Hi-fi cable nonsense

[berry120]

In a thread a while back I went off on a bit of a rant about how hi-fi shops often flog ridiculously priced cables, "converters" and other devices for hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds that are in reality no different in the slightest from their 99p equivalent. The idea of course is to back up these claims with impressive sounding figures on distortion, EMF and the like - however 99% of the time it's complete nonsense.

I brought this up because I found a concrete case in the UK of the ASA completely shooting down a guy on one particular case of it:

http://www.asa.org.uk/Complaints-an...uss-Andrews-Accessories-Ltd/TF_ADJ_44177.aspx

...so if you see any similar claims - stay clear! Some of us might see through the blatant sales talk as being complete crap to start with. Unfortunately many people don't, splash out hundreds on a power cable then proclaim to everyone else that it makes a huge difference (you'd look a bit of an idiot otherwise wouldn't you?!) It's a bit of a vicious cycle.

Personally I would've liked to see the above guy prohibited from owning a business rather than just being told not to do it again - it'd make more of an example and hopefully help to stop such behaviour in future. But at least the point has been made.

Of course the bigger lesson here is if a sales pitch makes a scientific claim you don't understand, CHECK it before believing it.

 

[Cabbs]

Marketing with terms that most people don't understand is a way to sell products.

 

[David Lindon]

If anyone understands signal theory, you don't need an expensive digital cable to run like 1 meter from your cable box to your tv etc. An analogue signal yes, but digital is much more reliable so don't waste your money

 

[foothead]

It's a matter of marketing over true functionality. They have ridiculously deceptive claims on the back of most of the boxes. I have seen quite a few times when they will say their special HDMI cable featuring (list features here) is designed to produce a better signal quality than 'conventional high definition video cables'

Two things poked out to me right there. The first was the word 'designed.' That does not indicate that they actually perform better in real world tests, just that the intent when designing them was that. The second, and most blatant IMO is mention of 'traditional/standard/typical/etc. HD video cables.' It doesn't specify what type of cables, so you bet that is talking about unsheilded analog cables, not standard HDMI cables like most people are led to believe. Also the placement of the feature list helps to deceive people into thinking they are comparing to a similar cable, just without the listed features.

Then they put standard specs and a diagram designed to make it appear extremely complicated, with nonsense names for things that are labeled.

Put all this together and it is capable of deceiving 99% of people who aren't educated on the subject.

I notice deceptive wording in pretty much every advertisement/product package I read. It's a big part of selling a product nowadays.

 

[01001010]

Just go with MonoPrice.com or Blue Jeans Cable.

'nuff said.