Cryogenically frozen plugs, hundred quid HDMI cables and now...

weegie.geek

An "Audiophile SATA cable".

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Oi06md947_oJ:www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/%3Fp%3D2479+malcolm+steward+sata&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

He's since deleted the original blog post because people were tearing him to bits in the comments and across the web, but it's worth reading, just for the facepalmery of it all.

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/8/20/audiophile-journo-gets-kicking-over-blog-post/

http://www.malcolmsteward.co.uk/?p=2495

The guy's a moron, but it's worth reading for a giggle.

Freddie_Snowbits

Software type peoples should be treated like mushrroms.

Kept in the dark and fed on ...

googler

I'm sorry, but WHY is he a 'moron' ...???

System

I wish he'd named the auduio manufacturer. Their R&D guys sound as thick as he is. definitely a company to miss.

googler

Again, WHY?

amcluesent

Yep. I couldn't understand why my SATA cables sounded so bad...until I reversed them and a veil was lifted on the music. It seems once cables have been 'burnt in' in one direction from disk to mobo, you can't reverse this without everything sounding like 128Kbit MP3.

DVardysShadow

googler wrote: »

I'm sorry, but WHY is he a 'moron' ...???

From TFA "We'll also assume that you are aware that SATA cables carry a stream of nothing more than ones and zeroes and that, no matter how shoddy your SATA interconnects are, it is physically impossible for them to have a detrimental effect on the quality of your music. You'll either get the music as it was sampled or you'll get debug gar all."

Now do you see why he is rightly considered to be a moron?

googler

DVardysShadow wrote: »

From TFA "We'll also assume that you are aware that SATA cables carry a stream of nothing more than ones and zeroes and that, no matter how shoddy your SATA interconnects are, it is physically impossible for them to have a detrimental effect on the quality of your music. You'll either get the music as it was sampled or you'll get debug gar all."

Now do you see why he is rightly considered to be a moron?

No, still don't get why this unsupported assertion that it's 'physically impossible' for the cable to affect the sound disproves the reviewers assertion that it does (for him, at least). I don't see why this automatically tags him as being of reduced intelligence, and worthy of insult, either.

Science once held that flight was impossible. The Wright Brothers de-bunked that one.

One learned individual once said that mankind had 'discovered all that it could discover'. Boy, was he ever wrong......

Need I mention Copernicus?

If Science asserts (at the moment) that there's no physical reason for one cable to sound different from another, and a sector of mankind says "Well, we can hear a difference between Cable X and Cable Y", then there's two possibilities - one, this sector is imagining the differences, or - Science may not, at the moment, have discovered all that there is to discover in order to quantify the difference(s).

DVardysShadow

googler wrote: »

No, still don't get why this unsupported assertion that it's 'physically impossible' for the cable to affect the sound disproves the reviewers assertion that it does (for him, at least). I don't see why this automatically tags him as being of reduced intelligence, and worthy of insult, either.

Science once held that flight was impossible. The Wright Brothers de-bunked that one.

One learned individual once said that mankind had 'discovered all that it could discover'. Boy, was he ever wrong......

Need I mention Copernicus?

If Science asserts (at the moment) that there's no physical reason for one cable to sound different from another, and a sector of mankind says "Well, we can hear a difference between Cable X and Cable Y", then there's two possibilities - one, this sector is imagining the differences, or - Science may not, at the moment, have discovered all that there is to discover in order to quantify the difference(s).

Cheap Cable
Data at start of cable: 0101010101010101
Data at end of cable: 0101010101010101

Expensive Cable
Data at start of cable: 0101010101010101
Data at end of cable: 0101010101010101

Which would you buy?

Either it works perfectly or not at all. It is only when you are genuinely clueless about how it works that you can see any scope for a difference in performance between a cheap digital cable and an expensive one. Mr Steward has thrown away his reputation on this one.

S0litaire

!!!!!! wrote: »

I wish he'd named the auduio manufacturer. Their R&D guys sound as thick as he is. definitely a company to miss.

Most of his reviews (90%) are for equipment supplied from a single company.

If there was *ANY* interference in the SATA cable then your PC would not work! There'd be no readable info on your Hard Disk!

If he was talking about a speaker cable, then he might have a point.

Digital is digital, it either works or it does not!

RobTang

googler wrote: »

No, still don't get why this unsupported assertion that it's 'physically impossible' for the cable to affect the sound disproves the reviewers assertion that it does (for him, at least). I don't see why this automatically tags him as being of reduced intelligence, and worthy of insult, either.

Science once held that flight was impossible. The Wright Brothers de-bunked that one.

One learned individual once said that mankind had 'discovered all that it could discover'. Boy, was he ever wrong......

Need I mention Copernicus?

If Science asserts (at the moment) that there's no physical reason for one cable to sound different from another, and a sector of mankind says "Well, we can hear a difference between Cable X and Cable Y", then there's two possibilities - one, this sector is imagining the differences, or - Science may not, at the moment, have discovered all that there is to discover in order to quantify the difference(s).

You're being pedantic or you have no clue how digital transfer of information works.

Science has nothing to do with any asserations, the SATA specifcation is a human made standard, these isn't any guessing we wrote the rulebook. Its not like we "discovered" SATA like we "discovered" gravity.

While its not quite as simple as all or nothing while transfering digital data, for this kind of link there is enough error checking that its highly unlikey that the sata controller will let corrupt data through.

Besides you MUST know that Audiophile industry has come up with some of the craziest interconnects and accessories in the world, I do understand the need for good cabling but this comes under the class that is only designed to extract money from cusomters