this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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Twelve audiophiles around the world just had seizures
They wouldn't hear any difference whatsoever: https://www.tomshardware.com/speakers/in-a-blind-test-audiophiles-couldnt-tell-the-difference-between-audio-signals-sent-through-copper-wire-a-banana-or-wet-mud-the-mud-should-sound-perfectly-awful-but-it-doesnt-notes-the-experiment-creator
That's the joke. They would claim that ... I don't know.. electrons are going to fall off that copper wire or something like that.
Man, if that isn't the experience when visiting any niche online community around anything hahaha.
I mean, if it makes good contact and is not moving it is not going to affect audio quality any more than an equivalent length of extra cable would've
Once someone tried to tell me that the wrong cable impedance to the speakers affected sound. Asked him what is the wavelength at audio frequencies, conversation died.
If they were passive speakers being powered through the cables and an amplifier wouldn't the additional impedance of the cable result in a (probably imperceptible) reduction on volume? I agree it wouldn't effect the waveform, and thus, the quality of the sound though.
Resistance can reduce the volume. E.g. if your wires are too thin for the current you want to send over them. The guy was talking about impedance.
Impedence is the combination of resistance (ordinary resistance to current) and reactance which is resistance specific to alternating current which comes from the capacitors and coils in the equipment. Even a squiggly circuit trace can create reactance. So, impedence is resistance.
Whatch this short for a clear explanation:
https://youtube.com/shorts/tanon58nW1o
From what I've read, and from talking to a guy who own a music studio near me, impedance mismatch is a real thing in audio equipment. At best, it'll lower the sound level causing you to have to crank up the volume, which just puts more strain on your equipment. Worse, it can cause crackling from waveform peaking. At the very worst, it can damage equipment.
Brushing it off just because the guy doesn't know the wavelength of audio signals is a dick move. No wonder he stopped talking to you. I bet you, yourself, know a lot of things, a lot of true things, that you can't explain to the utmost detail.
"You say quarks are combined with the strong force to make protons, huh? Well, what's the binding force between an up and down quark? Oh, you don't know? Curious."
Impedance mismatch between two pieces of equipment (amplifier and speaker, in this case) is a thing, and depending on how the amplifier is built can be a problem. But for the piece of wire connecting them to behave like a transmission line it needs to be a significant fraction of the wavelength of the signal, which at audio frequency is quite a lot, so unless you have your amplifier on the other side of town it is totally irrelevant. The guy was blabbing nonsense. We didn't talk about quarks.
There’s a dozen of us! Exactly a dozen!
Hey, at least it's copper instead of aluminum.