(06-Oct-2014, 18:18)IanG-UK Wrote: Cable influence, especially in the digital arena, remains a contentious issue even within the relative calmness of the DevialetChat forum.
What I continue to find unbelievable is the justification for charging astronomic prices at the "top end". And the multipliers which seem to apply.
For example, with many of us using 5m lengths for router to Devialet connection, the OP's Audioquest Diamond costs around £3,000 which is 55 times the price of Audioquest's base Pearl offering at £55, that in turn 10 times the price of stock CAT6 cable.
By comparison, looking at "real" hardware, the Devialet 800 at £21,000 is around 20 times the price of a base offering for pre/power/phono/dac/wifi from Arcam, being the FMJ A19 and the Airdac. I'm content that each of those probably retail at around ten times the component and manufacturing cost, but in the case of the Diamond I bet that multiplier is one hundred or more.
At the forthcoming Devialet Guildford event it would be interesting to get the Devialet guys to comment on ethernet properties from a technical viewpoint and get the Guildford guys to run some blind tests to see if differences are readily discerned.
Hello
I completely agree with you but you cannot force people/high-end journalist to do blind tests.... and make them stop "dreaming" too.
When I am reading all those posts I am impressed by many people spending not only money but lots of time tweaking/testing different parts (not only cables but also batteries, hardware/software, file format, hard disk, rack…) to fine-tune their system. And their technical knowledge is pretty high too. But for those people it is a real pleasure not only to listen music but also to test/tweak and constantly add/remove a piece in their system to improve it. Whether the improvement is only a perception or a reality is another question, but the passion to test/tweak/improve is a reality. At least this is how I feel about many posts I can read… and I am very happy to read them and learn from their experiences. There is obviously a lot of subjectivity in what people think but again some people have earing capabilities/musical education different/better than other so this is why we have a forum to talk about it.
With Devialet as a one box system, there are less tweaks to do since there is theoretically nothing to add except the speakers and one cable from the computer (USB) or the router (Lan cable) to listen music (recommended by Devialet). At least this is how I use my Devialet (I wish the Wifi would be flawless... and no cable would be necessary).
But still I wish there would be more blind tests listening sessions too….
Regards
philoouu
