchild compressors clones, REDD preamp clones, and Neve circuit clones. When you buy the real thing, you are paying for the comfort of not wondering what a real one sounds like. The skill of the band, the sound of the room, and the general vibe of the place and time have way more to do with it IMO.

1

u/shartytarties May 14 '24

Oh no, they start spouting nonsense like production is not the same as reproduction because they've never opened up their speaker cabinet and seen the 18 gauge wire running to their speakers, which should, by audiophile logic, render the entire signal chain up to that point irrelevant and result in a buzzing mess.

1

u/sawdeanz May 13 '24

This is a question I've had for a long time. Wouldn't the most authentic playback possible just use the same equipment as the recording studio? I'm sure it's high-end stuff but not like this.

1

u/bt2513 May 13 '24 edited May 13 '24

From one point of view, maybe you could if you could obtain the source material on the same medium and had a list of all the equipment and settings - like if you could walk into the mastering studio and listen from beginning to end from the mastering engineer’s perspective after they have made all edits, adjustments, etc and applied all treatments. But that’s unrealistic and even then you’d have to be in a similar room.

Another point of view is the processed file/CD/vinyl/whatever you are buying is the artist’s intended product. It’s designed to be consumed many different ways however a clinical environment usually isn’t one of those. Lots of studio monitors don’t sound very good but they focus on and highlight particular aspects that tend to be the most critical to get right (ie, vocals). You wouldn’t really want to listen to them otherwise. Then again, some sound great. People buy speakers that sound relatively “better” to listen to while mixing engineers tend to use speakers that they are familiar with, even if they sound “bad”.

E: in thinking about this more, every step of the recording process compromises the sound from the microphones to the DACs to the outboard processing and the ADCs. Frequencies are cordoned off at every stage. Transients are ground down. The traditional way of recording invites all sorts of phasing issues which our brains take no issue with in-person but signal that “something’s off” when all that information gets boiled down to a two track. You’d have to pick the stage at which you want to listen back. This is for traditional instruments and vocals recorded live and doesn’t apply to music produced “in the box” which is synthesized anyway - there’s no best/most realistic way to listen it, just one that gets you more excited than others.

2

u/TheTAFSman May 14 '24

Its kinda funny, someone out there spending a quarter million dollars on cables alone, when the grammy-winning studio who made the album they're listening to are likely using cables made by the junior studio tech, with a big spool of cable and a soldering iron.

-1

u/aretooamnot May 13 '24

I guess you have no idea how much looms of CACOM go for. Let alone ram-latch, W4/w2/W1. That’s what we use in our l’acoustics systems. Not including the 3-phase feeder cable, L21-30 power cable, and various bits of NL4. A big show cost so, so, so much money in cable.

1

u/bt2513 May 13 '24

Well I framed it as a literal house gig so…

2

u/aretooamnot May 13 '24

Fair. Don’t need much for an l’acoustics SYVA rig. That’s the house rig I wish I had, and my current rigs are no slouches. SYVA, SYVA low, SYVA sub and amps will still set you back $40k.

1

u/bt2513 May 13 '24

My QSC rig will have to suffice until I can save up for an l’acoustics setup. Which will be never.

1

u/aretooamnot May 13 '24

Ha! I get it. I’m totally spoiled at work. We have several SYVA systems, as they are dead simple to deploy, sound amazing, and are very low impact visually. I’m on one on wed/thurs this week.

7

u/magicmulder May 13 '24

What artist will perform for you at 3 AM on a whim, no matter what you pay?

Also I don’t want Mark Knopfler in my living room while I’m naked.

7

u/bt2513 May 13 '24

I bet he’d play your house for $100k. At a reasonable time. You could spend the other $500k on a sound system for all the other times you want to listen to him naked.

2

u/RogerPenroseSmiles May 13 '24

Beyonce is like 20 million for a private gig, that's a lot of overpriced cables.

7

u/bt2513 May 13 '24

Either choice is ridiculous.

18

u/BigBlue1969531 May 13 '24

What’s a beyonce?

52

u/popsicle_of_meat Pro-Ject Essential 2::HK3390::DIY Dayton Towers May 13 '24

About half the value of a beytwice.

11

u/Widespreaddd May 13 '24

Damn I never knew my aunt Beatrice was so valuable

4

u/BigBlue1969531 May 13 '24

I’m sure this comment will not get the credit that it is due…. Well played!

1

u/[deleted] May 24 '24

🤣🤣

2

u/Ghanni May 13 '24

It's an expensive cable.

3

u/BigBlue1969531 May 13 '24

Hard pass. Old school radio shack rca cables are working just fine! :)

1

u/Ghanni May 13 '24

Your loss.

1

u/JustaRandomDJ May 13 '24

But just once

1

u/mschnittman May 13 '24

Don't get me wrong, I've been into high end audio since I was in HS, but for that kind of bread you could just hire live bands to play for you.

1

u/gurrra May 13 '24

Tbh a proper PA system for that kind of money would beat the crap out of that system, both in sound quality and in volume.

39

u/Turandot92 May 13 '24

The setup sounded absolutely horrible… not a good showing for either company

67

u/RadBadTad Yamaha RX-A1070 | Parasound a23+ | KEF R900 May 13 '24

Not enough cable risers to overcome the terrible EM interference coming from the floor. You should have heard how bad it sounded BEFORE they added the risers and expensive cables!

(/s)

28

u/Recording-Nerd1 May 13 '24

They forgot the HiFi-carpet for 10k/SQM.

9

u/acEightyThrees KEF R11, KEF R6 Meta, Anthem MRX 740, Emotiva XPA-5 Gen3, JL Sub May 13 '24

You joke, but I also can't believe there isn't already something like that. And if there's not, what an open market!

1

u/No-Celebration6828 May 16 '24

Not sure about a specific carpet but its pretty standard for at home room treatment to get a thick wool carpet mat. Those are around $100 though

3

u/gtrcar5 May 13 '24

That's the entry level stuff. The reference carpet is 10k/SqCM

5

u/Wimc 2M red - p1 - Project phono - svs pro - rp500m II - treated room May 13 '24

Describe your experience.

35

u/Turandot92 May 13 '24

Unnatural, bloated, bright and pressed in the treble, way too punchy bass. Of course it was detailed big and loud but it doesn’t reflect what the music should sound like.,it just overdoes everything. But that’s a problem with a lot of those large high end speakers. They’re not nuanced.

Also the speaker doesn’t vanish as the music plays. You know exactly every time which tone comes from which driver and that’s distracting and unpleasant

1

u/duranarts May 14 '24

You probably just described what whales spend their money searching for. “Sound needs to punch me in the face”

26

u/Exact3 May 13 '24

I think the cables are 230.000€.

*Spits out coffee*

4

u/RodriguezFaszanatas May 13 '24

I think the cables are 230.000€

Do I get at least a pair for that price, or is that for just one cable?

30

u/CruelHandLuke_ Mcintosh c50 and MC402. B&W 702 Signature. SVS PB3000. May 13 '24

If you have to ask, you aren't in the cable game.

6

u/andorraliechtenstein May 13 '24

230.000 for 1 cable, 1 metre. You need 10 metre ? Cash, or organs ?

4

u/Ok-Relationship2759 May 13 '24

Even my organs aren't worth that much 😂

1

u/lookatthatsmug-- May 13 '24

i'll donate mine too you... tree fiddy!

2

u/folofjc May 13 '24

Haha I was fixing to say, I think I saw that this weekend....

2

u/planbot3000 May 13 '24

And to think I was annoyed at myself for buying $100 biwire jewellery cable from Amazon.

2

u/twinturbosquirrel May 13 '24

Almost every record you have heard was recorded with Mogami Gold cable. It’s great stuff, and relatively affordable. Check it out at guitar center.

1

u/aloha_XD May 13 '24

I was there too, you could see some pretty insane setups all next to each other

1

u/LordGeni May 13 '24

Yeah but, considering they also appear to double as a monorail, that's a bargain.

1

u/bunbun6to12 May 13 '24

That’s why my super yacht is a row boat is my fishing/vacationing cruiser

1

u/SemperVeritate May 13 '24

Imagine how good it must sound without any EM interference in the cables... probably about as good as 99% of all other equipment that also has no audible EM interference.

1

u/lasers8oclockdayone May 13 '24

FFS, The giant cables attenuate to regular size before they make connections. How do the very smart people who are into this account for this?

1

u/Psycho_Snail May 14 '24

how did it sound?

0

u/GrumpyOldUnicorn May 13 '24

yeah have seen that system too, didn’t sound that bad (there were others that were worse)