Fun fact: this is where the "banana connector" came from. Before copper was discovered, early humans used bananas for all their audio connections. The name stuck, even though wires are made of metal today.
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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Additional trivia: The term "banana republic" originates from countries best known for exporting high-end audio equipment back in the day.
"banana split" stems from a failed experiment where scientists tried to split audio frequencies by sticking the connectors into ice cream and running the audio through it
And Bananarama was so named for their high-fidelity recordings which were performed, mixed, and recorded entirely on bananas.
Yup. Failed spectacularly, which is why they went for mixing boards as a backup solution instead.
TIL! It’s fucking bananas that I never knew this.
Bravo
This will now be a standard AI response. Well done.
So wait, did they send analoge or digital signals through? Because digital means you could send it through anything and as long as it gets through its the same. The cable only matters when you ARENT using digital signals.
If I read it correctly, it was analog and they found that only the signal amplitude was meaningfully changed, not the quality
Makes sense. As long as the transfer medium isn't highly capacitive or inductive, it doesn't matter as long as you compensate for the loss in signal strength.
..and now I fell into a research rabbit hole regarding mud capacitance.
EDIT: Mud is actually slightly capacitive. Source: "Static Dielectric Constant of Water and Steam", a 1980 journal article by M. Uematsu and E. U. Franck* published in Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data
well obviously, all this proves is that copper wires are just as bad as wet mud. Every audiophile knows you need gold oxygen nitrogen purified wires blessed by a voodoo witch doctor.
I've got these cables. Yes, they are expensive but they are absolutely fantasti... wait, did you say voodoo witch doctor? Mine were blessed by just a witch doctor. Have I been ripped off?
Hoodoo is 3dB better than voodoo according to my tests.
Hoodoo? You do! Do what? Remind me of the babe!
Silver is the better conductor. Even if it is priced so that peons can afford it.
Sheeeit not recently, shot up to $120/oz recently, and it's back down to ~$80/oz right now, but that's still more than ~$35/oz last year. Not that gold didn't also follow that trajectory or anything, it's still more, but GODDAMN.
Just ask an audiophile what they think about blind tests. If they argue against them you've found a snake oil salesman.
"You can't trust blind tests for audio, that's the wrong sense bro. You need double deaf studies, obvs."
But what's the point of having your newly-purchased $3000 wooden volume knob and polyatomic copper ring bus lift yet another veil from the soundstage if you're blindfolded?
HEY! I got my $3000 wooden volume knob because it’s pretty and I can’t take a blind test if it’s worth it. I need my eyes to see it!
All I want to know is just how many veils has that soundstage got‽ Here I am, just having a soundstage like a sucker, and they've got veils they can lift!
3k is obviously an exaggeration but goddamn why is woodwork so expensive?! I needed wooden set of some things that are normally made of plastic for about $100, the wood was $465 and literally only one guy on earth makes it. Fuck me!
Now if they're deaf tests on the other hand...
I'm lightly active in the headphone enthusiast space. Even in the more light-hearted circles there is still an elevated amount of placebo bullshit and stubborn belief in things that verifiably make zero difference.
It's rather fascinating in a way. I've been in and out of various hobbies over the course of my life but there is just something about audio that attracts an atmosphere of wilful ignorance and bad actors that prey on it.
I'm a musician. I swear by Beyerdynamic DT700. Fucking great headphones for like an insanely reasonable price
Awesome headphones. If you don't mind the beyer peak. My favorites are my grado rs2. But I prefer music on speakers not headphones, so much space is lost on headphones. Hear a pair of magnepans in a room and you'll be blown away. Got some original SMGa's from 1989!
Real audio enthusiasts know the room is the most important, followed by the speaker itself, followed by the actual source. Then the amp etc.
And when you record and mix music you realize how much of it is bullshit in the end. The source is all that matters, really.
I buy headphone cables based on how nice the cable feels, if it transmits noise when it rubs against stuff, and how well the connectors fit into the devices I am using.
My favorite is when people get picky about cabling for digital transfer. The ones and zeroes either get there or they don't, nothing in-between. They work or they don't.
I think the best thing to do is to assess your ability to hear difference. I can absolutely hear the difference between my Bluetooth earbuds and a decent wired IEM, so I use wired headphones for listening to music. I CANNOT hear a significant qualitative difference between the $25 Chinese IEMs that I use and more expensive options that I have tried, so I use the cheap ones.
To be sure, there ARE perceptible differences between wired headphones, but those are more a matter of EQ and personal preference. I can achieve my maximum perceivable level of quality with pretty inexpensive hardware. It doesn't mean that other people cannot, that isn't my problem.
Regarding digital, quality spdif cables absolutely matter. One tiny mistake and they crackle out and don't work. I've gone through many pairs of cheap ones until I just spend the money to never have issues again.
Now will the 1 dollar one sound the same as the 80 dolalr one? Yes. It won't last or hohld up to dust or abuse at all though.
It's a rich playground for the price-equals-value fallacy, and there are plenty of well-heeled rubes that'll fall for the technobabble.
The one time I was absolutely blown away by a pair of headphones that are not in the insano area, are the beyerdynamic dt1990. They aren't cheap by any means but not insanely expensive. When I listened to music I've listened to hundreds of times, somehow they showed me even more detail I haven't heard before. For example a Nena 99 red balloons LP, the amp was still the same as always but I couldn't believe the amount of detail there was in the background, the soundstage those headphones were creating.
I've been in the audio enthusiast community for like 17 years now. When I was fresh, the internet commentators had me thinking there was some audio heaven in the high end compared to the mid range priced gear. Now I know better and the gear community is not so high end price evangelicals like it used to be. I feel like there was a before and after the $30 Monoprice DJ headphones and the wave of headphones since. Then especially IEMs. Once ChiFi really got rolling with IEMs and amplifiers and DACs, $1000+ snake oil salespeople got to deal in a way more competitive market
Same with speakers. Internet changed everything. No more at the whim of specialty audio stores stock and Best Buys. Now you got the whole worlds amount of speaker brands at a click of a finger plus craigslist/offerup. Also again ChiFi amplifiers and DACs. Also improvements in audio codecs whether for wireless or not. Bluetooth audio was awful until it stopped being awful as standards improved
These days I mostly see the placebo audio arguments in streaming service and FLAC/lossless encode fanboys. Headphone and speaker communities these days seem a lot more self aware and steeped in self-deprecating humor over the cost, diminishing returns, placebo, snake oil they live in today compared to 17 years ago. I want my digital audio cables endpoints plated with the highest quality diamonds to preserve the zeros and ones. No lab diamonds. Must be natural providing the warmth only blood diamonds that excel in removing negative ions. I treat my room with the finest pink himalayan salt sound absorbent wall panels to deal with the most problematic materials used by homebuilders. Authentic himalayan salt has been shown to be some of the highest quality material in filtering unwanted noise and echos while leaving clean pure audio bliss
I couldn't agree more. I got interest in higher-end audio equipment when I was younger, so I went to a local audio shop to test out some Grado headphones. They had a display of different headphones all hooked up to the "same" audio source.
60x vs 80x sounded identical. 60x to 125x, the latter had a bit more bass. 125x to 325x, the latter had a lot more bass and the clarity was a bit better. Then I plugged the 60x into the same connection they had the 325x in. Suddenly the 60x sounded damn similar. Not quite as good, but the 60x was 1/3 the cost and the 325x sure as hell didn't sound 3x better. They just had the EQ set better for it.
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